Christian Socialism; Religion; Social and Political Views.
 

Baker, Joseph Ellis.  The Novel and the Oxford Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932): 88-100.
Baker argues that Kingsley’s hostility to the Oxford Movement was based on a quite different view concerning the nature of man.  Whereas the Oxford Movement held that man's nature was essentially sinful, Kingsley, “of the school of Rousseau”, believed that it was essentially good (88).  Baker reviews the novels of this “pugnacious Protestant” for anti-Catholic sentiments (99).  “Though Kingsley’s pictures of Tractarians are so obviously prejudiced that it is hardly necessary to correct them, his comments help to reveal the core of his own vigorous mind, and the setting of the Oxford Movement within the framework of other mid-century ideas” (100).

Oxford Movement (Tractarianism); Novels; Catholicism; Religion.
 

Blinderman, Charles S.  “Huxley and Kingsley,” Victorian Newsletter No. 20 (1961): 25-28.
Blinderman studies the relationship between Kingsley and T. H. Huxley.  Both men enjoyed a close personal friendship.  However, Blinderman argues that despite such surface similarities as their mutual approval of determinism and Stoicism, their dislike of Positivism, their popularization of science, and the fact that both were charged with unorthodoxy, in certain fundamental respects, particularly their underlying attitudes to science and to religion, they were quite dissimilar and distinct.  “A study of the relationship between Huxley and Kingsley suggests that while friendship can provide a forum for the cordial debate of ultimate issues, ideological differences, however, obscured by social amenities, prevail as barriers to the reconciliation of irreconcilable world-views” (28).

Huxley; Science; Religion.
 

Brinton, Crane.  English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954).
Brinton provides an overview of Kingsley’s life and his major social and political views.  While his Christian Socialism was by no means a system, Kingsley held that a Christian Socialist society would indeed be hierarchical where each one's place is determined by his moral value as well as democratic in the sense that each one's place has been allotted by God.  Brinton considers that Kingsley’s ideal society was based on older English societies where different social classes “were knit together by habits which were genuine human relationships”.  His “programme is singularly like that of Tory Democracy” (125).  Kingsley’s paternalism did not signify that he rejected competition.  Competition was good but workers must first be members of cooperative associations, an ideal similar to “modern guild Socialism” (126).  While Brinton considers that Kingsley’s achievements were not insignificant, his ideals based on his religious faith could accomplish little to improve the very practical ills of working class and under-privileged society.  “His God, his virtue, his England, made too many promises to the flesh – promises unfulfilled to the common man.  For the uncommon man, his faith was even more inadequate.  Taste and intellect alike recoil from the simplicities of a universe on the pattern of Eversley” (130).

Social and Political Views; Alton Locke; Christian Socialism; Religion; Science; Evolution; Democracy; Capitalism; Teutons.
 

Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary Culture (London: Frank Cass 1966; first published 1952).
Buckley makes numerous diverse references to Kingsley.  With respect to Kingsley’s attitude to religion and Mammon worship Buckley stresses his detestation for the manifest evils of the industrial revolution and the harm they cause to body and soul.  Yet Kingsley was assured that the new age was here to stay and that religion would aid in combating an excessive focus on materialism.  “If his victory was never won, he yet succeeded more than any other popular apologist in reminding the mid-Victorians that the objects of religion might animate their common activity no less than the lonely meditations of the brooding conscience” (123).

Religion.
 

Childers, Joseph W.  “Alton Locke and the Religion of Chartism,” in Novel Possibilities: Fiction and the Formation of Early Victorian Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995): 132-157.
In his analysis of Alton Locke Childers focuses in particular on the relationship between politics and religion. He argues that the spiritual reform advocated, the "religion of Chartism", alleviates the fear of the middle classes of a revolt based on immorality or infidelity, since the reform is strongly linked to the tenets of religion, of Christianity.  However, the advocacy has little social value as long as it remains the subjective view only of Alton.  For real change to be effected, these views must be embraced by a wider public.

Alton Locke; Religion; Chartism; Social and Political Novel.
 

Conacher, W. M.  “Charles Kingsley,” Queen’s Quarterly Vol. 45 (1938): 503-511.
Conacher presents a sketch of Kingsley’s life and works.  He praises the characterization in Hereward the Wake; it surpasses that of Bulwer Lytton’s Harold and that of Scott’s Ivanhoe.  While he criticizes Kingsley’s anti-Catholic treatment in Westward Ho! as being mere bigotry and not based on proper historical facts, he admires the novel’s color and romance.  Though Hypatia has matter for a masterpiece, “haste, over-enthusiasm, and lack of artistry have spoiled it” (509). Alton Locke is modern in its sympathy for the working classes and its political views, while Yeast, though the work of a young author, is praised for its “generous feeling” (510).  Kingsley, according to Conacher, “railed at John Bull in life and in letters and was essentially in the end John Bull himself” (511).

