GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR.JOHNR. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE 
 
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 JAMES MARTINEAU
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 A BIOGRAPHT AND STUDT 
 
 BY 
 
 A. W. JACKSON, A.M. 
 
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 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
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 Copyright, igoo. 
 By Little, Brown, and Company 
 
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 UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 3 
 
 TO HORATIO STEBBINS. 
 
 Dear Friend, -whose noble presence fails to show 
 
 The regal gratideur of thy inner plan, — 
 
 Patrician mien, but an imperial man, — 
 
 / link thy name with that of Martineau. 
 
 He sage ; thou prophet. His the orient glow 
 
 Of one who stands on peak of Darien; 
 
 Thine, to call back dead souls to life again, 
 
 Isaiah's fla?ne, the tones of Cicero. 
 
 He is the Phosphor of the coming day ; 
 
 Awakener thou of those who dwell in night. 
 
 Through hi?n men see the heights, through thee adore; 
 
 And they who write your epitaphs should say 
 
 Of him, " He totiched the mountain crests with light; " 
 
 Of thee, " He thrilling witness to its glory bore'''
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Though the plan of this volume may be manifest in its 
 pages, it may yet be not amiss to state it. Of course I 
 could have prepared the narrative of Dr. Martineau's 
 life and followed it with an analysis of his teaching, 
 intent upon nothing more than a just account of his 
 labors ; and this is what I contemplated when I set about 
 the task. As I meditated, however, the thought occurred 
 to me that I might make the volume not only an account 
 of Dr. Martineau, but also an utterance of my own mind ; 
 and these two aims have ruled my labor. In saying this, 
 I hope I do not need to say that, save in love and rever- 
 ence, the disciple does not place himself beside his master. 
 I only imply that the disciple is other than his master, and 
 interprets him from his own mind and heart. 
 
 This twofold aim may explain to some a frequent 
 feature of the page, a mingling with exposition of much 
 that is extra-expository. There is another feature, too, of 
 which it is the explanation. In dealing with the problems 
 of thought, it made necessary the treatment of them at 
 first hand. This necessity brought me to the study of Dr. 
 Martineau in his teachers, — the masters of Tubingen, the 
 great moralists, the great philosophers, who appear some- 
 what conspicuously in the perspective of these pages.
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 Conceiving my task thus, I was happily, in the general 
 bias of my mind, fairly well prepared to execute it without 
 controversy with my master. Indeed I am not sure that 
 my thought has not been too accordant with his for the 
 best result of a critical study of him. His admonition to 
 me, " Be sure that you do not spare me," has sometimes 
 come back to me almost as a reproof for not finding more 
 in him to dissent from. However, the Empirical type of 
 philosophy, never more than a tentative in my mind, long 
 ago ceased to be even that; and Utilitarian ethics had 
 always seemed to me at best to provide only rules of con- 
 duct, never standards of character. Thus on the one hand. 
 On the other, the latter-day Idealism, though taught me 
 by a teacher whom I must always revere, and met in books 
 altogether admirable, had never laid a spell upon me. 
 Accordingly, I was prepared to receive as they came 
 the Types of Ethical Theory and the Study of Religion; 
 and, coming at length to the discussion of their problems, 
 I found their cardinal teachings my own working convic- 
 tions. In the domain of Christian Theology, too, Dr. 
 Martineau had long been a leader whom I was well content 
 to follow, while his peculiar ecclesiasticism was an ideal of 
 my mind before I met it in his pages. When I came to 
 the Scat of Authority in Religion, the cardinal features 
 of his New Testament criticism were too familiar to be 
 disturbing; and, though I had long wished for ample 
 assurance that John wrote the Fourth Gospel, my studies 
 had made me more and more doubtful if he could have 
 done so. On the Messianic question, however, I was 
 thrown for a time into an attitude of dissent: Dr. Marti- 
 ncau's contention that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 for a time seemed incredible, and I girded myself for 
 something like a debate with him. Collating, however, 
 the Synoptic texts which bear upon this problem, I soon 
 found that my own affirmative position was not without 
 difficulties; and at length, meditating the great declara- 
 tion at Caesarea Philippi, the general truthfulness of Dr. 
 Martineau's theory was irresistibly borne in upon me. 
 Thus I have toiled on, as serenely satisfied with Dr. Mar- 
 tineau as was John Fiske with Herbert Spencer when he 
 wrote the eloquent volumes of his Cosmic Philosophy. 
 
 A work like this, dealing with a teacher of so vast a 
 range, must necessarily be selective in its character : it can 
 deal with but few of the themes that invite consideration. 
 In the present volume even of the themes selected and 
 studiously treated, by no means all are ofifered. Among 
 other discarded manuscripts my mind turns regretfully 
 to a lengthy and toilsome discussion of the Types of 
 Ethical Theory. My publishers, undoubtedly wiser than 
 I, conceived that it were better to compress the two 
 volumes I had prepared into one, and so this was left 
 out because it could be spared. 
 
 My thanks are due to Longmans, Green & Co., of 
 London, for their kind permission to quote according to 
 my need from the Seat of Authority and the Essays, 
 Revieivs, a?id Addresses, of which they are the publish- 
 ers. The like grateful acknowledgment is also due the 
 Clarendon Press of Oxford for their permission to use 
 in like manner the Study of Religioft and the Types of 
 Ethical Theory. I gratefully remember, too, a group of 
 ministers in Boston in the smile of whose sympathy and 
 most cordial helpfulness my task has been performed;
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 also the children of Dr. Martineau for the valuable assist- 
 ance they have given me. There are others who have 
 variously aided me ; they will doubt not that I remember 
 their kindness, though I do not name them. 
 
 The labor that here closes has been the happiness of 
 many hours and the comfort of some pain ; and I send it 
 forth in the hope that it may draw some to the further 
 contemplation of the great intellect and soul to which it 
 
 is devoted. 
 
 A. W. JACKSON. 
 
 Concord, Mass., Feb. 20, 1900.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Book I 
 
 THE MAN 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Ancestry, Family, Early Home i 
 
 II. Education 12 
 
 III. Ministry in Dublin 35 
 
 IV. Ministry in Liverpool 50 
 
 V. Ministry in Liverpool {continued') 72 
 
 VI. London 88 
 
 VII. Later Publications ; A Remarkable Testimonial 107 
 
 VIII. His Intellect 123 
 
 IX. Personal Features 135 
 
 a3ook Vk 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 I. The Preacher 142 
 
 II. The Christian Theologian 162 
 
 III. The New Testament Critic 221 
 
 53aok CH 
 THE PHILOSOPHER OF RELIGION 
 
 I. Knowledge 279 
 
 II. God and Cosmos 299 
 
 III. God and Conscience 358 
 
 IV. His Criticism of Pantheism 401 
 
 V. Freedom and Immortality 423 
 
 INDEX 449
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE MAN 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME 
 
 Louis XIV. conferred incalculable benefit upon other 
 nations by acting the tyrant within his own. The Edict 
 of Nantes, their Magna Charta of religious privilege, had 
 given the Protestants within his realm a legal if precarious 
 exercise of their worship. The Revocation of this Edict 
 in 1685 made Protestantism an outlaw. The horrible 
 detail of persecution that followed, the demolition of 
 churches, the separation of children from their parents, 
 the galleys, the Dragonade, need not be recounted here. 
 The inevitable result was a flow of emigration which the 
 severest penalties and a ubiquitous police could not check. 
 The refugees went, availing themselves of every favorable 
 circumstance, in every manner of disguise, the arrest of 
 some only leading others to plot more skilfully ; and with 
 them went the bravest manhood, the sturdiest intelligence, 
 the most profitable industry. They recruited the armies 
 with which France was soon to be struggling, and carried 
 French manufactures into countries wherewith France 
 was competing. More than this, they carried the latent 
 intelligence that was destined to unfold in children and 
 
 I
 
 2 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 in children's children, that should have added to the 
 triumphs of French art and letters and statesmanship 
 and philosophy. 
 
 Among these refugees was one in whom we have a 
 special interest, a certain Gaston Martineau, son of Elie 
 Martineau of Bergerac. There is also a tradition that 
 makes him a surgeon of Dieppe. Bergerac, as we know 
 from general history, was one of the places visited by the 
 Dragonade, and the Martineaus may therefore have wit- 
 nessed, perhaps experienced, its atrocities. After the 
 Revocation of the Edict, this Gaston, a young man and a 
 surgeon, came into England. On the ship that bore him 
 across the Channel was a family of Pierres, also refugees ; 
 and one of these, Marie Pierre, became afterwards his wife. 
 They settled first in London, afterwards in Norwich, 
 where were already a considerable number of Huguenot 
 exiles, and here he practised his skill and reared his 
 family. Eight children were born to him. What was 
 his age when he came into England, or the date of 
 his coming, it is impossible to say ; but the records of 
 the Walloon Church in Norwich, in which he and his 
 immediate descendants worshipped, show him to have 
 been the father of two children in 1695. This is all that 
 can now be told of one the full record of whose life we 
 should be so glad to know.^ 
 
 Of the children of Gaston Martineau, the third was 
 named David. He adopted the medical profession, and 
 blessed Norwich by walking in his father's footsteps. To 
 him was born a son, also named David, who became a 
 surgeon likewise. Though he died at the early age of 
 thirty-seven, he left seven children. The oldest of these, 
 Philip Meadows Martineau, fulfilled the family expectation 
 of a surgeon, and in the practice of that noble science 
 
 1 Since writing the above I have learned that he was married at Spital- 
 fields in 1693, ^"^ ^^'^t ^^'^ fii'st child was baptized there in 1694.
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME 3 
 
 advanced the family fame. The youngest of the seven, 
 Thomas, born after his father's death, became the father 
 of him whose life and work now engage our studious in- 
 terest. Of Thomas Martineau little need be said. He 
 settled in his ancestral Norwich, and engaged in the manu- 
 facture of bombazine, a species of cloth much in use in 
 those days, of which Norwich was the chief source of sup- 
 ply. From a notice of him published several years ago, 
 the impression has gone widely abroad that he was also a 
 wine-merchant. This is an error. His customers in other 
 countries would sometimes send him wine in recognition 
 of some business favor or from friendly regard. His wine 
 was consequently often of choicer flavor than that of his 
 neighbors and friends, who would therefore sometimes 
 ask him to secure a pipe for them. This he would do, 
 though not as business, but as accommodation. 
 
 Thomas Martineau married Elizabeth Rankin, of New- 
 castle-upon-Tyne, a woman of hardy Northumbrian stock, 
 vigorous, affectionate, and capable. She bore him eight 
 children. Of these the sixth was Harriet, born in 1802, 
 with whom the world has become well acquainted through 
 her large intelligence, broad sympathies, and heroic work; 
 the seventh was James, born April 21, 1805, the lion of 
 this tribe of Judah. The other six sustained, perhaps not 
 less worthily, their less conspicuous part. Of these Eliza- 
 beth, the first born, and Ellen, the last, married each a 
 surgeon, and so imported into the fifth generation a native 
 product of the preceding four. Rachel never married, and 
 for many years conducted a boarding-school in Liverpool. 
 There were three brothers, Thomas, Henry, Robert. The 
 latter was a prominent manufacturer in Birmingham, and 
 at one time mayor of the city. His eldest son afterwards 
 twice held the same office, and in 1887 was knighted by 
 the queen. Ellen left also a son, who is now a noncon- 
 formist minister.
 
 4 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Of this large group James was for many years the sole 
 survivor. It was his fortune to enjoy far more than the 
 customary period of earthly life, and to be vigorously em- 
 ployed at an age when most must rest. It was not till 
 January ii, 1900, then a little less than ninety-five, that 
 he put off mortality. 
 
 Of the early home life details are scanty, though such as 
 we have afford a tolerable picture. The father was a man 
 of fine taste and kindly spirit, and, as we shall see further 
 on, of unbending integrity. He was, however, immersed 
 in business, and his part in the home could be hardly more 
 than a wholesome and cheerful influence. The manage- 
 ment of the family, therefore, fell mainly on the mother. 
 A mother with eight children may be as a sun in the 
 domestic firmament, that shines on all alike ; but though 
 they may severally have all her love, they must of necessity 
 divide her care, and so early learn the useful lessons of self- 
 dependence and mutual helpfulness. It was thus in this 
 household. A portrait of her, taken in old age, shows a 
 strong and self-reliant character ; and her gifted son speaks 
 of her sympathies as " open and flexible to new admirations, 
 to new thoughts, to new virtues." He also tells us that 
 " Burns was the poet of her heart," and that " she would 
 repeat his lines with a mellow and racy simplicity, whose 
 tones ring in my memory to this hour." ^ She was, too, a 
 woman of large executive ability, also of unbending con- 
 scientiousness, braced and softened by religious sensibility. 
 
 As respects the general flow of family intimacy and 
 affection, it is fair to remember that this family were of the 
 early part of the present century, when ideas and standards 
 were very different from now. Dr. Martineau himself says: 
 " In old nonconformist families especially, the Puritan tra- 
 dition and the reticence of a persecuted race had left their 
 austere impress on speech and demeanour unused to be 
 
 1 1884.
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME 5 
 
 free ; so that in domestic and social life there was enforced, 
 as a condition of decorum, a retinue of language and de- 
 portment strongly contrasting with our modern effusive- 
 ness." He adds : " In the process of change to more 
 genial ways, that Norwich home was in advance of the 
 average movement rather than behind ; and in few others 
 have I found the medium better observed between . . . 
 bidding high for profession of enthusiasm and quenching 
 its reality by coldness and derision." From this we get a 
 clear impression of a gentle hand that guided firmly, a 
 love less marked by profuseness of endearment than by 
 constancy of parental service.^ 
 
 The religious discipline of the home was probably graver 
 than is the wont in like households now. The traditions 
 of Puritan ancestry had not then had time to relax their 
 hold, as they since have done, and we can imagine the 
 compulsory Bible-readings, the severely decorous Sabbaths. 
 Yet, that the severity of that home was less than might be 
 looked for at that date, the following anecdote may show. 
 The mother, going to church one evening, left the children 
 at home alone with direction to read the Bible in her ab- 
 sence. On her return she asked James what he had read. 
 His answer was " Isaiah." " Why, no, you cannot have 
 read the whole of Isaiah." " Yes, mother, I have, skip- 
 ping the nonsense." Many of us whose birth was of 
 later date took our Bible as it came, not daring to skip the 
 nonsense or even find it. Further, in the bias of religious 
 opinion, the family had departed widely from the Calvin- 
 istic standard of their Huguenot ancestry; indeed, they 
 represented the liberalism of the day. Their church stood 
 
 ^ See two very interesting letters by Dr. Martineau in the London Daily 
 News, December 30, 1S84, and January 8, 1885. These letters were drawn 
 out by some reflections on his mother by Mrs. Fenwick Miller in her biog- 
 raphy of Harriet Martineau. These reflections, as well as certain intima- 
 tions in Miss Martineau's Atitobiooraphy, should for all time be discredited 
 by his most finely tempered word.
 
 6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 for English Presbyterianism, the root whence English Uni- 
 tarianism sprang. A cardinal principle with English Pres- 
 byterians was the requirement of no creed, adopting for 
 their rule the maxim of Chillingworth, " To the Bible and 
 the Bible only the Christian shall subscribe." 
 
 In the earlier years the father prospered in business; 
 and though the family maintained no extravagant stand- 
 ard, their circumstances were very comfortable. There 
 came, however, an evil day of which, for the sturdy honor 
 and self-sacrifice it called forth, it is pleasant to tell. In 
 1823 France threw her armies upon Spain, which received 
 them almost without resistance. New commercial arrange- 
 ments were dictated to the advantage of France, but to the 
 grievous loss of England. Thomas Martineau's bomba- 
 zines had long gone to Spain in exchange for Spanish silks. 
 This trade was now cut off, and, despite his bravest efforts, 
 his business rapidly declined. At length his affairs reached 
 such a degree of embarrassment that he could honor- 
 ably keep silence no longer, and he laid them before his 
 creditors. They found his liabilities in the neighborhood 
 of ;^ioo,ooo, his assets not far from ^75,000. Fifteen shil- 
 lings to the pound could have been paid, and thus release 
 secured. Fifteen shillings, however, could not pay a pound, 
 according to Martineau standards ; nor could war or any 
 other disaster release from an obligation that any toil or 
 sacrifice could cancel. Confident of his ability in time to 
 pay all, his creditors suffered him to undertake the struggle. 
 It was a long struggle, lasting beyond his life, and carried 
 on by his family. At length the goal was won ; the debt, 
 a maelstrom that had sucked in all their family fortune, 
 was discharged, and the family could face the world with 
 poverty and honor. Rachel and Ellen must needs take 
 service as governesses, and Harriet incur the hardships 
 of her brave early career, but no indulgence was purchased 
 with an unpaid debt.
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME J 
 
 That this achievement left a legacy of pleasant memory 
 we may well believe ; and testimony is not wanting. In 
 the memoirs of Lord Brougham is a note which he once 
 addressed to Lord Grey, soliciting a pension for Harriet 
 Martineau, whom he felt to be overworked and much de- 
 serving. In it he referred, innocently enough, to her 
 father's failure, meaning, of course, the catastrophe that 
 swept away his fortune. On the appearance of the book 
 Harriet wrote to the London Daily News with the intensity 
 with which she might have repelled an insult : " My father 
 did notfaiiy Dr. Martineau also, in a later writing, speaks 
 of the " imputation " (of having failed in business) erro- 
 neously cast upon his father " in Lord Brougham's auto- 
 biography." Some years later still, speaking of this event 
 with the present writer, he said with a satisfaction his mod- 
 esty could not conceal : " There was no failure ; twenty 
 shillings to the pound were paid." If there had been fail- 
 ure, surely, according to the judgment of men, there had 
 been no dishonor. The war was none of Thomas Marti- 
 neau's, and he was powerless to avert its consequences ; 
 and not a few may find at the root of his conduct an exag- 
 gerated sense of honor. Here, however, is the austere 
 ethics of such emergencies, as his son in later years pro- 
 claimed them : " Whatever be the practice of society with 
 respect to the insolvent, surely it is a mean perversion of 
 the natural moral sense to imagine that his temporary in- 
 ability, or length of delay, can cancel one iota of his obliga- 
 tion : these things only serve to increase its stringency ; 
 tardy reparation being a poor substitute for punctual 
 fidelity. I am far from denying that circumstances of 
 special and blameless misfortune may justify him in 
 accepting the voluntary mercy of friends willing to ' for- 
 give him all that debt.' But whoever avails himself of 
 mere legal release as a moral exemption, is a candidate for 
 infamy in the eyes of all uncorrupted men. The law
 
 8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 necessarily interposes to put a period to the controversy 
 between debtor and creditor, and prohibit the further 
 struggle between the arts of the one and the cruelty of the 
 other : but it cannot annul their moral relation. Obliga- 
 tion cannot, any more than God, grow old and die : till it 
 is obeyed, it stops in the present tense, and represents the 
 eternal now. Time can wear no duty out. Neglect may 
 smother it out of sight: opportunity may pass and turn 
 it from our guardian angel into our haunting fiend : but 
 while it yet remains possible, it clings to our identity, and 
 refuses to let us go." ^ 
 
 Beyond the home, the surroundings, if not the best con- 
 ceivable, were by no means unfavorable. Norwich was, 
 indeed, no Athens of poets and philosophers ; and neither 
 was she a Nazareth from which no good thing was to be 
 expected. Though a manufacturing city, it had in the 
 early part of the century an intellectual life which was 
 considerable, and with it the Martineaus were in touch. 
 William Taylor lived there, and was then doing his work, 
 which, if not great, as viewed in relation with the ages, 
 was yet not without value to his time. To the periodicals 
 of the day, he was a toilsome contributor on subjects of 
 foreign literature. He was among the first to introduce 
 German poetry to English readers. He translated the 
 Nathan der Weise, and gave a rendering of the ballad of 
 Ellenore which found favor in the eyes of Longfellow, and 
 from which Sir Walter Scott derived some inspiration.^ 
 He also wrote an Historic Survey of German Poetry, and a 
 work on English synonyms. His style was quaint, in- 
 volved, harsh, — no mortal could read him now; but the 
 fact stands that he was read, and not without profit, then. 
 There was also a Dr. Frank Sayers who abandoned medi- 
 
 1 Sermon : Christian Doctrine of Merit, Endeavors after the Christian Life. 
 
 2 Mrs. Barbauld wrote him : " Do you know that you made Walter Scott 
 a poet ? He told me the other day. It was, he says, your ballad of Lenore 
 that inspired him." Three Generations of Ettglisk Women, Janet Ross.
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOxME 9 
 
 cine for literature. He wrote Dramatic Sketches of Ancient 
 Northern Mythology; he brouglit out a volume of poems ; 
 he was the author of a volume of Disquisitions, Metaphysi- 
 cal ajid Literary. None of these works reached the standard 
 that insures fame, yet they served their day. There was like- 
 wise a Dr. Rigby who wrote very elaborately on subjects of 
 medicine and agriculture ; also a Dr. Alderson, who wrote 
 on agriculture and geology ; and several others whose names 
 are recorded, and whose works the curious may still find, — 
 not stars, yet very serviceable candles. There were two 
 others who stood in a somewhat dififerent category : Amelia 
 Opie, whose novels, though not great, were yet wholesome, 
 and gained a popularity that lasted beyond her day ; and 
 Anna Laetitia Barbauld, intelligent, gentle, pure, who fell a 
 little short of popularity and just missed of fame. The 
 latter did not live in Norwich, but was a frequenter there, 
 and an occasional visitor in the Martineau household. 
 Indeed, the Norwich of Mr. Martineau's boyhood might 
 have filled an alcove of a public library with the works of 
 her contemporary authors. 
 
 Besides, the city was not without a record of strong men 
 in whose paths the growing boy must tread. There was 
 John Taylor,^ teacher, author, and Presbyterian divine, 
 who wrote many works of a theological character, — A 
 Hebrew Concordance, A Scheme of Scripture Divijiity, The 
 Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement, A Paraphrase and 
 Notes on the Epistle to the Romans, A Free ajid Candid Ex^ 
 amination of the Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin. The 
 latter was honored with a polemic cannonade both from 
 Edwards and John Wesley. Reaching somewhat farther 
 back, there were Archbishop Parker, Thomas Legge, 
 
 1 Born at Lancaster, 1694. Ordained by " dissenting ministers " at Derby- 
 shire in 1716. He moved to Norwich to become the colleague of another 
 minister in 1733. In 1754 he laid the first stone of the famous Octagon 
 Chapel, described by John Wesley as " perhaps the most elegant one in all 
 Europe," and too fine for the " old coarse gospel."
 
 10 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Bishop Cosin, Bishop Pearson, — all Norwich born; also 
 Erpingham, Bishop Hall, and, best known of all, Sir 
 Thomas Browne, had found here their home. It was 
 surely no empty panegyric on the part of Lord Houghton, 
 when he said in an address at Norwich, not many years 
 ago : " I know no provincial city adorned with so many 
 illustrious names in literature, the professions, and public 
 life ; those of Taylor, Martineau, Austin, Alderson, Opie, 
 come first to my recollection, and there are many more 
 behind ; and there is this additional peculiarity of distinc- 
 tion, that these are for the most part not the designation 
 of individuals, but of families numbering each men and 
 women conspicuous in various walks of life." ^ 
 
 In this period, too, flourished a somewhat famous school 
 of landscape painting, distinguished by the works of Crome 
 and Cotman and Vincent, — far enough from Gainsborough 
 and Turner, yet awaking some admiration and enkindling 
 some incentives in their day. 
 
 Norwich is a venerable town, with its heirlooms of tradi- 
 tion and its historic monuments, — a more marked feature 
 in the first quarter of our century, perhaps, than now. In 
 the first quarter of the eleventh century it was the home of 
 Canute ; in the first quarter of the twelfth century Henry I. 
 gave it a charter. Here are traces of the ancient wall, 
 which in the first half of the fourteenth century sur- 
 rounded whatever of city there then was, a circuit of four 
 miles. Here is a Cathedral, a Norman structure, some- 
 what more than four hundred feet in length, with a spire 
 of three hundred and fifteen feet. Here, too, is a Benedic- 
 tine monastery, completed before the middle of the twelfth 
 century. Here are numerous churches said to antedate 
 the discoveries of Columbus ; and here is the Walloon 
 Church in which Mr. Martineau's ancestors worshipped. 
 
 Mrs. Chapman, in her Memorials of Harriet Marti- 
 
 ^ Three Generations of English IVomen, Janet Ross.
 
 ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME U 
 
 neau, writing of Norwich, speaks of its "uninteresting 
 antiquity." The antiquity may have been uninteresting to 
 Harriet, very Hkely to Mrs. Chapman. To James, how- 
 ever, who was of another order of mind, it may have been 
 not only interesting but profitable. Now it were pleasant 
 to tell how as a youth he explored crypt or churchyard, 
 or was lost in reverie as he gazed on some venerable 
 pile; of his thus doing, however, there has come to us 
 no tale. But from our knowledge of the man we may 
 come at least to some divination of the boy ; and from this 
 we may be sure of a sensibility to which these traditions 
 and these associations had meaning. Silently, and perhaps 
 unconsciously, he must have received their influence. 
 
 James and Harriet were children of the same mother; 
 yet the contrasts of their ruling characteristics were very 
 marked, and here we meet one of them. Harriet was a 
 child of to-day, who bravely looked to the future for 
 whose weal she toiled. She had, however, little reverence 
 for the past ; she was wanting in the sensibility by which 
 she should have seen that through the toils and strug- 
 gles of other generations had been handed to her the 
 very torch she bore. The institutions, the ideas, the 
 faiths of other times she was apt to treat as the dry stalks 
 and decayed herbage of her spring time garden, which 
 she cleared away to give space for the fresh summer 
 blossoms. James, too, is a child of to-day, yet a Janus 
 that looks before him and behind, — to the future with 
 prophetic hope, to the past with eye clear to the deep 
 meaning of its endeavors. His is the historic sense that 
 finds in to-day the unfolding of yesterday, and in yesterday 
 the interpretation of to-day. In his garden he is not so 
 much mindful of the dry stalks and decaying herbage as of 
 the hardy root from which they sprang, and from which 
 each season comes another and, by some miracle, a 
 different flower.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Among the useful institutions of Norwich is a grammar 
 school, a foundation of the fourteenth century. To this 
 school James Martineau was sent from eight to fourteen 
 years of age as a day-scholar. The school was not without 
 reputation. It had had among its pupils not a few who had 
 won distinction ; Dr. Samuel Parr was at one time at its 
 head. When James was in attendance, Edward Valpy was 
 head-master. As a classical scholar Valpy had reputation, 
 nor is he yet forgotten. Before James entered the school, 
 he had published Elegantics Latince, a text-book for such 
 as would teach an elegant Latinity, which he used. Some- 
 what later he brought out editions of the Greek Testament, 
 the Septuagint, and the Iliad. Under a teacher of such 
 marked classical accomplishment, the emphasis of the 
 school was naturally upon classical studies, and in these 
 James made rapid progress. He also learned the French 
 language. Mathematics, however, then as ever after a 
 favorite study, he was not permitted to pursue to an 
 extent commensurate with his abilities and his desires. 
 
 In a public school of two hundred and thirty pupils rude 
 elements are to be looked for; and the sensitive boy who 
 has endured well, should have a tolerable martyrdom put 
 down to his credit. James was this kind of boy. He had 
 also a moral sensibility to which the hazing and hectoring 
 were moral affronts of serious proportion. Of course, 
 therefore, he was not entirely happy there.
 
 EDUCATION 13 
 
 The way opened for his transfer to another school. His 
 sister Harriet, who had been visiting in Bristol, brought 
 home glowing accounts of Lant Carpenter, who was both 
 minister and teacher there. She does not speak of him 
 reverently in her Autobiography ; but her representation of 
 him then led her parents to place James under his care. 
 His school was a boarding-school ; therefore it was not 
 large. It was intended to be, and doubtless was, select. 
 
 No proper account can be given of Dr. Martineau that 
 does not embrace an account of Lant Carpenter. Dr. 
 Martineau has never been stingy in his recognitions of the 
 friends of his intellect or spirit; but to no other of his 
 helpers has he confessed a debt so large as to him. Har- 
 riet Martineau speaks of him as " superficial in his knowl- 
 edge, scanty in ability, narrow in his conceptions." His 
 influence upon her brother, of which, after seventy years, 
 he kindled into eloquence when telling, makes her judg- 
 ment incredible. Writing of him in 1841 he said, and 
 never after saw reason to unsay : " So forcibly, indeed, did 
 that period act upon me, — so visibly did it determine the 
 subsequent direction of my mind and lot, that it always 
 stands before me as the commencement of my present life, 
 making me feel like a man without a childhood ; and 
 though a multitude of earlier scenes are still in view, they 
 seem to be spread around a different being, and to belong, 
 like the incidents of a dream, to some foreign self that 
 became extinct when the morning light of reality broke 
 upon the sight." If further testimony be needed, it may 
 be drawn from the action of the University at Glasgow in 
 which he studied. When yet but twenty-six years of age, 
 forecasting authorship, he conceived that the degree of 
 Master of Arts might be helpful to him ; and wrote to 
 his Alma Mater respecting it. The Faculty without dis- 
 senting voice sent him, not an M.A., but an LL. D. in- 
 stead. Was it thus that the Glasgow University treated
 
 14 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 young men of " superficial knowledge and scanty ability and 
 narrow conceptions " ? Again, the class of minds on which 
 he acted, together with his ever-extending and lasting in- 
 fluence, makes the acceptance of this estimate impossible. 
 There are those, indeed, who mistake twinkle for star; but 
 the wise navigators of hfe's ocean speedily detect the dif- 
 ference. Yet again, here are his writings, not wise with 
 the wisdom the last fifty years have gathered, but surely 
 reflecting the scholar's mind, the thinker's insight, and, 
 before all else, the Christian heart. Grant that he had less 
 than the large and solid erudition of Arnold, less ability, 
 also, to mould the opinions of his pupils after the fashion 
 of his own, — a thing he would have religiously shrunk 
 from doing, — we yet feel that we are here dealing with 
 one of those instances in which Miss Martineau's early 
 impressions were truer than her later retrospects.^ Finally, 
 
 1 There is a view of Harriet Martineau, entertained in very high quarters, 
 which, in consideration of some of the judgments contained in her Autobi- 
 ography, seems in its nature charitable. She was an invalid a large portion 
 of her life ; she suffered from extreme deafness, which is almost sure at last 
 to leave its trace upon mind or spirit. Besides, she experienced a spiritual 
 transition from a faith the most confiding, to a scepticism the most ultra. 
 The view is that she threw back, as it were, her later and poorer moods, and 
 so saw her past in the discoloring light of her present. 
 
 An illustrative instance is told at Oxford by a gentleman in very high 
 standing. In earlier life, as is well known, Miss Martineau wrote a book of 
 a devotional character. In later life, after she had become, as she supposed, 
 an atheist, she was visited one morning by a lady whom she took into her 
 garden, then profusely in blossom. Waving her hand over her flowers, she 
 said, " Who would n't be grateful for blessings such as these ? " " Grateful 
 to whom. Miss Martineau, on your theory .'"' " Ah," said she, with a smile, 
 " you have me there." " Do you know," said the friend, " it has always been 
 a matter of great surprise to me that one who wrote those beautiful prayers 
 should have become an atheist ? " " What prayers } " " Why, those you 
 wrote." " / never wrote any prayers." " Why, certainly you did, Miss 
 Martineau, and I have the book and prize it very highly." Miss Martineau 
 still persisted that there must be some mistake about it ; so the friend called 
 again the next morning and placed the volume in her hands. " Well," said 
 Miss Martineau, " I suppose I must have written it, but I had forgotten all 
 about it ; and I do not see how I could have done it." 
 
 Forgetting the authorship of a book seems an extraordinary lapse of
 
 EDUCATION 1 5 
 
 while it is true that a Marcus may be the father of a 
 Commodus, and that to a John Shakespeare a William 
 Shakespeare may be born, still in these days a permanence 
 of high characteristics in a family is a suggestive circum- 
 stance. It seems in point to remember that Lant Carpenter 
 was the father of Mary Carpenter, also of William B. Car- 
 penter, whose fame two continents have proved not large 
 enough to hold ; that the latter became the father of Prof 
 J. Estlin Carpenter, who promises to add to the lustre of 
 his line. 
 
 In his mental outfit he was not a specialist, nor yet a 
 congeries of specialisms, as that of the modern scholar is 
 apt to be. He knew the classics well, mathematics well, 
 the sciences well, mental and moral philosophy well. He 
 was also, by education and training, a theologian. His 
 knowledge, however, was an organism in which all parts 
 had vital relation. He had therefore the primary qualifi- 
 cation for imparting knowledge, — a balanced appreciation 
 not likely to depreciate in one direction or exaggerate in 
 another. Indeed, so far as he went, he answered to Dr. 
 Martineau's own idea of an educator, as given in his address 
 on retiring from Manchester New College. Gently criti- 
 cising the tendency to specialisms by which the student is 
 handed along from master to master, he likens a mind so 
 formed to a ship put together in " water-tight compart- 
 ments " which is " not really at home in the element it 
 traverses, but treats it as an enemy against whose surprises 
 it must guard." On the other hand, he maintains that a 
 " learner of many subjects from one mind sees them in 
 their analogies and unity ; for they cannot well lie apart 
 from one another, unaided by agreement, unconscious of 
 
 memory ; and it is difficult to help feeling that the inability to see how she, 
 the atheist, could have done it, in part explains the phenomenon. The inci- 
 dent compels us to feel that, however zealously she may have been pressing 
 on to the things that were before, it is necessary to receive with caution her 
 testimony as to the things that were behind.
 
