Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

his conduct. To the operation of this principle he is indebted for all his moral greatness, his political importance, and the character which will go down with his name to the latest posterity. Religion made him what he was, and qualified and enabled him to attempt, and by perseverance to accomplish, some of the noblest purposes that were ever entertained in a human bosom. And of what nature that religion was, how it took possession of his soul and became the governing principle of his life, the following brief narrative will disclose.

Mr. Wilberforce was born at Hull on the 24th of August, 1759. His father was an opulent merchant in that town. His ancestors occupied, about five miles from York, a mansion in a township which has the name of Wilberfoss. After a gradual decline in wealth and numbers the family disappeared from the place about a century ago. The grandfather of Mr. Wilberforce was engaged in the Baltic trade in Hull, and with his patrimonial fortune inherited a considerable landed property. Robert, the younger of his two children, father of William Wilberforce, was a partner in the house at Hull; and here was spent the early childhood of his distinguished son. Of this little more is known than that his constitution was so feeble, his frame so delicate, that for several years fears were entertained for his life. It also appears that he gave early indications of his affectionate disposition and ready elocution. His father died before he completed his ninth year, and he was in consequence transferred to the care of a paternal uncle residing at Wimbledon, in Surrey. Here he was placed at school, where "they taught every thing and nothing." His aunt, to whose care he was at this tender and susceptible age entrusted, was deeply imbued with a religious spirit, and warmly attached to the ministry of Whitfield.' Under her pious instructions, he acquired a familiarity with the sacred writings, and a habit of devotion of which the results were perceptible throughout the whole of his mature life.

At this period he wrote several religious letters, and in accordance with the opinions he afterwards renounced, but to which he returned when he experienced a real change of heart. His mother, whom he describes as " Archbishop Tillotson's Christian," (orthodox, but cold,) was alarmed at the

an

tendencies of his mind, and repaired to London for the purpose of removing him from the scene of such dangerous contagion. On his return to Hull, the impressions received at Wimbledon were soon obliterated. Amid the gaieties of the circle in which he moved he lost the solemn convictions of his childhood. His irreligious relatives rejoiced in the change, and did their utmost to promote it. Indeed, he himself observes, "that no pious parent ever laboured more to impress a beloved child with sentiments of piety than they did to give me a taste for the world and its diversions."

That they too well succeeded, the years of his boyhood and youth to the time of his conversion to God sufficiently and painfully attest. Mr. Wilberforce, at the age of thirty-eight, ventures to speculate on the probable result, had he continued under his uncle's roof, "I should probably have been a bigoted, despised Methodist." It is possible— but then how many years of thoughtless levity and sin would he have avoided! And after all he did not escape the dreaded imputation-with Methodism he was branded. His bigotry (if indeed bigotry ever had a place in his bosom) took another direction.

After continuing till the year 1776 at the endowed grammar-school at Pocklington, he removed to Cambridge. And here, to a youth of seventeen what scenes were disclosed! Against such contamination as he describes only a special Providence could have preserved him. “I was introduced," he says, "on the very night of my arrival, to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives. I lived among them for some time, though I never relished their society, . . . . often indeed I was horror-struck at their conduct. . . . . . And after the first year, I shook off in a great measure my connexion with them."

In Mr. Wilberforce's time the whole system of this celebrated seat of learning was corrupt. The gownsmen freely indulged in the vices of the day, while the fellows and tutors conspired to foment the pride and indolence of every man of fortune. "The fellows of the college," he says, "did not act towards me the part of Christians, or even of honest men; their object seemed to be to make and keep me idle."

To one of them, in the year 1822, he

writes with a fidelity which makes one shudder at the responsibility so fearfully abused. Speaking of his vain and dissi pated conduct at college, and during the three or four first years of his parliamentary life, which immediately succeeded, he observes, "Even at college, those very men who ought tohave used both authority and influence (and of the latter at least I was susceptible) to root out those propensities and implant better, rather confirmed than abated them. I must do both you and Cookson the justice to exempt you in a good degree from this charge, though to be honest with you, not entirely. For would not the golden rule have prompted you to use towards me the language of a friend, if not of a father? (My natural father I lost when eight years old, and my grandfather and uncle soon after I went to Cambridge.) Ought you not to have urged me to look forward: and even on principles of sound human wisdom, much more on Christian principles to consider what must be the issue of the course of life I was pursuing, and of the choice I was making of associates and friends?" After much more that is severe, because it is so mild and gentle, he adds:-" You did not spend night after night at cards with me, but did you suggest to me the fate of the unprofitable servant?"

