William Wilberforce

In May 2010, 43-year-old David Cameron became one of the youngest Prime Ministers to take up residence at 10 Downing Street. However, the youngest person to take the helm of the British empire was William Pitt who became Prime Minister in 1783 at age 24.

With Pitt's encouragement, fellow MP William Wilberforce took up what historian John Pollock calls "The greatest moral achievement of the British people," the abolition of the British slave trade. But the man behind the crusade almost missed his calling.

William Wilberforce, a young Member of Parliament, came to Christ at age 25. Believing that God was more interested in religion than politics, Wilberforce initially thought he should leave parliament to study for the ministry.

Seeking God's will for his life, he visited John Newton, the old slave trader turned pastor and author of "Amazing Grace." Newton counseled him that God might have him in parliament for a reason. "It is hoped," Newton wrote, "that the Lord has raised you up for the good of the nation." Indeed he had. Two years later, Pitt asked Wilberforce to propose legislation to abolish the slave trade. Most of his contemporaries condoned the slave trade and thought abolition would bring economic ruin to the empire.

Wilberforce wrestled with whether or not he should take on the unpopular fight that could cost him his position and his wealth. His investigation of the slave trade drove him inevitably to one conclusion: it must be stopped. On Sunday, October 28, 1787, he wrote in his journal,

God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.

How had Wilberforce come to this conclusion -- his calling that would impact his nation and all of the western world? God gave him the gift to communicate, burdened his heart with a passion, and opened the door of opportunity. He wrote:

So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.

Though Wilberforce was at the forefront, he was not alone in the battle. A group of business, political, and social leaders joined him, including potter Josiah Wedgwood of porcelain china fame. Their passion burned until the slave trade and all slavery was abolished in the British Empire almost fifty years later.

Praise God that Wilberforce chose to stand up in Parliament rather than stand behind a pulpit.