 1 6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 contradiction, but must necessarily share the unity of the 
 personality they occupy." Of course this presupposes the 
 one mind, not large necessarily with the largeness of 
 Bacon's, but possessed of a certain assimilating and organ- 
 izing power, Baconian in character. Such a mind was 
 Lant Carpenter's, 
 
 He was, however, something more than a well-rounded 
 scholar; he was a well-rounded man. He was deficient, 
 his pupil tells us, in aesthetic sensibihty ; of art he had no 
 due appreciation. His moral sense, however, was of the 
 noblest order: if he could not adequately appreciate 
 Phidias' statues, he could enter into Aristides' justice ; 
 and if clouds and sunsets did not appeal to him, he knew 
 the look of Duty, and was responsive to her frown or smile. 
 Not that he was an austere man ; on the contrary, he was 
 a very gentle one. For religion too dwelt within him, and 
 softened into a Christian the stoic he might otherwise 
 have been. His one conspicuous departure from moral fair- 
 ness was probably in dealing with himself; he wore him- 
 self out in the pursuit of an exaggerated duty. Then, the 
 smile he could so freely give he could not appropriate. 
 He would turn from his toils, when perforce he must, not 
 with self-approval for the much he had done, but depressed 
 by a torturing consciousness of what he had failed to do. 
 Such a toiler we would have see in the skies he looks into 
 a considerateness equal at least to his own, and in his 
 nightly musing take account of the diligence with which 
 he has climbed as well as of the height he has not gained. 
 
 There was, too, a largeness in his view the want of which 
 has brought disaster to many a man of like austere con- 
 scientiousness. Detail and minutiae he required ; but he 
 saw through them, and made others see, the principle that 
 ennobled them. The order of his school-room was heaven's 
 order brought down to earthly relations ; and the triviali- 
 ties of behavior, or what we call such, were as snow-flakes
 
 EDUCATION 17 
 
 or grains of dust in which the whole law of gravitation is 
 manifest. 
 
 As a theologian he was involved in much controversy; 
 yet his zeal for the faith never supplanted his religious 
 tolerance ; a Protestant of Protestants, he could yet toil 
 for Catholic emancipation; a nonconformist of the Uni- 
 tarian type, he lifted religion out of all relation with sec- 
 tarianism. His convictions were reasonably intense ; yet 
 so far did he put by religious partisanship that parents of 
 the severer schools of religious opinion would place their 
 children under his tuition, that they might receive the 
 benefit of his religious instruction. 
 
 He was greatly helped in his work by a charm that 
 young people found in him. He could enter into their 
 sympathies and take hold of their affections. No mere 
 charmer, however, will leave the enduring impression that 
 he left ; his work was guided by an aim which only a great 
 teacher and a holy man could realize. All are familiar 
 with the criticism of Montaigne upon the education prev- 
 alent in his day, — that it made men learned, not good and 
 wise, taught how to decline virtus, not to love virtue ; and 
 the criticism would most likely apply to education in its 
 general scope in any time. With Mr. Carpenter the aim 
 was the reverse of this : his pupils should meet the commu- 
 nication of truth with answering reverence ; he grasped the 
 idea of a symmetry of culture in which intellect, the con- 
 science, and the heart should be nurtured together. To 
 this end he brought to bear upon them his stern and lofty 
 ideals, his intense and burning enthusiasm. The econo- 
 mies of time, the punctilios of behavior, were taken out of 
 drudgery by being lifted into moral relations. As for re- 
 ligion, it was as the sunshine and atmosphere, an element 
 in which they lived, — a stimulus, a consecration, and a 
 joy. "There was something in his voice," writes his 
 pupil, " mellowed by the spirit within, that made the 
 
 2
 
 1 8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 reality of God felt ; something that broke through the 
 boundary between the seen and the unseen, and opened 
 the secret place of the Almighty, whence sanctity descends 
 on all human obligations." 
 
 Such was the teacher to whom young James was com- 
 mitted. That the progress in his studies was rapid hardly 
 need be told. The value of tuition from such a teacher, 
 however, must be estimated, not in terms of measurable 
 attainment, but of immeasurable impulse. If in Dr. Car- 
 penter was the genius to give, in his pupil was the genius 
 to receive ; and under that stimulus his whole nature was 
 aroused. It was as dew and sunshine upon rich and fal- 
 low soil in which are germs of multifarious use and beauty. 
 In his long life of toil there was probably no period in 
 which he would not have confessed the still-abiding in- 
 fluence of his Bristol school-master. 
 
 Two years only of this high privilege were allowed him, 
 and with their termination he supposed his school-days to 
 be ended. 
 
 His father had decided on his career ; another was to be 
 added to the many attempts, some of them mournfully suc- 
 cessful, to make Apollo a farm-hand for Admetos. He 
 was to be an engineer, and was sent to Derby to learn his 
 profession. He was employed there in the works of Mr. 
 Fox, and for a year was kept at the lathe or the bench of 
 the model-room. He had a positive liking for the work, 
 and ever after preserved a taste for mechanical construction. 
 
 Several circumstances were soon conspiring against this 
 mistaken enterprise. First, his master, in many ways a 
 capable man, was yet not able to give him that instruction 
 in mechanics which an accomplished engineer should have ; 
 and he found himself an apprentice learning a trade rather 
 than a pupil being taught a science; and he was dissatis- 
 fied. Further, the spell of Lant Carpenter was upon him, 
 and powerfully influenced him. Again, the death of a
 
 EDUCATION 19 
 
 distant kinsman, Henry Turner, a not highly gifted but 
 saintly young minister, deeply moved him.^ Yet again, 
 and more significant than all other circumstances, the 
 vocation whereto he was called, while Henry Turner yet 
 lived, and before he knew Lant Carpenter, was declaring 
 itself within him. At length the conviction took form that 
 iron and steel were not the materials in which he was to 
 work, but thought tempered in the fire of spirit. 
 
 The announcement of his desire to become a minister 
 brought disappointment to his father, who saw an exchange 
 of a profession that promised a comfortable hvelihood for 
 one which, outside the Establishment, meant the crust of 
 well-nigh irremediable poverty. Too wise, however, to 
 attempt to thwart the wishes of his son in such a matter, 
 he offered to incur the expense of his needful education. 
 
 The year at Derby we may well believe not without 
 value to his future work ; the Pontifex Maximus who will 
 throw his arch from this world over to the other may be 
 helped by experience of terrestrial bridge-building. It 
 was, too, of great significance to him personally. He 
 boarded in the family of a dissenting minister. Rev. Ed- 
 ward Higginson, who had a daughter of about James' age. 
 The rest is the old story that is always new. They took 
 the situation somewhat too reasonably for ideal lovers. 
 Too young, as was thought, for engagement, they agreed 
 to leave the matter as it was, not seeing each other, or 
 corresponding save at distant intervals, until the years 
 of study were completed. Then, if their present mind 
 continued, all should be according to their hearts' desire. 
 The years of waiting only proved their constancy, and 
 their hope for each other was fulfilled in marriage. 
 
 At the time when James Martineau decided on college 
 training preparatory to the ministry, the great historic uni- 
 
 1 In his address on the occasion of his leaving Manchester New College 
 he speaks of " Henry Turner, whose death was my conversion."
 
 20 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 versities of England were closed to such as would not sign 
 the articles of the Church of England. The expense, too, 
 of attending one of them might have been too severe a tax 
 upon the family exchequer. The college chosen was the 
 Manchester College, then at York. Historically this col- 
 lege succeeds the famous Warrington Academy, that 
 Priestley served, but which expired after a brief and bril- 
 liant career of twenty-nine years. These were the days of 
 heroic and disheartening struggle for "free learning" in 
 England.^ Six institutions, succeeding one another, had 
 in less than a century borne aloft the torch ere Warrington 
 took it; ^ and now Warrington had let it fall. With a faith 
 in the principle which defeat could not vanquish, the 
 friends of " free learning " founded at once the Manchester 
 College, or Manchester Academy, as it was at first called ; 
 which for more than a century has borne the torch success- 
 fully. This College, however, has been remarkable for its 
 peripatetic tendency. It received its first class at Man- 
 chester in 1786. In 1803 it was moved to York. Thence 
 it was returned to Manchester in 1840. In 1853 it was 
 moved to London; and in 1889 to Oxford. Here we will 
 hope that its peregrinations are over, and that it may long 
 diffuse its light.^ 
 
 ^ The phrase "free learning" occurs very frequently in occasional ad- 
 dresses at this College, and it has a meaning to our English brethren which 
 we in America can scarce appreciate. It has tacit reference to the persistent 
 opposition of the State Church to whatever " university learning" she did 
 not foster and direct. And, as the enjoyment of this implied subscription 
 to her creed, her attitude meant the ban of ignorance upon such as could 
 not gather within her fold. The struggles for " university learning " in Eng- 
 land in the face of this opposition constitute one of the heroic chapters of 
 English history. 
 
 2 See a very interesting and instructive speech by Rev. Alexander Gor- 
 don on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of 
 the College ; also an address by Dr. Martineau on the same occasion. 
 Both may be found in the volume entitled Theology and Piety Alike Free. 
 
 * In its various changes the College has undergone corresponding 
 changes in its official designation. In its first Manchester period it was
 
 EDUCATION 21 
 
 In all these various stages it has been true to one cardi- 
 nal principle, that of absolute religious freedom. Of creed 
 subscription as a condition of university learning it has left 
 to the State institutions an ungrudged monopoly.^ 
 
 The purpose of the College, as quoted in an address of 
 its first Principal, was " to establish a plan affording a full 
 and systematic course of education for divines — and pre- 
 paratory instructions for the other learned professions — as 
 well as for civil and commercial life," It was thus a college 
 of divinity and of general culture in one. The number the 
 College has educated has never been large ; in its earlier 
 years the number that took courses in Theology was very 
 small. Yet not only has it filled a most important place 
 as an institution of learning in which the higher problems 
 of thought could be traversed without predetermined con- 
 clusion, but its record is a proud one. In a roll-call of its 
 students not a few of honored name and laurelled brow 
 should answer. In its professors it has had some of the 
 fairest ornaments of England's learning. 
 
 In its theology the freedom of its spirit has forbidden it 
 to be stationary. In its first Manchester period, under 
 Thomas Barnes, it represented the later development of 
 English Presbyterianism, mildly looking towards Arianism. 
 In the York period, under Charles Wellbeloved, we per- 
 haps may say that it accomplished the transition to the 
 older type of Unitarianism. In the second Manchester 
 period it represented that type of thought in its completer 
 unfolding. When the College reached London, it came 
 under the principalship of John James Tayler, and, follow- 
 simply Manchester Academy. At York it was Manchester College, York. 
 On its return to Manchester it became Manchester New College, Manchester. 
 At London it became Manchester, New College, London, and at Oxford, 
 Manchester New College, Oxford. Later its official designation was changed 
 to Manchester College. 
 
 1 Oxford and Cambridge have abandoned creed subscription save for 
 the theological professor.
 
 22 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ing the lead of his large thought and learning, it took on 
 Unitarianism of the more modern type, which anon under 
 Martineau it further unfolded, and now under Drummond 
 reflects in its fullest development. In its lecture-rooms for 
 many years Unitarianism as such has had but an incon- 
 spicuous place in truth's large inclusiveness. It is a school 
 of Divinity, not the arsenal of a sect. 
 
 It was in the York period that young Martineau, in the 
 year 1822, sought admission. The course was five years; 
 the first three devoted to studies of a general character, 
 the last two to Theology. Hebrew was taken through the 
 entire course. 
 
 The college work was pressed with great earnestness ; 
 John Kenrick twice mentions his pupil's " intemperate 
 study ; " also he speaks of his " care of research " and of his 
 " minute accuracy." He worked by a theory, oftener com- 
 mended than adopted, of which he spoke in later years. 
 " I remember," said he, " thinking that the use of educa- 
 tion was to correct the weakness of nature, rather than to 
 develop its strength, which would take care of itself; and 
 so I gave double time to whatever I disliked, and reserved 
 my favorite studies for spare moments of comparatively 
 tired will." 
 
 The College did not have the facilities deemed indispen- 
 sable in such institutions now. He found in it, however, 
 two essentials to rapid progress, — to such a pupil the only 
 two, — studies equal to his powers, and guidance equal to his 
 need. He was taught the Calculus by the fluxional rather 
 than the differential method, which he afterwards had rea- 
 son to regret; and Hebrew without the vowel pointings, 
 which must have added to the toil of learning.^ However, 
 
 ^ A note from John Kenrick begets the suspicion that tracts of learning 
 were sometimes traversed rather than explored. lie thought a year at Got- 
 tingen, where they went through only one evangelist, one prophet, three or 
 four epistles, or three centuries of ecclesiastical history, not equal to a year 
 at York, where Wellbeloved was in the habit of going through the Old or
 
 EDUCATION 23 
 
 at the end of five years he stepped forth into life with 
 thoroughly disciplined faculties, together with a store of 
 mathematical and physical science, of classical languages 
 and literatures, of history, logic, philosophy, theology, 
 that gave him firm footing as an educated man, and ample 
 equipment for entering on his chosen career. 
 
 This summary, however, hardly conveys the full signifi- 
 cance of his college years. Like all deep natures, his was, 
 then and ever after, extremely susceptible to personal in- 
 fluence ; and in college, as in the school at Bristol, he 
 was most fortunate in this. The number of students was 
 small, — there were ten only in his class, and he had but 
 three comrades in Divinity; so that the pupil enjoyed a 
 closeness of contact with his teachers which a thronged 
 lecture-room makes impossible. The closeness of this 
 relation was further provided for by the smallness of the 
 number of teachers. Many years later, contrasting the 
 Manchester New College from which he retired as Princi- 
 pal with the Manchester College in which he studied, he 
 mentioned the fact that the subjects taught at the later 
 date by fourteen teachers were taught by three at the 
 earlier ; and he was clearly of opinion that the advantage is 
 not wholly with the more extended division of labor which 
 is now prevailing. Then was the " pluralist" teacher, now 
 the " specialist ; " and, for purely educational advantage, he 
 found much to urge in favor of the pluralist. Another 
 advantage, however, which he did not mention, but which 
 he surely would have recognized, is this: Where now the 
 student receives his instruction from many teachers, and 
 so meets them at but a single point, and feels their influence 
 but slightly, he then, in receiving his instruction in many 
 subjects from few teachers, met them at many points, and 
 so experienced from them the full weight of their intellect 
 
 the New Testament. On this basis of comparison modern views of learning 
 would certainly give to Gottingen the preference.
 
 24 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 and character. Where the intellect was great and the 
 character was high, this was a circumstance not to be re- 
 garded lightly. Such were the intellect and character of 
 two of Dr. Martineau's teachers, John Kenrick and Charles 
 Wellbeloved. 
 
 John Kenrick, in the largeness of his attainments, must 
 have stood high among the first scholars of his day. Cer- 
 tainly in his line there was no institution in England whose 
 fame he would not have advanced, and any congress of 
 scholars would have applauded his erudition. His studious 
 and uneventful life has not called forth a biography, and 
 the encyclopaedias have for most part passed him by; 
 so that his record, save in the affectionate memories of 
 those who were near him, is somewhat dim. Nor had 
 he the genius for prolific book-making, such as charac- 
 terizes, for instance, Max Miiller; and so he failed of that 
 eclat, sometimes rather cheap, which a voluminous author- 
 ship may win. Yet his volumes, though few, entitled him 
 to the student's gratitude and the scholar's admiration. 
 He was the translator of Zumpt's Latin Grammar; he was 
 one of the earliest to undertake the preparation of popular 
 manuals for Greek and Latin study, which have made the 
 approaches to those languages in these modern days so 
 much more easy and delightful. He published two vol- 
 umes on Egypt, — Egypt of Herodotus and Ancient Egypt 
 itnder the Pharaohs, of which the worst that can be said 
 is, that they are not enriched with the results of investiga- 
 tions that have followed them. He published a volume on 
 Persia, which for forty years has held its place without 
 serious challenge. His more important books were the 
 outcome of his college work ; and it was the cause of 
 learning they were designed to serve, not popular favor 
 they were put forth to win. So, while written in a style 
 singularly clear and forcible, his matter is offered without 
 dilution or condiment, — the solid meat of learning in
 
 EDUCATION 25 
 
 which healthy appetite may rejoice, not the beef-tea which 
 feeble stomachs can receive. 
 
 He studied theology with thought of the ministry, but 
 from this the needs of Manchester College drew him aside. 
 From such religious writings as he left, it seems clear that 
 in him a great theologian was sacrificed to a great pro- 
 fessor in another field. As already indicated, his special 
 lines of study were classical and historical. His ability to 
 enter into a language, to grasp its details and absorb its 
 spirit, was of the first order. When a young man he had 
 the privilege of a year in Germany, and availed himself of 
 an opportunity to practise Latin conversation with Zumpt. 
 Zumpt afterwards remarked of his German that it differed 
 from a native's only in its extreme purity, — " correct 
 literary speech without a trace of local colouring." ^ A 
 student of language must deal much in the minutiae of 
 learning; and for this reason the classic tongues have been 
 a field in which pedantry has prospered. Professor Kenrick, 
 however, brought to them the patient research of the in- 
 vestigator, together with the broad view and deep insight 
 of the philosopher. His was the order of mind to which 
 Comparative Philology owes its being; and, had not his 
 work led him in a somewhat different direction, it is 
 hardly to be doubted that he might have stood with the 
 Schlegels and Wilhelm von Humboldt among the leaders 
 of that noble science. 
 
 The same order of ability he brought to the study of 
 history. With untiring patience in the scrutiny of details 
 he combined the clearest perception of the forces by which 
 history is ruled. For this reason his books, even when 
 they need the correction of more recent knowledge, are 
 yet profitable : they are the kind of books from which we 
 gather wisdom as well as learning; they are unambitious 
 in aim, modest in pretension, but wearing on every page 
 the impress of a master mind. 
 
 1 Martineau's Essays, Reviews; and Addresses, vol. i. p. 404.
 
 26 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 He was a sun that did not need a solar system in which 
 to shine ; for thirty-five years the httle class-room at 
 Manchester College was his field of toil, and there is no 
 evidence that he was ever haunted by the consideration 
 whether his influence reached beyond or no. Mr. Mar- 
 tineau thinks that of his title to be heard in the high 
 debates of European scholarship, he could not have been 
 unconscious. He was, however, one of those rare souls 
 whose satisfaction in simple duty makes a small place 
 large ; and the " last infirmity of noble mind " was ever 
 far away from him. His great pupil bears witness to him 
 as " above ambition, incapable of pretence, eager to see 
 things as they are, and assured that, through the darkness 
 that sometimes enfolds them, the only guide is the un- 
 swerving love of truth ; and, accepting life for service, 
 not for sway, he never measured his sphere to see whether 
 it was small or great, but deemed it enough to bear his 
 witness where he stood, and help, as he might, the com- 
 panions of his way." This will do for him ; but there is 
 another aspect of the matter respecting which satisfaction 
 is not so easy. How came it that he was so little known? 
 That his name is not written beside the names of Boeckh 
 and Lachmann is easily explained : he did not measure 
 himself against their problems ; at any rate, did not par- 
 ticipate in their discussions. That his reputation, however, 
 was hardly insular suggests some fault in his environment. 
 To be sure, he had no Eiffel Tower from which to shine ; 
 but neither was his candle hidden under a bushel ; and 
 its pure white beam shone clear. The explanation at 
 once suggested, it is to be feared, is too obvious: he 
 represented that nonconformity which to English church- 
 dom is a Nazareth out of which no good thing is expected, 
 yet out of which how frequently have the best things 
 come. When Matthiae's Greek Grammar, very celebrated 
 in its day, after a considerable growth through several
 
 EDUCATION 27 
 
 editions in Germany, needed a revised and complete Eng- 
 lish translation, the Bishop of London, who had the task in 
 hand, settled upon Professor Kenrick as one to be intrusted 
 with the labor. Accordingly the work was published 
 under his editorial care. The printer sent proof not only 
 to Professor Kenrick, but to the Bishop as well ; and in it 
 the editor's name appeared, " Rev. John Kenrick." The 
 Bishop erased the " Rev.," and at the same time wrote to 
 the printer explaining that it was impossible to concede 
 that title to one not in Holy Orders.^ The Rt. Rev. 
 could see the scholar, but a nonconformist Rev. was 
 impossible. It is to be feared that the spirit that cannot 
 see the nonconformist Rev. will, save in rare exceptions, 
 fail also to see the nonconformist scholar; at least, will 
 but dimly discern his merit and stingily measure off his 
 fame. 
 
 As to the order of his mind, he was little speculative, 
 perhaps too little. The classic poets and orators and 
 historians stirred his enthusiasm, but not the classic phi- 
 losophers in like degree. A page of Demosthenes was 
 more congenial to him than a page of Aristotle, and the 
 Histories of Tacitus than the Disputations at Tusculum. 
 In all his investigations in whatever field it was objective 
 evidence he sought, and with which alone he was satisfied. 
 On one side this may imply limitation ; it was limitation, 
 however, that afforded the negative value of protection. 
 It saved him from illusions to which the theorizer is ever 
 liable, and spared his pupils the brilliant vagary. Whether 
 in the realm of myth, or legend, or ancient inscriptions, 
 or laws, or institutions, it was with feet he walked, never 
 with wings he flew. He was one, therefore, from whom 
 to derive solid erudition. Likewise he was one to set the 
 example and instil the spirit of patient, slow-footed, and 
 toilsome investigation. 
 
 1 Martineau's Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. i. p. 410.
 
 28 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 As to his conduct in the class-room, we have hints here 
 and there, and Dr. Martineau has borne suggestive testi- 
 mony. There must have been something of severity in 
 his general tone ; possibly too little tenderness for strug- 
 gling stupidity; for shiftlessness and laziness the manifest 
 impatience or the biting sarcasm that was their due. His 
 professor's chair was doubtless something of a judgment 
 seat to the student who had been undutiful. Yet one 
 of his pupils tells of a " courtesy that bent to every intel- 
 lectual need, a sympathy that went half-way to meet 
 every genuine intellectual aspiration." ^ 
 
 He was a man of the severest literary taste, and the 
 bubbles the ambitious student might bring him were sure 
 to be delivered of the wind that had blown them. To 
 indelicacy of language he was sensitive, and a strained 
 and foolish pedantry was certain to meet a summary 
 judgment. Mr. Martineau tells of a student who, in read- 
 ing from Tacitus an account of some German tribes who 
 wore braccas, stopped at the word. "Well, what does 
 braccas mean?" The student blushingly replied, "A 
 species of habiliment for covering the lower part of the 
 body." " Humph, Mr. B., commonly called breeches." 
 Thus under his criticism was language ever brought down to 
 the dimensions of things and made correctly to name them. 
 
 With respect to his instruction Mr. Martineau's own 
 testimony had best be quoted. Speaking especially of 
 his classical instruction, he says : " In Mr. Kenrick's treat- 
 ment of every subject, there seemed to be one constant 
 characteristic, — a comprehensive grasp of its whole out- 
 line, with accurate scrutiny of its separate contents. Noth- 
 ing fragmentary, nothing discursive, nothing speculative, 
 broke the proportions or disturbed the steady march of 
 his prearranged advance. His prolegomena to every 
 classical text furnished a compendium of its hterary his- 
 
 ^ Rev. Charles Beard.
 
 EDUCATION 29 
 
 tory, and reproduced the conditions of ancient life, civic, 
 legal, domestic, personal, under which it arose. The read- 
 ing of it in class was marked by a similar completeness : 
 nothing was allowed to slip by without coming into 
 the full focus of elucidation : grammatical construction, 
 textual criticism, archaeology, dialect, geography, dates, 
 graces or defects of style, all were brought into distinct 
 view; yet without inducing any tedious slowness in the 
 progress, or killing out the spirit of the piece." His testi- 
 mony to his instruction in ancient and modern history is 
 not less emphatic. It seems not strange, therefore, that 
 fifty years after he left the class-room he should be able 
 to testify that he brought thence a " standard of philologi- 
 cal accuracy, of historic justice, of literary taste," that had 
 directed his " aspirations ever since." 
 
 The features of Charles Wellbeloved are less easy to 
 outline, though the materials at hand are sufficient to show 
 what manner of man he was. During the York period of 
 the College, a period of thirty-seven years, he was its 
 Principal. All this time he was pastor of a church to 
 which he gave the long ministry of fifty-four years.^ Per- 
 haps he was not a man of Olympian mould, yet from the 
 magnitude of his work and the quality of his influence one 
 not to be passed indifferently. 
 
 Mrs. Catharine Cappe in her Memoirs speaks of his 
 " humility, his disinterestedness, his varied talents, his de- 
 sire for knowledge, especially religious knowledge, his 
 freedom from prejudice, and his manifold piety." Thus 
 he impressed her when, a young man of twenty-three, he 
 came to York to assist her husband in his pastoral office. 
 
 1 The ministry of his predecessor, Mr. Cappe, was forty-six years. John 
 Kenrick very well remarks : " It is not common to find a pastoral connec- 
 tion lasting even the shorter of these terms ; that two in succession should 
 fill up a century must be a very rare occurrence." Memoir of the Late 
 Charles Wellbeloved, p. 228.
 
 30 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 She also quotes her husband, himself a saint and scholar, 
 as saying : " This, my dear, is the very young man I 
 wanted; he will be eminent in his day." John Kenrick, 
 also, writing of him after his death and from many years 
 of intimate acquaintance, says : " The characteristic feature 
 of Mr. Wellbeloved's mind was benevolence. It beamed 
 in his eye; it spoke in his voice; it diffused itself over his 
 manner, which was kind and courteous to every one, of 
 whatever rank or condition, with whom he had intercourse. 
 It might truly be said of him that he was a ' man made to 
 be loved.' " ^ We learn from the same writer of an official 
 relation which he held with the York Lunatic Asylum. 
 He says of him that " his benevolence led him to feel a 
 lively interest in those who were suffering from this griev- 
 ous affliction; he was convinced of the power of gentleness 
 and kindness to remove what severity only tended to 
 aggravate. He felt none of that undefinable terror of the 
 insane which affects many persons of stronger nerves and 
 greater physical courage, but mixed freely and fearlessly 
 among them. His voice and manner were peculiarly suited 
 to soothe a troubled mind and win confidence, and his 
 sagacity pointed out to him how their delusions were most 
 effectually to be dealt with."^ These touches bring before 
 us a man of peculiarly gentle mould, of sympathetic 
 nature, of winning grace. So constantly were these fea- 
 tures manifest, that those near him did not know until his 
 lips confessed, that he was naturally of a choleric temper 
 of which only through long and patient watchfulness had 
 he gained the mastery. 
 
 Such, however, was only one aspect of the man. Under 
 his soft glove was a hand that was capable of a grasp that 
 was strong ; he was ruled by the finest and most exacting 
 moral sense, to which no services were to be declined 
 
 1 Memoir of the Late Charles Wdlbeloved, pp. 244-245. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 139-140.
 
 EDUCATION 31 
 
 because onerous, and trifling duties were sacred. They 
 were taken, too, without apparent consciousness of aught 
 deserving in them, and with a modesty that looked upon 
 his best and utmost as the least that fidelity could render. 
 
 It may be doubted if students ever had before them a 
 more marked example of methodical and tireless and con- 
 secrated industry. In the earlier years of the College it 
 was not the teacher's privilege to have a single province 
 of learning over which he presided ; and we find Mr. Well- 
 beloved with one assistant, who rendered some service in 
 the classical and mathematical departments, doing the 
 entire work alone. That work embraced the work of an 
 ordinary college together with the courses in Theology. 
 Applying for an extra tutor, he writes : " I have, therefore, 
 seldom delivered less than four, generally five lectures a 
 day, each lecture occupying an hour. It is to be recol- 
 lected that the preparation for most of the lectures cannot 
 be made in so short a time as is occupied in their delivery. 
 The labour, therefore, which I have undergone, since the 
 Academy was removed to York, has been greater than is 
 consistent with other duties incumbent upon me as a min- 
 ister and as the father of a numerous family, and also with 
 a regard for my health." ^ With this labor he must con- 
 join the multifarious cares which the ofiice of Principal 
 devolved upon him, and answer the calls of his church, 
 reserving only Saturdays for the preparation of his ser- 
 mons. Yet with this vast amount of routine work, he 
 managed to devote to tranquil study a daily period of 
 time which many a modern minister, with only his pas- 
 toral office, finds impracticable. This may be taken as a 
 sample of his devoted and strenuous life. 
 
 Probably he was not a scholar in the august sense in 
 which John Kenrick was ; yet his ready mind, through its 
 unrelenting application, gathered a stock of erudition that 
 
 1 Memoir, etc., p. 91.
 
 32 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 was large. He read with ease the Greek and Latin 
 classics ; he had a thorough acquaintance with Hebrew, 
 Chaldee, and Syriac ; he had a considerable acquaintance 
 with Arabic ; knew French and Italian well ; and " under- 
 stood German," his biographer tells us, " so far as to be 
 able to avail himself of translations and commentaries in 
 that language." Of course he was widely read in theol- 
 ogy; he was an accomplished botanist and an archaeolo- 
 gist of fame. Notwithstanding his life was so crowded, he 
 found time to enrich his mind with more genial letters. 
 
 His work done mainly in the first half of our century, it 
 goes without saying that he represented a type of theology 
 not now widely prevailing, and a certain vigor of theologi- 
 cal interest not common in his theological descendants. 
 Yet under his guidance the school was for nothing more 
 remarkable than for the breadth of its instruction. He 
 made it an institution of theological learning, not an 
 arsenal from which to draw the weapons of sectarian war- 
 fare. John Kenrick speaks of his theological lectures as 
 critical and philological, not dogmatic. In his curriculum, 
 indeed, one finds no dogmatic theology. The various 
 subjects of theology were laid upon, difficulties shown, 
 differing attitudes stated, copious references given, and 
 then the student was left to shape a conclusion for himself. 
 So he went forth from the school with conclusions he had 
 formed, not opinions he had learned. He was taught to 
 investigate; and, to the end that he might more surely do 
 so, his teacher laid upon his mind no fashioning influence. 
 From this reserve on the part of the teacher there is 
 reason to suspect that there was sometimes discontent on 
 the part of those who wanted a judgment rather than data 
 from which to form one. It is easy enough to imagine 
 the complainings of the student whose indolent mind 
 asked a dogmatism rather than that supreme respect for 
 his intellect that made dogmatism impossible. Which, how-
 
 EDUCATION 33 
 
 ever, on the whole must be productive of the nobler 
 results, and which was practically wiser for a mind like 
 Mr. Martineau's, we need not pause to consider. 
 
 Many are the notices scattered here and there of this 
 modest scholar and devoted instructor, whom the world 
 so little knows, and whom no university ever honored 
 itself by honoring; and their testimony is unanimous to 
 the richness of his intellect, the candor of his judgment, 
 the saintliness of his character, the nobleness of his aim, 
 and the success of his endeavors. One of these notices, 
 that of Dr. Martineau himself, there can be no error in 
 quoting. In an address at Manchester New College, soon 
 after Mr. Wellbeloved's death, he said: "Well do I re- 
 member the respectful wonder with which we saw, as our 
 course advanced, vein after vein of various learning mod- 
 estly opened out; the pride with which we felt that we 
 had a Lightfoot, a Jeremiah Jones, and an Eichhorn all in 
 one, yet no mere theologian after all, but scarcely less 
 a naturalist and an archaeologist as well ; the impatience 
 with which, out of very homage to his wisdom, we almost 
 resented his impartial love of truth in giving us the most 
 careful epitome of other opinions with scarce the sugges- 
 tion of his own. Many of us have found the notes taken 
 in his lecture-room our best Cyclopaedia of divinity during 
 the first years of our active ministry, when books were 
 forced aside by other claims; and when at last some 
 leisure for independent study has been won, and the 
 entrance of the theological sciences upon new phases has 
 taken us into untried fields, then most of all, if I may gen- 
 eralize from my own experience, have we been thankful 
 for our training under a master of the true Lardner type, 
 candid and catholic, simple and thorough, humanly fond 
 indeed of the counsels of peace, but piously serving every 
 bidding of sacred truth. Whatever might become of the 
 particular conclusions which he favoured, he never justi- 
 
 3
 
 34 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 fied a prejudice; he never misdirected our admiration; 
 he never hurt an innocent feeHng or overbore a serious 
 judgment; and he set up within us a standard of Christian 
 scholarship to which it must ever exalt us to aspire." ^ 
 
 Such was Dr. Martineau's education; in intimate rela- 
 tion with such minds did he receive it. From the contact, 
 too, came by far the most important part of it, — the incen- 
 tives, not the lessons. The dryest pedantry that ever criti- 
 cised a text, and the dullest mechanism ever misnamed a 
 school would not have been able permanently to repress 
 an intellect so earnest ; but through this contact a quick- 
 ening had been given him, a standard had been shown him, 
 his possibilities had been revealed to him. The opportu- 
 nities he enjoyed have a meagre look when compared with 
 those of England's older universities, and for his depriva- 
 tion of these we may detect in him now and then a quiet 
 sigh, — the utterance, we may believe, of his casual, not 
 his habitual mood. To President Garfield, to sit on a 
 log with Mark Hopkins was to attend a university; Mr. 
 Martineau had had intimate relation with three Mark 
 Hopkinses. He had received guidance equal to his need, 
 and inspirations such as only great and consecrated minds 
 can give ; and we see not how he could have been better 
 trained for the career that now opens before him. 
 
