Moule was schooled at home before entering Trinity College, Cambridge in 1860, where he graduated BA in 1864.[1] He was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1865, and became an assistant master at Marlborough College before he was ordained deacon in 1867 and priest in 1868. From 1867 he was his father's curate at Fordington, Dorset, with a stint of five years as Dean of Trinity College chapel, 1873–1877.[2] In 1880 he became the first principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and then in 1899 became Norrisian Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, until his appointment as Bishop of Durham in September 1901. He was consecrated as a bishop in York Minster on 18 October 1901.[3] As Bishop of Durham, Moule occupied Auckland Castle. The 1911 Census of England and Wales shows that he had in his household thirteen servants including a butler, two footmen, and a lady’s maid.
Handley Moule married Harriet Mary Elliott (1844–1914)[7] (called "Mary") on 16 August 1881; they had two children, Mary "Tesie" Moule (1882–1905) and Isabel Catherine Moule (1884–1959). In 1907 Moule published a memoir on Mary's short life entitled The School of Suffering.[8] Isabel married Robert Vere de Vere, a colonial judge.
Moule had a considerable reputation as a preacher and persuasive speaker and expressed his emphatic support for Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in August, 1914, under the heading ‘THE GREAT WAR’.[9][10] He wrote that he was old enough to remember the Crimean War and other wars, but on this occasion, it was more possible, ‘....without one reserve, for the Christian Englishmen to pray for ultimate victory, supreme and overwhelming, as for a thing certainly well-pleasing to God. Our state has entered on the struggle with a conscience clear as the day’.[11] Of his contemporary bishops, he stood with the Bishops of London, Liverpool and Carlisle and the Archbishop of York in his pro-active support for the War.[12] He underlined ‘the sacred duty of national self-preservation. I have long thought that the Germanic power has aimed at the political ruin of Britain". He asked his clergy to encourage recruitment to the Army since half a million volunteers were needed.[13] He was proud of the report that 218,000 miners had enlisted,[14] half from Durham, that nearly 2,000 men from the diocesan branch of the Church of England’s Men’s Society were on active service,[15] and that Bede College former students included 4 dead on the Somme, 5 wounded, one MC, one DCM and one MM.[16] He supported the extension of the franchise to women, ‘a grant in which I for one believe that great possibilities of good lie in waiting’.[17]
Publications
Moule was a New Testament scholar who wrote over 60 books and pamphlets. He contributed the chapters on Paul's letters to the Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1891–98)[18] and also wrote poems on religious subjects; he won the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge for sacred poetry 1869–1873 and again in 1876. He published at least two volumes of poetry in his lifetime, in addition to the prizewinning pieces.[19] He wrote a number of hymns, of which "Lord and Savior, True and Kind" is probably the best known.[20][21]
This is an incomplete list of Handley Moule's published works:
Christ is All: Sermons from New Testament Texts on Various Aspects of the Glory and Work of Christ; With Some Other Sermons, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1892
Jesus and the Resurrection. Expository Studies on St. John xx, xxi, London, 1893
The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1894
Secret Prayer, Thomas Whittaker, New York, 1895
Colossian Studies: Lessons in Faith and Holiness from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon, A. C. Armstrong and Son, New York, 1898
Ephesian Studies: Expository Readings on the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, A. C. Armstrong and Son, New York, 1900
Phillipian Studies: Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, A. C. Armstrong, New York, 1900
The Old Gospel for the New Age, And Other Sermons, Fleming H. Revell Company, Chicago, New York, & Toronto, 1901
The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, A. C. Armstrong, New York, 1902
From Sunday to Sunday: Short Bible Readings for the Sundays of the Year, A. C. Armstrong and Son, New York, 1904
Short Devotional Studies on the Dying Letter of St. Paul, Religious Tract Society, London, 1905
The School of Suffering: A Brief Memorial of Mary E. E. Moule, By Her Father Handley, Bishop of Durham, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1907
Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, Elliot Stock, London, 1909
Letters and poems of Bishop Moule: Selections from the Spiritual Letters and Poems of Handley Carr Glyn Moule, Bishop of Durham (1901–1920), Marshall Bros., 1921
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