John Frederick Denison Maurice (29 August 1805 – 1 April 1872) was an English Anglican theologian, a prolific author, and one of the founders of Christian socialism.

What would surprise many, I felt a drawing towards the anti-Unitarian side, not from any religious bias, but because Unitarianism seemed to my boyish logic incoherent and feeble.

"[42] For his higher education in civil law, Maurice entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1823 which required no religious test for admissions though only members of the established church were eligible to obtain a degree.

The magazine did not pay and his father had lost money which entailed moving the family to a smaller house in Southampton and Maurice joined them.

[42] Mill described Maurice and Sterling as representing "a second Liberal and even Radical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism.

"[47] Maurice's articles evince sympathy for Radicals such as Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt, and he welcomed the "shattering of thrones, the convulsions of governments" that marked the end of the eighteenth century.

[47] He likewise commended the Whig Henry Brougham's support for Catholic emancipation in England, but criticized him for relying too much on the aristocracy and not enough on the people.

After taking a second-class degree in November 1831, he worked as a "private tutor" in Oxford until his ordination as a deacon in January 1834 and appointment to a curacy in Bubbenhall near Leamington.

Writing on this topic by "revision and expansion" continued the rest of his life until the publication of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, 2 vols in 1871–1872, the year of his death.

For Maurice the signs of this kingdom are "the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, to which must be added the creeds, the liturgy, the episcopate, and the scriptures—in fact, all the marks of catholicity as exemplified in the Church of England."

[53] During the invasion scare of 1859–60, Thomas Hughes raised the 19th (Bloomsbury) Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps from among the students of the Working Men's College, and Denison became the battalion's Honorary Chaplain on 7 December 1860.

In 1870, by accepting the offer of St Edward's, Cambridge,[65] where he had "an opportunity for preaching to an intelligent audience" with few pastoral duties, albeit with no stipend.

"[68] Final years In spite of terminal illness, Maurice continued giving his professorial lectures, trying to know his students personally and completing his Metaphysical and Moral Philosophy (2 vols., 1871–1872).

Very weak and mentally depressed, on Easter Monday, 1 April 1872, after receiving Holy Communion, with great effort he pronounced the blessing, became unconscious and died.

[61] In a letter of 2 April 1833 to Richard Chenevix Trench, Maurice lamented the current "spirit" of "conflicting opinions" that "cramps our energies" and "kills our life".

Dodgson wrote about attending morning and afternoon services at Vere Street at which Maurice preached both times with the comment, "I like his sermons very much".

I suppose I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty or forty times, and never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant.

"Mr. Maurice's characteristics are well known and becoming every year more highly appreciated—broad catholicity, keenness of insight, powerful mental grasp, fearlessness of utterance and devoutness of spirit.

(1900), wrote "Maurice is equally opposed to the sacerdotalism which makes the essence of religion consist in a magical removal of penalties instead of a 'regeneration' of the nature.

He takes what may be vaguely called the 'subjective' view of religion, and sympathises with Schleiermacher's statement that piety is 'neither a knowing nor a doing, but an inclination and determination of the feelings' ".

[42] Maurice was affected by the "revolutionary movements of 1848", especially the march on Parliament, but he believed that "Christianity rather than secularist doctrines was the only sound foundation for social reconstruction".

[46] Maurice "disliked competition as fundamentally unchristian, and wished to see it, at the social level, replaced by co-operation, as expressive of Christian brotherhood."

Then it undertook the practical project of establishing the Working Men's College because educated workers were essential for successful co-operative societies.

The lasting legacy of the Christian socialists was that, in 1852, they influenced the passage of an act in Parliament which gave "a legal status to co-operative bodies" such as working men's associations.

[82] In testimony from representatives of "Co-operative Societies" during 1892–1893 to the Royal Commission on Labour for the House of Commons, one witness applauded the contribution of Christian socialists to the "present cooperative movement" by their formulating the idea in the 1850s.

He was buried on the west side of Highgate Cemetery and "crowds following his remains to their last resting place, and around the open grave there stood men of widely different creeds, united for the moment by the common sorrow and their deep sense of loss.

"[87] By themselves, two of Maurice's books, The Kingdom of Christ (1838 and later editions) and Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (2 volumes, 1871–1872), are "remarkable enough to have made their writer famous."

In his "life-work" Maurice was "constantly teaching, writing, guiding, organizing; training up others to do the same kind of work, but giving them something of his spirit, never simply his views".

[88] In The Kingdom of Christ Maurice viewed the true church as a united body that transcended the "diversities and partialities of its individual members, factions, and sects".

Hugh Walker, a fellow academic, predicted in 1910 that neither of Maurice's major works, his Theological Essays (1853) and his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (1871–1872), will "stand the test of time.