London (England) -- Religion; Religious thought -- England -- London
Mr. Maurice, after all, is thrown away where he is: all his life he has
been in an uncongenial position. The son of a dissenting minister, the
habits he acquired have clung to him from his earliest youth. Hazlitt
tells us how a man so nurtured grows up in a love of independence and of
truth; and such a one will find it hard to retain a connection long with
any human organization and creed. Then, as the brother-in-law of
Sterling, Maurice would naturally be led to modes of thought and action
other than those the Church had been in the habit of sanctioning.
Eminently religious, he never could have been what he was to have been, a
lawyer; but as an independent writer on religion, as a co-worker with
Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, for instance, what might he not have done?
Another mistake of Maurice’s is, that his mission is to the poor. His
style is the very last that would be popular with such. In the pulpit or
out, Maurice preaches not to the public, but to the select few—to
literary loungers—to men of ample time and elevated taste—to men of
thought rather than of action—to men freed from the hard necessities of
life, and who can leisurely sit and listen to his notes of ‘linked
sweetness long drawn out.’ Hence is it that he is more a favourite with
intellectual dissenters than with churchmen, and that I believe at
Lincoln’s-inn-fields his congregation is made up more of the former than
the latter. They love his efforts at self-emancipation; they admire his
scholarship, his piety, his taste. They eminently appreciate him, as he,
like the intellectual power of the poet,
‘Through words and things
Goes sounding on a dim and perilous way.’
The absence in him of all that is cold and priestly—his human
sympathies—his love to the erring and the weak and the doubting, whom he
would reclaim, are qualities with which the better class of religionists
would heartily sympathize, and with which perhaps they would sympathize
all the more that they come to them couched in language of dream-like
beauty, all glorious, though misty with ‘exhalations of the dawn.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account