Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. Today we're going to be visiting with William Wilberforce.

He was born in 1759 and he died in 1833. A significant date in his life though is 1807. But first we need to learn a little bit more about him.

He comes from the coastal port town of Hull, and he comes from wealth.

His father died when he was only nine years old, and he went from Hull, which was rather

a good distance north of London, sent down to the big city of London to live with his extended family.

They had a home there in London and they also had a home in a village that was a little bit outside of

the city, a little village known as Wimbledon. These days the city of London has grown and of course encompasses

Wimbledon, but it was a little bit more pastoral in Wilberforce's day. While he was staying with that family there was an aunt

that had a significant influence on him and she as we can understand was likely

led to Christ by the ministry of the great revivalist of the Great

Awakening George Whitfield and she was a substantial supporter of George

Whitfield and it was in this family that Wilberforce had his early exposure to Christianity.

Doesn't seem that he was all that receptive to the gospel though at this point in his life

and a few years later in 1776, while I think one of the colonies of Britain was beginning to assert its independence,

William Wilberforce headed to Cambridge.

While he was at Cambridge, he was a fellow classmate with William Pitt. This is William Pitt

the second. His father was prime minister and William Pitt the second would go on to

be the future prime minister and there they were classmates together at Cambridge.

In 1780, William Wilberforce took his first seat as a member of Parliament.

Now he had finished his bachelor's degree, but he was still working on his master's degree at Cambridge,

and so for the next several years he was engaged both as a student and as a parliamentarian.

Well, in 1784, he took a trip through the continent,

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