THE name of Wilberforce is one of the most distinguished in modern times; and it will occupy as large a space in the history of the benefactors of the world as any of his predecessors, who laboured, lived, and died in promoting the moral and religious advancement, and consequently the happiness of mankind. It has been justly said of him, that "in an age fertile beyond most others in illustrious characters, he reached, by paths till then unexplored, an eminence never before attained by any private member of the British Parliament." The course of glorious usefulness which Divine Providence raised up this great and good man to pursue, and with unexampled success, demanded two requisites: that he should be a statesman, surrounded by an extensive sphere of influence; and that he should be a Christian, animated by the noblest principles of that faith whose essence is love to God and love to man.

Had he been a statesman only, actuated by no higher motives than ambition and the desire of obtaining wealth and distinction in the honourable service of his sovereign and his country, he might have realised as much as any of his contemporaries. Every county member with whom he was associated at the beginning of his career had been raised to the VOL. XVI.

peerage. And "he too," his biographer well observe, "would no doubt have been entangled in the toils of party, and have failed of those great triumphs he afterwards achieved, but for the entrance into his soul of higher principle."

A Christian, though of the highest order, and warmed with a seraph's zeal, confined within the limits of a private station, could not, under any circumstances however auspicious, have abolished the slave trade, and drawn upon his principles and conduct the scrutiny and then the homage of nations, awakening them to a sense of the reality and the power of vital religion; and thus the combination of political and public life, with the strictest religious profession, in the instance of Mr. Wilberforce, at once supplies a satisfactory refutation of the notion entertained by some weak Christians, that the management of the affairs of this world must be abandoned to those who are destitute of piety, because the bustle and the business of politics are incompatible with its spirit and its claims. It was the constant collision of Mr. Wilberforce with the men of the world, working against him with all their bad principles and passions, that brightened, and brought out, and strengthened the religious principle which had taken possession of his heart and governed all

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