Maurice, JOHN FREDERICK DENISON

Maurice, JOHN FREDERICK DENISON, one of the most influential thinkers and social reformers of his age, was the son of a Unitarian minister, and was born at Normanston, near Lowestoft, 29th August 1805. In 1814 the family removed to Frenchay, near Bristol; and in 1823 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, thence migrating to Trinity Hall. His reputation at the university for scholarship stood high, but, being at this time a dissenter, he left Cambridge in 1827 without taking a degree, and commenced a literary career in London. He wrote a novel, Eustace Conway, and for a time edited the Athenæum, then recently started. His spirit had, however, been profoundly stirred and influenced by Coleridge, and he resolved to take orders in the Church of England. He proceeded to Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A., and was ordained a priest in 1834. He became chaplain to Guy's Hospital in 1837; in 1840 professor of Literature at King's College, London, where he was professor of Theology from 1846 till 1853. In 1846 he was appointed chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and left Guy's Hospital. He continued chaplain of Lincoln's Inn until 1860, when he accepted the incumbency of Vere Street Chapel, which he held until his election as professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge in 1866. He died in London on 1st April 1872, and was buried at Highgate. The publication in 1853 of his Theological Essays, in which he dealt with the difficulties which hinder the acceptance of faith in Christ, lost him the professorship of Theology in King's College. The controversy turned on the doctrines of the atonement and eternal life. The atonement he declared to be not a terrible necessity but a glorious gospel, not of pardon for sin but deliverance from sin (see ATONEMENT); while Christ's definition of life eternal he maintained was opposed to the popular doctrine, which he regarded as a mixture of paganism and Christianity. The views set forth in this and other works were mainly these: that Christ was not the founder of 'a religion,' but king of all men, ruling now where he least seems to rule; that Christ's church does not consist of a few privileged persons, but is the body which represents 'the marriage of the Lamb,' that marriage being the incarnation, or uniting of the Godhead with manhood; that the 'fall of Adam' is not the centre of theology, but an incident in the early education of the race, important only as representing the weakness of man apart from Christ, in whom he lives and moves and has his being; that the curse of Adam was the condemnation of the false position of the man apart from God, resting on his own strength; that Christ came preaching 'the kingdom of heaven,' that is, the actual reign of righteousness in the world, the revelation of which is not contained in a closed book, but is always going on, and looks not backward to the restoration of an Eden of tropical fruits and easy culture, but forward to the cultivation by work and rest of all man's faculties unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that faith consists in trust in this King of men, and belief in the power of right and the impotence, despite its seeming strength, of evil, not in the acceptance of formulae: that creeds, the Bible, the church, are valuable just in so far as they set forth Christ the King as the object of the faith of man; as substitutes for that faith they are only mischievous. His principal books are his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Religions of the World, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, The Kingdom of Christ, The Doctrine of Sacrifice, Theological Essays, Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of the First and Second Centuries, Gospel of St John, The Conscience, and Social Morality. Maurice strenuously controverted Mansel's views on our knowledge of God, and denounced as false any political economy founded on selfishness and not on the Cross as the ruling power of the universe. He was the mainspring of the movement known as Christian Socialism, and the president of the society for promoting workingmen's associations; and was also the founder and first principal of the Working-man's College, and the founder and the guiding spirit of the Queen's College for Women, in both of which he taught. He vehemently repudiated the position of a party-leader, and his influence consequently extended throughout all parties in the church. He denounced the whole party-system as tending to divide Christ's body, both in church and state. See the Life of F. D. Maurice, based mainly on his own letters, by his son, Major-general Maurice (2 vols. 1884).