This is a worldview book. And, despite being hard to read, I found myself interested in knowing what Wilberforce believed to be true about God, the world around us, humanity, death, evil and suffering, right and wrong and human history. It gives the reader a clue into the heart of the politician, philanthropist and abolitionist.
Apparently, there were many nominal Christians -- Christians who had an inadequate view of God, an inadequate understanding of their own guilt and whose lives did not reflect God's power. I was well into the book when I concluded that this treatise could have been written by some modern day church leader. Many of the conclusions and arguments are true today; I have complained about many of the same things. So, I was amused to read this about dueling:
But, it seems hardly to have been enough noticed in what chiefly consists its essential guilt; that is is a deliberate preference of the favour of men, before the favour and approbation of God, in articulo mortis, in an instance, wherein our own life, and that of a fellow creature are at stake, and wherein we run the risk of rushing into the presence of our Maker in the very act of offending him. (page 174)That certainly doesn't fit into my thoughts about this book being timeless! It seems there wasn't a golden age of Christianity. The problems facing the church today aren't a new; there is nothing new under the sun.
So, what motivated Wilberforce?
He had a relatively high view of man. While Wilberforce recognized man as having "fallen from his high original, degraded in his nature, and depraved of his faculties," he also states:
Examine first with attention, the natural powers and faculties of man; invention, reason, judgment, memory; a mind "of large discourse," "looking before and after," reviewing the past, thence determining for the present, and anticipating the future; discerning, collecting, combining, comparing; capable, not merely of apprehending, but of admiring the beauty of moral excellence: with fear and hope to warn and animate; with joy and sorrow to solace and soften; with love to attach, with sympathy to harmonize, with courage to attempt, with patience to endure, and with the power of conscience, that faithful monitor within the breast to enforce the conclusions of reason, and direct and regulate the passions of the soul. Truly, we must pronounce him majestic though in ruin.(page 22)His salvation theology wouldn't have fit neatly into the grace-based, sloppy agape, say and pray and be saved salvation that is taught in many evangelical churches:
Again we see throughout, in the system which we have been describing, a most inadequate conception of the difficulty of becoming true Christians; and an utter forgetfulness of its being the great business of our life to secure our admission into Heaven, and to prepare our hearts for its service and enjoyments. The general notion appears to be, that, if born in a country of which Christianity is the established religion, we are born Christians. We do not therefore look out for positive evidence of our really being of that number; but putting the onus probandi (if it may be so expressed) on the wrong side, we conceive ourselves such of course, except our title be disproved by positive evidence to the contrary. (page 231)
