The Parliamentarian Who Almost Left

In the autumn of 1785, William Wilberforce sat across from John Newton in a London parlor, convinced he needed to leave Parliament and enter the clergy. Wilberforce was twenty-six, freshly converted, and burning with desire to serve God. Surely that meant ordination. Surely that meant a pulpit.

Newton — the old sailor, the former slave trader, the man who had penned Amazing Grace — listened carefully. Then he said something Wilberforce did not expect: stay where you are.

God had not called Wilberforce out of politics. He had called him deeper into it. Newton, like Eli in the temple, recognized the voice that the younger man had heard but misread. The call was real. The interpretation needed correction.

Wilberforce returned to his seat in the House of Commons. Over the next twenty years, he introduced bill after bill to abolish the slave trade. On March 25, 1807, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act finally passed. Wilberforce wept on the floor of Parliament.