At college, however, notwithstanding the above acknowledgment, he was not strictly dissipated; and far, very far, from every approach to the gross sensualities of vice. Of his acquirements at the University, under such hopeful guides and examples, he says, "I was a good classic, and acquitted myself well in the college examinations; but mathematics, which my mind greatly needed, I almost entirely neglected, and was told that I was too clever to require them."

Mr. Wilberforce having determined to enter upon public life, passed at a single step from the University to the House of Commons. The general election of 1780 occurring within less than a month from the completion of his twenty-first year, he commenced a canvass for the representation of his native town in Parliament: and the affection of his townsmen, aided and stimulated by the expenditure upon them and among them, of from eight to nine thousand pounds, placed him triumphant at the head of the poll. Although at this time Mr. Wilberforce states himself to have been "so ignorant of general society as to have come up to London stored with

arguments to prove the authenticity of Rowley's Poems;" yet so rich and so accomplished an aspirant could not be long excluded from the mysteries of the world of fashion which now burst upon him. Five clubs enrolled him among their members. He chatted, played at cards, or gambled with Fox, Sheridan, and Fitzpatrick; fascinated the Prince of Wales by his singing at Devonshire House; produced inimitable imitations of Lord North's voice and manner; sang catches with Lord Sandwich; exchanged epigrams with Mrs. Crewe : partook of a Shakspearian dinner at the Boar in Eastcheap; "shirked the Duchess of Gordon; and danced till five in the morning at Almack's." Yet was he not the mere idler or the fashionable lounger. Though so young and so captivated by the scenes of frivolity and dissipation around him, he was unremitting in his attention to his Parliamentary duties. With Mr. Pitt he lived on terms of intimacy; and this friendship, which but for the intervention of his religious change would have increased with their years, gave to Mr. Wilberforce that particular bias which has exposed him so much to the censure of the friends of liberal government and a free constitution. When at Wimbledon he was constantly receiving visitors of rank and talent. Mr. Pitt was rather an inmate than a guest.

The parliamentary vacation of this period found him on the banks of the Windermere surrounded" with a goodly assortment of books," and among the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland, with continual parties enjoying the amusements adapted to the season and the

scenery.

We must pass over his visit to France in the autumn of 1783, and merely stop to glance at the circumstance which removed him from the representation of his native town to become a member for the county, the largest, the most opulent and populous, in the British empire. The infamous Coalition, as it has always and justly been stigmatised, in which there was so much sacrifice of political consistency, and such evident destitution of all public principle, was at the commencement of the year 1784 the subject of popular invective. At a public meeting in the Castle-yard at York in March, Mr. Wilberforce condemned these measures in a speech which was received with the greatest applause. James Boswell, who witnessed the scene, in

transmitting the account of it to Dundas, says, "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table, but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." The consequences of this speech were those at which the speaker aimed. It diminished the influence of the great Whig families of Yorkshire, and as the election was approaching, an opening was made for the introduction of a new candidate. This was felt. The cry of "Wilberforce and liberty,' was easily exchanged for "Wilberforce and the representation of Yorkshire;" and the victory was achieved, without his principal opponents, the Whigs, venturing to the poll. With this memorable triumph, Mr. Wilberforce closed his twenty-fifth year, and returned to London in possession of whatever could gratify the wishes or exalt the hopes of a candidate for fame, on the noblest theatre of civil action which the world had thrown open to the ambition of private men. If we look at him at this period, just about to enter upon his great career, from his known character and qualities, as far as they had then developed themselves, what anticipations would the enlightened Christian philanthropist have been justified in forming of the course he would pursue, and the objects he would attain! He possessed, indeed, and evinced from the first, an intense fellow-feeling for other men.

No one more readily adopt

ed the interests, sympathised with the affections, or caught even the transient emotions of those with whom he associated. Then he was cheerful, buoyant, full of hope. Ever ready to weep with those that wept, his nature still more strongly prompted him to rejoice with those that rejoiced. He was born for society, of which he was the delight and charm.

