The Years of Transition

Abstract

In the 1820s, which was an important transitional period, Maurice was emerging from a sheltered Unitarian household into an intellectual and religious atmosphere charged with the new spirit of Romanticism. Home influences drove him to lead a religious life and at the same time induced in him a powerful psychological drive towards a unifying philosophy of life. By the beginning of the 1830s, Maurice had produced a faith in which the Christian doctrine was blended with his recent discovery of Platonic ideas and the contemporary ideas of Romanticism. This chapter discusses the period of transition and the changes that influenced and formed Maurice's theology, from his early development of his own religious philosophy, which is bonded with his deep reverence for his father, to the influences brought about by the contemporary ideas sprouting in Germany, to his subsequent education in Cambridge, to his association with Coleridge and other intellectuals and his years at Oxford. All these played an important role in the formation of Maurician theology and the transition it underwent.