Most of us know William Wilberforce as the inde­pendent member of the House of Commons who led the charge for the abolition of slav­ery. It is an inspiring story of faith in God and amazing perseverance, coupled with both tender human feelings and astounding integrity.

But most of us don't know of Wilberforce's campaign to refurbish the morals of the empire. And we don't know that in the course of that, this delightful human being wrote one of the rudest books of Christian history!

The full title of William Wilberforce's classic work and personal manifesto was A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country Contrasted with Real Christianity. (They sure knew about "snappy titles" in those days!)

I hope it might inspire you to read something of this book, and Wilberforce's approach to his life as an independent British politician. My goal in this article is to encourage Christians who yearn for a transformed culture, and insist that we are called to be both beautiful as well as bold, friendly as well as forthright, charming as well as challenging. Or as the apostle Paul might say, we are called to "speak the truth in love" (Eph. 4:15).

As a young politician elected to Parliament at 21 Wilberforce was known as a wonderful companion and enchanting orator. Even at this tender age years before his "evangelical awak­ening" when he offended people with his ideas, they were nevertheless charmed by the man who held them.

His friend William Pitt said that he had "the greatest natural eloquence of all the men I ever knew". His biographer Garth Lean explains in God's Politician that,

Wilberforce did not contrive or even always prepare his speeches in detail. He used a conversational style ... His diction, wrote a Parliamentary reporter, 'was so distinct and melodious that the most hostile ear hangs on them delighted. Then his address is so insinuating that if he talked nonsense you would feel obliged to hear him'. His warmth of feeling moved Members' hearts as well as their heads.

By the age of 24, his friend William Pitt was Prime Minister, and humanly speaking it must have seemed that Wilberforce was destined for equal greatness. But unexpectedly, on a trip to Europe (with, of all things, an English clergyman as company), the young Wilberforce was converted to orthodox evangelical Christian faith. This means that at the age of 25, Wilberforce found himself believing in God, and holding theological convictions that were minority views among most of the clergy of his day. Certainly they were a great rarity in England as a whole. William realised as a leader of society, and a prominent MP, he ought to do something with these convictions.

For two years, he grappled with this, at first rather grimly, but then with an increasingly obvious joy. As he continued to reflect on God's will for himself and his country, two great projects came to him. First he famously resolved to give himself to the abolition of the slave trade. But secondly, and perhaps less well known, the young evangelical resolved to conduct a campaign for the reformation of the morals of his age.

In any event, on 28^th October 1787 Wilberforce summed all this up in his journal "God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." This article looks at how Wilberforce went about this second object.

Wilberforce's campaign began with the help of the Prime Minister and dear personal friend, William Pitt, in encouraging George III to reissue the Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue and for the Preventing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality which like his predecessors since William and Mary, George had issued when he became King. In the case of William and Mary it had meant something and had been followed up with real social action but since then it had become a form rather than a matter of significance. However in the reissued form the King included a new Preamble, noting "the rapid progress of impiety and licentiousness, and that deluge of profaneness, immorality and every kind of vice which, to the scandal of our holy religion, and to the evil example of our loving subjects, have broken upon this nation".

Next came Wilberforce's campaign to establish a mechanism for enforcing this Proclamation. He canvassed and gained the support of leading figures who comprised with him a Proclamation Society. One of the chief roles for the society would be the prosecution of crimes (which at the time were not a concern of the state, but had to be done by victims or private citizens: hard to do unless you were wealthy.) The society would also place political pressure on magistrates to conduct themselves with legal diligence. Generally there would be a campaign for moral reform.

Wilberforce did all this while resisting the temptation to make this a thor­oughly religious movement. He felt it would be shrewd to gain leadership in all this from the irreligious and even those who themselves breached the Proclamation's standards. However the driving force in the Proclamation society would be fellow evangelicals like Edward Eliot, Hannah More and the like.

Wilberforce was mocked and opposed by some, but the society and its work struck a chord in many places in England. Many magistrates were clearly dissatisfied with the current state of the land, and they rose to the challenge.

Leading evangelical Hannah More wrote two important books addressed to the leading classes of England which, along with Wilberforce's Practical View, struck a chord. As many of the drinking houses were reformed and licensing laws tightened, more of the masses, and even some aristocrats began to go to Sunday church. Lean attributes the moral rigour of the Victorian age to all this. In the years that followed, many of the children of aristocrats (including Princess Victoria), rebelled against their parents' depravities and, despairing of what their parents' irreligion had produced, began to take Christian teaching and morality seriously.

Within two or three years after Wilberforce found his vision for the reformation of the nation's "manners" — at least by 1789 — he considered writing a personal manifesto. However at this early stage he rejected the idea, for he was sensitive to the possibility that "dread of an over-righteous man would deter people" thinking here especially of his friend Pitt, but also the King himself. Pitt and of course the king had been crucial in Wilberforce's first step in seeking the reissue of the Proclamation which took place on 1^st June 1787. If the Proclamation were to have its intended effect, it was vital that it not be compromised by any taint of religious "enthusiasm".

