These wide-ranging interdisciplinary essays attempt to shed new light on the characteristic tensions of the 19th century, a period torn between a continuing will to believe in the truths of Christianity and a pervasive spirit of criticism. Focusing particularly on the interaction of literature and theology, the work begins with general issues - the development of Biblical criticism, the Protestant Lives of Jesus, the question of immortality and the impact of evolutionary theory, and then proceeds to a close analysis of literary texts by Heinrich Heine, Hopkins and Tennyson and by lesser-known figures including Sheridan le Fanu, James Anthony Froude and Mrs Humphry Ward. Later essays consider the impact of certain continental thinkers culminating with Hans Urs von Balthasar's contemporary plea to restore the aesthetic dimension to faith. The essays also show links between the experience of the Victorians and European thinkers and missionary experience in Africa.