One thing that struck me while
reading William Wilberforce’s A Practical
View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and
Middle Classes was how logical, almost scientific, his language and arguments
were. He uses a lot of logical analogies to illustrate his points. He points to
astronomy and the natural world, and even mentions Isaac Newton at one point.
He also references historical, political, and international events to trace a
pattern of human nature and behavior, thus laying a groundwork for his theses.
He uses a phrase that I thought
was interesting “rational affection.” We don’t often think of affection—an emotion—as
“rational.” We don’t expect to be able to logically figure out who we’ll fall
in love with, or to explain with a pros-con spreadsheet why you are friends
with a specific person. Yet when it comes to our love of God, Wilberforce treats
it as a rational act. Our loving God is not on our own initiative—we’re not
doing Him any favors. Rather, our loving God is a natural, logical reaction of
gratitude for Christ’s salvation, of appreciation of all the blessings He gives
us, of acknowledging who God is, and of awe in how great and truly different He
is from us.