By the middle of the next decade, the tide had shifted towards publication. The danger of undermining the work of the Proclamation Society had passed, and now Wilberforce's chief concern was to be heard for the evangelical Christian that he was. He believed that it was imperative that his ideology be made plain to his countrymen, but particularly it seems, to his fellow Parliamentarians. Wilberforce believed that unless the heart of England was changed by the gospel, its outward moral condition could not be made healthy.

The primary audience to which he addressed his book were the leading members of society and the middle class (as evidenced by the book's title.)

The main object... is not to convince the Sceptic, or to answer the arguments of persons who avowedly oppose the fundamental doctrines of our Religion; but to point out the scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author apprehends to be real Christianity.

Thus, A Practical View was one of the rudest books written. It accused the great bulk of English middle and upper classes of being false Christians, and indeed, because they did not live true to evangelical faith, they were not Christians at all!

Understandably, Wilberforce's publisher was diffident about success. Even his old mentor, the clergyman Isaac Milner who had led him to Christ on that trip to Europe, tried to dissuade him from it. He thought it a lost cause. However Wilberforce pressed on with the plan. The publisher was finally will­ing to do a print run of 500 copies, provided Wilberforce put his name on it.

However because of Wilberforce's personal credibility, right from the very beginning the book was a tremendous success. The first print run sold out in days. Within six months, there had been five different editions and a total of 7500 copies sold, which in those days made it a best-seller.

From the early days it was read and reprinted in great numbers in North America and in India. By 1826 it had gone through 25 editions, and had been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and German. In 1838 his sons Robert and Samuel wrote that "its circu­lation was at that time altogether without precedent."

John Newton, the retired slave captain become clergyman, wrote that "I deem it the most valuable and impor­tant publication of the present age ... I shall be glad to look to you (at least to your book) ... to strengthen my motives for running the uncertain remainder of my race with alacrity."

Famous Irish statesman Edmund Burke spent most of his final two days reading it, and said that it had given him "unspeakable comfort ... If I live, I shall thank Wilberforce for having sent such a book into the world."

The main theme of the book is that there is only one true form of Christianity, and that is not the nominal and comfortable religion of the bulk of Englishmen, but rather evangelical Christianity, which takes seriously the Bible and its doctrines of sin, judgment, and salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.

Wilberforce wrote:

Thus have we endeavoured to trace the chief defects of the religious system of the bulk of pro­fessed Christians in this country. We have pointed out their low idea of the importance of Christianity in general; their inadequate conceptions of all its leading doctrines, and the effect thereby naturally produced in relaxing the strict­ness of its practical system; more than all, we have remarked on their grand fundamental misconception of its genius and essential nature. Let not therefore the difference between them and true believers be considered as a minute difference; as a question of forms or opinions. The question is of the very substance of Religion; the differ­ence is of the most serious and momentous amount. We must speak out. Their Christianity is not Christianity ... Let them no longer then be deceived by names in a matter of infinite impor­tance: but with humble prayer to the Source of all wisdom, that He would enlighten their understandings, and clear their hearts from prejudice; let them seriously examine by the Scripture standard their real belief and allowed practice, and they will become sensible of the shallowness of their scanty system.

Wilberforce was a man of tact. He could be shrewd in his handling of reform. In his efforts to correct the man­ners of his country through the Proclamation Society, he took care not to taint the society with any obvious connection to religious enthusiasm. Thus, in a way, he concealed something of his own Christian motives in this work. However he still acted with integrity for his goals for the society were always open, and were shared by his partners, even if they did not share his theological convictions.

However, Wilberforce always refused to act corruptly through trading influence. Thus he would not support a measure in Parliament, for which he had no taste, merely for the sake of gaining support from its promoters, for one of Wilberforce's own projects. This impeccable integrity earned him the persona of "conscience of the nation" and had a happy correspondence with his own naturally pleasant manner, which made him such an attractive conversationalist and delightful orator.

It seems to me that part of his need for this manifesto and I note here in particular that there were things in the book which he felt he had not been able to tell his friends, (even a friend as good as Pitt) — came from the fact that though this book must have been incredibly insulting, Wilberforce was not an angular person: he loved people and his natural impulse was to please and encourage them rather than insult and rebuke them.

Despite his campaign for the reform of "manners", Wilberforce insisted that the best way to pursue a healthy state and society, is

to cultivate ... real Christianity ... since humanly speaking, we must either have this or nothing. Unless (real Christianity) can be in some degree restored, we are likely to lose not only all the advantages which we might have derived from true Christianity, but also to incur the manifold evils which the absence of all religion would bring.

In conclusion, "the best wish that can be made for (any) country, by one who is deeply anxious for its welfare" is for true evangelical Christian religion to prosper and spread its influence.

I suggest that Wilberforce is a model of how all gospel-loving Christians should see ourselves. We should love our neighbour by presenting the gospel with bold words and a beautiful life: through the power of the gospel renewing us, we shall at the same time be both rude and refined!