The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-30 00:00:00

DEATH OF CANON KINGSLEY.

The Rev. Charles Kingsley, Chaplain in Ordinary
to Her Majesty, canon of Westminster, and rector of
Eversley, Hants, died at noon on Saturday, at Eversley
Rectory, after a long illness. Canon•Kingtley was born
on the 12th of June, 1819, at Holme Vicarage, on the
borders of Dartmoor, was educated at King's College,
London, and Magdalen, Cambridge, where he took
his bachelor's degree in 1842, obtaining a first class in
classics, and coming out as a senior optime in
the mathematical tripos. At the close of that year
he was ordained deacon by Bishop Sumner, and ap-
pointed to the curacy of Eversley. In the following
year he was offered and accPpted the rectory of the
parish, and he also married a daughter of Mr. Pascoe
Grenfell, for many years M.P. for Truro and for Great
Marlow. In 1860 Mr. Kingsley was nominated to the
Professorship of Modern History in the University of
Cambridge, a post which he resigned nine years later
on being preferred to a canonry in Chester Cathedral,
which in its turn he recently vacated on being made a
Canon of Westminster. In the pulpit Mr. Kingsley
was widely known as a powerful and eloquent preacher
and controversialist; whilst in literature he was even
more popular as a novelist. His best-known works
are "Alton Locke," "Westward Ho," and "Hypatia."
Last year he visited America and gave many success-
ful readings; but during his stay he contracted the
seeds of the disease which many weeks since prostra-
ted him, and ultimately resulted in his death.

The Rev. H. R. Haweis, in his sermon on Sunday
evening at St. James's, Westmoreland-street, referring
to the late Canon Kingsley, said :—" An earnest
preacher, a zefined poet, a brilliant novelist a manly
Christian—seldom have such varied attainments of
mind and character met in one man. Yet it was this
many-sidedness that gave Charles Kingsley his hold
ovez the English people, and made his name a house-
hold word in thousands of families throughout England
and America. But Mr. Kingsley did special work; and
he is intimately associated with the late F. D. Maurice
in connection with a generous breadth of thought and
feeling in religious questions far less common thirty
years ago than it is now. It is largely owing to his
influence that we have learned to discover good and
and truth in the various opposing sects. His wideness
of sympathy has thrown down many a barrier be-
tween soul and soul, and taught us that the real differ-
ences between good men of every denomination are
less than they seem. He has also done more,
perhaps, than any one else to destroy the false anta-
gonism between things secular and religious ; not that
he confounded the two, for secular employments and
pleasures belong doubtless to a plane of thought and
feeling different from that occupied by prayer and the
experiences of the religious life. But if secular and
religious are not identical terms, he made us feel by
his precept and practice that they were not antago-
nistic—nay, that they had constant points of contact.
The secular life widened the religious sympathies,
while religion controlled the daily round of secular
duty and pleasure. The term 'muscular Christianity'
perhaps summed up better than any other this recon-
ciliation between religion and common lite, and the
general lessons which flow from this teaching have
now become the common property of almost every re-
ligious sect and party."