Overview; Novels; Religion; Catholicism.
 

Cunningham, Valentine. "Soiled Fairy: The Water-Babies in its Time," Essays in Criticism Vol. XXXV, No. 2 (April 1985): 121-48.
Cunningham analyzes many of the causes and issues Kingsley treats with heat and hysteria in The Water-Babies declaring that they frequently coincide with the age’s heatedness and hysterias for these causes and issues.  Cunningham also discusses The Water-Babies’ various affinities to other classic fairy-story motifs.

The Water-Babies; Social and Political Views; Fairy-Story Motifs; Sanitation; Cheap Clothes and Nasty; Glaucus; Religion.
 

Daumas, Phillippe.  “Charles Kingsley's Style in Alton Locke,” Les Langues Modernes Vol. 63 (1969): 169-75.
Daumas argues that due to Kingsley’s conflicting views on Chartism there is a certain mystification in Alton Locke.  Though the novel seems to be an advocacy of Chartism and social reform, the reader when finished understands that it is really an espousal of charity and Christianity.  “Contrary to what one had been led to think, Alton Locke is not a tract in support of socialism, but a vindication of Kingsley’s own conception of Christianity” (169).

Alton Locke; Chartism; Social and Political Views; Religion.

Dawson, Carl. "Polemics: Charles Kingsley and Alton Locke," in his Victorian Noon: English Literature in 1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979): 179-202.
Dawson provides an overview of Kingsley’s character, his social and religious views, especially those on Roman Catholicism, and his involvement in and his diverse attitudes towards socialism.  He discusses Alton Locke, “perhaps one of the oddest literary documents of nineteenth-century England” (180), declaring that its recognition in modern times owes something to Kingsley’s treatment being relevant to contemporary Marxist assessments of literature.  “Kingsley articulates the sense of waste in his protagonist’s life; he equates Alton with the social upheavals of his age, setting him against middle-class virtues and assumptions; and he creates in Alton a psychic battle between social activism and pastoral escape”.  In  addition, “Alton Locke could figure in the survey that Georg Lukács, makes of the middling hero in nineteenth-century historical fiction” (201).

Overview; Social and Political Views; Religion; Catholicism; Alton Locke; Yeast.
 

Downes, David Anthony.  “Reverend Charles Kingsley: Prophet of Convulsion,” in The Temper of Victorian Belief: Studies in the Religious Novels of Pater, Kingsley, and Newman (New York: Twayne, 1972): 48-81.
Downes examines Kingsley’s style, which he terms “plain prophecy”, and his religious views.  He also discusses differences in style and temper between Kingsley and Newman, arguing that time has effected a “monumental irony on historical and critical judgment”.  He considers Newman to be a “medieval personalist” whereas Kingsley is a “prophetical modernist” (81).  Hypatia, argues Downes from his lengthy treatment of the novel, “represents Kingsley’s search for a way of expressing how religious faith in Christianity happens, and what it means in the most concrete personalist terms his imagination would conjure.  However philosophically vague, there is an attempt at a kind of phenomenology of faith, what Newman called ‘a grammar of assent.’  The tenability of Christianity as believable by people encountering their worlds on the most basic human levels is what Kingsley was striving to examine” (79).

Religion; Newman; Hypatia; History.
 

Hanawalt, Mary Wheat, "Charles Kingsley and Science," Studies in Philology Vol. 34, No. 4 (October, 1937): 589-611.
Hanawalt examines Kingsley’s interest and endeavors in science, arguing that his broader philosophy and art have been misunderstood because of the neglect shown to Kingsley the scientist.  To remedy this neglect and this misunderstanding she discusses firstly, Kingsley’s lifelong interest in science; secondly, the relation between his science and the art of his novels and poetry; thirdly, his views on the relation of science to religion and the importance of science in man’s existence; and, fourthly, the general influence of science on his philosophy.

Science; Religion.
 

Hartley, Allan John. The Novels of Charles Kingsley: A Christian Social Interpretation (Folkestone: The Hour-Glass Press, 1977).
Hartley in this book-length study interprets Kingsley's novels in the light of the influence of the Christian Social Movement. He contends that Kingsley is unusual in using novels to set forth the message of one whom he, together with many others, viewed as the age's greatest prophet, F. D. Maurice. "The value of Kingsley's novels ultimately lies less in their advocacy of liberality and reform, than in their insistent justification of both on the basis of Christian humanism.  Kingsley's inspiration sprang from Maurice whose reading of the Bible had shown his disciple the meaning, both of Christianity and of history, and the novels proclaim that social improvement had necessarily to proceed within the existing framework of society, which for Kingsley meant a Christian dispensation based on Commandments engraven on tablets of stone and interpreted by sacrificial love.  A minor prophet proclaiming a minor one, Kingsley thus added a new dimension to the novel" (169).

