The life of William Wilberforce / by his sons, Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce ; abridged from the London edition by Caspar Morris.

  • Robert Isaac Wilberforce
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of William Wilberforce / by his sons, Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce ; abridged from the London edition by Caspar Morris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    if I were thus to fly from the post where Providence has placed me, I know not how I could look for the blessing of God upon my retirement: and without this heavenly assist- ance, either in the world or in solitude our own endeavours will be equally ineffectual. When I consider the particulars of my duty, I blush at the review; but my shame is not occasioned by my thinking that I am too studiously diligent in the business of life; on the contrary, I then feel that I am serving God best when from proper motives I am most actively engaged in it. What humbles me is, the sense that I forego so many opportunities of doing good; and it is my constant prayer, that God will enable me to serve him more steadily, and my fellow-creatures more assiduously: and I trust that my prayers will be granted through the interces- sion of that Saviour ' by whom' only ' we have access with confidence into this grace wherein we stand ;' and who has promised that he will lead on his people from strength to strength, and gradually form them to a more complete re- semblance of their divine original. Watch and pray, he wrote earnestly to his sister; read the word of God, imploring that true wisdom which may enable you to comprehend and fix it in your heart, that it may gradually produce its effect under the operation of the Holy Spirit, in renewing the mind and purifying the con- duct. This it will do more and more the longer we live under its influence ; and it is to the honour of religion, that those who when they first began to run the Christian course, were in extremes . . enthusiastical, perhaps, or rigidly se- vere . . will often by degrees lose their several imperfections, which though by the world laid unfairly to the account of their religion, were yet undoubtedly so many disparagements to it: . . . like some of our Westmoreland evenings, when though in the course of the day the skies have been ob- scured by clouds and vapours, yet towards its close the sun beams forth with unsullied lustre, and descends below the horizon in the full display of all his glories: shall I pursue the metaphor, just to suggest, that this is the earnest of a joyful rising, which will not be disappointed 1 The great thing we have to do, is to be perpetually reminding ourselves that we are but strangers and pilgrims, having no abiding city, but looking for a city which hath foundations; and by the power of habit which God has been graciously pleased to bestow upon us, our work will every day become easier, if we accustom ourselves to cast our care on him, and
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