Fathers of the Victorians - The Age of Wilberforce Book

FATHERS OF THE VICTORIANS THE AGE OF WILBERFORCE BY FORD K. BROWN w CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1961 PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Bendey House, 200 Huston Road, London, N. W. i American Branch 32 East 57th Street, New York 22, N. Y. West African Office P. O. Box 33, Ibadan, Nigeria Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge Brooke Crutchley, University Printer CONTENTS Foreword PART I WAR ON THE GENTILE WORLD 1 Fat Bulls of Bashan 15 2 The Moses of the Israelites, a Courtier of Pharaoh 45 3 Disciples in Caesars Household 83 4 Citizenship in Heaven 123 5 Sennacheribs Army The Rally round the Alter 156 PART II LABOURING FOR THE SPIRITUAL IMPROVEMENT OF OTHERS 6 Gangrening the Principles of the Country 187 7 Missionaries to England 234 8 The Crisis at Cambridge 285 9 Ten Thousand Compassions and Charities 317 PART III ENGLAND IN DANGER 10 Sable Subjects, Souls in Darkness 3 3 11 Satans Grand Instrument 393 12 Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus 487 Bibliography 534 Index 547 is nty . S O n 1 i q 4 4 Never, perhaps, since the first age of Christianity, has a holier zeal existed than at the present moment, for the moral and. religious improvement of mankind. THE BIBLE SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1815 I live in a region in which I would have you also move. CHARLES SIMEON, 1828 FOREWORD The timid defensive state, in which Christians have long been contented to stand, in respect of the gentile world, has tended greatly to extinguish the spirit of zeal for the conversion of sinners at home . . . but if once the servants of God should . . . declare offensive war against the kingdom of the devil . . . zeal for pure Christianity in our own country and in our own hearts, will revive in proportion. THE REVEREND THOMAS SCOTT, l8OI You have, as yet, not met every where, with equal success but it has, however, uni formly been such that all intelligent Christians agree, that with the NINETEENTH century, A NEW ERA has begun betwixt CHRIST and BELIAL. THE ADHERENTS OF BOTH ARE ARMING on either side. The Calvinists Convention at Herrnhuth to the London Missionary Convention communicated by BROTHER STEINKOPFF, 1807 If the Lord wills, our work goes on. If it be his pleasure that we should exist, still let his enemies and ours, against whom we have drawn the sword, know this, that we ... are still the adversaries of the uncircumcised in purpose of heart. The Christian Review and Clerical Magazine, 1829 This is the story of a movement of national reform that took place in England from the 1780 s to the early years of the Princess Victoria, or roughly through the lifetime of Lord Byron. Begun by a handful of men and women shocked at the decay of English religion and the corruption of English morals, it grew rapidly into huge proportions. In thirty years it had covered England with reforming institutions and made its leader one of the foremost moral figures of the world. It left a lasting impression on all English-speaking countries. The moral scene in England as these people saw it at the beginning of what has been called the Age of Elegance was a spectacle of horror, a nightmare of depravity, vice, sin and infidelity. In 1785 William Wilberforce, the young Member of Parliament for Hull, recorded his despair of the republic, caused by the universal corruption and profligacy of the times, which taking its rise amongst the rich and luxurious has now extended its baneful influence and spread its destruc Fathers of the Victorians tive poison through the whole body of the people . x Others who felt that despair saw the sign of an approaching retribution in the national complacency that went with the universal corruption. I fear the Lord has a controversy with us, wrote the Reverend John Newton, a homely old divine who had been converted from a life of sin in the African slave trade. . . ...