William Wilberforce was a philanthropist, reformer, orator, and evangelical layman of the Church of England who led the fight in Britain for the abolition of the slave trade and for moral and social reform. His main importance was as a practical reformer, leading several important campaigns to improve the lot of the weak and oppressed and lending his support to many others. He did publish several works advocating reform of various kinds, but his importance as a reform writer was due mainly to his widely read and often-reprinted defense of Christianity and the Church of England during the decade of the French Revolution. Titled A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (1797), popularly known as Practical Christianity, this work asserted the centrality of Evangelical faith and daily living at a time when...