Christian Socialism; Maurice; Religion; Social and Political Views; Novels;  Yeast; Alton Locke; Hypatia; Westward Ho!; Two Years Ago; Hereward the Wake.
 

Hawley, John C., S. J.  “Baptizing the Victorian Epimetheus,”  Science et Esprit Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (1991): 349-354.
Kingsley, declares Hawley, was unusual among Victorian clerics in being an explicit advocate of technology.  However, he was also very aware of the grave social problems, especially among the working classes, brought about by technology.  Still his main criticism was directed at the spirit of competition bred by the industrial age.  Kingsley had “a complex response to technology.  He never portrayed the pursuit of technology as a meaningful life in itself; he did, however, recognize its potential for liberating men and women to engage in such a quest” (354).

Technology; Science; Social and Political Views; Religion.
 

Hawley, John C., S. J.  "Charles Kingsley and the Book of Nature," Anglican and Episcopal History Vol. 61, No. 4 (December 1991): 461-479.
Hawley examines Kingsley as natural theologian and his views on the “meaning” of nature.  He discusses Kingsley’s attempt to bridge the ever widening gap between the claims of science and religion and to establish a vocabulary that would be intelligible to and supportive of both fields.  In this respect he provides a comparison of Kingsley’s views on the theological beliefs of and the search for meaning in Arnold, Huxley, and Darwin.  Kingsley’s aim, according to Hawley, “was to circumvent fears and cynicism, and to move his readers into a world of scientific endeavor and Christian cooperation.  In choosing the commitment of faith over strict empiricism he became for many, in an age of increasing dichotomy between the realms of science and religion, a model of a Christian who hoped that the truths of both would ultimately coalesce” (479).

Nature; Science; Religion; Natural Theology; Arnold, Matthew; Huxley; Darwin.
 

Hawley, John C., S.J.  “Charles Kingsley and the Via Media,” Thought: a Review of Culture and Ideas Vol. 67, No. 266 (September 1992): 287-301.
Hawley goes beyond Kingsley’s well-known contretemps with Newman and examines his numerous other struggles and interactions with a broad group of parties in the Victorian Church.  He discusses the many changes and stages in the development of Kingsley’s final religious views, arguing that despite his frequent sectarian antipathies, for example to Roman Catholicism, and his bigotry, he adopted a middle path and became a staunch advocate of moderate Anglicanism.  “In the face of opposition from virtually all quarters, Kingsley staunchly defended a position somewhere in the middle, now appealing to reason, now appealing to authority, frequently emotional and ever-insistent upon the moral imperative he grounded in Jesus of Nazareth.  He embodied in all his inconsistency an adaptable Christianity . . . a Christianity not far from today’s norm” (300).

Religion.
 

Hawley, John C., S.J.  “The Water Babies as Catechetical Paradigm,” Children's Literature Association Quarterly Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 19-21.
Hawley declares that The Water-Babies has two principle functions, to entertain and to teach.  The goal of education for Kingsley was ultimately a religious one.  Little Tom’s adventures, his evolutionary progress, the lessons learned all end in religious salvation.  Kingsley also uses The Water-Babies to show that science and evolution can co-exist with religion.  “With the publication of this novel he offers his most attractive, deceptively simple presentation of the argument that all purely scientific explanations of reality would benefit by being placed in the larger context of Christian revelation” (20).

The Water-Babies; Religion; Education; Science; Evolution.
 

Henkin, Leo J.  Darwinism in the English Novel 1860-1910: The Impact of Evolution on Victorian Fiction (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963).
For Kingsley the Bible and science were compatible.  He welcomed Darwin’s theories which rendered Nature and all about him more full of divine significance than ever before.  While Kingsley reverenced Nature, “he reverenced more the will that is above Nature.  His reverence for Nature was not antagonistic, but paid homage to his faith in the supernatural” (146).

Science; Religion; Darwin; Nature.
 

Hickin, Rev. Leonard.  “Charles Kingsley, 1819-1875,” The Expository Times Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5 (Feb. 1975): 146-150.
This is an appreciation of the life and works of Kingsley one hundred years after his death.  Hickin focuses on Kingsley’s Christianity, his religious views and his practical work as a minister.  He concludes that he “was a devoted pastor, a gifted preacher, and an outstanding Christian leader” (149).

Overview; Parson, Kingsley as; Religion.
 