 ^ Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. p. 54
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 
 
 In 1827 Mr. Martineau, aged twenty-two, completed his 
 college studies. He was " admitted to preach," but did 
 not at once enter upon the clerical office. His friend and 
 former teacher, Lant Carpenter, in consequence of over- 
 work, was obliged for a time to suspend his labors, and for 
 a year Mr. Martineau took his place in the Bristol school. 
 It was a year of excessive toil for one so inexperienced. 
 Not only must he conduct the school, but he must assist 
 in the church in which Dr. Carpenter was wont to minister. 
 The pulpit was nominally supplied by a venerable clergy- 
 man ; but by reason of infirmities he was unequal to the 
 task of regular pulpit ministration, and Mr. Martineau was 
 called upon frequently, often at short notice, to take his 
 place. 
 
 At the close of the year. Dr. Carpenter's health not being 
 equal to the two offices of preacher and teacher, Mr. Mar- 
 tineau was asked to take the school. He had admirable 
 qualifications for a teacher, the relation would have been 
 pleasant and fairly remunerative, and the offisr was in a 
 measure tempting. His mind, however, had been fixed 
 upon the ministry, and happily this had the stronger 
 drawing. Erelong the Eustace Street Presbyterian Church 
 in Dublin invited him to the co-pastoral office- The pas- 
 tor, Philip Taylor, grandson of the Dr. Taylor of Norwich 
 fame, after fifty years of service, while enjoying the ameni-
 
 36 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ties of his office, was to devolve its burdens upon younger 
 shoulders. 
 
 On going to Dublin he was attended by his sister Rachel, 
 who superintended the establishment of his home. He 
 planned to take pupils, and a house equal to his needs 
 could not be rented ; so, with the aid of a friend, he pur- 
 chased one at an expense of seven hundred pounds. A 
 few months later, at Christmas time, he crossed over to 
 England, and Helen Higginson returned with him his wife. 
 Anon another came to bless them, a baby Helen, an angel 
 visitant that stayed not long. Erelong a son, Russel, was 
 born to them, destined to the scholar's quiet toils and hon- 
 orable success.^ In due time there was another daughter, 
 Isabella, now Mrs. Leyson Lewis,^of East Farleigh in Kent 
 County. Such, in brief, is the domestic story of those 
 Dublin years. 
 
 It was on Sunday, October 26, 1828, that he received 
 ordination. The service was according to Presbyterian 
 usage ; it was as a Presbyterian that he began his work. 
 His Presbyterianism, however, was English, not Scotch, a 
 distinction which, however apparent in England, needs to 
 be pointed out in America. In America the name Presby- 
 terian suggests John Knox and the Assembly's Catechism ; 
 while in England for the last three hundred years there 
 has been a Presbyterianism that writes its history from the 
 days of Baxter, whose broad and tolerant spirit it has re- 
 flected. A ruling principle with it has been, that there 
 shall be no binding dogma. With respect to creed sub- 
 scription its sentiment was voiced by Chillingworth, " To 
 the Bible only should a Protestant subscribe." It has 
 
 1 He was for several years professor of Hebrew in Manchester New 
 College, and for many years Assistant Keeper in the British Museum. He 
 was an Orientalist of fame and a user of twenty languages. He was also, 
 as is testified by those who knew him, and was apparent to those who met 
 him, one of the most modest, tlie most conscientious, and most lovable of 
 men. He died December 14, 1898. 
 
 2 Died January 5, 1900, after the above had been put in type.
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 37 
 
 sought, that is, to build on the rehgious sentiment while 
 leaving opinion free. 
 
 Dating from the times of Baxter, it hardly needs to be 
 said that it has reflected the sterner types of doctrine ; but 
 by virtue of its ruling principle it has been ever reaching 
 forward to more liberal views ; until Unitarianism came 
 there was to be found within its rank the best advance 
 upon the standards of orthodox opinion in England. 
 Indeed it is the antecedent of English Unitarianism ; and 
 a large number of the Unitarian churches in England to- 
 day, and nearly all those of Ireland, are Presbyterian in 
 their history. In the pamphlet in which are preserved the 
 services of Mr. Martineau's ordination, printed in 1829, is 
 a note which tells of the " same spirit of religious freedom " 
 among the Unitarians of Boston and the Unitarians [Pres- 
 byterians] of Dublin. One year later suit was brought 
 against certain of the Unitarianized Presbyterians, indi- 
 rectly implicating all of them, to recover from them the 
 chapels and trust funds their expansive views were believed 
 to have forfeited. 
 
 The church, then, that ordained Mr. Martineau, although 
 Presbyterian, stood for the heresy of the day. It interests 
 us to come into the atmosphere of that ordination to learn 
 something of the spirit of that heresy. The sermon was 
 preached by Rev. Joseph Hutton; and, aside from a slight 
 Presbyterian coloring, there was nothing in its prevailing 
 tone to distinguish it from the ordinary type of orthodox 
 discourse. His subject was "The Character, Duties, and 
 Privileges of Christians," which he illustrated not with far- 
 reaching thought, but in a spirit of most fervid loyalty to 
 his Master. " To be Christ's, implies that we have enlisted 
 under the banners of the cross — that we are soldiers and 
 servants of the Lord Jesus — that we have taken the oath 
 to be faithful to our Great Leader, the Captain of our Sal- 
 vation — that we will perish rather than desert his standard.
 
 38 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 or betray his cause — that we have renounced the world, 
 and wilHngly forego its pomps and vanities, and pride 
 and pleasures, to be with Christ." " To be Christ's, is to 
 call no man master, spiritually speaking — to acknowledge 
 no authority in religion, but the Bible; no master but 
 Christ." " To be Christ's, we must adhere to him alone ; 
 — alone, I say, for he admits no copartnership, nor hath 
 substituted any authority in his place." " And further, we 
 must take the holy Gospel, and search for ourselves, to find 
 its hidden treasures ; which we shall doubtless find, if we 
 search with humility, and sincerity, and faith." What iiinst 
 have been the orthodoxy to which this was heresy? 
 
 But further, " I beseech you, brethren, examine for 
 yourselves often and closely, whether ye be lit Christ. Is 
 your piety that of him, who passed whole nights in com- 
 munion with his God in prayer? . . . Consider, again and 
 again, the illustrious example of every virtue, which he hath 
 set before us ; and let it be our daily prayer to God, that 
 he would assist us by his divine grace to imbibe more and 
 more freely of this heavenly temper, . . . that so we may 
 be Christ's here, and his for ever." These passages fairly 
 illustrate. The sermon sounds no depths and soars to no 
 heights; but it is charged with a sentiment in the exuber- 
 ance of which the most stalwart orthodoxy of to-day 
 would find superabundant proof of Christian discipleship. 
 
 Following the sermon, a long discourse was delivered 
 by Rev. James Armstrong on Presbyterian Ordination. 
 This was natural and appropriate in a Presbyterian church, 
 flanked on the one side by Episcopacy and on the other 
 by Congregationalism. It was but slightly shown, as 
 would be shown to-day, that Presbyterianism is useful, jus- 
 tified by experience, a fair and practicable means to an 
 end that is most desirable ; it was mainly shown to be of 
 divine appointment, which makes consideration of expedi- 
 ency a superfluity and an impertinence. He who said,
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 39 
 
 " Let there be Light," also decreed, Let there be Presby- 
 ters. " We maintain," said he, " not only that the Bible is 
 an unerring rule of faith and conduct, but, also, that it con- 
 tains such regulations for order, and directions for worship 
 as are adapted to every state of the church. Therefore, 
 whatever is not either positively directed by the word of 
 God, or clearly warranted by the practice of our Blessed 
 Lord and his Apostles, we feel ourselves compelled to re- 
 ject as the invention of fallible uninspired men." He then 
 goes over the familiar ground of debate as to the meaning of 
 7rpecr/3yT6po9 and eV/cr/coTro?, buttressing his arguments with 
 Scripture texts, and explaining the usage of the Apostolic 
 Age. He brings his discussion to the cHmax with the 
 surely evangelical asseveration that " we aim at nothing 
 but the primitive purity of the apostolical constitutions, 
 the naked simplicity of evangelical truth, and that liberty 
 of conscience wherewith the Son of God hath made us 
 free. . . . We preach the Lord Jesus, and Him crucified 
 — we believe that He alone is the way, the truth, and the 
 life ; and that there is none other name under heaven where- 
 by we may be saved — we place our confidence in him as 
 our Saviour and Redeemer; and we receive, without ques- 
 tion, whatever he has communicated with respect to the 
 nature of the Deity, and the purposes of the Divine will" 
 
 And now Mr. Martineau ; — and here we read not only 
 the word spoken as he was crossing the threshold of the 
 ministry, but, so far as we know, his earliest printed word : 
 
 " Every Minister of the Gospel I conceive to be the ser- 
 vant of Revelation. ... By the authority of this Revela- 
 tion I believe myself supported, when I assume, as primary 
 principles in the conduct of my ministry, that the first and 
 simplest religious truths are incomparably the most mo- 
 mentous — that there is no being with whom we have so 
 much to do as God; and that as all religion begins, so 
 also does it end, with exhibiting the relation which man
 
 40 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 bears to his Creator. To this infinite Being, and to Him 
 alone, do I ascribe every conceivable perfection. He is 
 the source of power, to whom all things are possible — 
 he is boundless in wisdom, from whom no secrets can be 
 hidden — He is love; the origin of all good, himself the 
 greatest; and the dispenser of suffering only that we may 
 be partakers of his holiness — He is spotless in holiness ; 
 his will the only source of morality, and the eternal 
 enemy of sin — He is self-existent and immutable, for ever 
 pervading and directing all things, and searching all hearts ; 
 the Being from whom we came, and with whom, in happi- 
 ness or woe, all men must spend eternity. 
 
 " From these views I infer that it is my first office, as a 
 Minister of Christ, to awaken the attention of my people to 
 the claims of this one infinite Jehovah upon their adora- 
 tion, obedience and love. As I believe him to be the only 
 scriptural object of worship, so do I conceive the affec- 
 tions implied in that worship to be the greatest glory of 
 the human soul, and to be absolutely essential to the 
 acceptable discharge of duty here, and to participation in 
 the felicities of heaven hereafter. I am conscious of 
 nothing but sincerity in saying, that to inspire in others 
 and in myself a devotion ever fervent and humble, which 
 shall have a bearing on every duty, purify every thought, 
 and tranquillize every grief, I desire to make the main 
 object not only of my ministry, but of my life. 
 
 "At the same time I believe, that of the will, the pur- 
 poses, perhaps even the existence of Jehovah, we should 
 have remained in ignorance, had he not revealed himself, 
 partially by patriarchs and prophets of old, and more 
 gloriously by Jesus Christ, his well-beloved Son. Him 
 I acknowledge as the Mediator between God and man, 
 who was appointed to produce by his life, and yet more 
 peculiarly by his death, an unprecedented change in the 
 spiritual condition of mankind, and to open a new and
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 4I 
 
 living way of salvation. No pledge of Divine love to the 
 human race impresses me so deeply, as the voluntary death 
 of Jesus Christ, and his exaltation to that position which 
 he now holds above all other created beings, where he 
 lives for evermore, and from which he shall hereafter judge 
 the world in righteousness. I receive and reverence him, 
 not merely for that sinless excellence, which renders him 
 a perfect pattern to our race ; but as the commissioned 
 delegate of Heaven, on whom the Spirit was poured with- 
 out measure — as the chosen representative of the Most 
 High, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 
 As authorities for our duties, as fountains of consoling and 
 elevating truth, Jesus and the Father are one : and, in all 
 subjects of religious faith and obedience, not to honour him 
 as we honour the Father, is to violate our allegiance to him 
 as the great Captain of our salvation. When Jesus com- 
 mands, I would listen as to a voice from heaven : when he 
 instructs, I would treasure up his teachings as the words of 
 everlasting truth : when he forewarns of evil, I would take 
 heed and fly as from impending ruin : when he comforts, I 
 would lay my heart to rest as on the proffered mercy of 
 God : when he promises, I would trust to his assurances as 
 to an oracle of destiny." 
 
 Then follows a statement of his duties, as he conceives 
 them, growing out of these convictions, and a confession of 
 the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures as successive reve- 
 lations of God, together with the obligations they devolve 
 upon him. He closes thus : " Full well do I know that I 
 must review hereafter, in the unveiled presence of God, the 
 ministry on which I have now entered ; and that I must 
 then meet those who surround me now, and whose spiritual 
 interests I bind myself to serve. That no one may then 
 appear to reproach me with unfaithfulness — that there 
 may be no wanderer from the fold of Christ, whom my 
 neglect may have caused to stray, is the earnest and
 
 42 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 solemn desire which I now profess .before God and my 
 brethren." 
 
 Brave words which the hfe shall qualify as to the letter, 
 but intensify as to the spirit. 
 
 Such was Mr. Martineau's theological temper at the time 
 of ordination, and such that of the ministry that ordained 
 him. The prayer, the charge, are in like tone. Under 
 these so orthodox conceptions were, indeed, departures 
 from the standards of orthodox opinion of which only the 
 coming years should reveal the significance. Yet here and 
 there in the service we meet a word, a phrase, which be- 
 trays dissatisfaction with the relative position, which shows 
 that these almost orthodox, to whom the Bible was an in- 
 spired volume, and Christ the Lord and Master, chafed at 
 orthodox objection to them. Yet in the light of ultimate 
 issues the objection was, as it ever has been, rightly taken ; 
 and the chafe, then as ever since, as unphilosophical as 
 unmanly. " If you go thus far," said John Henry New- 
 man to his brother, " you will go farther." It may be at a 
 trifling angle that one railway branches from another. 
 Passengers wave salute as they glide on side by side; 
 through many miles they have experience of the same 
 chmate and look out upon the hke sceneries ; they disem- 
 bark after the day's journeying and find the like life around 
 them and the same constellations above them ; but con- 
 ceive the lines extended far enough and it is plain that, in 
 due time, they must look out upon most widely contrasted 
 conditions, — the haze of tropic sunsets, the blaze of 
 auroral skies. 
 
 The settlement of Mr. Martineau was in its outward as- 
 pects a happy one. His church, born of the Act of Uni- 
 formity, had behind it more than a hundred and fifty years 
 of honorable and inspiring history. It had been ministered 
 to by a long succession of able and devoted pastors, and 
 so had gained in strength, rather than contracted infirmity,
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 43 
 
 from age. It had local standing and its influence was wide. 
 The congregation was a superior one, both in numbers 
 and intelligence. It had wealth, of which it was not illib- 
 eral in the use; it supported an almshouse for twelve 
 widows; it had a school for boys, another for girls. It 
 was organized, earnest, appreciative, harmonious. Mr. 
 Martineau was emphatically the minister of their choice, 
 and admiration deepened into affection as they knew him 
 better. We may doubt not there were troublesome spirits 
 enough to keep a minister in discipline, but on the whole 
 he seems to have entered into a pastoral felicity of which 
 most ministers dream, but which very few attain. 
 
 His income was equal to his needs ; his clerical labors 
 not excessive. Work, however, to the utmost of his 
 strength he must have, and for this he had provided. His 
 purpose to take pupils had been met by a desire on the 
 part of pupils to be taken ; the school at Bristol had broken 
 up on his leaving it, and half its inmates had followed him. 
 He took into his family some students of the Dublin Uni- 
 versity whom he tutored. He taught Hebrew, also the 
 higher mathematics. In the Calculus, as we have seen, he 
 had been taught the fluxional notation ; to meet the needs 
 of his pupils he now taught himself the differential. 
 
 The hymn-book of his church was old and poor; so he 
 compiled a new one, which was published in 1831, under 
 the title of Hymns for Christian Worship. It was a small 
 collection, numbering only two hundred and seventy-three 
 hymns, and was prepared from very scanty material. In 
 1830 he delivered a sermon on Peace in Division} which 
 is the earliest of his published works. We read it now not 
 only for the interest it awakens, but more than this, for the 
 view it gives us of the Martineau of twenty-five. Certainly 
 it does not seem a great effort, when set beside some of 
 the mighty productions of his riper years ; yet the author 
 
 1 See Studies of Christianity.
 
 44 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 of the Endeavors and the Hours of Thought is here. The 
 elaborate and rhythmic style, the profuse yet careful met- 
 aphor, the gleaming insights, show the more youthful 
 photograph of our maturer friend. 
 
 Those Dublin years, in a word, were pleasant and pros- 
 perous. In the pulpit, indeed, he had no Whitefield popu- 
 larity; his quiet delivery, together with the severity of his 
 intellectual demands, were likely to incline the crowd to 
 follow after other attractions. For the serious, earnest, 
 thoughtful, however, he had the magnetizing word. So- 
 cially, though the least obtrusive of men, for his breadth, 
 purity, earnestness, he could but command a large respect. 
 Personally he had his attractions : his manners were ruled 
 by an interior courtesy, his temper was serene, his con- 
 versation agreeable. The freshness of youth was upon his 
 features; the maturity of wisdom was on his lips; the light 
 of genius was in his eye. 
 
 A long and prosperous ministry here we should natur- 
 ally forecast for him. A difficulty, however, was in his 
 path which, alas ! to most had been quite the opposite of 
 a difficulty. The venerable pastor died, and Mr. Martineau 
 came by natural succession to his place. To his surprise 
 he found that the change brought an addition of ;^ioo to 
 his salary. To this of itself we may presume he would not 
 have objected ; but the source whence it came raised 
 scruples which tore him from his charge, and gave a new 
 direction to his career. 
 
 The ;^ioo he thus succeeded to was his share of the 
 Reghnn Douum. Of this he had not heard before. 
 
 The Rcghim Donuin^ though at this time a parliamentary 
 grant, was originally, as the name implies, a royal bounty. 
 It was first bestowed by Charles II. upon the Presbyterians 
 of Ireland, a sum of ^^"600 annually in order to secure their 
 loyalty. Discontinued for a time, it was renewed and in- 
 creased by William III., and yet again by George I. And
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 45 
 
 not to Presbyterians of Ireland alone was it given; the 
 Presbyterians of England and some other nonconformist 
 bodies were smiled upon in like manner, though less 
 bountifully. 
 
 In its intent this Bounty was at first of the nature of a 
 bribe, and in this aspect there is evidence of some wincing 
 at receiving it. Baxter would have nothing to do with it, 
 and returned it when sent to him. It was given, however, 
 ostensibly for the support of poor ministers ^ or their 
 widows, though in Ireland it seems to have been used in a 
 more general way for the support of the ministry. It had 
 gone on with brief interruptions for more than a hundred 
 years ;^ — custom had established it; it was taken as the 
 rain and the sunshine, — the more approved as it did not 
 imitate the bounty of heaven, which sends rain and sun- 
 shine on all alike. It supported a needy ministry, — why 
 should it not ? It did not support the Quaker or the 
 Catholic, — why should it? That it was a good thing for 
 the government to support Presbyterians, Presbyterians 
 were not unnaturally agreed. 
 
 Mr. Martineau, however, took a different view of it. It 
 was customary, — yes, but custom can consecrate no wrong. 
 It has been long continued ; — many an error we are fight- 
 ing is hoarier still. The best and worthiest have received 
 it and thought no wrong, among them your venerated 
 predecessor. Alas ! the holiest are not infallible ; and even 
 plodding virtue cannot be helped by saintly blindness. 
 But it is the State that gives it ; let the State take care of 
 its own affairs. It is indeed the State that gives it, but it 
 is I that am supposed to receive it; and to my own mas- 
 ter must I be true or false in the matter. In recounting 
 his emotions at this exigency when fourscore and five, the 
 
 1 See Skeats' Free Churches in England, pp. 319-321, 671. 
 
 2 The English Kegium Domim was discontinued in 1850 ; the Irish in 
 1870.
 
 46 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 event sixty years behind him, there was more than the 
 usual kindh"ng in those mild blue eyes. 
 
 He quickly decided on his course. He might indeed 
 refuse to receive the money ; but that might ultimately 
 mean refusing it for his church, which his fine ethical sense 
 forbade. One of two things must be : the church must 
 itself surrender the Bounty or he and they must part 
 company. 
 
 He made known his scruple to his friends. He was well 
 satisfied to go on with his present income, but even were 
 it otherwise this fund he could not receive, and he must 
 make his most emphatic protest against it. At length he 
 addressed a letter to the church in which the grounds of 
 his objection were fully and earnestly stated. 
 
 Receiving the Royal Bounty he conceived to be placing 
 him in a relation with the State to which the objections 
 were insurmountable. First, the Bounty was of the nature 
 of a " religious monopoly." It was a fund belonging to 
 the whole people diverted to the benefit of a few. For 
 what all the people contributcr to the benefit of the State, 
 all the people, he argued, should receive an equivalent in 
 the blessings of good government. The governors, he de- 
 clared, are simply trustees of the governed, and when 
 they divert from the common fund for the benefit of a few, 
 they violate their trust. The Royal Bounty he showed to 
 be an instance of such misappropriation. The people 
 gave ; only Presbyterians received. Quakers, Free Think- 
 ers, Catholics, were taxed with the rest, and for the sup- 
 port of a worship in which they did not participate and 
 with which they had no sympathy. Were the question 
 brought to those who pay this fund whether they would 
 subscribe for the maintenance of Presbyterian worship, 
 there could be no doubt of their refusal. It was not, 
 therefore, a " free-will offering," but an " exaction upon 
 reluctant consciences." Any of us, he pleads, would con-
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 47 
 
 sider it a hardship to be compelled to aid in the support 
 of the Catholic church ; surely, then, we depart from the 
 Golden Rule when we inflict upon the Catholic a hard- 
 ship not less grievous. The system was inherently unjust ; 
 and though the government might be the author, yet by 
 receiving the Bounty he should feel himself an abetter, of 
 the injustice. 
 
 Such was his first objection ; his second was not less 
 weighty. The Bounty made a sinecure of his office. The 
 clergyman labors, but the labor is for one party, the con- 
 gregation ; the remuneration is from another, the State. 
 He thus is made to sustain a twofold relation, — to the 
 people for whom he works, to the government for which 
 he does not. Relatively to his people indeed the office is 
 no sinecure ; but relatively to the State it is. To entitle 
 one to receive this fund it is not enough that he be a good 
 citizen ; in some specific way he must be in the employ of 
 the government. In short, he is in the employ of the 
 State or not. If he is, then his office is that of a State 
 priesthood, and his religion Is thereby made a matter of 
 State selection, a secularization to which he, Mr. Martineau, 
 could not be a party. If he is not, then he has remu- 
 neration without duty, and so far his office is a sinecure. 
 
 Thirdly, State remuneration seemed to him to hinder the 
 circulation and impede the progress of religious thought. 
 That religion may bring forth its fairer fruits, it must be 
 unfettered in its thought and utterly free in its utterance. 
 To these ends, anything that tends to call forth profession 
 where belief is wanting, makes it for one's interest to be- 
 lieve this rather than that, or to smother the utterance of 
 the latest and fullest conviction, is to be deprecated and 
 resisted. To just this is there a natural and inevitable 
 temptation where State emolument is given in consequence 
 of some particular connection and forfeited by departure 
 from it. There is a constant and persuasive appeal to self-
 
 48 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 interest, to which — he does not say it, but it is plain that 
 he thinks it — even clerical virtue is not safe in exposure. 
 The free utterance and natural circulation and change of 
 religious opinion, there is a constant bribe to stay. 
 
 Fourthly, alliance with the State he holds to be inimical 
 to the " credit and influence of Christianity." He gives it 
 as his firm conviction that more unbelievers have been 
 made by " establishments than by all the speculations 
 which friends of establishments deem so dangerous." 
 Wherever it is known that there is personal interest in 
 religious profession there is sure to be widespread distrust 
 of religious sincerity. It will be suspected that you " hold 
 for pay the faith you are paid merely for holding." 
 
 These were the reasons that convinced him that in prin- 
 ciple the Royal Bounty was wrong. " And if the principle 
 is wrong," he asks, " how can I believe the practice right? " 
 " I am not blind," says he, " to the inconveniences of any 
 general plan for relinquishing it; but if in its abandonment 
 I see difficulty, in keeping it I see wrong." 
 
 Thus was the issue defined. What should have been 
 the decision seems clear enough. The Bounty, however, 
 was of long standing ; this view of it was novel ; interest 
 was persuasive, very likely blinding. Abstract right must 
 usually fare hard in its first encounter with a wrong that is 
 defended by custom and advantage ; and the measure of 
 Mr. Martineau's success is eloquent testimony to his hold 
 upon his people. The younger members rallied to his 
 side, and the contest was earnest. In the final decision 
 Mr. Martineau's party were defeated by one vote. The 
 letter was sent to the congregation the last of October, 
 and he resigned on the thirteenth of November. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it was the thought of the Catholics 
 about him that most deeply moved him ; they practically, 
 with respect to Ireland, the national church, owing indeed 
 with all others a loyalty to the common nation, but entitled
 
 MINISTRY IN DUBLIN 49 
 
 with all to a common benefit; yet taxed to support a 
 worship in which they could not participate and which 
 their consciences abhorred ! Our minds wander back to 
 Mr. Martineau's ancestors, driven from France by the 
 terrors of a Catholic persecution. We remember that this 
 persecution was consecrated by the Pope and applauded 
 by Bossuet; and here was Mr. Martineau throwing him- 
 self into the breach in defence -of the rights of Catholics ! 
 
 It was a moral contest into which he entered — to his 
 cost in either issue. If he won, it w^ould be at the forfeiture 
 of ;£"ioo annually; if he lost, it would be, at the sacrifice of 
 his church to which he was strongly attached. This was 
 not all the cost. He had purchased a house, as we have 
 seen, by the aid of a friend. Valuations for some reason 
 had seriously declined, and he must part with it at a great 
 sacrifice. The consequence was that he had now to face 
 the future with a young family and a heavy debt. Young 
 life is brave, but it seems reasonable to suspect that for 
 a time the sun did not rise as cheerily as usual, and that 
 the evening damps were peculiarly depressing.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 By his attitude towards the Regium Dojuim, Mr. Martineaii 
 had practically disqualified himself for further ministry 
 among the Presbyterians of Ireland, and, as a minister, 
 he was little known in England. Or rather, we perhaps 
 should say, he was better known than he supposed. Some 
 one once said of Gladstone that he could not whisper so 
 low in London as not to be overheard in Edinburgh; Mr. 
 Martineau's voice even then had something of the like 
 reaching power. Visitors in Dublin had listened to his 
 preaching ; visitors from Dublin had told of the new man 
 that had come. Very soon after his resignation in Dublin 
 he was invited to become the colleague of Rev. John 
 Grundy, who was settled over the Paradise Street Chapel 
 in Liverpool. Charles Wicksteed, writing in 1877, re- 
 membered how " the circular staircase of the somewhat 
 conspicuous pulpit was quietly ascended by a tall young 
 man, thin, but of muscular frame, with dark hair, pale but 
 not delicate complexion, a countenance full in the repose 
 of thought, and in animation of intelligence and enthu- 
 siasm, features belonging to no regular type or order of 
 beauty, yet leaving the impression of a very high kind of 
 beauty, and a voice so sweet and clear and strong with- 
 out being in the least loud, that it conveyed all the inspira- 
 tion of music without any of its art or intention." He 
 also tells us that " when this young man with the back- 
 ground of his honour and his courage rose to speak of the
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL SI 
 
 inspiration that was not of the letter but of the soul, and 
 [for that time of clay] boldly distinguished between the 
 inspiration of the Old Testament books and the Old Testa- 
 ment heroes, he completed the conquest of his hearers." 
 
 He had exchanged the generous income of Dublin for 
 a salary scarce equal to his needs, and he took pupils 
 to eke out a maintenance. About this time he began to 
 exercise his hand as a reviewer. In 1833 he contributed 
 to the Monthly Repository an article on yoseph Priestley, 
 which very properly leads in the first volume of Essays, 
 Reviews, and Addresses. In 1835 he appeared in The 
 Christian Reformer with an essay on Bentham's Deontology, 
 to which in his collected works it is to be regretted that he 
 gave no place. Not only is it a very able paper, but it 
 has a biographical interest. In those days he followed 
 with Mill and Bentham, and so championed the doctrines 
 of Necessity and Utility. This article was a proclamation 
 of Utilitarianism. We read it now with vivid memory of 
 his later teaching, and see how completely were the ethical 
 doctrines of his school lived through and abandoned in the 
 mumps-and-measles period of his intellectual manhood. 
 
 In 1835 Mr. Grundy died, and Mr. Martineau became 
 sole pastor. It can hardly be said that the change added 
 to his labors, which were always to the utmost. He con- 
 tinued to take pupils ; teaching was not only a source 
 of income but a congenial occupation. He took great 
 interest in the religious education of the young, and con- 
 ducted them through long courses of Biblical instruction. 
 At one time he gave a nine months' course of weekly 
 lectures on the Eucharist, its history, its doctrines, its 
 forms. This was very appropriately followed by a " self- 
 dedication service " preparatory to the next communion. 
 He bore an active part in more general outside work, 
 especially that of an educational character. In 1833 he 
 delivered a course of ten lectures on Chemistry before the
 
 52 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Mechanics' Institution in Liverpool, of which the syllabus 
 is still to be seen, A few years later his sister Rachel 
 came to Liverpool and opened a girls' boarding-school ; 
 and for ten years Mr. Martineau aided her by giving 
 instruction in some of her classes. He was much in 
 demand on public occasions, — a speech here, an address 
 there, and all those multifarious services w^iich are likely 
 to be asked of an intelligent, an interesting, and a willing 
 man. 
 
 New domestic experiences were before him. In 1833 a 
 daughter, Mary Ellen, was born to him. Two years later 
 another son, Herbert,-^ — " born for the future, to the future 
 lost," — came to gladden him. Three other children were 
 yet to enrich him : Gertrude, now an artist, Basil, a Lon- 
 don solicitor, and Edith, his latest born, also an artist. 
 Upon Mary Ellen, with Gertrude and Edith, devolved in 
 his later years the care of his home, — in his old age, of 
 himself. 
 
 In 1836 appeared his first original book. The Rationale of 
 Religions Inquiry, a thin volume, a little larger than Emer- 
 son's Nature, and, like that, a proclamation of original power. 
 It had done service as a course of six lectures, discussing 
 various aspects of Christian thought, and cogently plead- 
 ing for Rationalism against Orthodoxy. It was written 
 in a style possibly less winning than that of later years, 
 but concise, strong, earnest, elevated. It was character- 
 ized by great polemical dexterity, but also by a fearless and 
 invincible candor. What could be fairer or nobler than 
 this testimonial to the Roman Catholic church, at whose 
 
 1 He died at ten years of age. On his headstone is this touching epitaph : 
 
 " O Life too fair ! Upon thy brow 
 We see the light where thou art now. 
 O Death too sad 1 In thy deep shade 
 All but our sorrow seemed to fade. 
 O Heaven too rich ! not long detain 
 Thine exiles from the sight again."
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 53 
 
 dogma of Infallibility he is about to deal a trenchant 
 blow? "Long and far was this Church the sole vehicle 
 of Christianity, that bare it on over the storms of ages, and 
 sheltered it amid the clash of nations. It evangelized the 
 philosophy of the East, and gave some sobriety to its 
 wild and voluptuous dreams. It received into its bosom 
 the savage conquerors of the North, and nursed them 
 successively out of utter barbarism. It stood by the 
 desert fountain, from which all modern history flows, and 
 dropped into it the sweetening branch of Christian truth 
 and peace. It presided at the birth of art, and liberally 
 gave its traditions into the young hands of Colour and 
 Design. Traces of its labours, and of its versatile power 
 over the human mind, are scattered throughout the globe. 
 It has consecrated the memory of the lost cities of Africa, 
 and given to Carthage a Christian, as well as a classic, 
 renown. If in Italy and Spain, it has dictated the decrees 
 of tyranny, the mountains of Switzerland have heard its 
 vespers mingling with the cry of liberty, and its requiem 
 sung over patriot graves. The convulsions of Asiatic 
 history have failed to overthrow it; on the heights of 
 Lebanon, on the plains of Armenia, in the provinces of 
 China, either in the seclusion of the convent, or the stir 
 of population, the names of Jesus and of Mary still ascend. 
 It is not difficult to understand the enthusiasm which this 
 ancient and picturesque religion kindles in its disciples. 
 To the poor peasant who knows no other dignity it must 
 be a proud thing to feel himself a member of a vast 
 community, that spreads from Andes to the Indus ; that 
 has bid defiance to the vicissitudes of fifteen centuries, 
 and adorned itself with the genius and virtues of them 
 all ; that beheld the transition from ancient to modern 
 civilization, and itself forms the connecting link between 
 the old world in Europe and the new; the missionary of 
 the nations, the associate of history, the patron of art, the
 
 54 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 vanquisher of the sword." ^ What should we say, were we 
 to meet the Hke testimonial to Protestantism from a Wise- 
 man or Capel? 
 
 The book won immediate recognition, and in sixteen 
 years it reached a fourth edition. Among our older 
 liberal divines there is vivid recollection of the bright day 
 when it first shone upon them. It treated familiar themes, 
 yet with the freshness of original thought, and with some- 
 thing of prophetic boldness. It, indeed, was quite in 
 advance of the time; and there are perhaps to-day few 
 books that should do better service in guiding the groping 
 intellect from the old faith to the new. 
 
