THE REV. F. D. MAURICE, M.A. AMONGST Our living divines, few occupy a more elevated station in public esteem, whether for intellectual energy or practical effort, than the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice. His opinions are indeed marked by some peculiarities, which, whilst they have provoked censure, have yet, on the other hand, endeared to him the regards of a large circle of friends and admirers. Mr. Maurice is entitled to a notice here because he occupies a somewhat peculiar position among English divines. He is almost equally unpopular with those who are called High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, and Broad Churchmen. He has spoken with vehemence against all these names, though he maintains that those who bear them are indispensable elements in the Church, and bear witness, each in their own way, for eternal Truths. How he has arrived at these convictions may be partly explained by his especial mental culture and experience; and so far as influences of this kind are known to have existed in his case, they may be briefly recounted here. Mr. Maurice was the son of a Unitarian minister of great worth and nobleness of character, and was born in 1805. At the usual age he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where Julius Charles Hare, the late distinguished Archdeacon of Lewes, was then tutor. Here it was that he formed the acquaintance of many since distinguished men; among the rest, of John Sterling, of whose life the two memoirs, that of Archdeacon Hare, followed by the 'Life' by Carlyle, will be in every reader's recollection. From Trinity College, Sterling and Maurice both migrated to Trinity Hall; the former appears to have left Cambridge without having gone up for examination, and Maurice, whose name is found in the First Class in Civil Law for the year VOL. I. Y 1826-7, being a Dissenter, was unable to take a degree. Possibly Civil Law was the only faculty open to an undergraduate in his circumstances; whether or not, a First Class in Civil Law, from the small number of competitors, could not then, whatever it may now, indicate any great amount of academical success. After college the two friends met in London; and during the latter part of 1828, and throughout 1829, Maurice became editor of the 'Athenæum,' then lately started by Mr. Silk Buckingham. To this adventure Sterling contributed a series of sketches of contemporary writers, some stirring tales, and a number of reviews, indicating the vivacity and variety of his gifts. But the element of commercial success was wanting; and at the end of the period mentioned it was handed over to Mr. Dilke, father of the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke, under whose arrangements the paper has been gradually raised to its present flourishing condition. At this period the doctrines of Coleridge were, as Mr. Carlyle's readers will remember, the favourite study of the youthful spirits of the time, and amongst those who listened and pondered over what fell from the sage, few, we imagine, were more lastingly impressed or deeply imbued than Maurice. No one can fail to see in the mode in which religious and social questions are dealt with in Mr. Maurice's writings, a habit of thinking which must have been in a great measure derived from Coleridge. About this time appeared a novel by Mr. Maurice, 'Eustace Conway,' wild enough in plot and conception, but giving evident tokens of this philosophical influence. By degrees, the views of the writer and student, aided by the influence of Coleridge's Church theories, began to concentrate themselves in theology; and before long Mr. Maurice found that the path of practical activity in life led him inevitably to the Church of England, and finally to join its ministry. A degree being necessary to Orders, Mr. Maurice betook himself to Oxford; and in Gladstone's year, 1831, we find his name in the second class of classical honours at Exeter College, of which Society he is still a member. His ministerial duties commenced at a small curacy in Warwickshire, where he lived from 1834 to 1836. In the latter year he was elected Chaplain of Guy's Hospital, an office which he filled for ten years. This was the time during which, as we know from Carlyle, the intimacy with Sterling was closely renewed; and in 1837 Mr. Maurice married Miss Anna Barton, a younger sister of John Sterling's wife, who died in 1845, leaving him two sons. Shortly after appeared one of the most important of Mr. Maurice's earlier works, "The Kingdom of Christ; or, Hints on the Principles, Ordinances, and Constitution of the Catholic Church,' in letters to a Quaker. In these volumes the writer lays down an elaborate exposition of the existence, nature, and constitution of the Catholic Church, and of its relations to mankind. The work, originally published in 1838, was completely rewritten and remodelled in a second edition, which appeared in 1842. 6 Before this time Maurice had been asked by the Rev. Hugh James Rose to undertake the article on Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana,'—a work commenced many years before, with a preface by S. T. Coleridge, and of which Mr. Rose was then the editor. When the Encyclopædia,' after its completion, fell into the hands of the late Mr. Griffin, the principal articles in it were republished separately. Maurice's swelled into four volumes, on Ancient, Early Christian, Medieval, and Modern Philosophy. It was not finished till the year 1861. In the year 1844 occurred the lamented death of Sterling, of whom a memorial by his friend exists in the shape of a small volume, entitled 'Remarks on the Fable of the Bees,' by William Law, with an Introduction by F. D. Maurice. Carlyle relates that this publication was undertaken at the request of Sterling, who, shortly before his death, was so struck with the refutation of Mandeville by Law, that he desired his brother-in-law's assistance to reproduce it. In 1846 Mr. Maurice was appointed to deliver the course of lectures founded by Bishop Warburton at Lincoln's Inn, and in the same year was elected Chaplain of that Society, at which post he continued down to 1860. He had been since 1840 Professor of Modern History and English Literature-in 1846 he became also Professor of Ecclesiastical History-at King's College; he was further nominated by the Bishop of London, in 1845 and 1846, to preach the series of lectures founded by Robert Boyle, to be preached in one of the London churches, "against notorious infidels, to wit, Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans." The fruits of his labours in these fields of duty appeared from time to time in the publication of volumes of sermons and lectures. 'Christmas Day and other Sermons,' delivered at Guy's Hospital, had been previously brought out in 1843; in 1848 we find 'The |