against his will, was induced also to preside ever many of their practical endeavours. He edited, with Mr. Ludlow, their first organ, called ‘Politics for the People,’ which was apparently first suggested by Julius Hare. It lasted through seventeen weekly numbers, of which the first appeared on 6 May 1848. Among the contributors were many distinguished men, including Kingsley, Arthur Stanley, Helps, S. G. Osborne, Conington, and Whately. It reached a circulation of two thousand, but did not pay its expenses. It led to friendly relations with some of the chartist leaders. After its death weekly meetings, which had been held by the chief writers at Maurice's house, were continued and increased in numbers. From this was also developed at the end of 1848 a weekly class for the study of the Bible, which extended Maurice's influence with many rising young men. ‘Conferences’ were held with the working classes during 1849, when Maurice presided, and was generally well received. A visit of Mr. Ludlow to Paris to examine the ‘Associations Ouvrières’ and the publication of Mayhew's ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ helped to draw the attention of the friends to co-operation. At the beginning of 1850 they started a tailors' association, and other associations were afterwards formed. A society for the promotion of such associations was founded. A ‘central board,’ consisting of the managers of the separate associations, met for business purposes, and a ‘council of promoters,’ with Maurice for its head, acted as referees and general advisers. A series of tracts upon ‘Christian Socialism’ was issued, none of them without the sanction of Maurice, who intervened decisively on occasion. He suppressed a tract in which Lord Goderich had defended the movement on democratic grounds (Life, ii. 125, &c.) The ‘Christian Socialist’ was started as an organ of the party on 2 Nov. 1850, and at the beginning of 1852 became the ‘Journal of Association.’ Maurice objected to it at starting, and only contributed a few articles (ib. ii. 55, 88, 96). The associations formed by the Christian Socialists failed after a time, while those founded independently by working men in the north ultimately succeeded. The causes cannot be considered here. The Christian Socialists in any case secured one very important result by obtaining in 1852 the passage of the act which gave a legal status to co-operative bodies. Their advocacy of the movement had also a very great influence in obtaining recognition of the principle of co-operation among the more educated classes.
Maurice had meanwhile been growing in disfavour with the chief religious parties. An absurd outcry had been made about the Sterling Club, founded for purely social purposes by Sterling's friends (ib. i. 516, 532). The publication of Hare's ‘Life of Sterling’ had made his heterodoxy known, and Maurice, Manning, the Wilberforces, and others who had joined the club, were accused of infidelity. Maurice's ‘Christian Socialism’ was represented as implying the acceptance of all manner of atheistic and immoral revolutionary doctrines. He was fiercely attacked by Croker in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for September 1851. Jelf, as principal of King's College, called upon him for an explanation. Jelf said that unless Maurice disavowed Kingsley (who was wrongly suspected of contributing to the freethinking ‘Leader’) he would be identified with Kingsley, who was identified with Holyoake, who was identified with Tom Paine, and concluded by suggesting resignation of his professorships as an alternative to disavowal. Jelf accepted Maurice's denial of the more extravagant charges; but the council of King's College appointed a committee of inquiry. The committee reported decisively in Maurice's favour, with some expression of regret that his name had been ‘mixed up’ with other publications ‘of questionable tendency,’ and after some further explanations the affair dropped for the time. The publication of his ‘Theological Essays’ in 1853 produced a new attack. Jelf brought before the council the passage in which Maurice defended his doctrine (which had already been incidentally brought forward in the discussion of Ward's ‘Ideal’) that the popular belief in the endlessness of future punishment was superstitious, and not sanctioned by the strictest interpretation of the articles. ‘Eternity,’ he maintained, has nothing to do with time or indefinite duration. After a long correspondence with Jelf, a meeting of the council on 27 Oct. 1853 voted that Maurice's doctrines were dangerous, and that his continuance of his connection with the college would be detrimental. Mr. Gladstone moved as an amendment that ‘competent theologians’ should be appointed to examine Maurice's writings, hoping that some formula concordiæ might be arranged. The amendment, however, was lost. Maurice was much hurt by Jelf's decision that he should not even finish his course of lectures. He challenged the council to say which of the articles condemned his teaching, but they prudently declined to continue the discussion. Maurice's son mentions some circumstances tending to show unfairness in the procedure, and Jelf had advertised in the ‘Record,’ Maurice's chief assailant, that Maurice's orthodoxy was under consideration, and that