 The purpose of the book is to exhibit the rational 
 method by which he would deal with the problems of 
 religion. Imagination has its place and value ; but " how- 
 ever much imagination there may be in our belief, there 
 must at least be soTne logic." ^ Say what we will of Author- 
 ity, on the throne of final judgment we meet Reason. We 
 plead the probability of an inspired Authority; he an- 
 swers : " It cannot lead me to renounce a tenet which is 
 equally probable ; and if the evidence against any doctrine 
 appears greater than that for the Authority which recom- 
 mends it, it has no conceivable claim to my belief. A 
 divine right, therefore, to dictate a perfectly unreasonable 
 faith cannot exist." ^ We are told that belief should sub- 
 mit; he answers: "Belief cannot submit; belief is an act of 
 the understanding, submission an act of the will; belief is 
 perfectly involuntary, and is determined by evidence ; sub- 
 mission perfectly voluntary, and determined by motives." * 
 There is but one way in which a renunciation of belief can 
 be won from me, and that is by showing me its falsity. If 
 you "wish me to relinquish a credible doctrine, the nature 
 which God has given me leaves you but one method : you 
 
 ' pp. 19-20. "p. 21, 3d edition. 
 
 3 pp. 26-27. ^ p. 25.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 55 
 
 must present me something contradictory to it which is 
 more credible." ^ He furthers his argument by exposing 
 in the ordinary Christian apologist a prevalent and pal- 
 pable inconsistency: "When a Christian advocate wishes 
 to prove the divinity of his religion, he does not content 
 himself with the external proofs, but proceeds to make 
 reference to the doctrine so worthy of God, the morality 
 so pure and sanctifying, the views of human nature so just 
 and elevated, the hopes of futurity so rational and fitted 
 to our nature, the demeanour of Christ so majestic and 
 yet so tender. In this he does perfectly right; and the 
 argument is to my mind decisive. But surely he here 
 assumes that human understanding is capable of perceiv- 
 ing the worth and tendency of Christian doctrine, the 
 adaptation to our wants of Christian hopes, the dignity 
 and excellence of Christian virtue. And when an oppo- 
 nent, following the same course, says, here is a notion 
 absurd and unreasonable, — here a sentiment that tends 
 to evil, — here a representation of God which violates the 
 analogies of nature, with what justice can the Christian 
 turn round and declaim against the weakness and pre- 
 sumption of human reason and the depraved judgments 
 of the human heart? "^ 
 
 The denial of this principle leads to manifold confusion 
 and absurdity. The free and natural impression of the 
 Gospels cannot be indulged; for the faculty by which 
 alone it can be realized is superseded and discredited. 
 You could turn to them as the works of men, earnest, 
 truthful, making the best report possible of things they 
 saw, of events in which they participated, yet ignorant 
 from the prevailing ignorance of their day, — in their 
 ethics, in their philosophy, erring as other mortals err; 
 but you are told that these men did not write as other 
 men, that they were the passive agents of a higher Reason. 
 
 ^ P- 25- 2 p. 67.
 
 56 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 To test their work by human reason, therefore, is imperti- 
 nent and profane. These writings are to be " approached 
 with divine awe," not " embraced with human sympathy." 
 Understand and believe, — these are the only functions 
 allowed us ; and whatsoever is more than this cometh of 
 presumption in dealing with writings from a source so 
 high. " Interpret a portion of history, and you have a 
 narrative perfect from the memory of God," respecting 
 which it, of course, were blasphemy to raise question; — 
 " a piece of argument, and you have the reasoning of the 
 Infinite intellect; — an expression of expectation, and you 
 have a prediction from the prescience of the Most High." ^ 
 In consistency with such view reason can but dumbly 
 disown its function, and any natural relation of mind and 
 Gospels is impossible. " To praise their simplicity, to 
 admire their beauty, to judge of their moral excellence, 
 to point out the ingenuity and adroitness of their argu- 
 ments, is as presumptuous and absurd as to question their 
 accuracy, and discover in them traces of erroneous thought. 
 What kind of critics are we of the ability of the Holy 
 Spirit for narration, for precept, or for the exercise of 
 logical art? " ^ 
 
 These passages show the trend and temper of a volume 
 that stimulated much thought and awoke some raptures 
 sixty years ago, and which still has magnetism in its 
 pages. 
 
 In the preface to the third edition is a passage over 
 which the reader should be indulged a smile : " Soon 
 after the publication of the first edition of this book, the 
 Author was asked by a friend, whether he thought that the 
 opinions which characterized the volume could be regarded 
 as ' 7dtimate! As no one can foresee the changes of his 
 own mind, he answered with an affirmative." He had 
 found a bivouac for the night, and thought to build his 
 
 1 
 
 p. II. 2 p. II.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 57 
 
 home and his temple there. Ultimate opinions are for 
 stationary intellects. The Martineau of this volume and 
 the Martineau we know seem in comparison like the little 
 lake in the mountain and the lower Mississippi flooded with 
 a thousand streams and rolling ever and ever gulfward. 
 
 In 1839 an event took place which brought Mr. Marti- 
 neau into a good deal of prominence. It was the Liverpool 
 Controversy, whereof the echoes have not wholly died 
 away. He had then two comrades in Liverpool, — John 
 Hamilton Thorn, a hoary octogenarian recently gathered 
 to his fathers, then thirty-three years of age, winning in 
 spirit and in manner, with mind well stored and disciplined, 
 no Titan of unruly might, and likewise no Adonis of effem- 
 inate grace ; and Henry Giles, long since gone over to 
 the silent majority, then in the vigor of his manhood, an 
 intense believer, and, though by temperament literary 
 rather than polemical, a champion not lightly to be en- 
 countered. All were then engaged in pulpit and pastoral 
 work ; Mr. Thom was likewise editor of the Christian 
 Teacher; and Mr. Martineau was not only heavily bur- 
 dened with outside teaching, but in the quiet of his library 
 was engaged in work whereof anon we shall see the fruits. 
 
 In the midst of such cares they threw themselves into a 
 contest which alone should have taxed the strength of men 
 who are accounted strong. On the twenty-first of January 
 there appeared in print a circular invitation " To all who 
 call themselves Unitarians in the town and neighbourhood 
 of Liverpool " to attend a course of lectures in which the 
 errors of Unitarianism were to be exposed. The tone of 
 the missive was popish ; and it abounded in phrases in 
 which Orthodox dislike of Unitarianism was plainly rather 
 than delicately shown. The motive of the enterprise was 
 set forth as "our solemn impression of the value of souls, 
 and of the peril to which the false philosophy of Unitarian- 
 ism exposes them." They were told that Unitarians were
 
 58 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 sunk in the most blasphemous and deadly error, and 
 wholly unworthy of being considered Christians in any 
 proper sense of the word. The spirit of the invitation, they 
 were assured, was that of " the tenderest charity, of the 
 purest love, of the most affectionate sympathy with those 
 in the extreme of peril, and that an eternal peril !' " Shall 
 he who, unwittingly, totters blindfold on the edge of a 
 precipice, deem it a rude or an uncharitable violence which 
 would snatch him with a strong and a venturous hand, or 
 even it may be with a painful grasp, from the fearful ruin 
 over which he impends ? " The missive closed with the 
 announcement of the intention of the reverend gentlemen 
 undertaking this work, to come together, on the day pre- 
 ceding its commencement, " for the purpose of solemn 
 humiliation before God, and earnest prayer for the blessing 
 of our Heavenly Father." It was signed by Fielding Ould, 
 minister of Christ Church. At the same time there was 
 published a syllabus of a course of lectures, thirteen in 
 number, to be given by thirteen clergymen of the Church 
 of England. The subjects were to traverse the entire line 
 of difference between Unitarian and Orthodox faith. 
 
 Whether or not these worthy gentlemen expected to 
 carry on this enterprise and receive no challenge, we do 
 not know. That they were hardly looking for the challenge 
 they received seems probable ; that they did not duly esti- 
 mate the antagonists they were to encounter seems certain. 
 With good courage one may poach his neighbor's preserves 
 when they are guarded by a docile mastiff that will only 
 bark, or at worst snarl at the intruder ; but if there be an 
 armed and watchful guard there, it is another matter. The 
 above missive was promptly answered in polished but 
 sometimes pungent phrases, and the correspondence that 
 followed should beguile the dullest hour. 
 
 The answerers expressed great interest in the enterprise; 
 and, while doubting whether a public audience was the
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 59 
 
 best tribunal before which to try questions so grave, yet 
 felt it their duty to co-operate, that from a comparison of 
 views no merely one-sided impression might be imparted. 
 " Deeply aware," said they, " of our human liability to form 
 and to convey false impressions of views and systems from 
 which we dissent, we shall be anxious to pay a calm and 
 respectful attention to your defence of the doctrines of your 
 church. We will give notice of your lectures, as they suc- 
 ceed each other, to our congregations, and exhort them to 
 hear you in the spirit of Christian justice and affection ; 
 presuming that, in a like spirit, you will recommend your 
 hearers to listen to such reply as we may think it right to 
 offer. We are not conscious of any fear, any interest, any 
 attachment to system, which should interfere with the sin- 
 cere fulfilment of oicr part in such an understanding; and, 
 for the performance oi yours, we rely on your avowed zeal 
 for that Protestantism which boldly confides the interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture to individual judgment, and to that sense 
 of justice which, in Christian minds, is the fruit of cultiva- 
 tion and sound knowledge." Then followed the announce- 
 ment, that to the lectures given on the Orthodox side there 
 would each week be given a lecture in reply. That the 
 lectures might meet the larger audience, they proposed 
 that abstracts of them be printed side by side in some 
 paper. Or, if this arrangement did not please, they would 
 undertake a newspaper discussion of the points at issue. 
 
 Reviewing other parts of the missive, they use language 
 which, though most polite in itself, we fear must have 
 been the opposite of soothing to Orthodox sensibilities : 
 "You ask us, reverend sir, whether it is not a ' sweet and 
 pleasant thing,' to ' tell and hear together of the great 
 things which God has done for our souls.' Doubtless, 
 there are conditions under which such communion may be 
 most ' sweet and pleasant ; ' . . . but such conference is not 
 ' sweet and pleasant ' where, fallibility being confessed on
 
 60 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 one side, infallibility is assumed on the other; where one 
 has nothing to learn and everything to teach; where the 
 arguments of an equal are propounded as a message of 
 inspiration ; where presumed error is treated as unpardon- 
 able guilt, and on the fruits of laborious and truth-loving 
 inquiry, terms of reprobation and menaces of everlasting 
 perdition are unscrupulously poured," 
 
 Referring to the announced meeting for humiliation and 
 prayer, the letter reads : " Permit us to say, that we could 
 join you in that day's prayer, if, instead of assuming 
 before God what doctrines his Spirit should enforce, you 
 would, with us, implore him to have pity on the ignorance 
 of us all : to take us all by the hand and lead us into the 
 truth and love, though it should be by ways most heret- 
 ical and strange ; to wrest us from the dearest reliances 
 and most assured convictions of our hearts, if they hinder 
 our approach to his great realities. A blessed day would 
 that be for the peace, brotherhood, and piety of this Chris- 
 tian community, if the ' humiliation ' would lead to a rec- 
 ognition of Christian equality, and the 'prayer' to the 
 recognition of that spiritual God whose love is moral in 
 its character, spiritual, not doctrinal in its conditions, and 
 who accepts from all his children the spirit and the truth 
 of worship." 
 
 Thus in most polished phrases was the issue accepted, 
 but in a temper which showed a more than willingness to 
 wield the sword of the spirit, — in an emergency, to ex- 
 change it for a more carnal weapon. 
 
 The hope of fair and candid comparison of opinion, if 
 such was entertained, Mr. Quid's reply did not encourage. 
 The plan of publishing together abstracts of lectures he 
 would not agree to ; a newspaper discussion he did not 
 approve. To the question whether he would recommend 
 his congregation to hear the Unitarian lectures, he replied 
 unequivocally that he would not. " Were I to consent to
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 6l 
 
 this proposal," said he, " I should thereby admit that 
 we stood on terms of a religious equality, which is, 
 in limine, denied. As men, citizens, and subjects, we are 
 doubtless equal, and will also stand on a footing of equality 
 before the bar of final judgment. I therefore use the term 
 ' religious equality^ in order to convey to you the distinc- 
 tion between our relative position as members of the com- 
 munity and as religionists. Being unable ... to recognize 
 you as Christians, I cannot consent to meet you in a way 
 which would imply that we occupy the same religious 
 level." " To you," he adds, " there will be no sacrifice 
 of principle or compromise of feeling, in entering our 
 churches ; to ics there would be such surrender of both, in 
 entering yours, as would peremptorily prohibit any such 
 engagement." He closed his letter by congratulating his 
 correspondents on their expressed purpose to attend the 
 lectures with their congregations, to hear what was fatally 
 false in their system, and with a prayer that the Great 
 Head of the Church would prosper the effort about to be 
 made for the promotion of his glory, through the instruc- 
 tion of those who were " ignorant and out of the way'' In 
 applying this italicized phrase to Mr. Martineau and Mr. 
 Thom, Mr. Ould certainly betrayed a want of the sense of 
 humor, the best office of which is often to save us from 
 being ridiculous. 
 
 Whether in thrust or parry, Mr. Ould was a bungling 
 fencer in comparison with his lithe and dexterous antag- 
 onists ; and the reply he drew from them was his humili- 
 ating discomfiture : " You deny our religious equality with 
 you. Is it as a matter of opinion, or as a matter of certainty, 
 that such equality is denied? If it is only as an opinion, 
 then this will not absolve you from fair and equal discus- 
 sion on the grounds of such opinion. If it is with you not 
 an opinion, but a certainty, then, Sir, this is Popery. Popery 
 we can understand, — we know, at least, what it is, — but
 
 62 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Protestantism erecting itself into Romish infallibility, yet 
 still claiming to be Protestantism, is to us a sad and 
 humiliating spectacle, showing what deep roots Roman 
 Catholicism has in the weaker parts of our common 
 nature." 
 
 In his first missive Mr. Ould had imputed to Unitarians, 
 if sound theologians, the belief that their Trinitarian 
 neighbors were guilty of the " most heinous of all sins — 
 idolatry," — a belief which, of course, he knew they did 
 not entertain, but which it served the purposes of his argu- 
 ment to charge. The imputation was now turned upon 
 him with a significance he could not have anticipated. 
 " In reference to your repugnance to enter our chapels we 
 say no more, reserving our right of future appeal in this 
 matter to those members of your church who may be 
 unable to see the force of your distinction between religious 
 and social equality. But we are surprised that you should 
 conceive it so easy a thing for us to enter your churches : 
 and should suppose it ' no sacrifice of principle and com- 
 promise of feeling' in us to unite in a worship which you 
 assure us must constitute in our eyes ' the most heinous 
 of all sins — Idolatry.' EitJier you must have known that 
 we did not consider your worship an idolatry, or have 
 regarded our resort to it a most guilty ' compromise of feel- 
 ing; ' to which, nevertheless, you give us a solemn invita- 
 tion; adding now, on our compliance, a congratulation no 
 less singular." That there was no wincing at this most 
 palpable thrust, they may believe who can. 
 
 Two days after the above letter, there appeared an in- 
 vitation " To the Trinitarians of this Town and Neigh- 
 bourhood who may feel interested in the approaching 
 Unitarian Controversy," and they were addressed as 
 " Christian Brethren." It recapitulated the correspond- 
 ence, and appealed to them to give that " equal audience " 
 which their clergymen had refused. Three days later.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 63 
 
 there appeared another address "To the [so-called] Uni- 
 tarians of Liverpool ; " in which Mr. Ould made a lame 
 attempt to justify his attitude. 
 
 The next move was from Mr. Ould, in the offer of a 
 platform discussion, which was promptly declined, extem- 
 pore debate before a miscellaneous assembly not being 
 considered the proper mode of treating themes that need 
 the most critical and careful statement. To this Mr. Ould 
 made hasty reply that he could but " hope a secret con- 
 sciousness of the weakness " of their cause " prompted 
 their determination ; " — a most unfortunate remark, which 
 his keen adversary turned upon him : " Sir, it is not a 
 little mournful to find a Christian Minister expressing the 
 hope that other men are hypocrites, that they are secretly 
 conscious of the weakness of the cause which they habitu- 
 ally defend. To Jiope that we secretly know our errors, 
 whilst publicly preaching them as truth, is indeed strange 
 preference of faith before works." 
 
 Meanwhile, on second thought, the offer of a newspaper 
 discussion was accepted in a letter signed by Mr. Ould and 
 two of his brother clergymen. The consideration of the 
 preliminaries to this led to some statements of theological 
 attitude which revealed the fact that on the Unitarian side 
 there was dissent from the doctrine of plenary inspiration, 
 and a denial that even miracles were a guaranty of infal- 
 libility. At the revelation of these heresies the Orthodox 
 party withdrew from the controversy. " While, therefore," 
 said they, " we shall continue to use all lawful methods of 
 argument and persuasion, in the hope of being useful to 
 those who, though called Unitarians, are not so entirely 
 separated from the common humanity as you seem to be, 
 we have no hesitation in saying that, with regard \.o your- 
 selves as individuals, there appears to be a more insur- 
 mountable obstacle in the way of discussion than would be 
 offered by ignorance of one another's language; because
 
 64 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the want of a common medium of language could be sup- 
 plied by an interpreter, but the want of a common medium 
 of reason cannot be supplied at all." To this came the 
 sharp rejoinder, that " Theology appears in this instance to 
 have borrowed a hint from the ' laws of honour ; ' and as in 
 the world a ' passage at arms ' is sometimes evaded, under 
 the pretence that the antagonist is too little of a gc7itleman, 
 so in the church a polemical collision may be declined, 
 because the opponent is too little of a believer !' 
 
 The last letter was written March 25, but some seven 
 weeks earlier than this the pulpit contest had to be girded 
 for. As their adversaries had done, the Unitarians pub- 
 lished a syllabus of their lectures, thirteen against their 
 thirteen. Of the thirteen subjects Mr. Martineau took five ; 
 Mr. Thom and Mr. Giles each four. When we bear in 
 mind that the thirteen chose their subjects, each according 
 to his special interest or strength, and that the three had 
 thus their subjects practically appointed to them, the odds 
 seem fairly Thermopylaean. Theological sympathies will 
 incline the reader to one side or the other independently 
 of any consideration of weight of learning or cogency of 
 argument. But the readers are surely few who will not 
 say that if the odds were Thermopylaean the polemic 
 victory was Spartan. 
 
 On Wednesday evening of February 6, Mr. Ould gave 
 the opening lecture, in which he stormed the Unitarian line 
 with plagiarized thunder.^ The crowd that gathered was 
 immense; the three Unitarian clergymen found it difficult 
 to gain admission to the church. A pew was afterwards 
 assigned them, from their occupancy popularly known as 
 the "condemned pew; " and here, under the fulminations 
 of the pulpit and amid the responsive aniens of the faithful 
 
 I As was afterwards conclusively shown, he took a large part of his 
 lecture from Andrew Fuller's Calvinistic aiid Socinian Systems Examined 
 end Compared.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 6$ 
 
 about them, they sat out every lecture. Mr. Thorn replied 
 in the Paradise Street Church on the evening of the fol- 
 lowing Tuesday, and the crowd was not less great. The 
 Trinitarian clergymen, however, true to their word, stayed 
 away, and used their best endeavors to keep their flocks 
 away also. Through thirteen weeks the strife continued. 
 Liverpool was stirred as communities rarely are by con- 
 flicts of religious opinion, and the noise of the fray travelled 
 far. 
 
 If there was hope, however, of making proselytes, the 
 result was disappointing. Two families brought over to 
 the Unitarian rank were the sum total of conversions. 
 
 The lectures on either side were promptly printed in 
 pamphlets with appropriate prefaces and appendices, and 
 thus sent forth to enlighten as they might. At the close 
 of the discussion they were gathered into two volumes, 
 respectively entitled Ujiitarianism Confuted and Unitari- 
 anism Defended ; and from their pages he who cares to 
 read them now can judge the controversy. 
 
 Unitarianism Confuted expresses a desire, possibly a 
 belief, but hardly a fact. It may confute Unitarianism wnth. 
 those to whom it is already confuted ; but from its temper, 
 method, and low range of ability, it is poorly calculated to 
 confute Unitarians. 
 
 With respect to temper, the plea may be made that the 
 standard should not be too exacting ; in the heat of con- 
 troversy, as in the grip of battle, phraseology will not be 
 always nice. But we open to the general preface, and there 
 read that Unitarians are " men wise in their own conceits 
 and fervent idolaters of their own unhallowed reason ; " 
 that " this glorious transcript of the Divine Mind — origi- 
 nated in the counsels of Triune Deity from all eternity — 
 promulgated to fallen man in the shades of Paradise," they 
 " have endeavored and are daily endeavoring to pull down 
 and destroy ; " that " the existence and agency of the 
 
 5
 
 66 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Tempter, as Satan is emphatically styled by way of bad 
 eminence, is regarded as allegorical and visionary by men, 
 unthinking that it is one of the depths of Satan, one of his 
 most subtle devices, to make them deny and ridicule the 
 idea of his existence, that he may thus throw a dreaming 
 and deluded world off its guard and lead it captive to his 
 will." The belief of Unitarians is described in Milton's 
 picture of Death, — "If form it may be called that form 
 hath none," — quoting, or rather misquoting, from mem- 
 ory most likely. Unitarian polemic is alleged to be char- 
 acterized by " hardy misquotations," " inconsequential 
 reasonings," " the perversion of obvious meanings." 
 " Unitarians," we are told, " have borne some such pro- 
 portion to the Christian church, as monsters bear to the 
 species of which they are the unhappy distortions." It 
 informs us that " unwearied hostility is waged by Unitarians 
 against the mind of God." In closing it quotes from the 
 Collect for Good Friday, " Have mercy upon all Jews, 
 Turks, Infidels and Heretics." All this within the scope 
 of a brief preface. In the pages that follow, the like 
 expressions are scattered with less plentiful profusion, but 
 they are there ; and they give the volume a tone of which 
 the nobler passages do not neutralize the impression ; they 
 are of the bitterness that alienates, not the charity that 
 wins. 
 
 The method of argumentation, too, considered with 
 reference to Unitarians, is singularly mistaken. It is a 
 continuous appeal to authority, — the decretals of church, 
 texts of Scripture, — precisely what Unitarians had lived 
 through, wearied of, and cast aside. Unitarians were then 
 somewhat nearer to Orthodox standards than now; but 
 then, as now, it was needful to show them, not what Moses 
 and Athanasius said, but what Reason and Conscience say. 
 The Unitarian may not be wiser than other men, he may 
 be less wise ; but in general he has a characteristic way of
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 6/ 
 
 seeing things, and by this way you must approach him if 
 you will win him. Here these advocates made a capital 
 mistake ; original Greek they flung at him ; proof texts 
 they showered upon him ; creeds were quoted and ex- 
 plained to him ; but the presentation of the Orthodox 
 view in such manner as to show that it answered to the 
 deepest and truest within him was not offered him ; and so 
 failure was decreed from the beginning. 
 
 Judged by the common, intellectual standard, too, the 
 book, as a whole, seems hardly worthy the occasion that 
 called it forth. Some of the lectures were apparently given 
 off-hand ; and, among their marked characteristics, just 
 discrimination and careful scholarship are not conspicuous. 
 The lecturers spoke as to those who would make no reply, 
 and as if in forgetfulness or disdain of the fact, that in their 
 audience sat three at least who were following them into 
 whatever highways or byways of learning ; who would ex- 
 pose the fallacies of their ungirt logic, and call their care- 
 less words into judgment. Even in the better portions of 
 the volume, the occasion seems hardly met. Among the 
 thirteen were men of academic honors, who in scholarly 
 and thoughtful speech declared their convictions ; but there 
 was not at that day a learned prelate in all England who 
 would not have added to his fame by a polemic victory 
 over Martineau and Thorn ; indeed there were very few 
 who could have risked their fame in such an encounter. 
 All along the line the contest seems unequal, — the squires 
 of the church doing battle where her best trained and most 
 valorous knights were demanded. This is only to be re- 
 gretted ; for in polemic contests truth prospers from the 
 equal match, and even party faith is too cheaply vindicated 
 where the combat is one-sided. 
 
 If this seems severe judgment, it may be shown that the 
 studious public have judged the volume yet more severely. 
 The book has passed out of sight, is unread and unhonored.
 
 68 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Yet does it contain pages of earnest thought and brave 
 sincerity, and incidental discussions not hghtly to be 
 pondered. 
 
 In Unitarianism Defended we enter another atmosphere. 
 Occasionally the old Adam gets in a word, and there are 
 certainly pages that would wear a more dignified look after 
 a considerable excision. Yet in its prevailing tone the 
 book is perhaps as near to the model of a polemic as ever 
 issued from a debate so earnest. With especial emphasis 
 may this be said of the part borne by Mr. Martineau. In 
 the letters from which we have quoted, the evidence is 
 plain enough that his hand held the pen that wrote them ; 
 and under those polished sentences there lurks at times a 
 tone of irony that may suggest Izaak Walton's instruction 
 for the use of the frog: " Put your hook , , . through his 
 mouth and out at his gills ; and in so doing use him as 
 though you loved him." In his lectures, however, he lifts 
 himself into the atmosphere of knowledge and of thought, 
 where the loftiest aim and the noblest feeling rule him. 
 Only once does he make a personal reply, and that reply 
 from its uniqueness should be quoted. A venerable and 
 much esteemed but over-earnest lecturer had indulged in 
 something like a tirade against him, in answer to which 
 he may have read : " As to that excellent man who, on 
 Wednesday last, treated in this way our most cherished con- 
 victions and most innocent actions, I have said nothing in 
 reply to his accusations ; for I well know them to have failed 
 in benevolence, only from excess of mistaken piety. Had he 
 a little more power of imagination, to put himself into the 
 feelings and ideas of others, doubtless he would understand 
 both his Bible and his fellow-disciples better than he does. 
 Meanwhile, I would not stir, with the breath of disrespect, 
 one of his gray hairs ; or by any severity of expostulation 
 disturb the peace of an old age, so affectionate and good 
 as his. He and we must erelong pass to a world where
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 69 
 
 the film will fall from the eye of error, and we shall know, 
 even as we are known." 
 
 In the discussion of the various problems the Unitarians 
 drew prevailingly from three sources, — Nature, the Moral 
 Consciousness, and the Bible. From their use of the Bible 
 one would hardly suspect that they read it on their knees, 
 as was once the practice of a famous theologian ; yet it is 
 clear that they held it up to the light in studious and rev- 
 erent scrutiny of its page. To them it was a Revelation 
 from God, — no less a Revelation because given through 
 men from whom it received a human element. But if the 
 Bible is a Revelation, Nature is that too, and Conscience like- 
 wise, when its oracle is distinctly heard. These three reve- 
 lations, ahke from God, cannot contradict, but must rather 
 supplement and explain one another, — their concurrent 
 testimony to any doctrine, our certitude of its truth, the 
 clear remonstrance of any one, a not-to-be-doubted proof 
 that we have misconceived the other two. Hence a large- 
 ness in their reasonings and a strength in their conclusions, 
 quite in contrast with those of their adversaries, who of 
 these grounds of argument knew only one, and from this 
 limitation were denied the essential condition of knowing 
 even that. In one of Mr. Martineau's most earnest passages 
 he protests against the " infidel rejection " of Nature's 
 ancient oracle. It was something to him well-nigh incred- 
 ible, the scepticism that denied two Words of God to the 
 misunderstanding and even perversion of a third. And 
 those who pronounce against Unitarianism as a negative 
 faith he asks to justify the positive character of a system 
 that " disbelieves reason, distrusts the moral sense, dislikes 
 science, discredits nature." 
 
 Not only were these defenders strong men ; it is evident 
 that of their strength they were not sparing. They did 
 not aim merely to repulse assaulting arguments, but to give 
 their faith the noblest presentation. Their themes were
 
 70 JxVMES MARTINEAU 
 
 worn and hackneyed, yet they seized upon them as though 
 they had never before been treated ; and by the vigor of 
 their thought and their ample learning they gave them a 
 statement remarkable for nothing more than its freshness. 
 In the main, they answered their opponents, not by re- 
 joinder, but by implication, building a structure of doc- 
 trine over against which the Orthodox doctrines seem 
 incredible. Thus peculiarly it was with Mr. Martineau. 
 Three of his lectures were reprinted in America, in Studies 
 of Christianity ; and of the many who have read and ad- 
 mired them, probably not one to whom the fact was not 
 told has ever suspected that they came out of the hottest 
 of controversies. They suggest the scholar and thinker 
 coming from his study with his most careful, albeit his most 
 fervid word. He discredits the Orthodox doctrines some- 
 what as Newton in his Principia discredits the mediaeval 
 astronomy, which, without noticing, he annihilates. Surely 
 on the lines which he traversed no one who heard him or 
 who read him needed afterwards to ask the positive atti- 
 tude of the Unitarian mind. The only qualification to this 
 statement might be in the fact that his presentations were 
 somewhat in advance of the Unitarianism of the time. In- 
 deed, with slight touches here and there, they might do 
 service as Unitarian tracts even now ; nor have Unitarians 
 in their theological literature discussions of a similar char- 
 acter more nobly or more reverently toned. 
 
 Among the marvellous features of this controversy was 
 the vast labor it implied in a period so brief. Taken in 
 connection with the many other duties that engaged, it 
 was an exhibition of intellectual prowess not often paral- 
 leled. The first lecture was given on the Orthodox side 
 on the sixth of February; the last was given by Mr. Mar- 
 tineau on the seventh of May. Between these dates the 
 whole labor must be compressed. Yet the shortest of 
 Mr. Martineau's lectures, if given in full, could fall but
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 7 1 
 
 little short of three hours in average pulpit delivery, and 
 one of them would reach four. His discussion of the 
 Atonement, together with preface and appendix, reaches 
 nearly to one hundred quarto pages. Mr. Thom's presen- 
 tation of the Trinity is nearly as long. Mr. Martineau's 
 five lectures with their prefaces and appendices would 
 make a quarto volume of a little less than four hundred 
 pages ; and this, it should be remembered, not thought 
 and learning crudely thrown together, but thoroughly 
 organized, nobly elaborated and adorned..
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL {continued) 
 
 It is safe to affirm that Mr. Martineau emerged from this 
 controversy with a glad sense of rehef. We can enter into 
 the satisfaction with which he resumed the less distracted 
 exercise of his regular and more congenial offices, the new 
 delight of unhurried study and intercourse with friends. 
 
 But neither in his own consciousness nor in general 
 esteem could he come forth from such a contest as he 
 went into it. As well might he think to turn his dial back, 
 as to be again the man that he had been. Shape it to his 
 thought however modestly he might, there was the con- 
 sciousness of powers which, though severely tried, had 
 not failed ; powers, therefore, that to other arduous tasks 
 could be confidently applied. Abroad there was on the 
 one side the new admiration of his friends and followers 
 for the manifest splendor of his genius ; on the other side 
 a sort of admiration by inversion of the brilliant and 
 powerful heresiarch that Satan had let loose for a 
 season. It was, in a sense, a new attitude in which he 
 stood ; there was a new part that he must bear. A new 
 part was, indeed, not far before him, in which his proved 
 powers should be brought to other and severer proof, 
 in which expectation should again be distanced by 
 achievement. 
 
 Meanwhile there were sermons to preach, the young 
 people to instruct, his parishioners to visit, the sorrowing
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 73 
 
 to comfort, the morally lame and blind to heal and restore 
 as he might. With these offices, together with his books 
 and his pen, we take courage to hope that he did not suffer 
 from ennui. 
 
