Wilberforce and the Forty-Six Year Calling

In 1787, a twenty-seven-year-old member of Parliament named William Wilberforce sat at an oak desk in his London home and scribbled five words in his journal: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." He had no idea it would take him nearly half a century.

For twenty years, Wilberforce introduced abolition bills that were voted down, mocked, and buried in committee. He battled chronic illness, political betrayal, and seasons of crushing discouragement. Friends urged him to abandon the cause. Yet each year, he rose again in the House of Commons and spoke for those who had no voice.

What sustained him was not his own resolve but a deep conviction that the God who had called him to this work would not abandon it — or him. Wilberforce once told a friend, "I am not my own keeper. The Almighty holds the outcome."

In 1833, three days before his death, Parliament finally passed the Slavery Abolition Act, freeing eight hundred thousand enslaved people across the British Empire.