Sunday, Wilberforce and Newton

Audio: The sermon nobody wants to preach before the election. Steve Murrell speaks today at Bethel World Outreach to a very racially diverse congregation in Brentwood. From the In God We Trust series.
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Although he (Newton) must have been surprised to receive such a request from a correspondent he had not seen on heard from for over ten years. After further reflection Newton would not have found it difficult to at the hidden agenda behind Wilberforce's letter, for he was an old friend of the Wilberforce family, having known William since his schoolboy visits to his old Olney vicarage in the 1770s when he was a accompanied by his Aunt Hannah. The boy had grown into a rising twenty-six year-old politician who had just won reelection to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Hull.

But as Newton was aware, William Wilberforce MP had slipped from the serious and moral lifestyle in which his pious Aunt Hannah had brought him up. Since his arrival at Westminster he had, by his own admission, been something of a dilettante---"The first years I was in Parliament I did nothing---nothing to any purpose"---- was Wilberforce's description of his early political life. Instead he had become a fashionable figure in London society, a frequenter of the gaming tables in St James's Street clubs such as White's and Boodle's and an object of admiration in that beau monde on account of his inherited fortune, his melodious singing voice, and his close friendship with the young Prime Minister, William Pitt, who was twenty-six years old.

But his views began to change during the summer of 1784 and 1785 when he traveled around Europe with Isaac Milner, his form schoolmaster at Hull Grammar School. Wilberforce regarded Milner as "very much a man of the world in his manners." If those manners had been known to include evangelical leaning, it is unlikely that Wilberforce would ever have invited his old teacher to be his holiday companion.

Yet, once Milner's views on religion had emerged in casual conversation during their journey across France, the two friends engaged in many discussion about faith and the truth of Scripture. They also studied the Greek New Testament and a popular evangelical book, "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," by Philip Doddridge.

By the end of their second summer together in 1785, William Wilberforce had come under such powerful conviction that he began wrestling with his conscience that he thought might be telling him to leave his worldly role as a Member of Parliament and to serve God as a minister of the Church. Believing he had to make a choice between these two careers, Wilberforce resolved to approach his decision with utmost care.

Firstly he planned to withdraw from his former lifestyle of social elegance combined with political nonchalance. Secondly, he wanted to isolate himself in order to explore his vocation in a period of thoughtful seclusion......

---Jonathan Aitken, John Newton, From Disgrace to Amazing Grace

A beautiful song for today and our tumultuous times that puts all things in perspective.