Keep examines Kingsley’s sermons to the congregation at Eversley during the relatively unstable social and political period 1849-1854, the time Kingsley’s own radical views and writing were at their peak.  He declares that though these village sermons were clearly written and free from theological jargon they were on the whole not very extremist nor exciting.  They were particularly limited “in their failure to deal with the profound theological questions posed by unitarianism and the questions raised by higher criticism” (214).  However, they did reveal “an optimistic eschatology that God was working through technological progress and that change should be welcomed” (215).

Sermons; Preacher, Kingsley as; Eversley; Religion; Christian Socialism.
 

Muller, Charles H. “The Christian Didactics and the Sermons of  Charles Kingsley,” Communiqué  Vol. 9, No. 1 (1984): 14-44.
In a lengthy article Muller declares that Kingsley the preacher was essentially a teacher.  He examines Kingsley’ style of preaching, his didactic methodology, and his socio-theological didactics.  He declares that Kingsley was a forceful and emotional preacher, sometimes dynamic and dramatic, but frequently lacking in incisive intellectual argumentation.  When he expounded Scripture and taught about God, whether he preached to the unsophisticated in Eversley or to royals at the Chapel Royal or Windsor he was invariably didactic.  He was consistent in his didactic material: “the statutes of a loving but just God.  God is often revealed as severe and terribly exacting.  But there are times when God is seen as the author of benevolence and mercy” (33).  Muller declares that the didactic purpose of Kingsley’s sermons is primarily ethical-moral.  “It teaches, essentially, that there can be no change in the social order, no purposeful progress towards the perfect realization of God’s kingdom on earth, without a spiritual revolution first taking place within the heart and life of the individual.  Freedom from sin will mean a new spiritual democracy, when men have the strength to resist sin and choose the right” (39).

Sermons; Preacher, Kingsley as; Didacticism; Religion.
 

Muller, Charles H.  Two Sermons of Charles Kingsley (Pietersburg, South Africa: University of the North, 1979).
This is the text of two previously unpublished sermon manuscripts from the Morris L. Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library.  Muller, the transcriber, notes Kingsley’s strong vein of compassion pervading the sermons. The first, originally preached at Eversley in 1846, stresses that God does not just belong to some far off eschatological future but that he is at hand in people’s normal daily life.  The second sermon, preached in 1851 at a child’s funeral, also focuses on a comforting God’s presence in everyday life.  Muller discusses the influence of F.D. Maurice’s teachings on Kingsley’s “understanding of the present relevance of divine Providence, and of the Kingdom of God as a present and spreading reality” (3).  Carlyle was another important influence.  Muller also discusses the style and the composition of these two sermons. Though they were manifestly quickly and carelessly written, probably very shortly before delivery, “Kingsley’s spoken words, as recorded in the sermons, must have had an almost magical, and very dramatic, effect on his congregation.  In each case the emotional climax shows how directly they came from the heart”(5).

Sermons; Eversley; Religion; Carlyle; Maurice.