Literary and General Lectures and EssaysKingsley, Charles
History
Literary and General Lectures and Essays
Kingsley, Charles
English literature -- History and criticism
He might have been buried in Westminster Abbey. There was no lack of
men of mark who held that such a public recognition of his worth was
due, not only to the man himself, but to the honour of the Church of
England. His life had been one of rare sanctity; he was a
philosopher of learning and acuteness, unsurpassed by any man of his
generation; he had done more than any man of that generation to
defend the Church's doctrines; to recommend her to highly-cultivated
men and women; to bring within her pale those who had been born
outside it, or had wandered from it; to reconcile the revolutionary
party among the workmen of the great cities with Christianity, order,
law; to make all ranks understand that if Christianity meant
anything, it meant that a man should not merely strive to save his
own soul after death, but that he should live here the life of a true
citizen, virtuous, earnest, helpful to his human brethren. He had
been the originator of, or at least the chief mover in, working-men's
colleges, schemes for the higher education of women, for the
protection of the weak and the oppressed. He had been the champion,
the organiser, the helper with his own money and time, of that co-
operative movement--the very germ of the economy of the future--which
seems now destined to spread, and with right good results, to far
other classes, and in far other forms, than those of which Mr.
Maurice was thinking five-and-twenty years ago. His whole life had
been one of unceasing labour for that which he believed to be truth
and right, and for the practical amelioration of his fellow-
creatures. He had not an enemy, unless it were here and there a
bigot or a dishonest man--two classes who could not abide him,
because they knew well that he could not abide them. But for the
rest, those from whom he had differed most, with whom he had engaged,
ere now, in the sharpest controversy, had learned to admire his
sanctity, charity, courtesy--for he was the most perfect of
gentlemen--as well as to respect his genius and learning. He had
been welcomed to Cambridge, by all the finer spirits of the
University, as Professor of Moral Philosophy; and as such, and as the
parish priest of St. Edward's, he had done his work--as far as
failing health allowed--as none but he could do it. Nothing save his
own too-scrupulous sense of honour had prevented him from accepting
some higher ecclesiastical preferment--which he would have used,
alas! not for literary leisure, nor for the physical rest which he
absolutely required, but merely as an excuse for greater and more
arduous toil. If such a man was not the man whom the Church of
England would delight to honour, who was the man? But he was gone;
and a grave among England's worthies was all that could be offered
him now; and it was offered. But those whose will on such a point
was law, judged it to be more in keeping with the exquisite modesty
and humility of Frederick Denison Maurice, that he should be laid out
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