F.D. Maurice (1805-72)

We owe a double debt to the Revd Frederick Denison Maurice. When George Bell famously planned to start his Boy's Home, from whose chapel St Mary's originates, he consulted the best authority he knew, which was Maurice. And it was Maurice who first accepted, albeit reluctantly, the name of 'Christian Socialist,' later assumed by Percy Dearmer's party.

Son of a Unitarian preacher, Maurice read law at Cambridge, was briefly a barrister and journalist, and then went to Oxford to train for the church. He was ordained in 1834, but his 1837 book, The Kingdom of Christ, like his subsequent writings, was attacked from all sides in the religious press.

In due course, Maurice became a professor at King's College, London, but was sacked because he refused to teach a belief in hell. As chaplain to Lincoln's Inn, he gathered around him the young men - J.M. Ludlow, Thomas Hughes and Charles Kingsley - who became the first exponents of Christian Socialism and pioneers of the co-operative movement. He also founded Queen's College in Harley Street (the first higher education school for girls, where both Miss Buss and Miss Beale went) and the Working Men's College in Camden. In 1866 he was elected to a chair at Cambridge.

Maurice's beliefs were subtle and often confusingly presented, but nobody doubted the nobility and unworldliness of his character, or his profound love of God. His contribution to the church, to education and to political life, however, is perhaps still insufficiently recognised.

Charles Plouviez