The Patient Campaign of William Wilberforce

In 1787, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and introduced his first motion to abolish the slave trade. He was twenty-seven years old. The slave traders were powerful, wealthy, and deeply entrenched. They mocked his faith, questioned his motives, and defeated his bill — not once, but year after year for nearly two decades.

His friends urged him to compromise. His enemies prospered visibly, building grand estates on the profits of human misery. By every earthly measure, the wicked were flourishing like the green bay tree the psalmist describes. Wilberforce suffered chronic illness, public ridicule, and the slow erosion of hope that comes from watching injustice win again and again.

Yet Wilberforce committed his way to the Lord. Each morning he rose early to pray and read scripture. Each year he returned to Parliament with his motion. He did not scheme or rage. He trusted, and he waited.

In 1807 — twenty years after that first motion — Parliament abolished the slave trade by an overwhelming vote of 283 to 16. His former opponents wept. Three days before his death in 1833, he learned that full emancipation had passed as well.

Psalm 37 promises that those who wait patiently on the Lord will inherit the land, while the wicked will be cut off. Wilberforce's life is the living proof: faithfulness outlasts power, and the meek — in God's unhurried timing — do inherit the earth.