Straight to the Heart

Last week I took a very special guest away on holiday with my family. I needed to be refreshed spiritually as well as physically, so I took the biography of one of Wimbledon’s most famous residents with me. Converted at his home on the south side of Wimbledon Common, walking distance from my own house, William Wilberforce took up the fight against slavery and persevered till it was abolished.

After he was elected as an MP, he brought his first bill to abolish the slave trade to the British House of Commons in 1789. He delivered what was hailed as one of the greatest speeches in parliamentary history, and looked poised to succeed, but his enemies regrouped and managed to sideline the bill into committee for two whole years. During that time, a general election returned a much more conservative House of Commons against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and by the time he finally forced a vote on his bill in 1791 he was defeated by 163 votes to 88.

Undeterred, William Wilberforce published a best-selling pamphlet exposing the horrors of slavery, and reintroduced his bill in 1792. His speech was hailed by colleagues as “the greatest eloquence ever displayed in the House”, and he managed to pass it by 230 votes to 85. However, his enemies inserted the word ‘gradually’ into the bill to make it toothless, and the House of Lords threw it into committee and refused to even vote on it. He was defeated again in 1793, 1794 and 1795, after which his closest ally died a broken man. William Wilberforce, however, resolved to persevere. John Wesley had written to him only days before his death to urge him: “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing!”

In 1796, Wilberforce came very close to victory and had a big enough majority to outlaw the slave trade for good. However, on the evening of the vote a new Italian opera came to London, and five or six of his supporters ducked out of Parliament to watch it. When his bill was defeated by only four votes, he simply wrote in his diary: “Enough at the Opera to have carried it. Very much vexed and incensed at our opponents.” He was either a very patient man or else the master of understatement.

William Wilberforce was defeated in 1797, in 1798 and 1799, and was so discouraged that he didn’t even propose his annual bill for the few years which followed. He resumed in 1804 and got his law passed in the House of Commons, but the House of Lords refused to ratify it. In 1805 his bill fared even worse, and was defeated by a resurgence of his enemies within the House of Commons. Finally in 1807 he succeeded in passing his bill banning the British slave trade through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The superpower which had led the way in the slave trade was now committed to eradicating its curse from the seven seas.

What was it that gave Wilberforce the courage to persevere against failure after failure in the face of bitter and determined opposition? He wrote in his diary that “I confess to you, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition … Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” He shared the secret of his dogged perseverance in one of his books in 1797: “Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul.”

If you are part of Queens Road Church - the church I lead in south-west London - then join me in making William Wilberforce’s thoughts your own. We have many obstacles ahead as we love Jesus and live his mission in our sinful city, but God has called us, God has promised us, God empowers us, and God will give us the victory. The dreadful consequences of failure are so dire for our friends and neighbours in London, and for the nations we can reach together, that we must never, never, never give up.

And if you are a believer in Wilberforce’s God, but not in Wimbledon, then join us in making William Wilberforce’s thoughts your own too. Wherever you live, and whatever God has called you to, the God who saved and emboldened Wilberforce to push through to victory comes alongside you as you read this, and encourages you: “Don’t give up!”