 Our next meeting with him outside his appointed walk is 
 in the September following the controversy, at the open- 
 ing of a new chapel in Manchester, on which occasion he 
 preached a sermon on The Outer and the hitter Temple^ 
 which they who heard surely did not soon forget. He 
 drew his lesson out of the Messianic idea, which, divested 
 of its Jewish coloring, he showed to be not especially Jew- 
 ish, but the property of mankind. It is involved in the 
 great trust in Providence that ever looks for a better that 
 shall come. Ignorance and sin shall pass ; where now is 
 strife the dove of Peace shall hover; and whatever power 
 works to this end is the Messiah of God's appointing. But 
 over against the Messiah that God in his wisdom appoints, 
 we meet the Messiah which man in his foolishness expects 
 and insists on having; and the two come into sorrowful 
 collision. And the error being not national but human, it 
 is ours to-day as it was theirs with whom Jesus walked and 
 suffered. Then, turning to the times of Jesus, and placing 
 the expectations that met him in contrast with the 
 reality he was, — God's Messiah and man's, — he draws 
 out the impressive lesson : — 
 
 " See, first, how the great Father rebukes every plan of 
 partial and exclusive deliverance ; and declares that any 
 rescue of his must fold the earth in its embrace. The 
 Hebrews would have had a divine Emancipator to be theirs 
 alone ; the child of a nation ; the property of a class ; the 
 personal concentration of their collective peculiarities; the 
 punisher of other men's hatred and contempt, by adopting 
 and indulging their own. . . . He takes a village Christ, 
 whose soul is human, and not Hebrew; whose spirit has 
 become acquainted with men in the retreats of families,
 
 74 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 not in the schools of Priests and Pharisees ; and felt the 
 presence of God in the stainless breath of his native hills, 
 and the lilies of his native fields, more than in the smoke 
 of altars, and the withered fragrance of incense ; — one who 
 would neither strive nor cry, who had no scorn except for 
 narrow affections and mean pretences ; from whose voice 
 hearers, listening for denunciation, receive the tones more 
 piercing far, of a divine forgiveness ; and whose eye, when 
 spectators look for the flash of resentment, fills only with 
 silent tears. Nor was this all ; for when his countrymen, 
 enraged that his mind is not exclusively theirs, led him 
 away to Calvary, God does but take the occasion to wrest 
 from them his person too ; permits his executioners to 
 destroy the only part of his nature in which he resembled 
 them, and then redeems the everlasting elements of his 
 humanity for a blessing to all people and all times ; and 
 says to Death, ' Take now the son of David, but leave 
 the son of Man ; the Israelite is thine, but I suffer not my 
 holy one to see corruption.' And so, the cross, which was 
 to disown him as the Messiah of Jerusalem, made him the 
 Messiah of mankind." ^ 
 
 The following year, 1840, he did great service by bring- 
 ing out a second hymn-book. It was entitled Hymns for 
 the Christian Church and Home. It was a careful and toil- 
 some collection of six hundred and fifty-one hymns. The 
 book contained, besides the ordinary conveniences for its 
 special use, a reference to Scripture texts, of which the 
 hymns are the designed or unpremeditated utterance, and 
 a preface which no student of Hymnology can afford to 
 pass. It attracted wide attention, and came into very 
 general use in the Unitarian churches in England. It ran 
 through a large number of editions, was in use, indeed, for 
 a third of a century, till he himself superseded it with 
 another collection. 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 375~377'
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 75 
 
 A discussion of this book, though very tempting, must 
 not be indulged in here ; it contains two hymns, however, 
 which we must note for their pecuHar interest. They are 
 widely known now, but their first appearance was in this 
 volume. One, uttering in verse the deep sentiment of the 
 Scripture, " with his stripes we are healed," begins with the 
 familiar stanza, — 
 
 " A voice upon the midnight air, 
 
 Where Kedron's moonlit waters stray, 
 Weeps forth in agony of prayer, 
 ' O Father ! take this cup away ! ' " 
 
 The other, a song of trust, drawn out of the text 
 "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," sings to 
 the experience of how many hearts, — 
 
 " Thy way is in the deep, O Lord ! 
 E'en there we 'II go with thee : 
 We '11 meet the tempest at thy word, 
 And walk upon the sea I " ^ 
 
 Both these hymns are entered as anonymous; yet was 
 their author well known to the compiler, for he was none 
 other than Mr. Martineau himself. 
 
 We come now to the " new part" he was to bear; this 
 year, 1840, he was appointed Professor of Mental and 
 Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in Manchester 
 New College. This event determined his life to Philoso- 
 phy conjointly with Theology. Here for forty-five years 
 he was to toil at the deep problems of the sages, subject- 
 ing their doctrines to the severest analysis, and dropping 
 his plummet into deeps they did not sound. 
 
 1 This hymn has been widely appropriated, and prevailingly with a 
 departure from Mr. Martineau in the first line by the use of the preposition 
 "on" instead of "in," — "^« the deep " rather than " /« the deep." 
 Whether this is from mistake, or through the exercise of that very ques- 
 tionable right, which many compilers claim, to reconstruct hymns, I cannot 
 say ; but the sense is materially different.
 
 'j6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 It is with peculiar interest that we look back from the 
 nonagenarian sage to the thinker of thirty-five. It was at 
 the opening of the October session of the College that he 
 gave his introductory lecture, in which we may divine 
 something of the spirit of Sir Galahad going forth in search 
 for the San Greal. Easily and naturally, but with a sus- 
 tained eloquence, he told his hearers how Philosophy arose, 
 outlined the vast tracts it was his hope to explore, enjoined 
 the severe method by which alone philosophical studies can 
 be successfully pursued, and justified the claim of Philoso- 
 phy to be the promoter of man's higher welfare. " Com- 
 plaints," says he, " are often made of the uncertain and 
 shadowy results from all speculative science : and certainly 
 it will construct no docks ; lay down no railways ; weave 
 no cotton ; and, if civilization is to be measured exclusively 
 by the scale and grandeur of its material elements, we can 
 claim for our subject no large operation on human im- 
 provement. To use the words of Novalis, . . . ' Philosophy 
 can bake no bread ; but it can procure for us God, freedom, 
 and immortality.' " He makes his own the question of 
 the German, " Which, now, is more practical, philosophy 
 or economy?" Still further does he press claim for its 
 dignity and usefulness : " What periods could be least 
 well spared from the progress of civilization? Surely, 
 the golden ages of philosophy in Greece, and its revival 
 in modern England, France, and Germany. What are 
 the names, whose loss from the annals of our race would 
 introduce the most terrible and dreary changes in its sub- 
 sequent advance? Those of Plato and Aristotle in the 
 ancient world ; of Bacon, Locke, and Kant in more recent 
 times : and it is surely easier to conceive what we should 
 have been without Homer, than without Socrates." ^ 
 
 Mr. Martineau had now vocation and avocation, and to 
 both he brought a consecrated genius. The toiling pro- 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. p. 17.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 7/ 
 
 fessor would leave in his church no duty unperformed ; 
 the hard-worked minister would go with no slipshod prep- 
 aration to the professor's chair. The College had just 
 returned to Manchester after its thirty-seven years in 
 York, and he was here one day each week for the delivery 
 of his lectures. These must perforce be freshly prepared ; 
 and under any circumstances they could have cost him no 
 trifling toil. There was, too, a feature of his situation that 
 must have added not slightly to his labors. The keeper of 
 a lighthouse knows always where he is, and with ready 
 tongue can name the headlands and islands he looks out 
 upon ; but a sailor on the deep must take frequent and care- 
 ful reckonings if he will know his longitudes. Mr. Marti- 
 neau was on the deep, and, as a pilot to other mariners, he 
 had now a peculiar interest in his reckonings. The truth 
 was that he was somewhat out of his reckoning, and was em- 
 barrassed in consequence. He had early settled, as we have 
 seen, on the creed of philosophical Necessity, and this he 
 supposed himself to hold ; but somehow preparation such 
 as he had did not satisfy, and former opinions needed to be 
 qualified. The fact was that, without clearly seeing it, he 
 was in process of transition : the faith to which he thought he 
 was leading others, he was himself abandoning. Curiously, 
 but not unnaturally, the true status of his mind was shown 
 him by another rather than discovered by himself. The 
 syllabus of his first course of lectures came into the hands 
 of his friend, John Stuart Mill,^ whose searching glance 
 measured his departure from the Necessarian standards, 
 and detected the direction in which his mind was moving. 
 Mr. Martineau pleasantly remarks : "Though he saw to 
 the bottom of my apostasy, he did not cut me off as a lost 
 soul. On the contrary, his manifestation of friendly inter- 
 est in my future work at old problems on new lines was 
 gracious and respectful." 
 
 1 Preface to Types of Ethical Theory, p. xi.
 
 78 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Thus doubly occupied as minister and professor, it is 
 not surprising that during the next five years he did Httle 
 outside critical labor. In 1841 he printed an essay, which 
 had evidently done service as a lecture, on Five Points of 
 Christian Faith} a very eloquent presentation of his 
 attitude as a Unitarian theologian. During the same year 
 he wrote the letter on Lant Carpenter published in the 
 Memoirs prepared by Dr. Carpenter's son, one of the 
 fairest tributes a pupil ever bore his master. 
 
 The next year he printed nothing of importance ; the 
 year following, 1843, dates a blessing to many minds and 
 hearts, the first series of Endeavors after the Christian 
 Life, a selection from his pulpit discourses. Hitherto his 
 printed words had been mainly critical or polemical ; here 
 was the message of the religious teacher, spoken to the 
 faiths and hopes of men. 
 
 This book we shall meet again when we shall linger over 
 its pages. To-day we place it on our library shelves with 
 the classic literature of devotion, — different enough from 
 the Thcologia Germanica, yet rightfully in its companion- 
 ship ; not at all like Holy Living and Holy Dying, yet 
 worthy to stand beside it; yet at its coming those in the 
 judgment-seats of criticism betrayed no special enthusiasm. 
 To English Churchdom it was a light that did not shine 
 through cathedral windows; hardly, therefore, to be seen; 
 and those who from their position might have been sup- 
 posed to see, apparently saw rather dimly. The Chj'istian 
 Reformer smiled dubiously; the CJiristian Examiner was 
 critical rather than cordial ; the prevailing approval was 
 the faint praise that damns. A good book, however, is a 
 magnet that attracts its own ; and neither critical indiffer- 
 ence nor critical disparagement can permanently annul its 
 influence. This book found readers, and after more than 
 fifty years it finds them still. The edition now selling in 
 America is printed from the eighth English edition. 
 1 See Studies of Christianity, edited by William R. Alger.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 79 
 
 In 1845 he resumed those critical studies by which he 
 was to become so widely known. The Prospective Review 
 of that year was enriched with elaborate and eloquent dis- 
 cussions of the Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 
 Church and State, WhewelVs Morality. The following 
 year he contributed to the same magazine a discussion of 
 Whewell 's Systematic Morality and Theodore Parker s Dis- 
 course on Matters Pertaining to Religion} In 1847 ap- 
 peared the second series of Endeavors, too like the first to 
 need special comment, and in the Westminster Reviezv a 
 paper on Strauss and Theodore Parker. In 1848 the 
 readers of the Prospective Review met articles from his 
 pen on William E. Channing and Philosophical Christianity 
 in France, and thence on such, in the main, is the story ! 
 
 Such, in the main, the story ! Alas for his biographer 
 who would fain give the charm of variety to his narrative 
 that it is such ! Were there only some conspicuous intel- 
 lectual gyrations of which to tell, some striking eccen- 
 tricities to explain, a few wrong deeds for which to 
 apologize, how might they add interest to these pages ! 
 Just the labors of the Christian teacher and scholar, — 
 that is all ; and of these how monotonous the tale ! This 
 day-by-day sunshine is very well ; but it is in the narrative 
 of simooms and cyclones and thunder-storms that we are 
 interested. Very possibly some one who h^s lived near 
 that Hfe, in the record of personal incidents and experi- 
 ences, — joys, pains, friendships, — may find a variety these 
 pages cannot offer. But even here, from the prevailing 
 evenness and decorum there must be limitations. In a 
 Bentley not even a Boswell should have found a Johnson. 
 
 We do, however, approach here an incident of interest 
 and importance. Under his faithful and able ministry his 
 church had prospered ; but the rapid growth of Liverpool, 
 
 1 All these papers are reprinted in the four volumes of Essays, Reviews^ 
 and Addresses.
 
 80 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 by enlarging the business quarter, had sent the residents 
 farther away, and the Paradise Street Chapel had become in- 
 conveniently distant from the congregation that worshipped 
 within it. It was determined, therefore, to build a new 
 chapel in Hope Street ; and of this the foundation stone 
 was laid in May, 1848. Worn from excessive toil, Mr. 
 Martineau seized upon the opportunity for a period of rest 
 and study in Germany. He took with him his entire 
 family; his eldest son, then at University College, London, 
 he transferred for the time to the University at Berlin. 
 
 In May he assisted in laying the corner-stone of the 
 new chapel. In July he went to Dresden, where in the 
 art galleries he found both profit and recreation. Thence 
 he went in October to Berlin, where he settled down to 
 study. Trendelenburg was then there, and of him he 
 took lectures in logic and the history of philosophy. 
 Trendelenburg was an able expounder of the Stagirite, 
 and this circumstance brought Mr. Martineau to Greek 
 philosophical studies, the effect of which was, in his own 
 language, a " new intellectual birth." " I seemed to pierce, 
 through what had been words before, into contact with 
 living thought, and the black grammatical text was aglow 
 with luminous philosophy." ^ He also bestowed a good deal 
 of attention upon German Philosophy, and his friend, R. H, 
 Hutton, who was with him, tells how in the depths of a 
 German winter they toiled in a fruitless chase after Hegel's 
 " pure being and pure nothing." Together also they bent 
 over the more luminous page of Plato. He found it of 
 great advantage to pursue Greek and later German thought 
 together, for the light they shed upon each other. He once 
 told a friend that he never understood Aristotle's Ethics 
 till he translated it into German in Trendelenburg's class- 
 room ; and in the preface to the Types he tells us that the 
 " new way of entrance upon ancient literature . . . lifted 
 1 Preface to Types 0/ Ethical Theory, pp. xii-xiii.
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 8 1 
 
 the darkness from the pages of Kant and even Hegel." 
 The effect of these studies, however, was something more 
 than enlarged knowledge ; from their influence the deflec- 
 tion from the Necessarian view which Mill had detected 
 reached to conscious and complete repudiation. He was 
 converted to that spiritual philosophy of which, through all 
 his toilsome life he was to be a fervid apostle. In the pref- 
 ace to the Types he tells us : " The metaphysic of the world 
 had come home to me, and never again could I say that 
 phenomena, in their clusters and chains, were all, or find 
 myself in a universe with no categories but the like and 
 unlike, the synchronous and successive. The possible also 
 is, whether it happens or not ; and its categories, of the 
 right, the beautiful, the necessarily true, may have their 
 contents defined and held ready for realization, whatever 
 centuries lapse ere they appear." ^ 
 
 This vacation period was not without its distractions. 
 He had illness in his family, the excitement of war was in 
 Germany. It was, however, a period of intellectual activ- 
 ity of which the results were of great significance. It 
 brought him also somewhat of diversion. There was the 
 kindling spectacle of the Bavarian Alps ; there was a resi- 
 dence of six weeks in the secularized convent of St. Zeno ; 
 a sail in a private boat down the Danube, a brief stay in 
 Vienna. There was also inspiring intercourse with great 
 minds, among them Trendelenburg, the Zumpts, Von Ranke. 
 
 He returned in October, 1849, after an absence of fifteen 
 months. The beautiful Hope Street Church was ready for 
 him. In his opening discourse he remembered those who 
 had died in his absence, in a passage of tenderest signifi- 
 cance: "Those close-filled ranks cannot hide from me the 
 vacancies in their midst; and I miss here the sweet atten- 
 tive look of maidenly docility, there the dear and venerable 
 
 ^ p. xiii.
 
 82 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 form of one from whose eyes age had exhausted the vision 
 but not the tears." This dear and venerable one was his 
 mother. 
 
 The church and the college labors were both renewed 
 with the wonted tireless industry. To the College he must 
 carry the new light ; and to this end his lectures, labori- 
 ously prepared, must be superseded by new ones, or re- 
 constructed into congruity with the " metaphysic of the 
 world." His critical labors were renewed, if, indeed, they 
 had been intermitted. In 1849 he printed a second paper 
 on Channing. The following year he wrote the noble 
 papers on Letter and Spirit and F. W. Newman's Phases 
 of Faith and the Church of England. The year following 
 came the essays on The Creed of Christendom, The Battle 
 of the Churches, Europe since the Reformation, and the 
 sadly famous essay on Mesmeric Atheism. These were all 
 notable papers. 
 
 We come now to a passage in his life of which we would 
 willingly be silent, did it not seem cowardly to be so ; I 
 mean the estrangement between him and his sister Harriet ; 
 or, perhaps I might better say, her estrangement from 
 him ; for through all the dismal years of banishment from 
 her sympathy he preserved for her the fraternal heart.^ 
 Besides, simple right seems to require that the story 
 be told again. All the world has heard it, but, in the 
 main, they have heard but one version of it ; and here, as 
 ever, 
 
 " One man's word is no man's word, 
 Justice asks that both be heard." 
 
 The name of Harriet Martineau is one to be spoken 
 
 1 I never reciprocated the alienation from which I suffered, and should 
 have escaped a real sorrow, had the efforts to remove it been successful. It 
 has simply counted for me as an instance more of my sister's liability to 
 oscillate between extremes of devotedness and sympathy, and has in no way 
 disenchanted the old affection, or impaired my estimate of her high aims, 
 her large powers, and her noble private virtues. (Dr. Martineau in the London 
 Daily Nezvs, December 30, 18S4.)
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 83 
 
 with admiration. She was a woman of large powers and 
 generous sympathies, and through toilsome and suffering 
 years she consecrated both to the service of humanity. 
 Her intellect had not the penetration of her brother's, but 
 it was more versatile ; and though we would rather meet 
 him on the judgment-seat where ethical justice must be 
 given voice, in her was the more cosmopolitan sympathy. 
 While he would wage unrelenting battle with the wrong that 
 smites, she would meet the sufferer with the readier smile. 
 
 She was a great and noble woman, but to all their limi- 
 tations. Her devotion to truth was unquestionable; the 
 patience that searches for the simple verity of things was 
 not so marked in her. She was of the stuff of which mar- 
 tyrs, not philosophers, are made. Her judgment, whatever 
 it was, she would stand by at any cost, but she was not 
 sure to come to it by the way of careful discrimination. 
 Hence her opinions, whether of men or of doctrines, wear 
 often a per saltiim and even a capricious look. 
 
 She had a twofold physical affliction, ill-health and deaf- 
 ness. In spite of these she achieved her brave and brilliant 
 career ; but none the less it is difficult not to believe 
 that they gave a color to her spirit by which things and 
 people were sometimes disco\oxe6. to her apprehension. 
 Such extenuation it is easy to exaggerate, and she would 
 be the last to ask it ; and few who have suffered as much 
 have needed it so little. But few spirits are so stoical or 
 so Christian as to be lifted above a rasping pain or a tor- 
 menting malady. Emerson with Carlyle's dyspepsia very 
 likely had not scolded like Carlyle, but we fear he had 
 been a different Emerson. 
 
 She had a will whose servant she was, and others who 
 would prosper with her must needs be ; her conscientious- 
 ness was absolute, but needed now and then to be toned 
 with " sweet reasonableness ; " her charity was large, but 
 of the kind that sometimes faileth.
 
 84 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 As is known to all the world, she experienced a great 
 change in her religious and philosophical attitude. She 
 began life a very devout Unitarian, mildly shading off from 
 the Presbyterianism of her family. She became the dis- 
 ciple and translator of Auguste Comte ; later she sat down 
 at the feet of the phrenologist and mesmerist, Henry George 
 Atkinson. 
 
 Though it was from her relation with Atkinson that the 
 estrangement culminated, they mistake who suppose it 
 began there. The relations between her and her brother 
 in earlier years had been peculiarly sympathetic ; in all her 
 heroic struggle he had braced her with his counsel and en- 
 couragement. Correspondence had flowed on between 
 them, unreserved, fraternal, tender; domestic interests, 
 financial perplexities, literary aims, personal ambitions, 
 religious doubts and hopes, they had laid before each 
 other with a freedom which only the warmest sympathy 
 can make possible. At length she issued a mandate to 
 her correspondents that they should destroy her letters. 
 The penalty of disobedience was that they should receive 
 no more. Her brother remonstrated. The letters he had 
 were the record of a brave struggle which should not 
 be lost ; they were besides very dear to him, and he could 
 not part with them. Her threat was not at first executed 
 in full; but her "letters became notes, ever fewer and 
 more far between, limited to matters of fact, comparatively 
 dry and cold." They ceased altogether before the Atkin- 
 son episode to which now we come. 
 
 Henry George Atkinson was a man not without intelli- 
 gence of a certain order. He seems to have studied 
 Bacon; he had acquaintance with physiology; he had 
 given special attention to phrenology and mesmerism; 
 from the only writing we have from him one may gather 
 many illustrations of the mentally strange and abnormal. 
 But one who may astonish in a drawing-room may be
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 85 
 
 quite out of place in a congress of sages ; and the efforts 
 to sustain him in the role of unappreciated genius have 
 been wholly abortive. The one thing he did discredits 
 such an estimate of him, and the fact that he did nothing 
 else still further discredits it. Men with doctrines as un- 
 popular as his have conquered admiration; yet, in culti- 
 vated English society, inquire for Henry George Atkinson, 
 and there may be remembrance of him as one who had a 
 little cheap notoriety many years ago, which a peculiar re- 
 lation with Miss Martineau gave him, and httle more is 
 known of him. Left to himself, he sank to a natural ob- 
 scurity, out of which she had lifted him for a brief period. 
 Yet this man Harriet Martineau, immeasurably his superior, 
 whom they of regal intellect most justly honored, accepted 
 as her philosopher ! At his feet she sat down as a learner ! 
 The result of this intellectual mesalliance was a book on 
 The Laws of Mans Nature and Development. It com- 
 prised a series of letters that passed between them, in 
 which Mr. Atkinson assumed the tone of the most confi- 
 dent of masters, and Miss Martineau that of the most 
 docile of disciples. It was in large part a crude and super- 
 ficial handling of man's deepest and dearest faiths. " Phi- 
 losophy finds no God in nature," it tells us, " no personal 
 being or creator, nor sees the want of any ; nor has God 
 revealed himself miraculously." The belief in another life 
 is a harmless delusion " so long as it does not interfere with 
 our conduct in this." " Free will ! the very idea is enough 
 to make a Democritus fall on his back and roar with laugh- 
 ter, and a more serious thinker almost despair of bringing 
 men to their reason." The doctrine of moral responsibility 
 is declared " untrue and immoral." The outlook for man's 
 better condition is not in allegiance to a high and Holy 
 One, not in incentives enkindled by the hope of immor- 
 tality, not in obedience to the sense of obligation, not in 
 all together; but in the study of the laws of man's nature,
 
 86 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 which in their last statement are physical laws. The clue 
 to this study, the light among lights of superlative bright- 
 ness, is mesmerism. 
 
 The book, bearing simply the name of Henry George 
 Atkinson, had surely fallen flat. Had the name of Harriet 
 Smith or of Harriet Jones been coupled with his, its fate 
 had been no better. It bore, however, with his the name 
 of Harriet Martineau, at that time the most prominent 
 woman in England. The attention that it received and 
 the impression that it made were, therefore, out of all 
 proportion to its interior significance. In such cases, too, 
 names do not stand for individuals alone, but for family 
 and affiliations also. Miss Martineau was not merely Miss 
 Martineau ; she was the sister of James Martineau, who 
 was fast becoming one of the most potent forces in Eng- 
 lish thought and letters ; she was a member of a circle ; 
 she had come out from a sect of which, or of whose 
 tendencies, however absurdly, she was held to be repre- 
 sentative. These circumstances gave significance to her 
 position and weight to her words. 
 
 Mr. Martineau was at that time one of the editors of the 
 Prospective Review, and the book required notice in its 
 pages. Thoroughly to have reviewed the book could 
 not have been a labor of love to any one of his editorial 
 associates. Besides, in the general division of labor, 
 the treatment of books and subjects of a speculative 
 character was peculiarly his office. Most unwillingly, 
 therefore, he sat down to the task it seemed ignoble to 
 shirk, and the result was the article on Mesmeric Atheism. 
 It was a trenchant and searching review, certainly within 
 the requirements of polemical morality, but remorseless 
 in the exposure of flimsy logic and shallow sophistry. 
 It was not merely an answer to the book ; it was its com- 
 plete annihilation. Of his sister he spoke most gently, 
 but Atkinson fared somewhat hardly at his hands. He
 
 MINISTRY IN LIVERPOOL 8/ 
 
 had offered himself as a philosopher ; his credentials had 
 been examined and he was dismissed as a charlatan. At 
 this treatment of her hero Miss Martineau was deeply 
 offended, and to the end of her Hfe repelled all offers of 
 reconciliation. 
 
 Such is the story of that estrangement which, with various 
 coloring and distortion, is known as widely as the suffer- 
 ers from it. It suggests questions of mental peculiarity and 
 moral temperament for which I will not pause. I will here 
 only remark that the measure of offence conceived seems 
 far beyond any rational estimate of the offence committed. 
 A brother's refusal to destroy a sister's letters because they 
 are dear to him may be a mistake ; but surely it would 
 oftener give pleasure than provoke resentment. A few 
 passages in the criticism might have been more gently 
 toned, though the admirers of Miss Martineau could hardly 
 plead her example in asking it. To the plea sometimes 
 put forth that the criticism did violence to private affec- 
 tion, the answer is obvious : Truth, like the Christ, knows 
 no private affection, a dictum which Harriet Martineau 
 surely would have allowed. And I cannot help feeling that 
 she would have been truer to herself and to her great intel- 
 lect and heart, if, instead of thus resenting, she had kin- 
 dled with admiration for the brother whose affection, often 
 tried and always true, could not deflect him from that 
 unsparing truth which his conscience summoned him to 
 declare.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LONDON 
 
 The decade of the fifties was with Mr. Martineau a period 
 of great hterary activity, and in it he brought forth some 
 of the noblest of his essays. The papers on Hamilton, 
 Mill, Mansel, Comte, Lessing, Schleiermacher, the remark- 
 able paper on Personal Influences on Present Theology, 
 were all within this period. He wrote for the N'ational 
 Review, the Prospective, and the Westminster, commonly 
 three or four papers yearly, elaborate and brilliant discus- 
 sions of great problems of thought. This writing alone 
 would seem task sufficient for high talent when ordinarily 
 industrious. In his case it was the by-play of one who 
 kept regular appointment with the pulpit and the pro- 
 fessor's chair. 
 
 As has often been the case with distinguished English 
 men of letters, he won his first more emphatic recognition 
 in America. In 1852 Crosby and Nichols of Boston 
 brought out a volume of his essays with the title of Mis- 
 cellanies, under the editorial care of Thomas Starr King. 
 In 1858 the American Unitarian Association brought out 
 another and fuller volume entitled Studies of Christianity, 
 edited by William R. Alger. A little later he was invited 
 to visit Boston and give a course of lectures before the 
 Lowell Institute, and had he come these profound and 
 brilliant books would have prepared for him a flattering 
 welcome. He gave the invitation a favorable answer ; but 
 the first interest of our people was drafted into the stern
 
 LONDON 89 
 
 issues of the Civil War, Mr. Martineau, like many another 
 Englishman, was of South-side sympathy, and the engage- 
 ment was postponed to another day that never dawned. 
 
 There came a change. University College had been . 
 established in London on that broad principle of " free 
 learning" which Manchester New College had struggled 
 so long and so heroically to make secure. To a cer- 
 tain extent the two institutions became competitors, and 
 Manchester New College suffered from the competition. 
 Lay students were attracted to the younger and better 
 equipped institution. The decision was made to make 
 the rival an ally; and in 1853 Manchester New College 
 was moved to London. She here gave up in the main 
 her secular courses, for which the confederate institution 
 could the better care, and confined herself to theology and 
 allied studies. 
 
 This change brought extra tax upon Mr. Martineau. 
 Manchester was one hour from Liverpool; London was 
 six hours ; and this long journey must be taken to keep 
 appointment with his classes. He was obliged to make 
 longer and less frequent visits, compressing into a day 
 or two days work that would better have been distributed 
 through four or five. Of course the arrangement was 
 wearisome and unsatisfactory. 
 
 For four years, however, it continued, until 1857, when 
 he was invited to come to London and devote all his time 
 to the College. The invitation was accepted ; and the 
 relations with his church, which twenty-five years of faith- 
 ful toil had consecrated, were sundered. On the second of 
 August he gave his parting sermon, in which he told his 
 people that the one deep faith that had determined his 
 word and work among them was the " living union of God 
 with our Humanity." This further passage for its touch of 
 mental history should be quoted : " Long did this faith 
 pine obscurely within me, ere it could find its way to any
 
 90 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 clear joy. It was not enough for me that God should, 
 — as they say, 'exist;' it was needful to have assurance 
 that he lives. It was a poor thought that he was the be- 
 ginning of all, if he stood aloof from it in its constancy. It 
 withered the inmost heart to believe that he dwelt and 
 never stirred in the universal space, and delegated all 
 to inexorable * Laws ; ' — laws that could never hear the 
 most piercing shriek, and looked with stony eyes on the 
 upturned face of agony. It seemed to stain the very 
 heaven to charge him with the origin of human guilt, and 
 represents him as first moulding men into sin, and then 
 punishing them out of it. A mere constructing and legis- 
 lating God, satisfied to adjust ' co-existences ' and estab- 
 lish ' successions ; ' who filled the cold sky, and brooded 
 over the waste sea, and watched upon the mountain- 
 head, and embraced the waxing and waning moon, and 
 suffered the tide of history to sweep through him without 
 heeding its most passionate and surging waves ; — a God 
 who wrung from us a thousand sighs that never touched 
 him, who broke us in remorse for ills that are not ours, — 
 who drew to him, day and night without ceasing, moans of 
 prayer he never answered; — such a One it was a vain 
 attempt really to trust and love. At times the faith in him 
 appeared but to turn the darkness of atheism into flame; 
 and, in its light, the face of this blessed life and universe 
 lost its fostering look, and seemed twisted into an Almighty 
 sarcasm. Nor could I ever feel that the permanent 
 stillness and personal inaccessibility of God was at all com- 
 pensated by exceptional miracle. An occasional * message ' 
 rather serves to render more sensible and undeniable the 
 usual absence and silence ; nor can the ' sender ' well say 
 to his servant, ' You go there ' without implying, ' I stay 
 here.' Merely to fling in to the Deist's ' God of nature ' 
 an historical fragment of miracle does little to meet the 
 exigencies of human piety. It is not * once upon a time,'
 
 LONDON 91 
 
 it is not 'now and then,' — nor is it on the theatre of 
 another's life to the exclusion of our own, — that we sigh 
 to escape from the bound movements of nature into the 
 free heart of God. We pine as prisoners, till we burst 
 into the air of that supernatural life which He lives eter- 
 nally : we are parched with a holy thirst, till we find con- 
 tact with the running waters of his quick affection. Him 
 immediately ; him in person ; him in whispers of the day, 
 and eye to eye by night ; him for a close refuge in temp- 
 tation, not as a large thought of ours but as an Almighti- 
 ness in himself; him ready with his moistening dews for 
 the dry heart, and his breathings of hope for the sorrow- 
 ing ; him always and everywhere living for our holy trust, 
 do we absolutely need for our repose, and wildly wander 
 till we find."i 
 
 The invitation to move to London was attended by an 
 incident that should not be passed unnoticed. English 
 Unitarianism was then, as ever, of old school and new; and 
 at the head of the College was John James Tayler. Against 
 Mr. Tayler it was possible to allege a wide departure from 
 Orthodox opinion ; but even theological animosity could do 
 no more. His learning was large, his insight profound, his 
 candor unflinching. Few have ever met their fellow-men 
 with gentler spirit or looked to God in sincerer worship. 
 
 At this time he had not written in support of the Tu- 
 bingen view of the Fourth Gospel, but he was known to be 
 in sympathy with German culture, and through him more, 
 perhaps, than through any other man was the influence of 
 Germany being felt in the liberal churches of England. 
 In fact, while as a worshipper he was of all schools, as a 
 scholar and thinker he was emphatically of the new. 
 Mr. Martineau was of the new school also, and known of 
 all men to be so; — hence an old-school panic. By the 
 side of such a man as Mr. Tayler shall we place such a 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 5 ^^5' 7-
 
 92 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 man as Mr. Martincau? Will it not be giving to new- 
 school opinions too preponderant an influence? Should 
 not Mr. Tayler be counterpoised by a representative of 
 less radical views? In pursuance of this feeling a protest 
 was circulated against Mr. Martineau's appointment. It 
 was signed numerously and by some of the best of men, 
 friends and even relatives of Mr. Martineau, who knew the 
 difference between truth and affection, and could be faithful 
 to both without confounding their offices. Indeed, if we may 
 judge from the prints of the time, a considerable feeling 
 was stirred, and the measure of Mr. Martineau's departure 
 from the standards of orthodox Unitarianism was freely 
 and even earnestly canvassed. The flurry passed like a 
 summer squall, after which all nature beams again. 
 
 Though the beginning of Mr. Martineau's connection 
 with the College in London was not free from anxiety, yet 
 on the whole his relations with it were exceedingly pleas- 
 ant. At its head and in the chair of Biblical and flistorical 
 Theology .was one of the most personal of his personal 
 friends, a brother of his heart; in the chair of Hebrew 
 Language and Literature was his own gifted son. Happy 
 the council of wisdom to which affection brings a grace ! 
 
 The number of students was not large, — in fact it was 
 very small. The catalogue, however, of those years bears 
 names that have since been widely mentioned, among them 
 Alexander Gordon, R. A. Armstrong, J. Estlin Carpenter, 
 Philip H. Wicksteed, — men who must have met him with 
 receptive and appreciative mind. In the work of instruc- 
 tion it was his custom to begin in Ethics with annotating 
 Paley and Butler ; and where lay the emphasis of his dis- 
 sent from the one and of approval of the other, it is not 
 difficult to divine. For more advanced students he wrote 
 elaborate courses, blending a discussion of principles with 
 an account of systems that stood for them ; in which who 
 will may see the incipient form of the great Types of Ethical
 
 LONDON 93 
 
 Theory. In the Philosophy of Religion it is easy to divine 
 what the instruction was from the mighty Study of Religion 
 it grew into. His lectures were revised and revised so as 
 to give due recognition to the last discovery and the latest 
 thought. 
 
 In logic he did not give himself the like laborious prep- 
 aration. Here text-books would serve him. He used not 
 one but many, — Hamilton, Mill, Mansel, Bain, — that the 
 student from " familiarity with several nomenclatures might 
 be the slave of none." ^ For its great value as discipline he 
 brought his classes to the page of Aristotle. 
 
 Some of his pupils tell with special satisfaction of read- 
 ings with him from the Greek, — mainly, if not wholly, of 
 Plato. It was an informal exercise, and for that reason the 
 more enjoyed. They tell of an accurate yet poetic ren- 
 dering, and a fine classical appreciation. 
 
