I’m growing increasingly interested in William Wilberforce. I’ve read little about him: just the few dozen pages in John Piper’s little book, The Roots of Endurance. I am looking for a good biography of him. In Dr. Piper’s short sketch of his life, one of the most notable features about Wilberforce was his joy. It was apparently as contagious as it was boundless:

“Being himself amused and interested by everything, whatever he said became amusing or interesting… His presence was as fatal to dullness as to immorality. His mirth was as irresistable as the first laughter of childhood.” James Stephen, in John Piper, Roots of Endurance, 149.

“If I were called upon to describe Wilberforce in one word, I should say that he was the most “amusable” man I ever met in my life. Instead of having to think of what subjects will interst him it is perfectly impossible to hit one that does not. I never saw anyone who touched life at so many points and this is the more remarkeable in a man who is sippsed to live absorbed in the contempationa of a future state. When he was in the House of Commons he seemedd to have the freshest mind of any manner there. There was all the charm of youth about him.” James Mackintosh, in Piper, 148.

“Joy… is enjoined on us as our bounden duty and commended to us as our acceptable worship… A cold unfeeling heart is represented as highly criminal.” Wilberforce, in Piper, 150.

William Wilberforce is not the first to point out the connection between joy in the heart of the believer and the transforming grace of the gospel:

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” John 15:11

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Romans 15:13

I think the forthcoming Amazing Grace movie–based on Wilberforce’s life–looks particularly promising. Check out the website if you’d like to learn more. Produced by Walden Media (makers of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe), it comes out on February 23!

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