The principal theological works of Maurice are The Kingdom of Christ (1838), The Doctrine of Sacrifice (1854), and The Claims of the Bible and of Science (1863). He wrote also a not very valuable treatise on Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (1848-1862). And finally he wrote a number of tracts on Christian Socialism, of which he was the originator.
The Christian Socialists made a well-meant but not very wise attempt to raise the condition of the working classes. The name is unfortunate. If the party had thought a little more carefully they must have seen that if their socialism was economically sound there was nothing specially Christian about it; while, if it was not sound, neither it nor Christianity was benefited by the addition of the adjective. The Christian Socialists had no more thought out their principles than they had considered the name they chose, and for want of solid ground-work they failed. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism has left a mark on literature, in the works of Maurice himself, in the novels of Charles Kingsley, and to some extent in the writings of John Sterling, who was for a time of the school of Maurice.
Frederick William Robertson
(1816-1853).
Frederick William Robertson owes his position entirely to the celebrated sermons which he preached at Brighton during the last six years of his life. They are not great in scholarship, nor even in eloquence, but they exhibit a character of many-sided attractiveness which was the real secret of Robertson’s power.
Mark Pattison
(1813-1884).
Benjamin Jowett
(1817-1893).
The other section of theologians made a much firmer stand for freedom of thought than Maurice. Their leader in the earlier days of opposition to Tractarianism was Dr. Arnold of Rugby. Some of them were his pupils, and all were influenced by his spirit. In many cases however they came to hold very different ground from his, and supposing him to have lived and to have remained stable in his opinions, he might have regarded his disciples with as much disquiet and fear as he regarded the Tractarians. One of his pupils was A. P. Stanley, who entered the Church and remained in it; another was Clough, the story of whose doubts and unrest is written in his poems; and the author of Literature and Dogma was a third. Outside the circle of Arnold’s pupils but in general sympathy with them were Mark Pattison, a quondam follower of Newman, and Benjamin Jowett, the celebrated Master of Balliol, whose most important literary work, the translation of Plato, comes after 1870, but whose struggle for freedom of opinion and whose persecution in its cause belong to the period under consideration. Jowett was Regius Professor of Greek, and the animosity of those who detested his opinions took the contemptible shape of withholding a reasonable salary. They mistook their man and their means. Jowett was no money-lover; his enemies could not starve him out; and the effect followed which experience proves to attend persecution when it cannot be made crushingly severe. He became the hero of the more liberal-minded, and he moulded almost as he pleased the best intellects of the most intellectual college of the university.
Both Jowett and Pattison were writers in the celebrated volume entitled Essays and Reviews (1860). This was a collection of seven papers on theological subjects, united only by a common liberalism of view. Few books, in the main so harmless, have caused such a commotion. The volume is valuable chiefly as a landmark. Some of the opinions would still be considered heterodox, but they would be received now, if not with satisfaction, at least with calmness. At that time however people were sensitive on the point of orthodoxy. Darwin had just been promulgating an obnoxious doctrine, and it seemed hard that the faith, in danger from without, should be assailed also from within; for six of the seven essayists were clergymen. Legal proceedings were taken against two of them, but they only let off harmlessly humours which, if suppressed, might have been dangerous. It was with respect to the Gorham controversy, ten years earlier, that a Frenchman ‘congratulated Stanley on the fact that the English revolution had taken the shape of “le père Gorham.”’ The truth underlying this remark applies to other things besides the Gorham case.
In 1862 the excitement was renewed by the publication of Colenso’s book on the Pentateuch. It seems arid now, for there is nothing attractive in the application of arithmetical formulas to Noah’s Ark; but it was just the kind of argument needed for the time and for the audience addressed. It is commonly objected that criticisms of the Bible are a wanton unsettlement of the faith of simple folk. One striking fact will demonstrate the need of some liberalising work. In 1864 the Oxford Declaration on Inspiration and Eternal Punishment was signed by 11,000 clergy; and according to Bishop Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the effect of this declaration was that ‘all questions of physical science should be referred to the written words of Holy Scripture.’
John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873).
The society in which such a thing as this was possible stood in crying need of an intelligent philosophy. The matter was all the worse because this incident came after the great English school, dominant during the first three quarters of the century, had grown and flourished, and was on the point of decay. This was the school which in the early years of the century had for its prophet Jeremy Bentham, and as inferior lights James Mill and the economists. During the third decade we see the thinkers who were in sympathy with these men gradually grouping themselves round John Stuart Mill, whose family connexions, as well as his own ability, made him a centre of the school. He was the son of the hard, dry, but able and clear-headed Scotch philosopher and historian, James Mill, who, almost from his son’s cradle, set about the task of fashioning him in his own image. In some respects James Mill’s success was wonderful. ‘I started,’ says J. S. Mill, ‘I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.’ But even he was aware of the concomitant defects of the system. A want of tenderness on the part of James Mill led to the educational error of neglecting the cultivation of feeling, and hence to ‘an undervaluing of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an element of human nature.’ There are indications all through the younger Mill’s life as of a warm-hearted, affectionate nature struggling to burst the fetters linked around him by his early education; and there is a touch of irony in the fact that in an early mental crisis John Mill found relief in the ‘healing influence’ of Wordsworth.