 His lectures were read slowly, so that a student with 
 nimble fingers might take them very nearly as given. His 
 manner was grave and unimpassioned ; where great themes 
 are discussed before an audience of four or five the word 
 of wisdom may be spoken, but eloquence would look 
 quite foolish on the wing. 
 
 Yet another period of service as a minister was before 
 him. In 1858 Edward Taggart, for thirty years the min- 
 ister in Little Portland Street Chapel, died. Little Portland 
 Street Chapel, under his ministry, had stood for the older 
 and more dogmatic type of Unitarianism ; and the action 
 of the congregation at this juncture was a matter of denom- 
 inational surprise. The two men who more than any others 
 in England represented the newer and more elastic views 
 were J. J. Tayler and Mr. Martineau ; and to each the pul- 
 pit was offered. Neither, however, in connection with col- 
 lege duties was willing to undertake it alone ; and so both 
 were called to a joint pulpit service. In the terms of 
 
 ^ Charles Wicksteed.
 
 94 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 settlement there was the stipulation that there should be 
 expected of them no pastoral labors. 
 
 Little Portland Street Chapel should satisfy the most 
 austere demands for modesty and simplicity. As one 
 measures it with the eye, five hundred should fill it, and it 
 is plain almost to rudeness. When, however, one might 
 be sure of finding Mr. Tayler or Mr. Martineau in the 
 pulpit, there was no question where in London the largest 
 and loftiest word would be spoken ; and those seeking this, 
 in indifference to any standard of faith, were apt to find 
 their way thither. They came from far, not the many but 
 the chosen. Unitarianism, however, is not a favored faith in 
 London, and the great word without popular accessories 
 draws the masses nowhere. Mr. Tayler with his great intel- 
 lect and great soul had yet a feeble voice ; Mr. Martineau had 
 voice enough, but in his utterance there was no declamation; 
 and it required the alert intellect to keep pace with him. 
 It was, however, a remarkable audience. Not unnaturally 
 the students of the College came to hear their professors ; 
 in one part of the assembly sat Charles Dickens ; in another 
 Frances Power Cobbe, who found the place with all its bald- 
 ness a fitting one " for serious people to meet to think in ; " 
 in yet another Sir Charles Lyell, who spoke with bitterness 
 of the place where England hid her greatest preacher; and 
 withal there was a very plentiful sprinkling of those toiling 
 at the higher tasks of thought and learning. 
 
 This arrangement continued till 1869, when Mr. Tayler 
 died. Mr. Martineau succeeded to his place as Principal 
 of the College, and at the same time took the pulpit charge 
 alone. In the two offices he continued till 1872, when, 
 from the strain of unrelaxing labor, his health was begin- 
 ning to give way; and he laid down the pulpit burden. 
 
 During the sixties and seventies the busy pen toiled on 
 as heretofore, and many a page of the National and the 
 Theological reviews he ennobled and adorned. In i860
 
 LONDON 95 
 
 came the splendid paper on Nature and God, also a search- 
 ing review of Bain's Cerebral Psychology. In 1862 he 
 published the tremendous paper on Science, Nescience, and 
 Faith, a challenge of certain aspects of the philosophy of 
 Evolution, as presented in the newly published First Prin- 
 ciples. In 1863 he put forth a critique of Kenan's Vie de 
 Jtsiis, in which we meet the first distinct avowal of his 
 affiliation with Tubingen. During this and the following 
 year he printed two papers on Early Messianic Ideas, 
 which the reader will find profit in comparing with his 
 treatment of the same theme in the Scat of Authority. 
 
 In 1866 and 1867 W. V. Spencer of Boston brought out 
 two volumes of Mr, Martineau's magazine papers under 
 the title of Essays, Theological and Philosophical. These 
 won, from thinkers of all ranks, a grateful recognition. 
 The subject of Hymnology was ever near his mind ; and 
 in 1874 he brought out another hymn-book under the title 
 of Hymns of Praise and Prayer. His mind had undergone 
 many changes in the thirty-four years since the last hymn- 
 book was published, and Hymnology had been enriched by 
 the writing of many hymns of great value. The new book 
 was the old one revised to date by excisions and additions. 
 In the English Unitarian churches it had mainly the old 
 one to supplant, which it has very largely done, but not en- 
 tirely. In 1876 he published the first series of Hours of 
 Thought on Sacred Things, and in 1879 the second series. 
 These are collections of sermons of his later years, not 
 stronger than those in the volumes of Endeavors, but riper, 
 and surpassing them in mystic glow. In 1882 came the 
 volume on Spinoza, embracing the pleasantest account of 
 his life and the toughest analysis of his doctrine. 
 
 It was his biennial wont to open the college year with 
 an address to the students and alumni and friends. The 
 address opening the session of 1874 was notable both for 
 itself and what followed it. His subject was Religion as
 
 96 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Affected by Modern Materialism ; and his treatment of it 
 embraced a review of certain evolutionary doctrines then 
 much in vogue. His strictures upon these doctrines were 
 weighty, and Professor Tyndall, knight ever ready to do 
 battle for his faith, took up the gauntlet. The contest, 
 though ruled by all chivalries, was inspired by all ardors ; 
 and the author and defender of the Belfast Address did 
 Truth inestimable service by provoking Moderji Material- 
 ism : its Attitude towa^'ds Theology, a rejoinder that hon- 
 ored and overwhelmed him. 
 
 To follow his career in close detail is perhaps not de- 
 sirable. One day at the College was much like another; 
 the occasional address or essay was but a variation of a 
 familiar nobleness ; his domestic peace and social intima- 
 cies were too beautiful to be eventful. 
 
 In the main, his days passed in quiet joys and ennobling 
 labors. In 1866, however, he became the centre of a con- 
 tention which was earnest, and not unattended with ill 
 feeling. The chair of Logic and Mental Philosophy in 
 University College was made vacant, and Mr. Martineau 
 was put in nomination for the place. The professorial 
 body, the senate of the College, were unanimous in his 
 favor; and with their indorsement his name went to the 
 Council, with whom was the final decision. Here opposi- 
 tion was encountered, led by none other than George Grote. 
 
 Nobody questioned Mr. Martineau's ample attainments ; 
 and no one would more surely than he have restricted 
 himself to his appointed tasks, and held aloof from his 
 lecture-room all themes that were irrelevant. There are 
 names, however, that are a red flag in themselves, and Mr. 
 Martineau's in this issue was such. University College 
 was founded on a secular basis ; Mr. Martineau was a 
 theologian, bearing a very active part in a theological 
 institution ; he was also a pronounced and influential 
 Unitarian. Neither nor both these objections could satisfy 
 pure reason ; but the latter alone was enough to satisfy
 
 LONDON 97 
 
 a theological, the former an anti-theological, antipathy ; 
 and both were here. Mr. Martineau's friends urged that 
 the principle of secularization did not require that a man 
 be held disqualified for the position because of his the- 
 ology, but that he should receive appointment without 
 regard to it; nay, that to deny appointment because of 
 one's religious faith was to set aside that principle. The 
 point was well taken ; but Mr. Grote wanted no theologian, 
 and there were others who wanted no Unitarian, — who felt 
 that Unitarian influence in the College was already suffi- 
 ciently great, or who feared that the appointment of a 
 Unitarian so prominent as Mr. Martineau would be the 
 occasion of popular suspicion from which the College 
 would suffer. The debate was taken up by the press, and 
 language was used too emphatic to be inoffensive. Some 
 of the best men in England were on Mr. Martineau's side, 
 among them Mr. Gladstone. In the Council the vote was 
 a tie, and the issue was decided against Mr. Martineau by 
 the chairman. In indignation at the result, one of the 
 most distinguished professors in the College, Mr. De 
 Morgan, threw up his position. 
 
 The position of itself was not one for which Mr. Marti- 
 neau could have greatly cared ; it would have added little 
 to his income and nothing to his honor. The loss was 
 clearly with the institution whose custodians had denied to 
 it his splendid powers. That the contest, however, gave 
 him a transitory pain there is reason to believe ; and not 
 unlikely, with him as with so many others, the keener re- 
 gret was that an institution so great should have so failed 
 of the nobler standard. 
 
 A little later, in 1869, Mr. Martineau had a good deal 
 to do with the formation of a Metaphysical Club which 
 gained a wide celebrity. The origin of the Club is inter- 
 esting. The plan seems originally to have arisen in the 
 mind of Tennyson, though it owed much to the further- 
 
 7
 
 98 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ance of Mr. Knowles, editor of the Nineteenth Century}- 
 Its purpose, as originally conceived, was to combat agnos- 
 ticism. Several had been found willing to join it, among 
 them Archbishop, afterwards Cardinal, Manning, when Mr. 
 Martineau was invited. Looking into the plan, he de- 
 murred. He was willing to join a club to combat agnos- 
 ticism, but it must not exclude agnostics whose doctrines 
 were to be combated. He would meet them in a tourna- 
 ment of thought, knight against knight, but on no other 
 plan could the Club interest him. 
 
 This revision of the plan seemed at first impracticable. 
 As it was mentioned abroad, however, it met a favorable 
 response, and on this basis the Club was founded. It was 
 a society of leading metaphysicians, theologians, scientists, 
 and men of literary pursuits, selected without respect to 
 philosophical or theological bias. Archbishop Manning 
 was of it; also the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops 
 of Bristol and Peterborough. Professor Maurice was of 
 the number, and Dean Stanley, likewise Sir John Lubbock, 
 William B. Carpenter, Thomas Huxley, Professor Clifford, 
 Frederic Harrison, with many others of not less celebrity. 
 
 1 Of this Club Mr. Martineau wrote Mr. Alger, November 25, 1869: " A 
 project, suggested I believe by Mr. Tennyson, has been started here, of a Meta- 
 physical Society for the thorough discussion of the ultimate grounds of in- 
 tellectual, moral, and religious belief. The scheme originated in a desire to 
 bring together from different sides the scattered representatives of a theisti- 
 cal philosophy, and present a strong front of resistance to the advance of 
 Positivism and the dogmatic Materialism of the newer science. On being 
 asked to join, I urged the absolute reciprocity of inviting the heads of the 
 negative party into the Society from the very first, and making the Society 
 unreservedly one of philosophical search, for patient and impartial com- 
 parison of ideas among differing equals. This principle has been adopted, 
 and Mill, Bain, and Tyndall have been asked to join, — with what result I 
 have not yet heard. Already Tennyson, Browning, Archbishop Manning, 
 Ward [Ultramontane editor of the Dublin Revieu^, Dean Stanley, F. D. 
 Maurice, R. H. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, Knowles [author of the King 
 Arthur legend, and friend of Tennyson], and, I believe, the Archbishop of 
 York, Dean Mansel, and the Duke of Argyll have given in their adhesion."
 
 LONDON 99 
 
 These representatives of most diverse schools of thought 
 became friendly and even sympathetic. " This," writes 
 Professor Huxley, " was a great surprise. We thought at 
 first it would be a case of Kilkenny cats. Hats and coats 
 would be left in the hall before the meeting, but there 
 would be no wearers left after it was over, to put them on 
 again. Instead we came to love each other like brothers. 
 We all expended so much charity that had it been money 
 we should have been bankrupt." The same picturesque 
 pen also describes the society as " that singularly rudder- 
 less ship, the stalwart oarsmen of which were mostly en- 
 gaged in pulling as hard as they could against one another, 
 and which consequently performed only circular voyages 
 all the years of its commission." 
 
 The earliest meeting of the Club was June 2, 1869, and 
 the last. May 12, 1880. After the first year they met 
 quite regularly once a month ; August, September, and 
 October being always excepted. A dinner was served ; a 
 short paper was read, which was then made a bull's-eye 
 for target-practice. Some of the subjects are suggestive. 
 Professor Carpenter presents the Couimon-Settse View of 
 Causation ; Professor Huxley, the Views of Hume, Kant, 
 and Whatcly npon the Logical Basis of the Immortality of 
 the Soul ; also another paper in which he raises the ques- 
 tion whether the Frog has a Soul. Mr. Martineau brings 
 inquiry whether there is an Axiom of Causality. Mr. 
 Harrison discusses the Relativity of Knoivledge ; Mr. 
 Froude, Evidence; Mr. Clifford, the Scientific Basis of 
 Morality. Professor Huxley rises again to present his 
 views as to the Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrectiofi. 
 Mr. Harrison and Cardinal Manning both offer papers on 
 The Soul before and after Death. Such are samples of 
 the setting forth at this feast of reason. 
 
 Academic honors were slow in coming, but they came. 
 In 1872 Harvard University crowned him with an LL.D.
 
 lOO JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 In 1874 the University at Leyden gave him an S.T.D. 
 Somewhat later Edinburgh made him a D.D. Later still 
 Oxford honored him with a D.C.L. Last of all Dublin 
 University conferred upon him a Litt.D. Honors enough 
 surely to satisfy a reasonable ambition; and, if late in 
 coming, they were the more indisputably earned. 
 
 In 1872 there came to him another testimonial, w^hich, 
 if not adding to the laurels of the scholar, was most 
 gratifying to the man. At the close of the college session, 
 as he was about leaving London, an interview was sought 
 with him, and, after a little explanation, a cheque for 5000 
 guineas was placed in his hand, with the intimation that 
 there was more to come. The sums that flowed in later 
 swelled the amount to ;^5900. With his approval, a por- 
 tion of this was devoted to the purchase of two pieces of 
 silver plate for domestic use. On these was inscribed the 
 following memorial: 
 
 PRESENTED 
 
 WITH 
 
 FIVE THOUSAND GUINEAS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 REVEREND JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 BY A LARGE NUMBER OF 
 
 HIS ENGLISH FRIENDS 
 
 AS A 
 
 MEMORIAL OF PERSONAL AFFECTION 
 
 AND IN 
 
 GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS SERVICES 
 
 IN THE MAINTENANCE OF 
 
 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM, 
 
 IN THE PROMOTION OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN TRUTH, 
 
 AND IN THE INCULCATION OF THAT 
 
 PURE MORALITY 
 
 WHICH IS THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 PRIVATE AND PUBLIC VIRTUE 
 
 AND THE SAFEGUARD OF 
 
 NATIONAL LIBERTY. 
 
 June, 1S72.
 
 LONDON lOI 
 
 Accompanying the gift was an address from which I 
 quote the following: "Originating in a desire that the 
 shortcomings of the past may be repaired, however in- 
 adequately, in the case of one distinguished example of 
 the material injustice usually sustained in England by the 
 instructors of the intellect, and especially by men who 
 become pioneers and leaders of thought and opinion, this 
 movement nevertheless owes its force to mingled motives 
 of gratitude, respect, and admiration. Some of the con- 
 tributors belong to a generation older than your own, . . . 
 many among them are your contemporaries; who have 
 striven hard to keep near you in the struggle of Endeavor 
 after the Christian Life, in which you have helped and led 
 them." 
 
 To this Mr. Martineau replied: " You speak of mingled 
 motives of this splendid gift. So far as it springs from 
 personal friendship and generous affection it can bring me, 
 however I may wonder at it, only the sincerest joy. But 
 to accept it as an arrears of justice over-due would be to 
 charge a wrong upon the past which I can in no way own. 
 Far from having any claim to plead, I am conscious that, 
 in account of services exchanged, I am debtor to the 
 world, and not the world to me; and am half ashamed 
 to have escaped so many of the privations on which I 
 reckoned when I quitted a secular profession for the 
 Christian ministry. My deepest disappointment has been 
 from myself and not from others, from whose hands I have 
 suffered no grievance I did not deserve, and received kind- 
 ness far beyond the measure of my boldest hopes. Who- 
 ever dedicates himself to bear witness to divine things is 
 the least consistent of men, if he does not lay his account 
 for a modest scale of outward life, and a frequent conflict 
 with resisting interests and opinions. Such incidents of 
 wholesome difficulty attending the study and exposition 
 of moral and religious truth are an essential guarantee that
 
 102 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 its service shall be one of disinterested love." Wholesome 
 words these, which it may not be in vain to commend to 
 the whiners over the ingratitude of the world ! A little 
 later, on his retirement from the Little Portland Street 
 Chapel, the flock to whom he had ministered presented 
 him the sum of ^^"3500, likewise a testimonial of "grati- 
 tude, respect, and admiration." 
 
 The ebbing strength, because of which he gave up the 
 pulpit, did not speedily flood again; and as the years 
 advanced, his friends became anxious respecting him. 
 Still he kept to his appointed tasks, but the old vigor and 
 spirit were not there. The cause may have been in part 
 within himself, but it was more in a shadow that was hover- 
 ing near, and a chilling anxiety and sorrow it was casting 
 on his heart. The fact was that the companion of these 
 many years, the sympathizer in his struggles, the com- 
 forter of his pains, and the sharer of his joys, was fading 
 before him. At length, in 1877, after a lingering malady, 
 she died. 
 
 After her death health gradually came back to him, 
 seeming to show that by taxing his sympathies she was 
 drawing him after her. For eight years more he held to 
 his customary routine. At length eighteen hundred and 
 eighty-five had come ; the sands of eighty years were run 
 down. 
 
 In full vigor of health and intellect, he yet realized that 
 the octogenarian is not a young man ; the feeling, too, 
 pleaded persuasively within him that the time yet allowed 
 him could be none too much to put in order the results of 
 his long years of study. That year brought out one of the 
 greatest of his works, the Types of Ethical Theory ; but 
 there were yet other tasks that required his undistracted 
 attention. He, therefore, signified to the trustees of the 
 College that at the end of the college year he should 
 resign.
 
 LONDON 103 
 
 The announcement was not unexpected, yet regret was 
 profound. For forty-five years he had given the institu- 
 tion the most faithful toil; it had been uplifted by his 
 genius; it had become famous through his fame. All 
 recognized the reason for his action, and, without vain 
 remonstrance, yielded to a decision which must be " wise 
 because it was his." One thing they would fain do : his 
 name, even without his official service, was valuable ; they 
 would retain him as their Principal, yet relieve him of all 
 toil and responsibility, a proposition to which he would 
 not for a moment listen. He suffered himself, however, to 
 be made president of the board of directors, in which 
 capacity he served for three years. 
 
 Accordingly, at the close of the college year, the last 
 of the following June, he laid down his office. The stu- 
 dents' dinner was made an occasion of which the chil- 
 dren of the young men present will surely tell the story. 
 Various speeches were made, bearing testimony to Mr. 
 Martineau's long and inestimable service to the College 
 and to the faith. A letter was handed him, signed by a 
 large number of his former pupils, testifying their gratitude 
 and affection. As is not known to all, there is a consider- 
 able Unitarian body in Hungary with an Episcopal organi- 
 zation. From this came a most appreciative address, 
 signed by their bishop. In it was this touching sentence : 
 " Your greatness is great because you were great in little 
 things." He also received an address from several former 
 students from Hungary who had been in attendance at the 
 College. 
 
 The address of Mr. Martineau on this occasion, evidently 
 impromptu, was one of great tenderness and beauty. He 
 spoke humorously of his long connection with the College ; 
 he went back to his own education and marked the many 
 changes that the years had wrought; he compared the 
 earlier with the more modern methods of education, in a
 
 104 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 vein of smiling disapproval of some aspects of latter-day 
 improvement. At length he got to himself, and thus 
 poured out his heart: — 
 
 " Though I speak no more within the old lecture halls, I 
 carry away with me a garland of hope that will never fade ; 
 and when I count the group which I trust to rejoin, — not 
 of parents, brethren, children only, but the guides and 
 quickeners of a later spiritual life ; Henry Turner, whose 
 death was my conversion, and sent me into the Christian 
 ministry; my fellow students, Franklin Haworth, John 
 Hugh Worthington, Francis Darbishire, bound to me in 
 common vows of duty and devotion ; the venerated John 
 Kenrick, who alone of my teachers lived on into my ma- 
 turest reverence ; Samuel Dunkinfield Darbishire, whose 
 Grecian calm, like a lake sleeping on a volcanic bed, 
 covered the ignes S7ippositos oi a noble enthusiasm; my 
 predecessor, John James Tayler, in whom the amplest 
 learning was steeped in purest sympathy, and held in de- 
 vout simplicity ; with others no less congenially present 
 in that sacred light ; — death softens the shadows of its 
 partings here, and meets me with a mild countenance 
 of welcome. 
 
 " But meanwhile, I have not yet quite done with the 
 world, or lost one jot of my interest in its persons and 
 affairs. Nor do I wish to turn the remainder of my days 
 into a siesta or a holiday. That, indeed, would be but a 
 graceless return for immunity from the infirmities of age ; 
 the strength unspent it would be unfaithful to leave idle or 
 unused. Some feeling of this kind, at least, it is that com- 
 mends to me Cicero's advice, Resistendum est sctiectnti, — • 
 resist it, that is, not with rebel pride as against a wrong, 
 but with delayed acceptance of a privilege. Welcome the 
 disability of age, when come it must, but do not invite it 
 by a lazy will." 
 
 To the Consistory of Hungarian Unitarians he wrote a
 
 LONDON 105 
 
 touching reply. Speaking of the profound impression 
 made by their address upon the audience, he goes on to 
 say: "If this was the feeling of an audience personally 
 unconcerned, how much more deeply moved must I have 
 been, to whom your words of tender greeting and benedic- 
 tion were addressed. I thank you for them with all the 
 fervor of a heart which age has not yet chilled, and with 
 the surprise of one who has earned no such distinguished 
 recognition at your hands. 
 
 " True it is that from youth the history of your venerable 
 Church has attracted me with all the interest of romance, 
 and served as a favorite example of reverent freedom and 
 heroic conscience, upheld and blended in the love of God. 
 But in thus directing my admiring gaze to the far East of 
 Europe, little did I dream that my look thitherward would 
 ever be returned, and that you would find out and meet 
 the quiet eye that wondered at your past and watched 
 your present life. 
 
 " It is without anxiety, therefore, that I quit the stress of 
 life and turn to the few possibilities that await my finish- 
 ing hand. That they are small and final brings me no 
 sadness. The merest remnants of the ' Great Taskmaster's ' 
 service are sacred, like the rest, and may still be wrought 
 out in love and prayer." 
 
 To the group of Hungarian students he wrote : "Towards 
 all other doctrines of the schools I have honestly tried 
 to maintain the expositor's attitude of impartial sus- 
 pense, till a position has been gained for final, critical 
 judgment. But one thing I have deemed it imperative 
 to assume and hold exempt from doubt, viz., — that Truth 
 is to be found, and that the instinctive prayer of the human 
 soul for vision is not itself the only gleam in an Eternal 
 darkness. Intellect itself would be an illusion, unless the 
 faculty to seek were the pledge and measure of the 
 faculty to learn, and in the catechism of the Reason no
 
 I06 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 question stood without an answer. . . . The faith which, 
 as prior to all reasoning, no reasoning can impair, is the 
 condition of all intellectual enthusiasm. . . . 
 
 " What can I add but an old man's blessing? My sym- 
 pathy is with you all ; your callings are without exception 
 worthy and noble ; though of deepest interest to me, from 
 personal experience, is the mission of those who bear the 
 message of Christ to men. His faith, his love, his self- 
 sacrifice, his life eternal, are to me the sanctifying crown of 
 all philosophy, the secret of union with God for the indi- 
 vidual soul, and the hope of redemption from the sins and 
 sorrows of mankind. My race is nearly run ; the fire 
 given me to bear flickers between dark and light ; but if, 
 ere its last spark drops into the stream, it should have 
 sufficed to kindle any torch of yours, and send it aglow 
 through its appointed stage, the prayer of my heart will be 
 fulfilled, though my name should but touch the water with 
 that momentary trace to be seen no more." 
 
 Thus answering applause with benediction, he laid down 
 his academic toils.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL 
 
 We have noticed, as our narrative has brought us to them, 
 his various books : the Rationale of Religious Inquiry, his 
 hymn-books, the Endeavors after the Christian Life, the 
 three collections of essays brought out by American pub- 
 lishers, the two volumes of Hours of Thought on Sacred 
 Things, the Study of Spinoza. These in their appearance 
 belong to the period of his activity, — all noble and useful, 
 yet none except the Spinoza representing long-sustained 
 and elaborate work. They were fruits wanting nothing of 
 ripeness, but dropped from the tree in advance of the har- 
 vest. With these alone he had been known abroad as the 
 noblest of preachers, the most studious of hymnologists, 
 the most incisive of critics ; but, save within the favored 
 circle of his immediate acquaintance, he had not been 
 known for the vast range of his scholarship and his great 
 powers of thought. The harvest through which these 
 were to be made known, was for the period of his retire- 
 ment. It began with the publication of the Types of 
 EtJiical Theory, which was in 1885, and very nearly syn- 
 chronous with his sundering of his college relations. 
 
 The work was brought out by the Clarendon Press in 
 two heavy volumes, and at once drew attention as a great 
 contribution to ethical thought. Considered not as a sys- 
 tem but with reference to its scholarship and range, the 
 century has hardly produced another ethical treatise that 
 is its equivalent. As a preparation for dealing with the
 
 I08 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 great ethical problems, there is probably no better work 
 in the English tongue than this, and its publication placed 
 him in the front rank of moral philosophers. 
 
 It is the work of many years ; in the main it had been 
 proved in the college lecture-room, and that year after 
 year, — its judgments tested, its learning enriched, its 
 statements chastened. While its logic is the severest, yet 
 on every page it glows with ethical enthusiasm. Then its 
 scope ! Of course it presents Dr. Martineau's own ethical 
 doctrine; but this in relation with many other doctrines, 
 and all in one vast organism of thought. His primary 
 classification shows ethical systems to take their origin 
 from the study of the universe or from the study of man. 
 He first deals with those drawn from the study of the uni- 
 verse. These he distinguishes as Physical or Metaphysical, 
 according as they build upon the outward and phenomenal 
 aspect of the universe or the metaphysical and real. Of 
 the former, or Physical type of doctrine, he finds a con- 
 sistent representative in Auguste Comte, and devotes to 
 him a searching and copious page. The latter, or Meta- 
 physical type, he finds divided into two branches, accord- 
 ing as man is conceived as a pre-existent entity, or as a 
 modal presentation of the Eternal Essence and Only 
 Reality. The first of these he distinguishes as Transcen- 
 dental, the second as Immanential. The Transcendental 
 type of doctrine, Plato by his genius has for all time 
 stamped as his own ; and to his teaching Dr. Martineau 
 devotes an exhaustive exposition. The Immanential, of 
 course, takes us to Spinoza. Spinoza's roots, however, 
 are in the movement of thought he brought to a conclu- 
 sion, and so the better to exhibit him the great Cartesians 
 are severally reviewed. This section is not easy reading, 
 but he who masters it has made his own, not only the 
 ethical outcome of the doctrine, but the cardinal features 
 of the Cartesian philosophy.
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL IO9 
 
 To these types of doctrine, the Physical and the Meta- 
 physical, the first volume is devoted. Its aim is to show 
 that, making the point of departure some aspect of the 
 universe, no satisfactory ethic can be won. 
 
 With the second volume he changes his point of depart- 
 ure ; instead of an aspect of the universe he begins with the 
 study of man ; and here we are introduced to a system of 
 intuitive doctrine which is Mr. Martineau's own. Of the 
 wealth of thought and the sustained eloquence of this sec- 
 tion of his work it were vain to attempt to tell. It is not 
 merely a thinker's conclusion ; it is a prophet's burden. 
 Completing his exposition, he passes critically upon mod- 
 ern systems of Hedonistic and Utilitarian doctrine, espe- 
 cially as set forth by Bentham and Mill and Spencer; and 
 these great thinkers were perhaps never brought to a more 
 searching arraignment. These, too, take their departure 
 from man ; but instead of recognizing in the " springs of 
 action " a guiding principle, as Conscience, they put all 
 these " springs " under the rule of one dominant end, which 
 is Pleasure or Utility. His doctrine is strictly Psychologi- 
 cal, tJieirs he distinguishes as Hetero-psychological ; and 
 in his struggle with them he fights the good fight for 
 the Sovereign whose voice he hears within him. But 
 the Hedonistic and Utilitarian are not the only forms of 
 Hetero-psychological doctrine ; there is the Dianoetic 
 doctrine of Cudworth and Clarke and Price, and the 
 ^Esthetic doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson ; and to 
 these he devotes the last quarter of the volume. Such is 
 the scope of this great work. In this vast tract of dis- 
 cussion there is hardly an important phase of ethical 
 theory, whether of the ancient schools or the modern ones, 
 if we may except the Hegelian, which is not exhibited 
 either directly or by implication. To know this work is 
 to know ethical philosophy, as it can be learned probably 
 from no other single treatise.
 
 no JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 The preface to this work has attracted special interest 
 for a passage or two of mental history which it contains, 
 and in which the general bearing of the work is incidentally 
 shown, " When," says he, " I first woke up, before and 
 during my College life, to the interest of moral and meta- 
 physical speculations, I carried into them, from previous 
 training for the profession of civil engineer, a store of ex- 
 clusively scientific conceptions, rendered familiar in the 
 elementary study of mathematics, mechanics, and chem- 
 istry. Small as it was, it was my all, and necessarily dic- 
 tated the only rules of judgment which I could apply. I 
 had nothing to take with me into logical and ethical prob- 
 lems but the maxims and postulates of physical knowledge; 
 and as the instructions of the philosophical classroom, ex- 
 cellent of their kind, moved strictly within the same limits, 
 I was inevitably shut up in the habit of interpreting the 
 human phenomena by the analogy of external nature. 
 Steeped in the * empirical ' and ' necessarian ' mode of 
 thought, I served out successive terms of willing captivity 
 to Locke and Hartley, to Collins, Edwards, and Priestley, 
 to Bentham and James Mill; and though at times I was 
 driven to disaffection by the dogmatism and acrid humours 
 of the last two of these philosophers, my allegiance 
 was restored and brightened by literary and personal 
 relations with the younger Mill. His vast knowledge, his 
 intellectual conscientiousness, his analytical skill, his sin- 
 cere humanity, presented the excellences of his school in 
 so finished a form as to proclaim him its undisputed cory- 
 phaeus, and reanimate the confidence of its disciples." 
 
 A little further on he writes : " It was the irresistible 
 pleading of the moral consciousness which first drove me 
 to rebel against the limits of the merely scientific concep- 
 tion. It became incredible to me that nothing was pos- 
 sible except the actual ; and the naturalistic uniformity 
 could no longer escape some breach in its closed barrier
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARIL\BLE TESTIMONIAL 1 1 1 
 
 to make room for the ethical alternative. The secret mis- 
 givings which I had always felt at either discarding or 
 perverting the terms which constitute the vocabulary of 
 character — ' responsibility,' ' guilt,' ' merit,' * duty ' — 
 came to a head, and insisted upon speaking out and 
 being heard ; and to their reiterated question, * Is there 
 then no ought to be other than zuhat is?' I found the 
 negative answer of Diderot intolerable, and all other 
 answer impossible. This involved a surrender of deter- 
 minism, and a revision of the doctrine of causation : or 
 rather, I should say, a recall of the outlawed causes from 
 their banishment and degradation to the rank of antece- 
 dents ; and constituted therefore a retrograde movement 
 on the line of Comte's law, back from physics to meta- 
 physics; terminating in the definition that a cause is that 
 which determines the indeterminate." The full signifi- 
 cance of this transition even these two great volumes are 
 not enough to show. 
 
 In his letter to the Consistory of Hungarian Unitarians, he 
 spoke of the " small and final " " possibilities " that awaited 
 his " finishing hand." Can it be possible that in these 
 terms he refers to the Study of Religion ? This was the 
 next work, and appeared in two volumes in 1888. It was 
 welcomed by leaders of all schools of religious thought as 
 one of the mightiest defences of fundamental truth. As 
 the Types of Ethical Theory brought him to a leading 
 place among Moral Philosophers, so this placed him in 
 the foremost rank of Philosophers of Religion. In the 
 main, it is laborious reading; there are portions of it over 
 which even the trained student must linger, and sometimes 
 long. The statement lacks nothing of clearness ; illustra- 
 tion is felicitous; but the severities of style, the profound 
 analyses, the deep insights, the vast marshalling of knowl- 
 edge, impose exactions which only the alert and patient 
 intellect can meet.
 
 112 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 To give a detailed account of the work in a notice so 
 brief is, of course, impossible. It traverses the great 
 themes with which the Philosophy of Religion must deal, 
 — Knowledge, Cause, the Intellectual and Moral Aspects 
 of the Universe, Personality, Pantheism, Freedom, Immor- 
 tality, — with a scope too large and a presentation too 
 deep for brief and intelligible summary. There is, how- 
 ever, a brief section of the work in which the spirit and 
 general philosophy of the whole are compressed, and 
 from which a few quotations may be made ; and that is 
 the invaluable Introduction, by common consent one of 
 the most eloquent passages of all his writings. 
 
 He begins by defining Religion as " belief in an Ever- 
 living God, that is, a Divine Mind and Will ruling the 
 Universe and holding Moral relations with mankind." 
 It is, he tells us, " at once a mode of thought and a mode 
 of feeling; nor does it matter to their indissoluble union 
 which of the two you put into the prior place ; whether 
 you trust first the instinct of intuitive reverence, and see 
 the reality of God emerge as its postulate ; or whether, 
 having intellectually judged that He is there, you sur- 
 render yourself to the awe and love of that infinite pres- 
 ence. These intense affections, rich in elements of wonder, 
 admiration, reverence, culminate in worship ; and, break- 
 ing thus into visible expression, reveal to others the 
 invisible faith to which they inseparably belong. It is 
 only our artificial analysis that separates the two, and 
 insists on calling the intellectual side of the fact a tJieologyy 
 the afifectional a religiony ^ 
 
 An Ever-living God, a Divine Mind and Will ! a Personal 
 Creator and Ruler ! — for the validity of this conception, 
 and its supreme significance in any religion worthy the 
 name, he rises to the great argument. 
 
