ABSTRACT
The figures prompt quite different reflections. No doubt quite a few of those who attended church did so simply from expediency; but even so there can hardly be the smallest doubt that sincere religious belief was far more widely disseminated in 1851. Various explanations of the growth in religious belief and observance during the first half of the nineteenth century have been put forward. Some have regarded it as an effect of the Romantic Revival; but a theory which can link Hannah More with Madame de Stael is surely capable of explaining anything. Religion and religious observances were made the central point not just of lessons but of life. Henry Sidgwick’s own career illustrates the religious doubts and difficulties which troubled many of his contemporaries and successors. Abandoning all hope that historical enquiry would remove his religious difficulties, Sidgwick plunged back into philosophy and theology; and in 1867 he was appointed College lecturer in Moral Science.
