By this time the society for promoting associations was thoroughly
organized, and consisted of a council of promoters, of which Kingsley was a
member, and a central board, on which the managers of the associations and
a delegate from each of them sat. The council had published a number of
tracts, beginning with "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," which had attracted the
attention of many persons, including several of the London clergy, who
connected themselves more or less closely with the movement. Mr. Maurice,
Kingsley, Hansard, and others of these, were often asked to preach on
social questions, and when in 1851, on the opening of the Great Exhibition,
immense crowds of strangers were drawn to London, they were specially
in request. For many London incumbents threw open their churches, and
organized series of lectures, specially bearing on the great topic of the
day. It was now that the incident happened which once more brought upon
Kingsley the charge of being a revolutionist, and which gave him more pain
than all other attacks put together. One of the incumbents before referred
to begged Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures, and to
ask Kingsley to do so; assuring Mr. Maurice that he "had been reading
Kingsley's works with the greatest interest, and earnestly desired to
secure him as one of his lecturers." "I promised to mention this request to
him," Mr. Maurice says, "though I knew he rarely came to London, and seldom
preached except in his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience,
that he would preach a sermon on the 'Message of the Church to the
Labouring Man.' I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent intimated
the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not only with a previous
knowledge of our published writings, but expressly because he had that
knowledge. I pledge you my word that no questions were asked as to what we
were going to say, and no guarantees given. Mr. Kingsley took precisely
that view of the message of the Church to labouring men which every reader
of his books would have expected him to take."