"Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, then go straight forward"
About this Quote
A humble traveler asks for directions and gets a map anyone can follow: turn at once to the right, then go straight forward. William Wilberforce compresses a lifetime of conviction into two swift movements. First, a decisive pivot toward what is right, a pun that joins moral truth to a simple compass point. Second, an unswerving perseverance, a straight course without detours, excuses, or fashionable zigzags. The language is homely and urgent. At once rejects procrastination. Straight forward rejects dithering and double-mindedness.
The line reflects Wilberforce’s evangelical core. For him, Christianity was not an ornament of polite society but a transforming commitment. In A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, he argued that genuine faith produces visible fruit, reshaping habits, loves, and public action. The road to heaven is not a maze of speculation; it is a path of repentance and steady obedience. Biblical echoes sound beneath the phrasing the narrow way of Jesus, the straight paths of Proverbs and Isaiah. Yet the tone is pastoral, aimed at a plain man, insisting that the deepest truths are accessible to ordinary people.
Context sharpens the force of the words. Wilberforce’s own life embodied this map. He turned away from the easy road of ambition to champion the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of manners. His Clapham circle believed that private piety must flow into public justice. Turn right names that moral break with complicity. Go straight forward describes the long, often lonely, work of sticking to principle through defeats and delays until laws change and lives are freed.
Read this way, the counsel challenges relativism and complacency. It offers clarity without harshness and simplicity without naivete: choose righteousness now, then keep going. Heaven is not reached by clever theology or sporadic zeal, but by a clear turn and a faithful walk.
The line reflects Wilberforce’s evangelical core. For him, Christianity was not an ornament of polite society but a transforming commitment. In A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, he argued that genuine faith produces visible fruit, reshaping habits, loves, and public action. The road to heaven is not a maze of speculation; it is a path of repentance and steady obedience. Biblical echoes sound beneath the phrasing the narrow way of Jesus, the straight paths of Proverbs and Isaiah. Yet the tone is pastoral, aimed at a plain man, insisting that the deepest truths are accessible to ordinary people.
Context sharpens the force of the words. Wilberforce’s own life embodied this map. He turned away from the easy road of ambition to champion the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of manners. His Clapham circle believed that private piety must flow into public justice. Turn right names that moral break with complicity. Go straight forward describes the long, often lonely, work of sticking to principle through defeats and delays until laws change and lives are freed.
Read this way, the counsel challenges relativism and complacency. It offers clarity without harshness and simplicity without naivete: choose righteousness now, then keep going. Heaven is not reached by clever theology or sporadic zeal, but by a clear turn and a faithful walk.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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