His talents were great in themselves, beautiful in their combinations, brilliant, joyous, and impressive in their exercise; and, for his proper business as a senator, no man in the House was equal to him in all points. He was equally endowed by nature, and education, and condition. And his return to Parliament at the age of twenty-five as member for Yorkshire, carried in by the tide of popular enthusiasm, placed him on an enviable, though dangerous, eminence. And if no new element had been thrown into his moral nature, completely to imbue, to sanctify, and direct it, his career might have been

[ocr errors]

66

brilliant, but hardly of any enduring fame. Ordinary foresight," observes the Edinburgh Review," "might have predicted that he would be courted or feared by the two great parties in the House of Commons; that he would be at once the idol and the idolater of society; and that he would shine, in Parliament and in the world, in the foremost rank of intellectual voluptuaries. But that he should rise to be amongst the most laborious and eminent benefactors of mankind was beyond the penetration of human sagacity."

That Mr. Wilberforce, in a moral and religious sense, was not only unprepared for the great revolution his principles and life were about to experience, but also adverse to those Scriptural views which led to it, we learn from his declaration, that if he had suspected the clergyman who was destined to be its instrument, of entertaining those views, he would not have accepted him as his travelling companion to the Continent. He had forgotten all the impressions produced by the assiduities of his pious relatives at Wimbledon, and could even treat religious topics with lightness and raillery. But there was an agency at work which he did not recognise, and the time of its development was drawing near.

Upon the prorogation of Parliament in 1784, he determined on a Continental tour, and applied to a friend at York to accompany him. To his great surprise the invitation was declined, when casually meeting with a clergyman well known to him, and afterwards highly distinguished both as a devout Christian and a dignitary of the Church, the offer was transferred to him. Isaac Milner, the brother of Joseph, the ecclesiastical historian, and subsequently the Dean of Carlisle, was the person. He was not suspected of ultra views of religion, or of any strict conformity to its requirements. Mr. Wilberforce describes him as "free from every taint of vice, but not more attentive than others to religion. He appeared in all respects like an ordinary man of the world, mixing like myself in all companies, and joining as readily as others in the prevalent Sunday parties."

With a clergyman of this stamp, the sentiments of the new member for York seemed to be in perfect harmony. With a profligate, or a suspected profligate, in holy orders, he would have shuddered to associate; and to an evangelical mi

nister, such as he had known in his childhood at Wimbledon, he would have felt equal repugnance. But in Milner he soon found himself mistaken.

If not a spiritual man, Milner proved himself a sound and a sincere divine; and when religion came before him, or rather when he saw the necessity of making a stand for it, against the cavils and taunts of his companion, he felt an awakening reverence in his heart. Discussion was beneficial to them both; for the nominal piety of the one soon ripened into fruit; and the newly implanted principle in the other was not long in discovering its reality and its power in changing his character and dignifying his pursuits. A copy of Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion" was possessed by one of the party, and having been casually taken up by Wilberforce, the opinion of his friend was asked respecting it. "It is one of the best books ever written," said Milner. "Let us take it with us and read it on our journey."

66

His advice was followed, and Mr. Wilberforce determined at some future period, to examine the Scriptures for himself, in order to ascertain if they coincided with the representations of the Nonconformist author. This was done during the following year, in company with Milner, when they journeyed from Genoa to Switzerland. Their conversation now became more impressive and absorbing. The Greek Testament was their daily companion, and its doctrines the subjects of thoughtful study. The result was a deep impression on Mr. Wilberforce of the reality of religion, and the correctness of the views which Milner defended.

66

For a considerable time his convictions were fluctuating, and produced scarcely any adequate effect. My conscience told me," he remarks, "that in the true sense of the word I was not a Christian. I laughed, I sang, I was apparently gay and happy; but the thought would steal across me, 'What madness is all this, to continue easy in a state in which a sudden call out of the world would consign me to everlasting misery, and that, when eternal happiness is within my grasp!" These feelings produced, under the Divine blessing, the most painful compunctions for sin. He charged himself with deep guilt and black ingratitude; and fell abased in the dust, when he thought that he had lived in vain. "I condemned myself for having wasted my

precious time, and opportunities, and talents."

Having returned to Englard, he felt that he was no longer what he was; and that it would be impossible for him to live with the mere people of the world, as he had formerly done.

For some months he was in a state of sad depression, and engaged in a course of religious exercises, with a view of relieving his overburdened heart. All this nourished the new principle of spiritual life so mercifully vouchsafed to him. His convictions gathered strength; his views expanded. He saw, and felt, and loved the truth. Of this his friends and the world must not remain ignorant. He felt that his general deportment must be altered, and he did not think it manly to suffer them to guess the cause. Mr. Pitt was one of the first to whom the announcement was made.

