Quotes About Wilberforce

Christianity has been successfully attacked and marginalized… because those who professed belief were unable to defend the faith from attack, even though its attackers' arguments were deeply flawed.

It must be conceded by those who admit the authority of Scripture (such only he is addressing) that from the decision of the word of God there can be no appeal.

Only an unwillingness to be open and honest can keep us from the conclusion that both reason and experience tell us that what the Bible says about us is true. We are without excuse if we remain in denial.

Christianity itself has been too often disgraced. It has been turned into an engine of cruelty, and amidst the bitterness of persecution, every trace has disappeared of the mild and beneficent spirit of the religion of Jesus.

No politician has ever used his faith to a greater result for all of humanity, and that is why, in his day, Wilberforce was a moral hero far more than a political one.

Influenced by Wesley and the revival movement, Englishman William Wilberforce led the successful movement to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire.

Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham. Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ.

In what appears to have been an unplanned quip, Wilberforce asked Huxley if he thought he was descended from an ape on his father's or mother's side. Huxley retorted that he would rather have simian relatives than claim kinship with a man who used his charisma and authority to quash free debate.

Wilberforce simply got caught up in the proceedings below and a desire bloomed in him to join the debate and say for the historical record what he was already thinking; perhaps he thought he might do as well as those extemporizing down on the floor and wished to try.

Wilberforce manifestly lacked the personality to sit over an account ledger and do whatever was necessary to be a successful businessman in the merchant trade back in Hull.

By the time Wilberforce experienced his "Great Change," all of the social problems that would plague eighteenth-century Britain had come to full flower, having been unchecked by the social conscience of genuine Christian faith for nearly a hundred years.

Wilberforce was greatly renowned for his singing voice and came to be known as the "Nightingale of Commons"—probably not only for the remarkable quality of his voice but for the hours at which he sang.

It wouldn't be entirely clear to him until 1787, but in the meantime, as a first step in the right direction, Wilberforce championed two bills, both of which failed. One was for parliamentary reform and the other was a strange and ghoulish bill combining two macabre issues: putting an end to the burning of women at the stake, and selling the corpses of hanged criminals for dissection.

I thank God that I live in the age of Wilberforce and that I know one man at least who is both moral and entertaining.

The date was appropriate for his debut, for it was—certainly unbeknownst to Wilberforce—the fiftieth birthday of George Washington, the man who had driven Lord North and King George to the brink of madness and frustration

Wilberforce, only twenty-four himself, was Pitt's greatest ally there, and he stood staunchly by his friend's side during this time, both of them using their powerful oratorical skills to the fullest.

Though we can hardly understand it, and Wilberforce himself never quite made sense of it during his lifetime, he now entertained the outrageous idea of using this opportunity to become one of Yorkshire County's two representatives in Parliament, something that was effectively impossible.

But Wilberforce's exquisite voice was a force of nature itself, and as rude and harsh as the wind and rain were, Wilberforce's voice was glorious and beautiful.

What made Wilberforce one of the best speakers of his day is complex

Milner simply cannot have really existed, except perhaps in a tale by Baron von Munchausen. And yet there he stood at the Scarborough races, looming gigantically over the wee mannikin Wilberforce.

Great men like Wilberforce and Wesley had the humility and the wisdom to know that whatever strengths they had—and they had many—they could not win without a total reliance on God. At its core, every battle worth fighting is a spiritual battle. Those men were able to succeed only because they humbled themselves and entrusted the battle to God.

Today, Wilberforce University welcomes many of America's poorest and most underserved populations and transforms their educational dreams into realities.

This was evidently the place Wilberforce had come to, a place of such guilt before God, of such misery at his own failings, that nothing short of being publicly pilloried would do. And so now he unburdened himself somewhat by declaring himself to his friends. One can only imagine what, in this overemotional state, he might have written to them, and one can only imagine what they would have thought upon reading his declaration.

Newton didn't tell him what he had expected—that to follow God he would have to leave politics. On the contrary, Newton encouraged Wilberforce to stay where he was, saying that God could use him there.