Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/118

 distinctive doctrines and an intimate circle of sympathetic friends, and to outsiders this looked like being the head of a party. He condemned in the strongest terms the characteristic theories of the ‘high’ and ‘low’ church, and, although it included many of his warmest friends, those also of the ‘broad church’ party. The ‘broad church,’ first so called by W. J. Conybeare [q. v.], appeared to him to reduce Christianity to a mere caput mortuum, by abandoning all disputed doctrines and mysteries. He stood to them in the relation in which the ‘Cambridge Platonists,’ his nearest analogues in the Anglican church, stood to Locke and Tillotson. According to the definition of his early master (Coleridge) he was emphatically a ‘Platonist’ as opposed to an ‘Aristotelian,’ and has been regarded by theological opponents (see, Anglican Theology, 3rd edition, pp. 244–345) as substantially a neo-Platonist. The peculiarity which divided him from the mystics was his strong conviction of the necessity of an historical element in theology. A mystic appears, in any case to ordinary common sense, as unintelligible, and Maurice's distinctions (e.g. between ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting’) seemed mere evasions to uncongenial minds. They were equally perplexed by his statements as to the worthlessness of mere dogmas or opinions considered as such, and their infinite value when considered as divine revelations of truth. His catholic interest in all religious beliefs, and sympathetic appreciation of their value, seemed to imply an excessive intellectual ingenuity in reconciling apparent contradictions. The effort to avoid a harsh dogmatic outline gives an indistinctness to his style, if not to his thought, and explains why some people held him, as he says himself, to be a ‘muddy mystic.’ The value of his theological teaching will therefore be estimated very differently as the critic belongs to a school more or less in sympathy with his philosophical tendencies. But no fair reader can doubt that he was a man of most generous nature, of wide sympathies, and of great insight and subtlety of thought, and possessed of wide learning. Such qualities are compatible with much confusion of thought, but are too rare to be overlooked or undervalued. A bibliography of Maurice's writings, by Mr. G. J. Gray, was published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1885. His works, omitting a few occasional sermons, are: 1. ‘Eustace Conway, or the Brother and Sister, a novel,’ 1834. 2. ‘Subscription no Bondage,’ 1835. 3. ‘The Kingdom of Christ, or Hints to a Quaker respecting the Principle, Constitution, and Ordinances of the Catholic Church,’ 1838; 2nd enlarged edition, 1842; 3rd edition, 1883. 4. ‘Has the Church or the State power to Educate the Nation?’ (a course of lectures), 1839. 5. ‘Reasons for not joining a Party in the Church; a Letter to S. Wilberforce,’ 1841. 6. ‘Three Letters to the Rev. W. Palmer’ (on the Jerusalem bishopric), 1842. 7. ‘Right and Wrong Methods of supporting Protestantism’ (letter to Lord Ashley), 1843. 8. ‘Christmas Day, and other Sermons,’ 1843. 9. ‘The New Statute and Dr. Ward,’ 1845. 10. ‘Thoughts on the Rule of Conscientious Subscription,’ 1845. 11. ‘The Epistle to the Hebrews’ (Warburtonian lectures), with preface on Newman's ‘Theory of Development,’ 1846. 12. ‘Letter on the Attempt to Defeat the Nomination of Dr. Hampden,’ 1847. 13. ‘Thoughts on the Duty of a Protestant on the present Oxford Election,’ 1847. 14. ‘The Religions of the World, and their Relations to Christianity’ (Boyle lectures), 1847. 15. ‘The Lord's Prayer’ (nine sermons), 1848; with the succeeding in 1880. 16. ‘Queen's College, London; its Objects and Methods,’ 1848. 17. ‘The Prayer Book, considered especially in reference to the Romish System’ (nineteen sermons at Lincoln's Inn), 1849, 1857, and with the preceding in 1880. 18. ‘The Church a Family’ (twelve sermons at Lincoln's Inn), 1850. 19. ‘Queen's College, London’ (in reply to the ‘Quarterly Review’), 1850. 20. ‘The Old Testament’ (nineteen sermons at Lincoln's Inn), 1851 (second edition as ‘Patriarchs and Law-givers of the Old Testament,’ 1855). 21. ‘Sermons on the Sabbath Day, on the Character of the Warrior, and on the Interpretation of History,’ 1853. 22. ‘Theological Essays,’ 1853 (a second edition in 1854 with new preface and concluding essay). 23. ‘The word Eternal and the Punishment of the Wicked’ (letter to Dr. Jelf), 1853. 24. ‘The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament’ (sermons at Lincoln's Inn), 1853. 25. ‘The Doctrine of Sacrifice deduced from the Scriptures,’ 1854. 26. ‘Ecclesiastical History of the First and Second Centuries,’ 1854. 27. ‘The Unity of the New Testament, a Synopsis of the First Three Gospels, and the Epistles of St. James, St. Jude, St. Peter, and St. Paul,’ 1854. 28. ‘Learning and Working’ (six lectures at Willis's Rooms), with ‘Rome and its Influence on Modern Civilisation’ (four lectures at Edinburgh), 1855. 29. ‘The Epistles of St. John: a Series of Lectures on Christian Ethics,’ 1857. 30. ‘The Eucharist’ (five sermons), 1857. 31. ‘The Gospel of St. John’ (sermons), 1857. 32. ‘The Indian Mutiny’ (five sermons),