 The conception is an old one, it is the widely prevalent 
 
 ^ P-3-
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL II 3 
 
 one ; but it has been fiercely challenged in recent years, 
 and its absolute importance to religion has been called in 
 question by men held great and wise. Among these is J. 
 R. Seeley, who in his Natural Religion, " waters " Religion 
 down to " habitual and permanent admiration!' Consist- 
 ently with this definition he makes devotion to art or 
 science or letters or morals a form of Religion, though in 
 the outlook upon the universe there be recognized only 
 the "sequences" and "coexistences" of phenomena, no 
 Causal Intelligence being discerned within them or behind 
 them. This devotion he dignifies with the name of Theism. 
 To a man of science to whom, as to Comte and Laplace, 
 the " cosmos is all in all," God is a " synonym for nature ; " 
 and, contemplating it, he is as if in the " presence of an in- 
 finite and eternal being." This extraordinary " watering 
 down," Dr. Martineau meets early in his page, and honors 
 with reply : " There might be some excuse for this para- 
 doxical statement, if its author were dealing with the 
 Poets personification of nature as an infinite organism, 
 looking with deepest expression into the human soul; for 
 the conception does really, for the moment, both unify 
 and animate the world, and brighten up its face as with a 
 flash of inner meaning from beneath its form; and, while 
 this vision lasts, there is a transient immanence of mind 
 with which the seer may commune. But, the assertion is 
 expressly made of that lowest view of nature which, like 
 Comte's, rids the observer of all ideas of causality or 
 power, and resolves the All into phenomena, related only 
 in time and place, in resemblance and difference, and 
 simply grouped into sets under these heads. The deifica- 
 tion of such bundles of facts [and 'laws ' are nothing else], 
 the transference of the name God to the sum of them, 
 the recognition of their study as Theism, involve a deg- 
 radation of language and a confusion of thought, which 
 are truly surprising in the distinguished author of ' Natural 
 
 8
 
 114 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Religion.' The subversion of established meanings for 
 familiar terms is already begun in the very title of his 
 book: by 'Natural Religion' has hitherto been under- 
 stood ' what may be known of the invisible God through the 
 things whicJi he has made, even his everlasting power and 
 divinity ; ' but here it means, instead of the teachings of 
 nature about God, the substitution of nature for God, the 
 actual dispensing from thought of everything but nature, 
 and the attempt to concentrate upon it the affections 
 previously reserved for him : in other words, nature-wor- 
 ship in place of divine worship!' ^ 
 
 Mr. Seeley's mind is drawn to the familiar alternative of 
 miracle and law, with a decided bias in favor of the latter, 
 as the exponent of the ultimate truth of the universe ; and 
 he seems to feel, as careless thinkers have often done, that 
 where all is ordered there can be no supernatural. To 
 this Dr. Martineau makes answer: "If we were simply 
 classifying phenomena, certainly the author's bifurcate 
 division would hold good : they must come about either 
 conformably, or inconformably, with some given rule : they 
 would be either natural, or extra-natural : the affirmation 
 of the one would be the negation of the other. But the 
 question whether ' Nature ' [in the sense oi all that happens'] 
 is indeed the totality of existence, is a question not between 
 one mode of happening and another, but between all hap- 
 penings and the never-happening whence they come, be- 
 tween the time event and its eternal ground, between the 
 phenomenal sum, from end to end, and the non-phenom- 
 enal presence without which they cannot emerge into 
 thought at all. Change has no meaning, and no possibil- 
 ity, but in relation to the permanent, which is its prior 
 condition ; and pile up as you may your * co-existent and 
 successive' mutabilities, that patient eternal abides behind, 
 and receives an everlasting witness from them, whether 
 
 1 pp. s-6.
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL 1 1 5 
 
 heeded or unguessed. Here it is, in this intellectual pre- 
 supposition of any emerging world, this prior condition of 
 the natural, that we meet a persistent ' supernatural,' in the 
 idea of which the very essence of the religious problem 
 lies, and without reference to which the order of nature 
 can tell us of nothing but itself; for God is not there. 
 Nature therefore can never swallow up the supernatural, 
 any more than time can swallow up eternity : they subsist 
 and are intelligible only together; and nothing can be 
 more mistaken than to treat them as mutually exclu- 
 sive. . . . But though there is no antagonism between 
 them, antithesis there certainly is; and nothing can be 
 more misleading than to say that ' God is merely a synonym 
 for nature.' The attributes of nature are birth, growth, 
 and death ; God can never begin or cease to be : nature 
 is an aggregate of effects ; God is the universal cause : 
 nature is an assemblage of objects ; God is the infinite 
 Subject of which they are the expression : nature is the 
 organism of intelligibles ; God is the eternal intellect itself. 
 Cut these pairs asunder ; take away the unchangeable, the 
 causal, the manifesting Subject, the originating Thought ; 
 and what is left is indeed ' Nature,' but, thus bereft and 
 alone, is the negation and not the ' synonym ' of God." ^ 
 
 It is the manifest aim of Natural Religion, by broaden- 
 ing the conception of Religion, to mitigate its contentions. 
 By embracing art and science within its demesne the author 
 would bring an end to the antagonism between it and them. 
 This aspect of the book draws from Dr. Martineau the fol- 
 lowing eloquent passage : " Heartily as I would welcome the 
 enthusiasms for knowledge and for art, as well as for Right, 
 into the circle of religious affinities, and recognize in their 
 noblest representatives an inspiration akin to that of genu- 
 ine piety ; emphatically therefore as I deny that there is 
 any uncongeniality between the modern culture and the 
 
 1 pp. 7-8-
 
 Il6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ancient sanctities, I yet must hold that, in the order of de- 
 pendence, these minor forms of devoutness hang upon the 
 major; and that if we are to give them a home in the 
 widened category of ReHgion, it must be as children of 
 the house and not as wielding its supreme authority. 
 Their functions are sacred, because concerned with a uni- 
 verse already consecrate by a Divine presence, gleaming 
 through all its order and loveliness : suppose its inner mean- 
 ing gone, let its truth be only useful and its beauty only 
 pleasant, and would any lofty genius be taken captive by 
 them, and bow before them? Rightly enough are the man 
 of science and the true artist called ministering priests of 
 nature : but this they could not be, unless nature were a 
 temple filled with God. If there be no sanctuary and no 
 Shekinah there, there is no inner meaning for them to inter- 
 pret ; and the account of it is complete in the measure of its 
 proportions and the inventory of its contents. If you place 
 me face to face, not with an infinite hving spirit, but only 
 with what is called ' the Great Necessity^ what enthusiasm 
 do you expect the vision to excite? Can there be a more 
 paralyzing spectacle? and shall I flingmyself with passion- 
 ate devotion into the arms of that ghastly physical giant? 
 It is impossible : homage to an automaton-universe is no 
 better than mummy-worship would be to one who has 
 known what it is to love and trust, and embrace the living 
 friend. In short, a human soul so placed would itself be 
 higher than aught it knows within th . immensity, and 
 could worship nothing there without idolatry." ^ 
 
 Thus the wonderful page goes on, — philosophy enrap- 
 tured with the poet's vision and touched by the prophet's 
 fire. Towards the close he consecrates the universe in 
 these words : " The rule of right, the symmetries of char- 
 acter, the requirements of perfection, are no provincialisms 
 of this planet: they are known among the stars: they 
 
 1 pp. II-I2.
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL 11/ 
 
 reign beyond Orion and the Southern Cross : they are 
 wherever the universal Spirit is ; and no subject mind, 
 though it fly on one track for ever, can escape beyond 
 their bounds. Just as the arrival of light from deeps that 
 extinguish parallax bears witness to the same ether there 
 that vibrates here, and its spectrum reports that one chem- 
 istry spans the interval, so does the law of righteousness 
 spring from its earthly base and embrace the empire of 
 the heavens, the moment it becomes a communion between 
 the heart of man and the life of God." ^ 
 
 With the publication of this great work it was generally 
 supposed that his labors were ended. He was eighty-three 
 years of age, — time, as we ordinarily think, not to " take 
 in sail," but to cast anchor in the harbor. Astonishment 
 was wide when two years later appeared the Seat of Author- 
 ity in Religion. Several years before he had published a 
 series of theological papers in the Old and New, a maga- 
 zine of noble promise that died ere the fulfilment of its 
 expectation ; and these we were pleased to meet again in 
 the earlier section of the volume. The remaining portion, 
 however, more than five hundred ample pages, had been 
 w'ritten since the publication of the Study. 
 
 That in range of knowledge, keenness of insight, vigor 
 of statement or nobility of feeling, this volume falls behind 
 its predecessors, no competent critic could maintain. It 
 traverses themes, however, in dealing with which the aver- 
 age Christian mind is more sensitive, — the nature of 
 Religious Authority, the Authority of Scripture, the Gen- 
 uineness of the Canon, the Person and Work of Jesus, 
 Union with God ; and in the treatment there is a peremp- 
 tory challenge of prevalent modes of thought. Not un- 
 naturally, therefore, it brought upon him a tempest of 
 criticism, though for most part of the feebler sort. In 
 reading it over it is astonishing to find how prevaihngly it 
 
 1 p. 26.
 
 Il8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 is partisan depreciation rather than a valiant grappHng 
 with his teachings. 
 
 Though written so late in life, it shows his intellect at 
 full vigor; it has the freshness of new enterprise. Of all 
 his works it is the most variously learned, and of no other 
 is the style so popular. 
 
 Another important task was before him : soon after the 
 publication of the Seat of Authority he set about bringing 
 together a selection of his literary papers. These appeared 
 in four goodly volumes, under the title of Essays, Reviews, 
 and Addresses. Next came a volume of Home Prayers, his 
 Pax Vobiscuin. 
 
 We have passed an incident which it were hardly par- 
 donable not to narrate. We have noticed very significant 
 testimonials to his worth and service ; here is another testi- 
 monial of which it were not easy to find a parallel. Soon 
 after the appearance of the Study of Religion a movement 
 was set on foot, under the guidance of Prof. William 
 Knight of the University of St. Andrews, to greet him 
 on his eighty-third birthday with an appropriate tribute. 
 The form conceived was that of an address, signed by lead- 
 ing scholars and thinkers of Europe and America, without 
 distinction of sect or party. The time was short, and so 
 the intent was not realized in the fulness of its scope ; yet 
 was the enterprise a most notable success. The Address, 
 drawn up and sent to various friends for criticism, received 
 its final revision at the hand of Benjamin Jowett. After 
 the introductory paragraph it went on to say: "We thank 
 you for the help which you have given to those who seek 
 to combine the love of truth with the Christian life : we 
 recognize the great services which you have rendered to 
 the study of the Philosophy of Religion : and we congratu- 
 late you on having completed recently two great and im- 
 portant works, at an age when most men, if their days are 
 prolonged, find it necessary to rest from their labours.
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL II 9 
 
 " You have taught your generation that, both in poHtics 
 and rehgion, there are truths above party, independent of 
 contemporary opinion, and which cannot be overthrown, 
 for their foundations are in the heart of man ; you havfc 
 shewn that there may be an inward unity transcending the 
 divisions of the Christian World, and that the charity and 
 sympathy of Christians are not to be hmited to those who 
 bear the name of Christ; you have sought to harmonize 
 the laws of the spiritual with those of the natural world, 
 and to give to each their due place in human life ; you 
 have preached a Christianity of the spirit, and not of the 
 letter, which is inseparable from morality ; you have 
 spoken to us of a hope beyond this world ; you have given 
 rest to the minds of many. 
 
 " We admire the simple record of a long life passed in 
 the strenuous fulfilment of duty, in preaching, in teaching 
 the young of both sexes, in writing books of permanent 
 value, a life which has never been distracted by contro- 
 versy, and in which personal interests and ambitions have 
 never been allowed a place. 
 
 " In addressing you we are reminded of the words of 
 Scripture, ' His eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
 abated,' and we wish you yet a few more years both of 
 energetic thought and work, and of honoured rest." 
 
 It bore between six and seven hundred signatures of 
 those whose " praise was fame." The first signature was 
 that of Tennyson ; the next was that of Robert Browning, 
 followed by the names of Benjamin Jowett, G. G. Bradley, 
 Dr. E. Zeller of Berlin, F. Max Muller, W. E. H. Lecky, 
 Edwin Arnold, E. Renan, Otto Pfleiderer ; a long list of 
 Professors of St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, 
 Oxford ; of the Universities of Jena, Berlin, Groningen, 
 Amsterdam, Leiden ; of Harvard University, the Andover 
 Theological School — its entire board of instruction, of 
 Johns Hopkins University ; of members of Parliament in
 
 120 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 long array; of distinguished Americans, — James Russell 
 Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frederic H. Hedge, 
 Phillips Brooks, Philip Schaff; a great number of clergy- 
 men, of England, France, Germany, Holland, America, — 
 the leaders of all schools of Protestant Christian thought. 
 Party distinctions were lost to view in the common recog- 
 nition of a common benefactor. As one scans the list 
 of names and marks the many that are the lustre of our 
 age, leaders in letters, science, philosophy, theology, and 
 public service, he is likely to query whether a nobler 
 tribute could have been offered. The only names con- 
 spicuously absent are those of men of science, espe- 
 cially of those of agnostic tendencies ; and some of these, 
 unable to subscribe to all the terms of the Address, sent 
 him their personal acknowledgment. The Address and 
 signatures were offered him in a book of surpassing 
 elegance. 
 
 Dr. Martineau's reply was characteristically modest; 
 and whoever can, may believe the free movement of his 
 pen was not interfered with by a throbbing of his heart : 
 " You will not wonder that the Address which you sent to 
 me on the 2ist ult. has overwhelmed me and put me to 
 silence for some days, rendering as it does my eighty-third 
 birthday the most memorable of my life. But I must not 
 longer wait for what can never come, — the power of fitly 
 expressing the wondering gratitude with which I read, in 
 its paragraphs and signatures, assurances of respect and 
 affection impressive from their number and priceless from 
 their source. To be held of any account by the elite of 
 those to whom I have habitually looked up, including rep- 
 resentatives from the foremost ranks of literature, science, 
 philosophy, religion, and personal character, is an honour 
 simply mysterious to me. * Ea est profecto jiicunda laiis, 
 qucB ab Us proficiscitur, qui ipsi in laude vixerunt! To 
 such an escort down the declining path of life, what can
 
 LATER PUBLICATIONS ; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL 121 
 
 an old man do but throw out a few faltering words of 
 thanks, and love, and reverence? 
 
 " The studies and duties of my life have centered upon 
 subjects which at once draw men into closest union, and 
 part them in widest severance, and so render the due com- 
 bination of intensity with catholicity of afifection, one of 
 the rarest of human excellences. All the more striking is 
 the abounding evidence of its presence in the list of names 
 attached to your Address — names, not only supplied 
 from variously contrasted schools of thought and faith, 
 but even sent in by the very authors whom I have had 
 occasion to criticize and controvert. Deeply as I am 
 touched by this as a trait of personal generosity, I honour 
 it no less as an insight into the philosopher's secret — that, 
 often, differing conceptions, if in one direction opening 
 into divergencies of opinion, converge in the other and 
 close upon the truth. 
 
 " To those who, though unable to subscribe to every 
 clause in the Address, have yet signified their wish to be 
 associated with its general purport of sympathy and con- 
 gratulation, I cannot refrain from tendering my cordial 
 acknowledgments, not only for what they express, but for 
 the solid guarantee for its serious meaning and sincerity 
 in what they withhold. Such residue of approval as, in 
 hearts thus scrupulously honourable, can still be spared to 
 me, is all the more precious from its fidelity to truth. 
 
 "Among the signatures from foreign lands are some 
 names dear to me as those of former pupils, now occupy- 
 ing posts of honourable service, whether for Church or 
 University, in the East of Europe. But I also see the 
 autographs of many distinguished scholars and philoso- 
 phers whom I have long regarded with the homage due to 
 intellectual benefactors. In several instances the appear- 
 ance of their names is the more grateful to me because, as 
 I know it does not imply philosophical agreement, it can
 
 122 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 only mean that, in what they have seen of my writings, 
 they find something to approve in the matter or the spirit 
 of the discussions. To no ampler encouragement do I 
 aspire than such witness from such men." 
 
 The life had yet other years before it; but here the 
 story of the labor endeth. With his last book his task 
 was performed, his message was delivered ; and there now 
 awaited that period of " honoured rest " which the Address 
 prayed for him. Not, indeed, a period of idleness; offices 
 of love and blessing he was still to find and to discharge. 
 Yes, and something of the old service too : when the 
 newly discovered Gospel of Peter was a dominant interest, 
 his eager mind plunged into its study, and his facile pen 
 enriched the Nineteenth Century with a critical judgment 
 of it. When Balfour's Foundations of Belief was a fresh 
 wonder, though at the great age of ninety, he appeared in 
 the same magazine with an elaborate discussion of its con- 
 tents, which showed nothing more clearly than that " his 
 eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." For a 
 volume of sermons ^ by his friend and early comrade, John 
 Hamilton Thorn, he furnished a Memorial Preface of great 
 interest and tenderness. Still the strenuousness of life was 
 past; the sunrise could bear him cheer, and not at the 
 same time a summons to an exigent and relentless service. 
 He had opportunity for the greetings of love and the testi- 
 monies of appreciation ; opportunity, too, to note in its 
 trace upon other minds the significance of his labors, and 
 to gain some foretaste of the fame that posthumously 
 awaited him. 
 
 1 A Spiritual Faith.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HIS INTELLECT 
 
 Among the impressions derived from the preceding pages 
 must surely be that of unusual work, unusual both in 
 amount and in variety. By his labors must one prove 
 himself a Hercules or no ; and here we come to a provi- 
 sional estimate of Mr. Martineau's powers. For twenty- 
 eight years he discharged all the offices of a metropolitan 
 clergyman, answering, too, the numberless calls which con- 
 spicuous ability and acknowledged leadership brought him. 
 For ten other years, alternating with a colleague, he kept 
 regular appointment with a pulpit ; and for yet four other 
 years he bore the burden of pulpit toil alone. We thus 
 foot up forty-two years of clerical service. Taking into 
 account the severe standard to which he held himself, here, 
 according to our common way of thinking, is a very fair 
 life's work ; and one should pass unchallenged to the king- 
 dom of Rest who has this record for credential. But we 
 have to add forty-five years as college professor, during 
 eleven of which he was also college principal. His de- 
 partment, too, was one that laid upon him the severest 
 exactions : he was surrounded by inquisitive young men 
 who must be instructed in the lore of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, who must be led in paths hewn out by Descartes 
 and Hume, and to whom the vast regions of German 
 Philosophy and Theology must be laid open. From his 
 position, also, he must keep a watchful eye on contem- 
 porary movements of thought, ready to meet any Mill or
 
 124 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Mansel with critical challenge or approval. Through this 
 long period worthily to have filled this office and done no 
 more, filled it as he filled it, had been to perform the hfe- 
 work of an able and industrious man. He had then left a 
 memory rather than a record, but it had been a memory 
 of faithful and laborious years. But we have now to add 
 his literary labors, which, as measured by his published 
 works, are in amount not less than the score of volumes it 
 taxed the great powers of Carlyle to bring forth. His 
 writings, too, wear never a slipshod and extempore look, 
 but show always the thinker's toil, the scholar's diligence, 
 the rhetorician's care. A part of this work is, indeed, the 
 outcome of pulpit and professorial labors ; yet a complete 
 collection of his printed writings should show a dozen 
 goodly volumes, produced without reference to either. 
 Hardly a theological movement, hardly a philosophical 
 problem, during the last sixty years has broadly engaged 
 human thought, to the discussion of which he did not 
 contribute. The names of a few of those with whose 
 work he critically dealt — Comte, Bentham, Mill, Whewell, 
 Spencer, Tyndall, Bain, Mansel, Grote, Hamilton, Strauss, 
 Renan, Parker, Newman, Lessing, Schleiermacher, Cole- 
 ridge, Carlyle — indicate the latter-day problems, how many 
 and of what scope, which his tireless mind toiled to eluci- 
 date. This literary labor alone would seem enough to en- 
 title him to a conspicuous place among the workers of the 
 world. 
 
 To have performed any one of these services had been 
 to acquit himself worthily ; to have performed any two of 
 them had been enough to challenge our admiration and 
 gratitude; the fact that he performed them all places him, 
 of course, among the phenomenal men. In the presence 
 of such achievement, question as to the greatness of his 
 powers were like question as to the strength of Atlas while 
 poising the globe on his shoulders.
 
 HIS INTELLECT I25 
 
 Such estimate, however, is somewhat gross ; it is like 
 giving account of the CorHss engine by telling the number 
 of its horse-power, whereas it is the interior structure 
 of its wonderful machinery of which men want to learn. 
 What account can be given of the powers of that intellect 
 through the toils of which such marvellous labors were 
 accomplished? 
 
 I. The portrait of such a mind, however faithfully 
 taken, is hkely to satisfy not many; it wears such different 
 aspects according to the position from which it is studied. 
 All, however, will allow to Mr. Martineau an acquisitive 
 power remarkably great and varied. The diverse fields in 
 which this faculty seemed at its best especially impresses us, 
 as setting aside, or rather, by a notable exception, proving, 
 the current theory that will not allow us to expect a many- 
 sided cleverness. That Prescott and Macaulay should find 
 no joy in mathematics, that Spencer should be an indiffer- 
 ent linguist, and that Darwin in his later years should lose 
 all relish for poetry and music, seems natural enough; 
 while a mind that can pass from deep absorption in the 
 differential calculus to an absorption no less deep in a 
 Greek chorus, and turn without a sigh from /Eschylos or 
 Sophocles to the logic of Hamilton or Mill ; take up in 
 turn with no less interest the details of any science that a 
 Carpenter or Youmans or Lockyer may offer ; meet as if 
 the one and only enthusiasm the reasonings of Pascal or 
 Butler, the dialectic of Plato or Kant, the generalizations of 
 Comte or Spencer ; that is at home in the minutiae of Bibh- 
 cal learning, happy in ethnological research or historical 
 investigation, finds problems of political or social economy 
 exhilarating, turns with joyful appreciation to art or music, 
 draws quickening and solace from Tintern Abbey and In 
 Memoriam, seems to us a splendid anomaly. The com- 
 pensation which experience teaches us to look for, whereby 
 the man is sacrificed in one direction that he may be mag-
 
 126 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 nified in another, seems happily put by. And this de- 
 scription illustrates the intellect of Mr. Martineau in its 
 wonderfully varied capacities. In his native aptitudes na- 
 ture made provision for a universal scholar. And when we 
 turn from the range of his aptitudes to the mass of his ac- 
 quirements, the spectacle is even more suggestive. We 
 hear, indeed, of none of those prodigious achievements 
 which astonish us now and then, as of Theodore Parker, 
 who would absorb the contents of a heavy volume at a 
 single sitting ; his powers seem natural rather than preter- 
 natural, — large, facile, ready, and to their tireless applica- 
 tion we must refer the amazing amplitude of his learning. 
 All readers remark the ease with which he draws from 
 mathematics, as if the calculus and analytical geometry were 
 a pleasant substitute for Addison or Montaigne, for the di- 
 version of his leisure. His linguistic attainments were large 
 and profound, and justify the feeling that he might have be- 
 come the companion and peer of Whitney and Max Miiller 
 had he not chosen rather to wrestle with the problems of 
 Plato and Spinoza. In the domain of physical science he 
 was widely at home, and to the last revelation any Proctor 
 brought from the stars, the last discovery of any Lyell, 
 the last experiment of any Faraday, the last fact of any 
 Darwin, one was almost certain to find his quick mind 
 adjusted. He had a firm grasp upon history, its details 
 and forces ; political and social systems were given large 
 scope in his studies ; in political economy he read exhaust- 
 ively; religious institutions, ancient, mediaeval, modern, 
 he explored to their foundation-thought; of schools of 
 Biblical criticism, theological systems, in their genesis, 
 history, substance, he spoke with expert authority; while 
 in ethics and philosophy he had travelled all the mean- 
 dering way from the Athens of Plato to the Concord of 
 Emerson. He found place also for more genial letters: 
 from the essayists and poets and noveUsts he drew solace
 
 HIS INTELLECT 12/ 
 
 and inspiration. He wrote so much, it is difficult to see 
 how with the burden of his most onerous duties he ever 
 found time to read ; yet he read so much that it is matter 
 of simple wonder how he ever wrote at all. Over a con- 
 gress of sages no other of his time could more fittingly 
 have presided ; a dozen specialists might have been 
 equipped out of his vast erudition. 
 
 The strength of the strong man is seen not merely in 
 the burden that he carries, but also in the manner of the 
 carrying. Such a mass of erudition may make one simply 
 one of the " asses of Parnassus," a not valueless, but a 
 comparatively ignoble animal, which of all things Mr. Mar- 
 tineau was not. This weight of learning he carried with 
 an ease that suggests that it might have been his toy had 
 it not been his tool. While no burden, neither was it 
 a hindrance to his movement. His treasures, gathered 
 always for use, his quickly organizing mind distributed to 
 their several places to await their call. Here we reach 
 the supreme proof of a great scholar, in that a vast and 
 multifarious learning is never impedimenta. Turn for 
 comparison to that wondrous scholar, Theodore Parker, 
 who, like Bacon, seemed to take all knowledge for his 
 province, but who certainly failed in the test of his powers 
 here provided. His mind was not unlike some vast mu- 
 seum, on whose shelves are indeed many specimens duly 
 classified and labelled, but on whose floor are heterogene- 
 ous piles, specimens of many genera confusedly mixed, a 
 learned litter which the master's hand has not yet disposed 
 to order. Mr. Martineau's museum, not less rich in accu- 
 mulation, is yet always in order. His specimens are always 
 in their place, and never an obstruction. 
 
 2. Behind Mr. Martineau the scholar was Mr. Martineau 
 the thinker. This vast power of acquisition was associate 
 with the genius of patient and toilsome meditation. Learn- 
 ing, much as he loved it, was subsidiary, — torch, com-
 
 128 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 pass, telescope, to light him and guide him in the arcana 
 of ideas. No beauty of flowers could blind him to the 
 botany that organizes them, and no glory of stars, to the 
 astronomy that explains them. There was in him, indeed, 
 that of which, left to itself, the pedant is made : an ex- 
 treme care for the trivialities of learning, or what we call 
 such, like that which Professor Agassiz once humorously 
 drew to himself, when, asked by a lyceum committee to lec- 
 ture on fishes, he declared it a thing impossible ; he could 
 not give a lecture on fishes, but he would like to give a 
 " course of lectures on a scale." In Mr. Martineau's case, 
 however, it was like the care of the mathematician for his 
 formulae, mindful of the eclipses he must calculate and the 
 planetary orbits he must measure. As of learning, so of 
 the very lords of thought and knowledge. He had many 
 teachers, but never a master. He gathered the regal of 
 all time at his board ; yet was he ruler of the feast, and, 
 with whatever deference in his tone, he firmly directed, 
 " Aristotle, sit thou here ; " " Spencer, sit thou there." 
 As the discourse flowed on, and one after another held 
 attention, the issue was the host's predetermined conclu- 
 sion ; as in the Platonic dialogues, Socrates may question 
 and Glaucon answer and Adeimantus join in the argu- 
 ment, yet in the end it is only Plato that we hear. 
 
 With respect to the order of his mind he was logician, 
 that is to say, he was not diviner. He held afifinity with 
 Mill rather than with Emerson ; he was philosopher, not 
 seer. This is not saying that visions were not given him; 
 it is noting the nature of the receptacle into which they 
 came. He deduced conclusions ; he did not announce 
 oracles. Indeed, there is chance to suspect that from the 
 strength of his logical sensibility it was possible for him to 
 fail in appreciation where there was conspicuous want of 
 it. Thus, of his great contemporaries, Emerson seems 
 least of all to have moved him. He had a smile for Emer-
 
 HIS INTELLECT I29 
 
 son, but he had applause for Parker. Recognizing his 
 genius, it is yet doubtful if he was entirely happy in that 
 no-method by which our seer reached stars indeed, but 
 left no orderly track by which to follow after him. He be- 
 lieved in feet and careful and toilsome climbing, but the 
 winged kind were to him the children of Icarus and heirs 
 to his fate. 
 
 There is a peculiar charm in his logic ; it seems not an 
 instrument that he uses, but an instinct that rules him. It 
 is his life, not his rule ; by it his structure grows rather 
 than is builded. The works of the great logicians are apt 
 to suggest the carpenter whose edifice may be imposing, 
 but the careful jointings of which are none the less plainly 
 apparent. Mr. Martineau's edifice suggests an immanent 
 reason that works thus and not otherwise. Of its range, too, 
 a word should be spoken. There is one power which we 
 look for in a telescope, another in a microscope ; and 
 among logicians there is an analogous contrast. The two 
 powers Mr. Martineau's logic combines ; it is equal to 
 solar systems of thought and the finest reticulations of 
 argument. Behind it, too, is an intrepid daring and an in- 
 tense conviction, from which it becomes " logic on fire," 
 which Demosthenes defined eloquence to be. 
 
 He was strong in induction ; his ability to scrutinize facts 
 and detect the law that binds and interprets them, sedu- 
 lously cultivated, should have enrolled him with the Lyells 
 and Faradays, as a master of inductive knowledge. He 
 was, however, more characteristically deductive. Indeed 
 he seemed never quite at his best save when his feet were 
 planted on a priori ground. Here he was a mailed and 
 dauntless knight ready for any tournament of thought. 
 To apply a fundamental truth to diverse problems of 
 human interest, to prove systems by their congruity with 
 it, to build by it so that his structure in all its parts should 
 be like the tree whose roots, trunk, branches, twigs, 
 
 9
 
 I30 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 leaves, are informed by one life, was the aim by which his 
 noblest labors were accomplished. 
 
 3. Whoever reads him is sensible of the strength of his 
 imagination, and how it co-operates with his clear thinking 
 to give vividness to his thought. And not only vividness, 
 but definiteness. He had a genius for outline and bound- 
 ary. He was a surveyor who traced the border line between 
 contiguous provinces of thought, and, through whatever 
 wilderness, left a Via Appia behind him. 
 
 We touch here upon that quality which some have 
 called his cleverness, and others have named — perhaps 
 less happily but not without good reason — his Frenchiness ; 
 a quality which his peculiarly vivid imagination must ex- 
 plain. In some of his mental characteristics he seemed of 
 the German type. Yet was he French in his origin ; and it 
 may well be that the moulding of generations by which he 
 became an Englishman left in him something of the genius 
 of his ancestry. He once spoke of his friend, J. J. Tayler, 
 as the English Schleiermacher, a designation which the 
 admirers of both would the rather give to Mr. Martineau, 
 Yet were the designation improved by a significant addition. 
 Schleiermacher, — yes; but Schleiermacher with an infu- 
 sion — shall we say? — of Bossuet. The combination may 
 be illustrated thus : The German rolls down a mighty 
 stream, but, like the Mississippi, its waters are apt to be 
 murky ; there are snags to vex the navigator ; the channel 
 is inconstant; the banks open into bayous; and the un- 
 practised sailor may often be in doubt whether it is river 
 or bottom-land over which he is sailing. The Frenchman's 
 river may be somewhat less in volume, but its waters are 
 clear ; its channel is not to be mistaken ; and its banks 
 after whatever rains are sure to restrain the flood. Mr. 
 Martineau's river is a Mississippi, but a Mississippi of 
 clear water. Its channel is constant ; its banks are never 
 broken. It bends, too, in many a curve of beauty; and
 
 HIS INTELLECT I3I 
 
 where it rolls through realms of metaphysic darkness, as 
 to many a sailor metaphysic realms must be, there is no 
 want of guiding lights that gleam upon the headlands. 
 
 4, He had a genius for criticism, and that of the nobler 
 sort that honors while it disapproves and creates while it 
 destroys. It was, indeed, no trifling circumstance to be 
 brought before his tribunal, and one who sustained there 
 his examination well needed to have no dread of Rhada- 
 manthus. There was a justice that gave the full meed of 
 recognition, but which with the feeble theory or the incon- 
 sequential reasoning dealt inexorably. Often his criticism 
 suggested the glacier, radiant in sunshine and sending 
 irrigating streams down the valleys, yet grinding the very 
 boulders into powder. 
 
