From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Essays and Reviews, published in 1860, is a collection of seven essays on religion, covering topics including the biblical research of the German critics, the evidences of Christianity, religious thought in England, and the cosmology of Genesis.

Today the essay topics and conclusions may seem innocuous, but at the time, they were considered heretical and the essayists were called "The Seven Against Christ." The book was important because of its date and its authors. Appearing the year after Darwin's Origin of Species, it summed up a three-quarter-century-long challenge to biblical history by the higher critics and to biblical prehistory by scientists working in the new fields of geology and biology. Baden Powell restated his argument that God is a lawgiver, miracles break the lawful edicts issued at the creation, therefore belief in miracles is atheistic, and wrote of "Mr Darwin's masterly volume" that the Origin of Species "must soon bring about an entire revolution in opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature."

Hardly known outside academic theological circles today, Essays sold 22,000 copies in two years, more than the Origin sold in twenty years. It sparked five years of increasingly polarised debate with books and pamphlets furiously contesting the issues.

Later in 1860 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce attacked Essays and Reviews both in the Quarterly, and in a letter to The Times signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 25 bishops which threatened the theologians with the ecclesiastical courts. Darwin quoted a proverb: "A bench of bishops is the devil's flower garden", and joined others including the eminent geologist Charles Lyell in signing a counter-letter supporting Essays and Reviews for trying to "establish religious teachings on a firmer and broader foundation".

Despite this alignment of pro-evolution scientists and Unitarians with liberal churchmen, two of the authors were indicted for heresy and lost their jobs by 1862. They appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and in 1864 it overturned the judgement, "dismissing hell with costs", to the fury of Wilberforce. 137,000 laity signed a letter of thanks to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for voting against the Committee, and a declaration in favour of biblical inspiration and eternal torments was drawn up at Oxford and circulated to the 24,800 clergy. Wilberforce went to the Convocation of Canterbury and in June obtained "synodical condemnation" of Essays and Reviews.

The authors of Essays and Reviews were seven liberal Anglican churchmen:

• Frederick Temple (who later became Archbishop of Canterbury)
• Rowland Williams (tutor at Cambridge and later Professor and Vice-Principal of St David's University College, Lampeter)
• Baden Powell (clergyman and Professor of Geometry at Oxford)
• Henry Bristow Wilson (fellow of St John's College, Oxford)
• Charles Wycliffe Goodwin
• Mark Pattison (tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford)
• Benjamin Jowett (Master of Balliol College and Regius professor of Greek, Oxford University)

• Liberal Christianity

• VictorianWeb.org's summary of Essays and Reviews