Houghton, Walter E.  “The Issue Between Kingsley and Newman,” Theology Today Vol. IV (April 1947): 81-101.
Houghton argues that the fundamental disagreement between Kingsley and Newman was the fundamental dichotomy between Protestant Liberalism and Christian Orthodoxy. Though in many respects Kingsley was a conservative and a public enemy of those espousing the liberal cause, in religion he followed the liberalism of the likes of Maurice and Carlyle.  While we read such thinkers to understand liberal ideology, argues Houghton, we study Kingsley to comprehend Protestant Liberalism in its actual practice.

Catholicism; Newman Controversy; Newman, John Henry; Religion; Protestant Liberalism.
 

Irvine, William.  Apes, Angels, & Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution (New York: Time, 1963; 1st published 1955).
Irvine discusses the relationship and correspondence between Kingsley and Thomas Henry Huxley, stressing their views on science and religion.  Despite their radically different attitudes towards religion, both men had a strong mutual respect for each other.  Irvine mentions the openness and honesty of Huxley’s attitude towards Kingsley.

Huxley; Religion; Science.
 

Karl, Frederick R.  An Age of Fiction: The Nineteenth Century British Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1964): 333-337.
In his treatment of Alton Locke Karl focuses on Kingsley’s social and political views.  Locke comes to believe that the Chartist goals, and all political and social aims, can only be realized if linked to Christianity, a belief earnestly held by Kingsley.  However, Karl declares that Kingsley’s argument turns into the “hollow rhetoric” of those who, fearing radical change, advise prudence (335).  The working classes must wait until others decide it is time for their equality; they must not decide for themselves.  Because of what he considers the weakness of this thesis, Karl believes that Alton Locke has a “flabby intellectual spine”.  While the novel is praised for some excellent scenes, the characters when they think or act appear “platitudinous or intellectually shallow”.  Karl’s conclusion is that Kingsley, despite his compassion for the poor, “has not worn well, but less for the old-fashioned nature of his narrative than for the intellectual assumptions behind the novel” (336).

Alton Locke; Social and Political Views; Religion; Characterization in Novels.
 

Keep, David J.  “The Theology of Charles Kingsley’s Village Sermons,” The Evangelical Quarterly Vol. LIII, No. 4 (Oct-Dec 1981): 207-215.

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.
 

Labbe, Jacqueline M.  “The Godhead Regendered in Victorian Children’s Literature,” in Alice Jenkins and Juliet John (eds.) Rereading Victorian Fiction (UK: Macmillan, 2000): 96-114.
Labbe argues that many texts of Victorian children’s literature substituted the Wise Woman, the Fairy Godmother, for God the Father as the sage of choice.  Christianity, in short, was being feminized.  In The Water-Babies such “female deities” as Mother Carey, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, and Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid with their female virtues of love, compassion and inherent knowledge are more important than the more manly qualities in the divine order.  “In Kingsley’s version of the female Christ, he realigns Christ’s gender, or rather his sex; this female Christ poses no threat to established gender roles, but rather makes plain the femininity of Christ’s character” (104).

Females; Religion; Manliness; The Water-Babies.
 

Lackey, Lionel.  “Kingsley’s Hypatia: Foes Ever New,” The Victorian Newsletter No. 87 (Spring 1995): 1-4.
Lackey examines the theme and structure of Hypatia.  The novel’s pejorative depiction of many aspects of the early Church was met with much disfavor by many religiously conservative critics.  Though the novel’s ostensible thesis, according to Lackey, is that the early Church despite its faults was better than the atheism it replaced, the true thesis is that this Church’s bigotry, persecution, and violence are far from real Christianity.  Lackey ends by suggesting that a consideration of Kingsley’s views may still be relevant in today’s complex civilization; he “poses an alternative to the poles of a destructive Christianity and a soulless intellectualism” (4).

Hypatia; Religion; Social and Political Views.
 

Lankewish, Vincent A.  “Love Among the Ruins: The Catacombs, the Closet, and the Victorian ‘Early Christian’ Novel,” Victorian Literature and Culture Vol.  28, No. 2 (Sept 2000): 239-273.
Lankewish considers the Newman-Kingsley debate in the context of Kingsley's antipathy to what he perceived as Catholics' unnatural attitude toward sex, especially the Tractarian and Catholic depiction of Christ as spouse, and their embrace of celibacy which Kingsley frequently regarded as effeminacy. Kingsley, declares Lankewish, believed that it was only through such relations as marriage, parenthood, and family that God could be truly known.  Lankewish also discusses Newman's possible homosexuality and Kingsley's attitude to it.  He argues that a consideration of the sexual context of the Newman-Kingsley dispute provides a useful background to the study of the Victorian Early Christian novel. He contends, in particular, "that the Hypatia/Callista conflict not only anticipated the theological debate that erupted between Kingsley and Newman in 1864, but foreshadowed the gender and sexual tensions inherent within that debate as well.  Through the representation of the spiritual marriages between Christians and Christ that Kingsley found so deplorable, Early Christian novels by Wiseman, Newman, and Pater coopt the genre and transform it into a charged site for the articulation of sexual difference and, most specifically in Pater's case, of male-male desire" (252).

