TWICE-BORN MEN

REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE

Compiled by HY. PICKERING

The Emancipator of the Slaves

W. M. WILBERFORCE, of whom it was said that “he touched life in a most unusual number of points, ” was on a tour on the Continent, along with ISAAC MILNER, when the New Birth took place.

“He goes too far, ” said Wilberforce, speaking of a good man. “Not a bit too far,” returned Milner; and then a discussion followed. After a while Wilberforce took up a volume which had been given by Mr. Unwin, the friend of Cowper, to one of their travelling companions. It was “Dodderidge’s Rise and Progress of Religion.” “What sort of a book is this?” asked Wilberforce. “The best book in the world, ” returned his friend, and after a little they began to read it together. An amount of interest was awakened; and when his reason was convinced, then at length his heart began to feel; and ere long he was compelled to own that Isaac Milner was in the right.

The party remained abroad for many months, though Wilberforce had to return home during the interval for a short time on business. When they went back to England, Milner and he travelled alone together from Nice, and the Greek Testament was during that journey the main subject of their earnest converse. Wilberforce had known its great truths long before, while under his aunt’s care; and now back came all those thoughts and feelings which he had so long put from him, until the recollection of his wasted years, talents, and opportunities filled him with bitter sorrow and remorse. “What folly, what madness to live on in a state from which any sudden call out of this world would consign him to endless misery!” he began seriously to think. And then the base ingratitude of his past life humbled him in the very dust. Gradually had he come to feel thus; for his feelings of remorse deepened as time went by, until for months together he fell into a state of the greatest depression, of which many years afterwards he said that “nothing which he had ever read in the accounts of others exceeded what he himself had felt.” He had sinned against that Saviour who had died for him; he had sinned, too, against much longsuffering forbearance on the part of the Heavenly Father.

These thoughts weighed him down. After a time, however, the freedom and fulness of the Gospel promises went home to his heart, and gradually produced in him a settled peace of conscience. Then very deliberately did he dedicate himself to the service of the God and Saviour whom he had so long neglected, and resolve to begin an entirely new course of life.

Returning home in November, 1785, a new man, changed in all his aims and aspirations from what he had been, the transformation was manifest to all. It could not be hid.