In his thirst after spiritual instruction and consolation, there were few experienced Christians to whom he could open his heart. He felt at length a determination to introduce his case to the Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, the venerable John Newton.

"It may do good," he writes in his diary; "he will pray for me; his experience may enable him to direct me to new grounds of humiliation, and it is that only which I can perceive God's Spirit employ to any effect. It can do no harm, for that is a scandalous objection which keeps occurring to me, that if ever my sentiments change, I shall be ashamed of having done it; it can only humble me, and whatever is the right way, if truth be right, I ought to be humbled; but sentiments change."

After having made an unsuccessful effort to call on Mr. Newton he wrote to him.

The letter begins, "There is no need of apology for intruding on you, when the subject is religion." And concludes with, "Remember I must be secret, and that the gallery of the House is now so universally attended, that the face of a Member of Parliament is pretty well known."

He obtained the interview, and remarks upon it:

"On the whole, he encouraged me, though I got nothing new from him; as how could I, except a good hint that he never found it answer to dispute, and that it was well not to make visits that one disliked over agreeable. When I

came away I found my mind in a calm, tranquil state, more humbled, and looking more devoutly up to God."

It was part of Mr. Newton's counsel that he should not hastily form new connexions, nor widely separate from his former friends.

"This very day, accordingly," he says, "as I promised, I went to Pittsad work. I went there in fear, and for some time kept an awe on my mind. My feelings lessened in the evening, and I could scarce lift up myself in prayer to God at night."

He withdrew his name from all the clubs of which he was member. The world gazed and admired; and though it could not love the change, yet was its enmity as to its expression greatly softened and subdued by the amiable character of his piety. Without any deficiency of strength or compass, it was mainly visible in the growing benevo

lence of his spirit, the stricter regulation of his temper, his desire to subdue opposition and to overcome prejudice by a consistent display of the milder and more attractive features of the Christian character. This was shown in his solicitude to remove the impressions which his mother had received respecting his change.

"It may tend," he remarks, when anticipating a meeting with her in 1786, "to remove prejudices-if I am more kind and affectionate than ever, consult her more, show respect for her judgment, and manifest rather humility in myself than dissatisfaction concerning others."

So completely did he accomplish his views that a female friend of his mother, commenting on his cheerfulness and command of temper, remarked, “If this be madness, I hope that he will bite us all."

ON THE GENERAL CALL OF THE GOSPEL. THE propriety of preaching to unbelievers, inviting all men to come to Christ, and the consistency of this practice with Calvinistic principles, are questions of ancient date; and so much has been said, and well said, on the side which we espouse, that we should not now have recurred to the subject, had we not been requested by a correspondent, whose communication has inspired us with esteem for its author.

not attempt to prove; for they are admitted by those who doubt the propriety of the second set; because these seem opposed to Calvinism, which they justly think the doctrine of Scripture.

We assert, then, eternal predestination to life, and particular election, with the specific design of the atonement, that it is not a lottery where chance awards the prizes, but that its saving effect was, not only foreseen, but predetermined. We maintain, also, in the fullest sense, the necessity of Divine influence to render the Gospel the power of God to salvation; and we protest against every thing in preaching which is really opposed to these principles.

But we assert, also, that the Gospel should be preached to every creature; that ministers are bound to "call upon all men every where to repent and believe the Gospel;" and be reconciled to God; and that they who refuse should be charged with their own blood.

The first set of propositions, which are usually termed Calvinistic, we need

That the Scriptures contain indiscriminate addresses to all men, seems too clear to need proof. Moses, the first of the inspired writers, preaches to those in Israel of whom he expressly says, “The Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day." In the second Psalm, the Holy Ghost says to the kings of the earth, who set themselves against the Lord and his Messiah, "Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth; serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling: kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way." In the Proverbs, wisdom is exhibited, as "standing at the head of the way," saying, "As for him that lacketh understanding, turn in hither; eat of my bread, and drink of the wine that I have mingled." The prophet Isaiah says, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ;" and Ezekiel says, "Turn ye, why_will ye die ?" In the New Testament, John

Deut. xxix. 4.

+ Prov. viii. 9.

« VorigeDoorgaan »