Newman Controversy; Hypatia; Sexuality; Celibacy; Religion.
 

Maison, Margaret M.  The Victorian Vision: Studies in the Victorian Novel  (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1961).
Maison considers Kingsley’s religious and spiritual thought as represented in his novels.  She declares that matters of the soul tend to be well overshadowed in these works by stories of adventure, by depictions of physical activity, by scenes of daring and so on.  However, one pervasive religious theme in Kingsley’s novels is the spiritual development of the characters through strong physical activity.  She contends that one of Kingsley’s most dominant beliefs is that man’s soul necessarily suffers from long exposure to dire physical conditions.  It was as important a duty of the parson, Kingsley believed, to care for social, economic, and political reform as to cater to more spiritual elements.  “Thus might Kingsley answer any critic likely to accuse him of preferring sanitation to meditation” (127).  Maison also briefly considers Kingsley’s desire to reconcile religion with science.

Religion; Manliness; Science; Novels.
 

Manlove, Colin.  “MacDonald and Kingsley: A Victorian Contrast” in William Raeper (ed.) The Gold Thread: Essays on George MacDonald (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990): 140-162.
In this article Manlove compares and contrasts the characters, the views, and the writings of Kingsley and George MacDonald, who, he declares were arguably the only two significant writers of Christian fantasy in the Victorian period. Generally, Kingsley, whose belief and involvement in science were much greater than MacDonald's, places nature first while MacDonald chooses "supernature."  Kingsley's God is so identifiable with the works of His creation that He is only distinguishable from them by faith.  The God of MacDonald, who has a stronger sense of the supernatural and the mystical, is invariably a person, whereas for Kingsley He is a force.  Nevertheless, Manlove argues that the two writers for all their differences share a particular common bond, namely "that they chose, alone and at almost the same time in the nineteenth century, to put what they could of the divine presence in the fairy tale" (159).

MacDonald, George; Religion; Science; The Water-Babies.
 

Maynard, John.  “Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature Vol. 19, Nos 2 & 3 (1987): 61-69.
For Kingsley, according to Maynard, religion and sexuality are thoroughly intermingled.  His dislike of Newman stemmed in large part from his strong aversion to religious celibacy.  However, all forms of sexual license for Kingsley was anathema..  The proper place for sexuality was within marriage, with only one marriage in a lifetime.  “Celibacy is religion without sex; licentiousness, sex without religion.  The via media for Kingsley, married religious sexuality, allows one unified discourse: married sexuality repairs the Fall and leads us from earth to heaven, which is only more – and more intensely – of the same” (63).  Kingsley also depicts competing types of sexuality in certain of his writings.  For example, in Hypatia the struggle between the intellectual views of different religious groups in 5th century Alexandria may be seen as just as much a competition of opposite sexual styles.  Similarly, Westward Ho! may be understood from the standpoint of opposite sexual religious world views as the conflict “between chaste, successful Protestants and lewd, unsuccessful Spanish Catholics” (64).

Religion; Sexuality; Celibacy; Hypatia; Westward Ho!.
 

Meadows, A. J.  “Kingsley’s Attitude to Science,” Theology Vol. LXXVIII, No. 655 (January 1975): 15-22.
Meadows declares that Kingsley was unlike many of his religious contemporaries in his belief that science and even the theories of Darwin actually strengthened the truths of Christianity. He also states that Kingsley viewed science as a vehicle for improving society, for example the promotion of public health. In addition, Meadows writes that Kingsley though an enthusiastic practitioner of science was still an amateur in a field that was quickly becoming professional.

Science; Religion; Darwin; Health.
 

Muller, Charles H.  “Alton Locke: Kingsley's Dramatic Sermon,” Unisa English Studies Vol. 14, Nos. 2-3 (1976): 9-20.
Though much of Alton Locke, according to Muller, reads as a political tract and Alton himself is represented through most of the novel as a dangerous agitator, a dramatic change occurs at the end with Alton renouncing his subversive views and embracing religion as a solution.  Kingsley seeing no distinction between the secular and the religious, believed that such desiderata as sanitary reform and social emancipation would come about through spiritual or religious emancipation. Alton Locke may be viewed not primarily as a Chartist novel but as an expression of Kingsley's Christian work on behalf of the poorer classes.  The novel "is really a Christian novel, written in the spirit of his sermons which never failed to emphasize, on the one hand, the Gospel message of the Kingdom of God, and, on the other, personal salvation or reform" (9).

