Mill died in 1873; the Three Essays on Religion was published the following year. This same period (the end of 1872 to the beginning of 1875) saw the publication, from two opposing sides, of stringent intellectual challenges to Mill's views about religion. It may help to clarify Mill's attempt to fashion a compromise between religion and humanism through a discussion of how Mill's work gets caught in the crossfire between a tough-minded liberal humanist like John Morley and an equally tough-minded political defender of religion like James Fitzjames Stephen.

Let us start with John Morley's sharp and witty commentary on the Three Essays. Morley was an intellectual and later a prominent politician who was personally close to Mill, who clearly looked up to Mill as a true exemplar of both intellectual and political life at their best, and who owed his own loss of faith, apparently, “in part at least [to] having read On Liberty.” In the light of Morley's self-conception as “a follower” of Mill, there is no question that the essays on religion (especially the third) were a deep disappointment. It would perhaps be overstating the point to say that Morley received the Three Essays as an act of intellectual betrayal, but his response to the essays clearly leans in that direction.