Muscular Christianity

As a commercial endeavor, Politics for the People failed spectacularly. Running for just seventeen issues between May and July of 1848, the Christian Socialist weekly never generated enough income to meet its own production costs. But even though the paper's failure was a disappointment to its founder, F. D. Maurice, it was a disappointment tempered with optimism. In his final contribution, “More Last Words,” Maurice admits that the paper's writers had executed their work “very imperfectly” but asserts that “Whatever is true, must at last be mighty. The battle with principalities and powers is fought, for the most part by weak arms; which nevertheless, shall prevail” (284). The imagery in this passage tells us much about Maurice, the theologian and social philosopher who inspired both Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes. Indeed, the friendship alone of these three men has meant that Maurice's name is often linked with the muscular Christian movement even though he wrote only one unsuccessful religious novel and rarely mentioned fist fights or sporting events in his sermons and essays.