Alton Locke; Chartism; Religion.
 

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.  “The Heroes: Kingsley’s Moral Lessons,” Textures Vol. 2 (1986): 37-44.
Muller sees The Heroes, Kingsley’s retelling of the Greek legends, as “almost undisguised moral lessons.  This is clear from the biblical style, the personal addresses to the reader, the moral stance and numerous moral dictums and exhortations spun around the old Greek heroes who are presented as models of positive initiative, daring, courage and majesty – moral models for the young reader to admire and emulate” (37).

Heroes, The; Moral Lessons; Religion; Manliness; Females.
 

Muller, Charles H.  “Poetics and Providence in Kingsley’s Two Years Ago,” UNISA English Studies Vol. 17, No. 2 (1979): 29-39.
In this study of the respective roles of art and God in Two Years Ago Muller contends strongly that it was "Kingsley's recognition of Providence's role in his fiction which undermined the value of his art.  It made his art obstrusively didactic. . . . However, it was chiefly because of Kingsley's belief in the poetic - or, rather, religious - licence of Christian art that he considered himself free to obtrude his moral commentary" (38).

Two Years Ago; Art; Religion.
 

Muller, Charles H.  “Spiritual Evolution and Muscular Theology: Lessons from Kingsley’s Natural Theology,” Studies in English Vol. 15 (March 1986): 24-34.
Kingsley’s understanding of the relationship between science and religion is quite straightforward according to Muller.  The natural world for Kingsley everywhere reveals the work of God; everything physical is but a reflection of the Eternal Realities.  The work of the scientist is essentially a glorification of the Creator.  “As a religious thinker, Kingsley was deductive and intuitive in his logic; as a scientific thinker, he was inductive, seeing the infinite in the finite, or maxima in minimis, as exemplified by the wonders of creation in so lowly a creature as the spider-crab.  In seeing the divine mirrored in a pebble or spore, however, he was combining a scientific and religious vision of life –   uniting the function of the microscope and the telescope, as it were” (31).

Science; Religion; Nature; Natural theology; Glaucus.
 

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.
 

Muller, Charles H.  “The Water Babies: Moral Lessons for Children.” UNISA English Studies Vol. 24, No. 1 (1986): 12-17.
Muller discusses the numerous biblical and moral lessons in The Water-Babies and the work’s patent allegorical and didactic significance. However, he stresses that the fable’s major aim is to assert God’s abiding love and the ever presence of divine providence.

The Water-Babies; Moral Lessons; Children; Religion.
 

Noel, Conrad.  Socialism in Church History (Milwaukee: Young Churchman, 1911).
Noel discusses the “socialist” views and work of Kingsley and Maurice and relates them to their religious beliefs.  He denies that they were broad Churchmen; rather “they protested against broad Churchism as being almost as anti-Christian as Puseyism or popular Protestantism.  Their lives were devoted to the revival of the Catholic democratic Faith” (245).

Religion; Christian Socialism; Maurice.
 

Paradis, James G.  “Satire and Science in Victorian Culture,” in Bernard Lightman (ed.) Victorian Science in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 143-175.
Paradis points out that though Kingsley was a strong advocate of the scientific efforts of the likes of Lyell, Darwin, and Huxley, he also eagerly sought a post-Darwinian equivalent to natural theology.  Kingsley considered that Victorian science was inadequate in itself as a philosophy of life and caricatured its one-sided scientific naturalist approach in The Water-Babies.

Science; Religion; Natural Theology; The Water-Babies.
 

Parrish, Geoffrey.  “Kingsley and a Victorian View of Miracles,” Faith and Freedom Vol. 38, No. 114, Part 3 (Autumn 1985): 151-157.
Parrish examines Kingsley’s view of miracles as expressed in Alton Locke.  It is probable that it is Kingsley’s own view that Dean Winstay expresses, namely that science and revealed religion, though separate, are complementary sources of knowledge, each enjoying its own sphere of competence.  Parrish makes three points concerning Kingsley’s opinion on miracles.  “There must be a theistic interpretation of the universe, there must be a belief in the Incarnation, and from these two there comes the conviction that if Jesus is what Christians believe him to be, he can do what others cannot, because he knows what the laws of nature really are” (156).

Miracles; Alton Locke; Religion; Science.
 

Prickett, Stephen.  “Adults in Allegory Land: Kingsley and MacDonald,” in his Victorian Fantasy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979): 150-197.
Prickett provides a lengthy examination of The Water-Babies comparing and contrasting it with several allegorical fantasies of George MacDonald.  Among other topics, he discusses the extent to which Kingsley was influenced by Wordsworth regarding his view of nature and his attitude to childhood, as well as by Rabelais.  He also examines Platonism, religion, evolution, and the nature of allegory in The Water-Babies.  Prickett declares that Kingsley and MacDonald have quite distinct mental sets.  “Kingsley, the botanist, marine biologist and historian is fascinated by every minute detail of this world; ‘other’ worlds are constructs – telling us yet more about this.  MacDonald is a temperamental Platonist, only interested in the surface of this world for the news it gives him of another, hidden reality, perceived, as it were, through a glass darkly” (193).

