Amazing Grace, a Bristol Bay Productions film, tells his story, one that cries out to be heard by the apathetic world of today.
God didn't leave Wilberforce alone for long. As he grappled with his newly-found faith, Wilberforce was faced with a dilemma.
"We understand you're having problems choosing whether to do the work of God or the work of a political activist", a group of mysterious visitors told him one evening.
"We humbly suggest...that you can do both."
And he did. Amazing Grace is the story of that battle: one man in Parliament versus his country's largest profit machine. A small band of friends versus evil. All of them fighting an impossible battle.
Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
Pitt the Younger: "Which is why we're too young to realize that certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."
And so Wilberforce devotes his life to righting a wrong that has plagued him for years - slavery. He gives his brightest years of life to the cause. He gives his health, his sleep, his mind, his soul. His everything. Any hope of a peaceful family life is crushed by the commitment.
But years later, the only thing Wilberforce has won is ridicule. Bitter and depressed, he withdraws to the country to mull over his failures.
"It's only painful to talk about because we haven't changed anything," he says.
The determined Barbara Spooner draws him out, forcing Wilberforce to confront his past. "...If there is a bad taste in your mouth", she scolds him, "you spit it out. You don't constantly swallow it back." And later: "You still have passion! That matters more!"
After they marry, Wilberforce returns to London renewed and once again surrounds himself with his closest friends and confidants, this time a group freshly zealous to end the slave trade once and for all. With a new strategy and revived passion, they continue the fight.
"Your life is a thread. It breaks, or it doesn't break," Equiano, a former slave, comments. Righteousness, however, stretches on - a reality greater than yourself, bigger than anything you could possibly hope to be.
When the slave trade is finally outlawed, there is no doubt: every failure was worth it. As Lord Fox proclaims: "William Wilberforce will return to his family, lay his head on his pillow, and remember the slave trade is no more."
That's not the end of the battle, of course - but it is one glorious victory in the struggle for the sanctity of life. It demonstrates what happens when good men do something.
Amazing Grace reminds us that some things are worth fighting for. Worth giving all you've got - the last drop of blood, the last tear, the last breath. In a world where selfishness is the norm, Wilberforce shows us that there are things that transcend a life of comfort and complacency. Things worth doing.
