Professor Chadwick completes his study of the Victorian Church with detailed accounts of the problems which confronted the Church in the latter part of the nineteenth century: the question of science and religion, the acceptance of biblical criticism, the Church in village and town, changes in the attitude to the episcopacy, relationship with the Roman Catholics, and the growth of secularization. The material is organized in masterly fashion, the style of writing is characteristically engaging, and the innumerable sidelights on people in high and low places are as illuminating and relevant as in Part I of this work. The two volumes together provide an understanding of the background of many of the problems, which the Church faces today. For this second edition, Professor Chadwick has made many minor revisions to the text and included a number of additional bibliographical references.

R.H. Charles: A Biography first situates Charles's work in the history of biblical scholarship. The remainder of the book is divided into three parts that draw on material stored in several archives and other sources. The first provides an account of his early life and education in Ireland. Part two is devoted to his Oxford years (1890-1913). Within a chronological framework, the chapters regarding the Oxford period focus on his pioneering work with Jewish apocalypses as evident in his many textual editions, translations, and commentaries. For all of his major publications an attempt is made to assess how his work was received at the time and how it continues to affect the field of early Judaism. The third part furnishes a biographical overview of his work as a canon of Westminster (1913-31). At the Abbey, he carried out pastoral duties but also published books that made contributions to publicly debated issues such as divorce, while at the same time continuing his scholarly endeavours. The volume includes bibliographies of Charles's many publications and of works cited.

This book is a study on the life and mystical thought of George Matheson. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Matheson was a Church of Scotland minister at Innellan on the west coast of Scotland. Matheson was of Highland descent and blind from the age of eighteen. His spiritual journey included a distressing experience of atheism, the attraction of Hegelian idealism, and through the practice of silence and meditation on Scripture, he wrote of the Eternal through mystical union. Matheson has much to offer those interested in the inner life, not least Christians in the Presbyterian tradition.

Beginning with the premise that women's perceptions of manliness are crucial to its construction, The author focuses on the life and writings of Charlotte Yonge as a prism for understanding the formulation of masculinities in the Victorian period. Yonge was a prolific writer whose bestselling fiction and extensive journalism enjoyed a wide readership. The author situates Yonge's work in the context of her family connections with the army, showing that an interlocking of worldly and spiritual warfare was fundamental to Yonge's outlook. For Yonge, all good Christians are soldiers, and Walton argues persuasively that the medievalised discourse of sanctified violence executed by upright moral men that is often connected with late nineteenth-century Imperialism began earlier in the century, and that Yonge's work was one major strand that gave it substance. Of significance, Yonge also endorsed missionary work, which she viewed as an extension of a father's duties in the neighborhood and which was closely allied to a vigorous promotion of refashioned Tory paternalism. The author's study is rich in historical context, including Yonge's connections with the Tractarians, the effects of industrialization, and Britain's Imperial enterprises. Informed by extensive archival scholarship, Walton offers important insights into the contradictory messages about manhood current in the mid-nineteenth century through the works of a major but undervalued Victorian author.

Concerned here broadly with the period 1829-59, Professor Chadwick writes of the church's precarious position at the start of the period, and the problems of dissent; the Whig reform of the Church by the ministries of Peel and Melbourne; the Oxford Movement, the influence of Newman and the development of ritual; the relations of church and government under Lord John Russell; the growth of the seven principal dissenting bodies; the theory and practice of Church and State at mid-century, and the troubles that arose over eucharistic worship; and finally the unsettlement of faith and the several attempts at restatement at the close of the period. The history is completed in The Victorian Church, Part II 1860-1901.