The Water-Babies; MacDonald, George; Rabelais; Wordsworth; Nature; Children; Religion; Plato; Evolution.
 

Prickett, Stephen.  “Purging Christianity of its Semitic Origins: Kingsley, Arnold and the Bible,” in Juliet John and Alice Jenkins (eds.). Rethinking Victorian Culture (London: Macmillan, 2000): 63-79.
Prickett examines the role of pagan civilization and the Church in Hypatia.  Kingsley is favorable to neither.  Rather, his theory of history leads him to admire the Teutonic races who are civilization’s future.  The Catholicism of fourth-century Alexandria is as doomed as the pagan world it supplanted.  It is merely a proto-Christianity that is “saved only by the presence within it of certain forward-looking characters who dimly foreshadow, as it were, the coming age of Teutonic Protestantism a thousand years in the future” (68-9).

Hypatia; Religion; Racial Prejudices; Anti-semitism; Arnold, Matthew.
 

Rapple, Brendan.  “The Motif of Water in Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies,” University of Mississippi Studies in English Vol. XI-XII (1993-1995): 259-71.
Kingsley uses the motif of water in The Water-Babies to preach the virtues of bathing and washing.  Cleaning the body and the inculcation of good sanitary habits is also an effective method of preventing disease.  In addition, washing with water, preferably cold water, helps the attainment of moral rectitude.  “However, the depiction of water as a cleansing agent may also be viewed in an allegorical sense, namely as purifying morally and spiritually both the individual Tom as well as the collective society. Only after Tom's baptismal washing and consequent Christian rebirth does his deeply felt wish ‘I must be clean, I must be clean’ begin to be truly satisfied.  Only after an analogous allegorical cleansing can any genuine regeneration of England occur” (269).

The Water-Babies; Water Motif; Cleanliness; Sanitation; Religion; Social and Political Views.
 

Rauch, Alan. "The Tailor Transformed: Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke" in his Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and 'The March of Intellect' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001): 164-189.
Rauch argues that Kingsley intended Alton Locke: Tailor and Poet, as its name suggests, to be a novel that harmonized quite disparate themes and ideas. A staunch believer himself in the truths of religion and science and their ultimate integration, he hoped that Alton Locke's readers would also accept their reconciliation and their worth when blended as a pathway to absolute truth.  However, Rauch considers that the novel failed in this goal and that Kingsley's passionate attempt to reconcile religion and science did not satisfy and did not convince.  While Alton's own "transformation" uses language taken from science and a purpose taken from religion, neither are credible. "Because of its attempt to deal with all controversies single-handedly, Alton Locke is, in fact, a polemic and thus lacks the kind of intriguing suggestiveness that is so characteristic of" novels by Jane Webb Loudon, Mary Shelley, and Charlotte Brontë that succeed in linking "science with tradition without invoking religion itself" (189).

Alton Locke; Science; Religion; Social and Political Views; Change, Notion of.
 

Rauch, Alan. "The Tailor Transformed: Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke and the Notion of Change," Studies in the Novel Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer 1993): 196-213.
Rauch considers Kingsley's belief that science and religion are compatible and that the study of the former could only serve to support the teachings of faith.  Both are truth seeking activities.  Kingsley also found suggestive the parallels between transformations in the natural worlds and transformations in the spiritual spheres. It is a parallel, declares Rauch, that Kingsley adapted for the character of Alton in Alton Locke.  Kingsley is drawing on the progressive transformation of forms in the natural world when he depicts the gradual change of Alton from an atheist and political agitator to a Christian with a much moderated political reform agenda.

Science; Religion; Change, Notion of; Darwin; Alton Locke; Social and Political Views.
 

Raven, Rev. Canon C. E.  “Charles Kingsley,” The Listener Vol. 11, No. 283 (13 June, 1934) 1007-1008.
Though holding that Alton Locke is clearly a work of propaganda, Raven praises it for its scene painting, its descriptions of landscape, atmosphere, sights, sounds and smells.  He declares that the best work of Kingsley, a passionate lover of nature, was as an interpreter of recent scientific discoveries in terms of Christianity.  “. . . he was almost the only Churchman of his time to realise that science and the scientific method were accomplishing a revolution in human thought, and that unless the Church recognised this it would be unfit to commend its message to the world” (1008).

