DAILY READINGS: WILLIAM WILBERFORCE
Editor Michael D. McMullen.
Christian Focus. 376 pages. £19.99
ISBN 978 1 527 110 144
During 1787 William Wilberforce reached his conviction that “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners”, which attained its high point in the 1807 abolition of the trade.
It is this for which Wilberforce is recognised. Yet if that is all, we know only a single dimension of this godly man’s life. Michael McMullen’s edition of Daily Readings – along with his previous edition of Wilberforce’s spiritual journals – go a long way to correcting this. As a pastor friend in the USA remarked to me when writing this review: “He was the most spiritual man in public life I have ever heard of, let alone read.”
The providence of God
Follow these readings for a year, and what is one likely to conclude? His unflagging sense of God’s providence, for one. He constantly referred to God’s providence over and in his life. In a letter to his mother soon after word of his conversion had become more widely known, he said: “It would merit no better name than desertion … if I were to fly from this post where Providence has placed me.” He was ever aware that “My walk I am sensible is a public one; my business is in the world; and I must mix in assemblies with men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”
His self-criticism is always in evidence: “My grand faults seem to be those which include in them all others: vanity and pride and sensuality. Mortify these daily. Even my religion is practiced with a view to the praise of men.” Later in life he recorded: “When I look back on my parliamentary life, and see how little, all taken together, I have duly adorned the doctrine of God my Saviour, I am ashamed and humbled in the dust; may any time which remains, Lord, be better employed.”
I do not think I exaggerate when saying that this is the most helpful daily readings of its kind that I have ever read. It may encourage readers to look more widely into the life of someone who will challenge, and surprise, by the depth of his godliness in the midst of a life of the busiest political engagements one could imagine.
