Although Frederick Denison Maurice is appropriately remembered as the spiritual founder of the Cambridge "Apostles," an early editor of the Athenaeum, a founder of Queen's College, an influential preacher, a cofounder of Christian Socialism, the mentor of Charles Kingsley, and a founder and principal of the Working Men's College, he was fundamentally a theologian who became active in other areas because he saw and accepted the implications of his theology. However, as a theologian he is singularly difficult to classify. He in fact abhorred party divisions in the church and attempted always to convince his readers of the implicit unity of all humanity. He was uniquely aware of the artificial divisions that separate human beings and fragment a species that should regard itself as a family.

Maurice's convictions grew out of the unusually tense family situation in which he grew up. Born in 1805 in Normanstone, near Lowestoft, in...