Alton Locke; Science; Evolution; Religion.
 

Robertson, J. M.  A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century.  2 Vols. (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1930).  Vol. II, pp. 321-323.
Robertson very briefly discusses Kingsley’s understanding of the compatibility of science and religion and his acceptance of the theory of evolution.

Science; Religion; Evolution.
 

Schiefelbein, Michael.  “'Blighted' by a 'Upas-Shadow': Catholicism’s Function for Kingsley in Westward Ho!,” Victorian Newsletter Vol. 94 (Fall 1998): 10-17.
Schiefelbein examines Kingsley's severe characterizations of Catholics in Westward Ho!, especially two of his keenest bete noires, Catholics' worship of the Virgin Mary and Catholicism's embrace of asceticism and condemnation of the flesh.  Kingsley, advocate of muscular Christianity and espouser of manliness, detested what he considered to be effeminate "Mariolatry" which was responsible for weakness and womanishness in society.  He also condemned the asceticism of the Jesuits Parsons and Campion which he held to be an unnatural rejection of God-given impulses.  They were "spiritual grotesques" (15).  However, Schiefelbein also argues that Kingsley reveals his own ascetic impulses and his attraction to monkish ways in Westward Ho! and reconciles the opposite pulls of asceticism and carnal and sexual nature.  Schiefelbein concludes that while "one may certainly object to the role Kingsley assigns to Catholicism . . . it becomes an effective foil for enlightening his readers - and, very likely, for reminding himself - of the dangers of Manicheanism" (16).

Westward Ho!; Religion; Catholicism; Virgin Mary; Muscular Christianity; Sexuality; Manliness.
 

Schilling, Bernard N.  “Kingsley,” in Human Dignity and the Great Victorians (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946): 96-122.
Schilling examines Kingsley's work as a humanitarian and his efforts to dignify the life of England's poor.  "Kingsley achieved a working synthesis between his religion and his radicalism; he made it seem as if he had to be a humanitarian reformer because of the implications which he saw in religion, not in spite of them" (96).  Schilling discusses Kingsley's work on behalf of sanitary reform and his campaign against the terrible conditions of the sweated tailoring trade, stressing Kingsley's belief that many societal problems had their underlying cause in laissez-faire capitalism. He also considers Kingsley's advocacy of popular medical instruction and of cooperative movements, his plans to make art, amusement, country life and education more available to the public, and his staunch promotion of public education.  Though Kingsley became increasingly conservative and came to embrace a form of feudalism as he aged, Schilling concludes that he "bore the mark of all great humanitarians - the union of compassion, humaneness, and optimism" (122).

Overview; Sanitation; Social and Political Views; Religion; Education; Christian Socialism.
 

Uffelman, Larry K., and P. G. Scott,  “Kingsley's Serial Novels: Yeast,” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter Vol. IX, No. 4 (December 1976): 111-119.
Uffelman and Scott discuss the early publication history of Yeast which first appeared anonymously in six monthly installments in Fraser’s Magazine from July to December 1848 and which was later republished in volume format in 1851.  They pay particular attention to the revisions Kingsley made in the volume text.  In addition to tempering many phrases which might have upset orthodox religious sensibilities, Kingsley also added much anti-Catholic material in the 1851 book, especially in the sub-plot concerning Luke, the Tractarian curate and Lancelot’s cousin.  The other major revision involved expanding the ‘discussion’ element in the last part of the novel where Lancelot meets the prophet Barnakill.  This tilts “the balance of the novel towards the question of religious belief” ( 117).  With respect to the diverse revisions Uffelman and Scott declare that “The new and topical sub-plot devoted to Luke’s conversion to Catholicism made the novel more abstract and theological, as did also the expanded conversation with the prophet in the last chapter.  The minor revisions, however, suggest an interesting slight softening in Kingsley’s attitudes to more orthodox religious earnestness, and show also that Kingsley himself had become aware of some of the unevenness of plot and tone which serial composition had encouraged in his first novel” (118-119).

Yeast; Catholicism; Religion; Publication.
 

Vance, Norman.  “Kingsley’s Christian Manliness,” Theology Vol. LXXVIII, No. 655 (January 1975): 30-38.
Vance declares that Plato's doctrine of thumos was central to Kingsley's notion of manliness.  In addition, his ideal of manliness required a sound religious basis as well as a distinct moral independence that eshews fatalism and moral inertia.  Rejecting what he called the Manichaeism of some Tractarians and Evangelicals who finding the world hopelessly evil withdraw from it, Kingsley held that the ideal of true Christian manliness required working strenuously within the world to ameliorate it. Kingsley also embraced the more common understanding of manliness by lauding the cultivation of the body by sport and physical exertion.

Muscular Christianity; Manliness; Religion; Plato.