at stern Puritan,
William Prynne, who wrote about 'The Unloveliness of Love Locks.' During
Term time this chapel is open for worship every afternoon at three; and
the preacher is the Rev. Mr. Maurice.

Considering the position Mr. Maurice has attained, and the notoriety
attaching to his name, your first feeling is one of wonder that he has
not a larger congregation. After writing more books on theology than any
other clergyman of the day--after teaching more youth--after mixing up
himself more with the working classes than almost any other man I know
of--one is surprised that Mr. Maurice's audience is not larger; and I can
only account for it by supposing that his task is impossible, and that he
is fighting a hopeless fight; or on the supposition that, after all, Mr.
Maurice's place is not the pulpit, but the professor's chair: yet that he
has a numerous class of followers, the sale of his books is an
unanswerable proof--a sale, however, much commoner amongst Dissenters, I
have good reason to suppose, than amongst the clergy of the Established
Church. Mr. Maurice has the true appearance of the professor--short dark
hair, sallow face, precise manner: all indicate the man of study and
thought. His voice is clear and agreeable, though not strong. His
reading is very rapid, but, at the same time, emphatic. As to action, he
has none. He aims more at what he says than how he says it; and, if you
listen, you will find food for thought in every phrase. You can hardly
imagine that the man before you has been charged with heresy, he seeming
to differ in no other respect from other clergymen, save in his superior
power of ratiocination and in the wider inductions on which he bases his
doctrines.

What Mr. Maurice's opinions are he has taken full care to place before
the world. He is a churchman in the fullest sense of the term. 'I have
contended,' he writes in his 'Kingdom of Christ,' 'that a Bible without a
Church is inconceivable; that the appointed ministers of the Church are
the appointed instruments for guiding men into a knowledge of the Bible;
that the notion of private judgment is a false notion; that inspiration
belongs to the Church, and not merely to the writers of the Bible; that
the miracles of the New Testament were the introduction of a new
dispensation, and were not merely a set of strange acts belonging to a
particular time; lastly, that the Gospel narratives must be received as
part of the necessary fu