William Wilberforce (1759-1833) is best remembered for his work in bringing about the abolition of the slave trade and slavery itself. He was born in Hull in 1759. Whitefield died when Wilberforce was about 11 years old but the effects of the mighty revival with which his name is connected continued to be felt. Converted in his mid-twenties, Wilberforce served as MP for his native county of York from 1790-1825. He was a life-long friend of the younger Pitt. He once said that he felt God had set before him “two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” He was a conspicuous member of the so-called "Clapham Sect", a significant group of evangelicals in public life who sought to be an influence for good and to evangelise the property-owning classes.
To this end Wilberforce produced a book whose full title was A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country contrasted with Real Christianity, although it is usually known simply by the first three words of its title.
The book started life as a little tract but by the time of its publication four years later, in 1797, it had grown to a work of nearly 500 pages. It was an immediate success. In the first six months it went through five impressions, selling 7,500 copies. It went through nine English editions by 1811 and 18 by 1830. It was published in the USA in 1798, and translated into French (1821) and Spanish (1827). It remained in print long into the next century and is still in print today (though often in abridged form).
It lays bare the shallowness of the nominal Christianity so prevalent then and not dead today. Wilberforce wanted to show that what passed for Christianity among many was only moralising, not New Testament Christianity. His contemporary evangelicals, men like Richard Cecil and Henry Thornton, were particularly pleased that the work reached an audience not normally touched by such "enthusiasm". It was not by a clergyman and it was written in a charming, gracious and discursive manner. (One writer described it as "temperate, courteous, and studiously restrained in its language".)
Even Edmund Burke spoke warmly of it on his death bed.
In the 19th Century the prominent evangelical bishop Daniel Wilson wrote in a long preface “Never, perhaps, did any volume by a layman on a religious subject, produce a deeper or more sudden effect”. It was one of the books that helped another evangelical bishop, J C Ryle, in his early days.
John McLeod wrote in the 20th Century: "The impetus that it gave to practical religion continued for many a day, and the remote ripples and wavelets of its influence are still to be detected upon the surface of the sea of mankind."
"A Practical View is a biblical view, presented intelligibly if haphazardly," wrote John Pollock in his 20th Century biography of Wilberforce.
It deals with the inadequate conception of Christianity held by people in Britain; the state of human nature according to the Bible - sinful, needing forgiveness and renewal; the lack of true understanding of Christ and the Holy Spirit amongst nominal Christians (including remarks on the importance of emotion in true Christianity); the common failure of practical Christianity because it is not seen to be faith working by love; the excellence of true Christianity (proving its divine origin); hints and advice on how change can occur in the state of religion. It closes with practical advice for various sorts of reader.
John Piper has observed that as he completed the book he “could not recall a single sentence that a Calvinist like John Newton or George Whitefield or Charles Spurgeon could not agree with”.
Amongst those converted through it were the editor of The Annals of Agriculture, Arthur Young, one of the first men to raise agriculture to the level of a science. He bought the book when in anxiety over a dying daughter. He wrote to Wilberforce to say how the book had changed his life and this began a life-long friendship between the two.
Another convert was Legh Richmond, author of The dairyman's daughter a greatly used evangelistic tract in the Victorian age. As an unconverted curate on the Isle of Wight a copy given to him by a friend was used to humble his heart and lead him to the Saviour.
A practical view was found in many a home in the 19th Century. As a boy David Livingstone was thrashed by his father for refusing to read it. It was also instrumental in the conversion of the great Thomas Chalmers. “Somewhere about the year 1811 I had Wilberforce's View put into my hands,” he writes “and as I got on in reading it I felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my opinions of Christianity. I am now most of the opinion … that on the system of do this and live no peace ... can ever be attained. It is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
This article first appeared in The Evangelical Library Bulletin
