In 1836, after twelve years in the post, he began business on his own account in Threadneedle Street as a silk and drug merchant, and in 1843, on the recommendation of his former employers, he was appointed manager of an iron company.
The main conclusion of the work is that Christianity is to be accepted as forming simply a portion of natural human history.
[1] John Mackinnon Robertson called it: ... the first systematic analysis, in English, without animus, of the gospels as historical documents.
[4]And in his Short History Robertson classified Hennell as a representative of "revived English deism", with Francis William Newman, W. R. Greg, and Theodore Parker.
[1] Elinor Shaffer argues that Hennell was familiar, as was common enough in rational dissenter circles going back to Priestley, with some German theologians, but largely limited (as Strauss wrote) to works in Latin; and that his writing was not in those terms so innovative as to justify the weight sometimes given it as an influence on George Eliot.
[6] Hennell published in 1839 Christian Theism, an essay on religious sentiment after the end of a belief in miraculous revelation.
[11] Mary Ann Evans (the future writer George Eliot) was for the time close to the Brays, and in 1852 she wrote an account of the Inquiry for the Analytical Catalogue of John Chapman's publications.