Theological Essays

The essays began as sermons preached to Maurice’s own congregation between Quinquagesima and Trinity Sunday, recast as essays to meet a request left in the will of a friend, once a Quaker, that he write something for Unitarians, the community in which he had grown up. They move from charity, sin and the evil spirit, through the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Resurrection, to the Judgment Day, the unity of the Church and the Trinity.

The concluding essay’s argument that “eternal” in the New Testament describes the life of God, not endless duration, led to Maurice’s dismissal from his professorships at King’s College, London. The book is dedicated to Tennyson, and this edition includes the preface Maurice wrote for the third edition in 1871.