The Christian Teachings of Charles Kingsley

The moral purpose of Charles Kingsley’s novels is pronounced because he was a preacher, and more specifically, a teacher. He was above all a preacher of stirring didactic sermons. It is the didactic content of his writings—in his sermons, his novels, and his essays on natural theology—which is the study of this work. One too often forgets that Kingsley was not, in the first instance, a social and political reformer. As a preacher, and as a writer, he was pre-eminently a teacher—a theologian, yes, but more importantly, a Christian didactician. He was not an evangelical preacher, yet the Christian gospel was at the heart of his teachings and his moral exhortations. This work attempts to look at the Christian message that was the inspiration behind his socio-religious gospel. Writing at the time of Charles Darwin, Kingsley saw no reason to lose his sound Christian faith with the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Instead, he could accept it as a means to a divine end, another example of how Providence might bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.