 In his critical labors he aimed at two results : a clear 
 presentation of an author's teaching in which its limitations 
 must of course appear, and a large view of its relations. 
 With respect to the former his method was simple : he 
 seized upon some pivotal idea, and by that, its absolute 
 worth and the success of its application, was the work jus- 
 tified or no. Such criticism, executed in his thorough 
 fashion, is most helpful, and after following the ramifica- 
 tions of some treatise, the student may turn to him as the 
 ship out of reckoning may hail a passing voyager. A 
 venerable sage once testified that of all his reading of 
 Plato, the Platonic writings included, Mr. Martineau's dis- 
 cussion in the Types of Ethical Theory had yielded the 
 most luminous view of him. It is, however, in the rela- 
 tions he opens before us that most have found his criticism 
 especially helpful. The average Briton, type of human 
 nature in more senses than one, easily magnifies his island 
 to the proportions of a continent, — to all intents and pur- 
 poses he may think it the world ; and dwellers in Nepaul 
 may doubt whether above their Himalayas is any height 
 worth mentioning. Our infinite is apt to be practically
 
 132 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that beyond the limits of which we do not see. Mr. Mar- 
 tineau never minimized his islands, but he had the knack 
 of embracing island and embosoming ocean in one view. 
 He never depreciated his mountains, but, at whatever 
 height, saw the blue dome above them, and the measure- 
 less vacancy around them. When the Philosophy of evo- 
 lution first beamed upon us, and to our bewildered sight 
 seemed to take all things within its embrace, Mr. Mar- 
 tineau, surveying its boundaries, showed us a bordering 
 infinity which its very genius excluded from its embrace.^ 
 Perhaps we still believed in Evolution, but he verily com- 
 pelled us, in seeing it, to see also more. Turn to his 
 splendid critique of Sir William Hamilton, a planetary 
 man, shown in all his planetary proportions ; yet shown 
 in a heaven of ideas in which is space for a million orbs as 
 large. 
 
 5. He was a born polemic, and there was in him a for- 
 ward eagerness in this kind of warfare. He was apt at 
 fence ; his attack, had it not been of the kind to be coveted, 
 had certainly been dreaded. In intellectual combat no 
 man was ever more observant of the chivalries ; indeed he 
 was in controversy our knightly Bayard. 
 
 6. But how of his literary style? — for while royalty in 
 homespun is royal, we yet like to meet our king in kingly 
 attire. And it is in kingly attire that we meet Mr. Marti- 
 neau. We may like to vary the cut in some particulars, 
 and change a decoration here and there, yet the material 
 of the robe is unmistakably Tyrian purple. 
 
 It is a unique style, and a passage of Shakespeare is 
 hardly more easy to distinguish than a passage of Marti- 
 neau. Not only is it unique, it is profoundly personal. 
 As Schopenhauer would say, it is a " physiognomy," not 
 a " mask." Respecting no other can be more safely 
 
 ^ " Science, Nescience, and Faith," in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, 
 vol. iii.
 
 HIS INTELLECT 133 
 
 quoted the dictum, " The style is the man." As a unique 
 style is almost sure to do, it has drawn the reproach of 
 being far sought and artificial. Yet its characteristic fea- 
 tures, as met in sermon or essay, appear also in his letters, 
 his extempore talk, his conversation ; and whoever will 
 give adequate account of it must take his very soul into 
 the reckoning. As a " physiognomy " it is only luminous 
 from an inward light. 
 
 It is not the grand style, like that of Frederic H. 
 Hedge. It is, however, a full style; his sentence is a 
 golden beaker flowing to the brim. What he aims to 
 express may be the smaller part of what he conveys; 
 allusion, metaphor, open how many side-lights of detain- 
 ing suggestion. He is not especially sententious; he does 
 not deal largely in aphorisms; yet few writers tell so 
 much that they do not say. 
 
 It is, too, a poetical style. The " faculty divine " was 
 not given him, but the " vision " was ; and in no meagre 
 degree it ruled his utterance. All readers of him 
 observe an habitual cadence in his sentence, as if dic- 
 tated by an interior rhythm. Within him was a sensi- 
 bility that felt an inharmonious structure as a poet feels 
 a faulty measure, or a musician a discord. His language 
 and illustration, too, make it plain that a beauty haunted 
 him ; yet is the poet within him severely ruled by the 
 artist. In his loftiest flights he indulges in no rhapsody. 
 It is prose that he writes, prose that his naive poetry 
 animates, decorates, illuminates, but leaves always prose. 
 
 He is elaborate, but not diffuse; not lavish in language 
 nor yet parsimonious ; every figure is organic, every word 
 is vital. His page betrays ever a painstaking accuracy; 
 yet there are those who complain that he is obscure. 
 Such might often well recall the saying of Goethe, "In 
 the dark the plainest writing is illegible," and ask whether 
 the obscurity is in Mr. Martineau or in themselves. To
 
 134 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 scale his heights or to descend into his depths no ordering 
 of the pathway can make always easy. However plain 
 the statement, there are yet thoughts that tax our think- 
 ing; and Mr. Martineau's are apt to be of them. His 
 page is for the studious, not the indolent hour. Yet in a 
 single aspect the complaint is not without reason ; there 
 is an obscurity that comes from his exuberance of meta- 
 phor. His metaphors are most admirable in themselves, 
 never commonplace and always luminous, but they are 
 sown upon his page in such profusion ! They come like 
 flashes of heat lightning, and bewilder from excess of 
 light. 
 
 Though the most serious of writers, yet not infrequent 
 gleams of humor relieve his page. He deals little in inci- 
 dent, is sparing in anecdote ; but a happy turn in a sen- 
 tence will provoke a smile, — likewise call forth a tear. 
 He has, too, resources of satire which he draws from not 
 frequently. He is strong in antithesis, and his words have 
 a knack of running together into golden sayings, which 
 chng to the memory Hke passages of Emerson. 
 
 It is a style wonderfully varied to express a many-sided 
 man, — the scholar and thinker who must feel the rock 
 beneath him as he builds, and see his walls reared true ; 
 the man, too, of aspirations that want a temple and of 
 affections that want a home ; so different from that, for 
 instance, of Herbert Spencer, also a " physiognomy," but 
 which expresses only a clear and passionless intellection. 
 The latter we might liken to the Bank of England, solid, 
 massive, but on whose granite cubes we see no suggestion 
 of a heaven or a soul. The former we might liken to the 
 dear and venerable Abbey, built on granite foundations 
 and its walls reared true, but also with towers and arches 
 which tell of a various aspiration and rapture and ideal.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PERSONAL FEATURES 
 
 In his figure Dr. Martineau was tall and spare. Of adi- 
 pose tissue he had no superfluity. One meeting him in 
 later years observed a slight stoop, though it seemed 
 rather the stoop of the scholar than of the octogenarian. 
 His features were thin, his complexion delicate. His 
 eyes, which were " changeful blue," were not particularly 
 noticeable until he became animated ; and then his very 
 soul seemed shining through them. His head was not 
 much beyond the average in size, but compact, and per- 
 fect in its poise. His perceptive organs were large ; his 
 hair, always remarkable for its abundance, in later years 
 was bleached almost to whiteness. Grace Greenwood, 
 writing of him in 1854, spoke of his head as wearing 
 a " classical and chiselled look," and of his features as 
 " finely and clearly cut ; " a description as true at eighty- 
 five as at forty-nine. 
 
 His personal habits were always natural and healthful. 
 So far from being self-indulgent, his general conduct was 
 mildly suggestive of asceticism. He was indeed no John 
 the Baptist, to make a diet of locusts and wild honey ; yet 
 one to rule his breakfast by consideration of his morning 
 toils, and in dining not to forget the evening hours of 
 study and of thought. And while in his conduct we may 
 see here the ruling of prudence, it is not difficult to be- 
 lieve that his simple tastes were thus satisfied. A dinner 
 with a few friends, with moderate abandonment to its
 
 136 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 enjoyment, he may have found agreeable ; a revel he vi^ould 
 have found unendurable. He had no artificial appetites : 
 tobacco he never used ; without being pledged to total 
 abstinence, his use of wines and liquors was almost wholly 
 medicinal. His only intemperance was intemperate work, 
 if that can be called intemperate which, though vast 
 in amount, he sustained to extreme age unfalteringly. 
 All his pleasures were of the rational and ennobling sort. 
 Good art afforded him agreeable diversion ; he enjoyed 
 music and sought its solace ; he delighted in conversation 
 with the wise and good. His home was the magnet of his 
 heart ; and in the shelter of its domesticities was his rest, 
 his solace, his joy. 
 
 He had a fondness for mountain scenery, and a favorite 
 diversion was walking. His summer home in Scotland 
 afforded him special delight for the wild and rugged coun- 
 try he could there explore. In his seventy-eighth year he 
 wrote of the " annual delight " not yet forbidden him of 
 " reaching the chief summits of the Cairn Gorm moun- 
 tains." They tell in England of his achieving twenty miles 
 of mountain rambling in a day. There is a story of an 
 American visiting him in his Scottish home. One morn- 
 ing there arose a question of diversion: should they walk 
 or drive? Something was said of a walk, and Dr. Marti- 
 neau, pointing to a mountain eleven miles away, proposed 
 a walk thither and return. Those mindful of our ways 
 hardly need be told that the American, who as guest had 
 the determining vote, gave it in favor of a drive. 
 
 His hospitality was most cordial ; his manners, sugges- 
 tive of the older and more elaborate style, were charmed 
 by a spirit that would make any style, or even want of 
 style, delightful. His voice, not loud, was admirably focal- 
 ized and melodious ; his enunciation was leisurely though 
 not slow, and perfectly distinct; he had a vein of humor; 
 he laughed heartily but not noisily. His conversation,
 
 PERSONAL FEATURES I 37 
 
 more it is said in later than in earlier years, tended to 
 monologue, and this for two reasons : first, from the 
 amplitude of his knowledge, approaching him with al- 
 most any subject was like taking a line of verse to one 
 who holds the whole poem in memory, and who needs 
 only the prompting of the one line to go on to the end ; 
 and secondly, ninety-nine out of a hundred, sitting 
 down with him, were likely to act as if on the reflec- 
 tion, If Jie will talk, why should I ? That reverend look, 
 that gracious manner, that quiet and melodious speech, fit 
 vehicle of the noblest wisdom, were almost sure to banish 
 all inclination save to listen. But then, in the sequel some- 
 thing happened which you scarce understood, which you 
 doubted if he did, and which the fitness of things seemed 
 hardly to warrant. As you rose to go, he expressed to 
 yoii his gratitude for the favor you had done Jiim; which, 
 if of ordinary sensibihty, made you only more sensible of 
 the nothing you had done except to receive from his im- 
 measurable store. You received the due of an Esau who 
 had brought a kid, and went your way with the feelings 
 of a Jacob who had purloined a blessing. 
 
 His general manner was one of calmness slightly verging 
 upon severity. With a friend, or one who had rightful 
 dealing with him, the severity dropped away and left a 
 smiling affability. Against the intruder, however, it may 
 have been a defensive armor. And from another class it 
 may have protected him, — the destitute, the wretched, from 
 whom, for the great sympathy of his heart, he could not 
 always have wished to be protected. A patient ear he 
 might give to the tale, a thoughtful consideration of what 
 was expedient; but of the effusive sympathy, the uncon- 
 sidered aid, for which such are likely to be looking, they 
 could have seen little promise in that grave and austere 
 countenance. And it may as well be said, that what was 
 thus apparent at the surface was probably true of the
 
 138 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 depths of his nature. That is to say, this large class of 
 needy ones he could feel for more easily than with. In 
 other words, the possible union of Plato and Father Taylor 
 was not realized in him. 
 
 Friends and pupils, the latter with especial emphasis, tell 
 of his severe regard for minutiae ; and illustrative of this 
 they dwell affectionately upon special incidents that have 
 fallen under their observation. Trust their report, and you 
 conclude that he ruled his life by Michael Angelo's maxim : 
 " Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." 
 Whether in the niceties of scholarship, the care for his in- 
 tellectual judgments, the discharge of official duties, the 
 regulation of private affairs, in his appointments, in his 
 courtesies, they maintain that it was the same, — nothing 
 slighted, nothing forgotten. Like Thoreau, he might have 
 " left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way to right up a 
 fallen man ; " but, the man fairly set upon his feet, he would 
 have returned at the earliest moment to his Greek accent, 
 whose mistaken slant could not have left his memory. 
 And the casual observer saw something of this in the little 
 nameless touches of personal conduct ; in his conversation, 
 which in his lightest moods was faultless; in his letters, 
 which, however hasty or however brief, were never care- 
 less. Most men, though scrupulous enough in dealing 
 with the matters that especially engross them, hold yet 
 their realm of order within an unconquered chaos ; so that 
 the slovenly scholar, the boorish philosopher, the states- 
 man who forgets appointments, and the saint who does not 
 answer his letters, are characters with whom we are all ac- 
 quainted. They keep their planets under exact regula- 
 tion, but leave their asteroids outside the controlling law. 
 Dr. Martineau, on the contrary, illustrated a imity of char- 
 acter in which large and little, planets and asteroids, were 
 subject to the same rule ; so that he answered his letters as 
 he wrote his books, and was the same where aff"ection laid
 
 PERSONAL FEATURES 139 
 
 light exaction as in the courthcst circle he was invited to 
 adorn. And this trait was apparent in all about him. As 
 these words are written, there floats into memory an illus- 
 trative contrast. I recall a pleasant hour in the study of a 
 London man of letters, whom a grateful world recognizes 
 among its benefactors. The library, rich in the lore of 
 many tongues, stood on the shelves in utter disregard of 
 order. Bacon was flanked by Douglas Jerrold and Henry 
 George, Homer was crucified between Akenside and Martin 
 Tupper, and Plato was standing on his head beside Jouf- 
 froy. Books and pamphlets were on the floor, in the 
 chairs, upon the sofa. The study table was a confusion of 
 letters, cuttings from newspapers, books, pamphlets, maga- 
 zines, sheets of manuscript scattered like the Sibyl's leaves, 
 a pipe or two, a pouch of tobacco, the stumps of several 
 cigars. That room was a Teufelsdrockh's lair, which many 
 studious men with good reason may forgive, but which 
 none would have the courage to commend. An hour later 
 I was in Dr. Martineau's study, which, in comparison, 
 seemed heaven's first law in miniature. 
 
 No feature of the man was more apparent than his 
 modesty. Of the guerdon he had won he had seemingly 
 no appreciation. That on the battle-fields of thought he 
 had been more than a faithful soldier, that he had been a 
 leader and a conqueror, seemed never to occur to him. 
 The encomiums that came to him impressed him with a 
 sense of the generosity of others, not a greatness that was 
 his own. With this modest self-estimate he combined, as 
 was but natural, the most generous appreciation of others. 
 Differences of opinion could not blind him to the reality 
 of merit, and the very knight he might unhorse he would 
 thank for the example of his prowess. The teachers he 
 confessed were often those whom he had taught, very 
 likely accrediting to their originahty a wisdom that was 
 first his own. A lifelong friend, speaking of earlier days.
 
 I40 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 once humorously illustrated this aspect of his character. 
 He would meet, said the friend, some commonplace 
 woman, and, in a half-hour's talk, fill her mind with ideas 
 of which she had never dreamed before. Three months 
 later he might meet her again, and she would in some 
 measure give him back the thoughts he had lavished on 
 her; and he, never suspecting the sun she was reflecting, 
 would go his way telling of her wonderful intelligence. 
 
 Temperamentally he was not always on the heights. 
 Readers of his sermons, notwithstanding the exultation 
 and the joy that are in them, are likely to feel an under- 
 tone of sadness. It is there, and those who were nearest 
 to him know that it does not misrepresent him. In such 
 as he, too, it is peculiarly natural. A heart so large and 
 tender, while quickened by the gladness, must also feel 
 the sorrow, of the world; and one who at intervals is 
 caught up into the heavens must be sensible of the transi- 
 tion to earth's damps and shadows. On the other side of 
 life, however — the practical as distinguished from the 
 ideal — his serenity was worthy of Seneca himself. What- 
 ever volcanoes might boil within him, at the surface there 
 was no eruption. His wishes might be thwarted, critics 
 might misrepresent him, partisans disparage, yet still was 
 he cheerful, dignified, reasonable. 
 
 Of the general atmosphere of the man, the impression 
 that came fi-om the blending of these various qualities, 
 how tell? All readers of him know the clearness and the 
 nobleness of his ethical judgments; in his presence one 
 was simply sure that he was worthy of them. In his won- 
 derful sermons we are familiar with the mystic heights to 
 which he climbed ; in his presence we felt their reflected 
 sunshine. To him as to all men were the " tides of the 
 Spirit," its ebbs as well as floods ; yet failing to meet him 
 on the Mount of Beatitudes, we should have looked for him 
 on the slopes of Sinai, and wondered not to find him there.
 
 PERSONAL FEATURES I4I 
 
 It was my privilege to form acquaintance with him in 
 extreme age, 
 
 "When the soul declares itself, — to wit, 
 By its fruit, the thing it does." 
 
 Of course I expected to meet a scholar; but a scholar 
 may be a Johnson. I knew I was to confront a thinker; 
 but a thinker may be a Schopenhauer. I held him a man 
 of genius ; but a genius may be a Byron or a Carlyle. I 
 hardly need say that from these endowments acquaintance 
 demanded no abatement, and that these examples could 
 only serve for contrast. Over against the coarseness of 
 Johnson one saw in him refinement refined. In contrast 
 with the selfishness of Schopenhauer one saw in him 
 consideration for others that was almost self-effacement. 
 In place of the cynicism of Byron we met in him the 
 serenest charity ; instead of the rudeness of Carlyle the 
 soul of courtesy and grace. 
 
 The thought of meeting one so crowned with honors 
 was attended with natural anxieties. Two hands extended 
 in welcome, a gracious smile, a cordial word, and all 
 anxieties were gone. The happy discovery was made that 
 his greatness was of the kind that lifts but does not over- 
 power. Of the quiet hours spent with him I need not tell. 
 Sufhce that they fixed in my mind the impression of a 
 sage, a hero, and a saint ; of one who might converse with 
 Plato, and dare with Luther, and revere with Tauler; an 
 habitn^ of the Academy, who thrilled to the Categorical 
 Imperative, and who knelt at the Cross.
 
 BOOK II 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PREACHER 
 
 From the account of the man, we come to the severer 
 task of exhibiting the religious teacher and philosopher. 
 Dr. Martineau began his career as a preacher ; and it 
 seems fitting that to his work as such we devote a few 
 pages. 
 
 When our minds are drawn to a noted preacher, our 
 first thought is likely to be of his pulpit effectiveness ; and 
 this is likely to be estimated, not in terms of thought, but 
 of magnetism and manner. Three-fourths of the gossip 
 about Channing relates to how he talked rather than what 
 he said ; and Beecher's wise words are forgotten while 
 men tell of the look, tone, gesture, with which he uttered 
 them. Indeed, the substance of doctrine may be obscured 
 by the grace of its proclamation, and the very Gospel 
 be eclipsed by the histrionics of the apostle. There are 
 preachers, however, with whom thought and manner are 
 so blended in a composite effect, that any account of the 
 effect must linger largely on the thought; and of such 
 was Dr. Martineau. Certainly we know preachers who 
 from their graceless and spiritless utterance could make 
 little impression, even with sermons like Dr. Martineau's in 
 manuscript before them ; which is another way of saying
 
 THE PREACHER 143 
 
 that he was never such as they. At the same time, it is 
 probably true that he owes his fame as a preacher to the 
 greatness of his message. A Tahnage, talking whatever 
 emptiness, will have thronging audience; Dr. Martineau 
 had hardly been a marked figure in the pulpit but for the 
 intellectual and spiritual quickening he gave. 
 
 Few school-boys read far into Cicero's Orations with- 
 out speculating as to their probable impressions, could 
 they have sat in the Senate or stood in the Forum on 
 some momentous occasion when the great orator was 
 speaking. Readers of the Endeavors or the Hours of 
 Thought may have indulged the like speculation as to 
 their impressions in the church where Dr. Martineau was 
 ministering. Of course these would vary according to the 
 period of his life ; but in general such as should come 
 from an ensemble like this : A tall, spare figure robed in 
 the scholar's gown, and wearing the dignities of his office 
 as a natural grace ; a thin face, suggestive of the cloister, 
 and traced with deep lines of thought; a voice not loud, 
 but musical and reaching ; an enunciation leisurely but 
 not slow, and perfectly distinct. The opening services 
 are somewhat long, but informed by a spirit that lifts 
 them above tedium. The hymn is read in tones that 
 reveal a soul that vibrates to its melody and thrills to its 
 joy. There is reverent reading of the Scriptures, reading 
 not obtrusive as to its emphasis, but which reveals their 
 meaning and conveys their power. The prayer is quiet, 
 tender, appealing, a strain of rapture and love and long- 
 ing. And now the sermon ; from the beginning it is 
 plain that it is to serious thought, yes, and hard think- 
 ing that you are invited. The preacher has taken the 
 philosopher into service; at need, the scholar's stores 
 are brought into requisition; rhetoric contributes of its 
 strength and grace. In his manner there is calmness: 
 gestures are few, speech is quiet. It is, however, a calm-
 
 144 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ness at the surface combined with fervors in the depths, 
 which kindle the eye, light the countenance, and which 
 the tones reveal. Here is no logic-grinder, but a soul 
 swayed by a holy passion ; and these thoughts so severely 
 stated are a prophet's burden. The theme is laid open ; 
 the awful sanctities are made plain ; the moral depths are 
 explored ; the mystic heights are gained. In America a 
 preacher is sometimes told that his service has been en- 
 tertaining; and often that word describes it well. Dr. 
 Martineau, as a preacher, never entertains; he has serious 
 business with you, and to the consideration of that he 
 holds you with little thought whether he entertain or no. 
 You have been living in some castle of worldliness or 
 pride; — there it is a hopeless debris around you, and 
 you a shivering and unsheltered soul in the bleak desert 
 of the world. You are suffocated with the dust of life ; 
 you are borne away to some Alpine summit where the 
 air is free and a glory thrills you. You came hither, as 
 you felt, deserted and alone; you go home with — God ! 
 
 Such the preacher, and such the natural effect of his 
 great message. Yet this effect, however provided for in 
 the sermon, was only for such as could receive it, who, 
 we fear it must be admitted, were the comparatively few. 
 Dr. Martineau never drew large congregations. That 
 manner, so wholly undramatic, was little calculated to 
 lay a spell upon the popular mind. Then, even with the 
 manner and tones of Whitefield, he could hardly have 
 drawn the multitude with such sermons as he habitually 
 gave. The clever interpreter may gather hearers from 
 country farms or city streets, and beguile them with 
 passages of Longfellow ; but Dante with whatever acces- 
 sories of elocution only the trained intellect can receive ; 
 and Dr. Martineau in heights and depths may fairly be 
 called our Dante of preachers. To some, who read that 
 the common people heard II im gladly, and remember how
 
 THE PREACHER I45 
 
 common and uncommon people have since found life in 
 His word, this may carry the force of an adverse criticism. 
 In the experience of His apostles, however, common and 
 uncommon have needed to be treated differently. Cer- 
 tainly the discourses in the Endeavors and the Hours of 
 ThoitgJit would have been ill-suited to the hillside where 
 Whitefield preached ; and the exhortations that brought 
 the colliers to repentance would have evoked but a feeble 
 reponse in the Hope Street Church or the Little Portland 
 Street Chapel. 
 
 We will take a closer scrutiny of the sermon. Of its 
 style, considered as a composition and with reference to 
 pulpit effectiveness, it is possible to entertain two opin- 
 ions. A student of divinity, in an American school, 
 opened for the first time a volume of the Endeavors. 
 Presently he was in a realm of wonder. Vision opened 
 upon vision. The sentences seemed but translucent media 
 for stars to shine through. On the current of thought he 
 was borne almost as resistlessly as if afloat on the whirl- 
 pool of Niagara River. That hour's reading brought him 
 in contact with one of the master influences of his life. 
 He closed the volume with a feeling not unlike that of 
 General Wolfe, floating down the St. Lawrence River, 
 reciting the immortal Elegy. A few days later the student 
 was turning over a sermon of his own with the homiletical 
 professor, when conversation led to the general subject 
 of sermon style. The student asked, " What do you think 
 of the style of Dr. Martineau ? " The prompt answer was, 
 " The worst in the world." The student went his way 
 doubtful for once of his professor's infallibility. Now, 
 if we take into consideration the two attitudes of mind, 
 that of the student and that of the professor, there is in 
 Dr. Martineau's sermon sufficient reason for these diverse 
 judgments. The student, in daily contact with studious 
 books, welcomed a challenge to his thought which the 
 
 10
 
 146 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ordinary sermon was not sure to offer ; was well pleased, 
 indeed, to drink the wine of life without watery dilution. 
 Then, being of an imaginative mind and mystic tempera- 
 ment, the imaginative and mystic features he everywhere 
 met in Dr. Martineau's discourse awoke in him responsive 
 raptures. If the beauty was bewildering, why, it was a 
 bewildering beauty ; if the heights were ethereal, to breathe 
 ether in exchange for common air he found exhilarating ! 
 The professor, however, mindful of the common life which 
 the preacher must somehow reach, of men who must come 
 to the altar from the plane, the forge, the farm, the shop, 
 the office ; of women who must be the Marthas of domes- 
 tic arrangement before as Marys they can sit down at the 
 feet of Jesus, might well caution his pupil against a style 
 which would be often to them, at best, a beautiful bewilder- 
 ment; and if the caution was in terms the strict truth 
 would not warrant, why, error, like wisdom, may some- 
 times be justified of her children. It may as well be said 
 that Dr. Martineau's style, even for people of high intelli- 
 gence, would have been more effective if something less 
 imaginative, before all things, could he have restrained his 
 exuberant use of metaphor. His beauties are exceedingly 
 beautiful, but their profusion is excessive. You linger to 
 admire a pearl and a shower of diamonds is falling around 
 you. Even the reader, and how much more must have 
 been the listener, is often bewildered by the splendors that 
 in swift succession burst upon him. You encounter a pas- 
 sage like this : " The soul, as it sings, cannot both worship 
 and beat time. The rainbow, interpreted by the prism, is 
 not more sacred, than when it was taken for the memoran- 
 dum of God's promissory mercy, painting the access and 
 recess of his thought. The holy night, that shows how 
 much more the sunshine hides than it reveals, and warns 
 us that the more clearly we see what is beneath our feet 
 the more astonishing is our blindness to what is above our
 
 THE PREACHER I47 
 
 heads, is less divine, when watched from the observatory 
 of science, than when gazed at from the oratory of private 
 prayer; " ^ you are surely a veteran reader if you are not 
 drawn by the splendor of the illustrations from the thought 
 they illustrate. Two or three such passages in a sermon 
 were certainly enough for the trained and attentive lis- 
 tener; and even he would hardly fail to find it difficult to 
 turn at once from such a series of pictures to resume the 
 thread of the argument. Passages such as this are met 
 everywhere in the pages of Dr. Martineau's sermons. To be 
 lost amid such joys may not be without compensations ; yet 
 in thought, as in life, to lose the way is to fail of the destiny. 
 Lost in a garden is lost. Lost amid Sierra glories is lost. 
 
 Another aspect of his discourses calls for notice. For 
 the ordinary hearer or reader they are found difficult, not 
 only because of their highly imaginative style, but also 
 because of a uniqueness in their structural principle. In 
 an important respect they are unlike most other sermons, 
 and the rules of the commonly received homiletics cannot 
 be applied to them. You ask respecting them, with what 
 aim were they preached, what motive ruled his mind in 
 the preparation of them? You see very clearly why 
 Edwards preached his terrible sermons : there before him 
 were souls to save from the hell that was gaping for them. 
 You do not need to be told why Channing preached his ser- 
 mon on " Unitarian Christianity most Favorable to Piety; " 
 it is sufficiently manifest that he would vindicate a form of 
 doctrine which was dear to his heart. So, in general, upon 
 the sermon of almost every preacher is impressed the pur- 
 pose that called it forth. With Dr. Martineau's sermons, 
 however, it is otherwise. They are not doctrinal : what 
 may be his Christology, what his attitude towards the 
 Bible, how he views miracles, why he is a Unitarian, one 
 must be a sharp-eyed critic to detect in his pulpit utter- 
 ^ Endeavors, pp. 446-447, American edition.
 
 148 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ances. While not doctrinal, neither are they, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word, practical. Practical, indeed, they 
 are, as fresh air and sunshine, as art and music and poetry 
 are practical ; but not practical as addressed to the specific 
 needs of men, to move their will or instruct their under- 
 standing for instant action. They lead into the realm of 
 elevated thought, which may be to our souls as a holy 
 enchantment ; yet, however they may nourish, stimulate, 
 comfort, constrain us, we hardly feel that they are spoken 
 to us. This is their distinguishing characteristic : In the 
 intent of the preacher they are not spoken to us. Their 
 aim is not address, but self-utterance ; not primarily to 
 move another's soul, but to tell the visions, raptures, long- 
 ings, and imperatives within his own. Spiritual communi- 
 cation in the deep and literal meaning of the word, — that 
 is what they are intended to be. He looks not about his 
 congregation to discover what they have need to hear, but 
 within himself to find what God has given him to say. 
 There is hope, indeed, that the word whispered in his soul, 
 through his utterance may reach the soul of another ; it is 
 the hope, however, of the artist who traces his beauty on 
 the canvas, trusting that another may thrill to its joy. 
 He uses the ordinary form and method of discourse, and 
 so makes into a sermon what were otherwise a psalm. 
 This is not merely a characteristic traced upon his sermon ; 
 it is his theory as to the method in which a sermon should 
 be brought forth. In the preface to the second series of 
 Endeavors he writes : " In virtue of the close affinity, per- 
 haps ultimate identity, of religion and poetry, preaching is 
 essentially a lyrical expression of the soul, an utterance of 
 meditation in sorrow, hope, love and joy, from a represent- 
 ative of the human heart in its divine relations. In pro- 
 portion as we quit this view, and prominently introduce 
 the idea of a preceptive and monitory function, we retreat 
 from the true prophetic interpretation of the office back
 
 THE PREACHER I49 
 
 into the old sacerdotal : — or [what is not perhaps so 
 different a distinction as it may appear] from the prop- 
 erly religions to the simply moral. A ministry of mere 
 instruction and persuasion, which addresses itself prima- 
 rily to the understanding and the will, which deals mainly 
 with facts and reasonings, with hopes and fears, may fur- 
 nish us with the expositions of the lecture-room, the com- 
 mandments of the altar, the casuistry of the confessional ; 
 but it falls short of that ' true testimony of God,' that per- 
 sonal effusion of conscience and affection, which distin- 
 guishes the reformed preaeJiing from the catholic homily !' 
 This conception of the true nature of the sermon raises 
 in his mind an objection to extemporaneous preaching, 
 " which may be the vehicle of admirable disquisitions, 
 convincing arguments, impressive speeches; but is as 
 little likely to produce a genuine sermon, as the prac- 
 tice of improvising to produce a great poem." " The 
 thoughts and aspirations which look direct to God, and 
 the kindling of which among a fraternity of men con- 
 stitutes social worship," he declares to be " natives of 
 solitude." Such is his theory both as stated and exem- 
 plified. There comes of it a tendency to soliloquy, to 
 rhapsody, beautiful and ennobling indeed, but quite the 
 opposite of that directness of speech by which attention 
 is easiest won and held. 
 
 There is another result of which it is impossible not 
 to be sensible. In the sermons of few preachers is there 
 so little lecturing ; few indeed there are whose organized 
 thought is so completely a vessel in which the spirit is 
 offered us. Sermons, like men, must have the defects of 
 their qualities; and it is doubtful if they can be the oracles 
 of the soul and at the same time always easy for the intel- 
 lect to grasp. Pouring out the heart is something other 
 than addressing the understanding ; psalm and homily have 
 different qualities. There are preachers who deftly blend
 
 150 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 them, as Channing usually, as Dewey frequently, as Beecher 
 occasionally. But so far as the homily is obtrusive the 
 psalm will be sacrificed ; so far as the psalm is overpower- 
 ing the homily will falter. This brings us to the doubt 
 whether, save by Dr. Martineau's method, sermons can or- 
 dinarily be produced so profoundly and loftily religious as 
 his. We give them place with the classic literature of de- 
 votion ; with the volumes of Tauler and Taylor and the 
 Theologia Gerinanica. We pass from any of these to the 
 Hours of Thought or the Ejideavors, sensible of no decline 
 in spiritual altitude. The manner is different, the tone is 
 different ; but through these, as those, the like heights 
 gleam, the like raptures thrill. By spiritual consanguinity 
 he is the kinsman of Eckhart and Thomas a Kempis, and 
 draws his sermons from the like spring as they their medi- 
 tations. In him, as in them, is the mystic soul, out of 
 which alone the mystic utterance can come. The under- 
 standing can offer what is understood, the reason can fur- 
 nish reasons ; and thus the intellect may be guided into 
 ways that shall please it well ; but whoever will speak the 
 oracular word must retire within the shrine where oracles 
 are given. This secret of his office. Dr. Martineau, beyond 
 all contemporary preachers, seemed to know; and hence 
 the well-nigh incomparable appeal with which his words 
 speak home to us. 
 
 From the general character, we pass to the more special 
 features of his discourse. Drawing ever from the deepest 
 deeps, he naturally seeks utterance through the treatment 
 of those feelings and experiences that give utterance to them, 
 — the faiths, dreads, longings, raptures, of men. His char- 
 acteristic themes are suggestive : " The Besetting God," 
 "Christian Peace," " The Tides of the Spirit," "The Sor- 
 rows of Messiah," "Where is thy God," "The Discipline 
 of Darkness," " Christ the Divine Word." They are 
 themes, indeed, on which the mere polemic might exer-
 
 THE PREACHER I5I 
 
 cise his dexterity, and the priest expound his homily; but 
 which are pecuHarly suited to the mystic contemplation 
 which Dr. Martineau brings to them. 
 
 His theory of a sermon implies a theory of man : his 
 competency to know God. Not merely to know of him, 
 but to have immediate acquaintance with him ; not merely 
 to know His word, but to hear His voice. This is an initial 
 truth with him, the implications of which are manifold and 
 vast. As a preacher, he dwells much on the immanence 
 of God, but before God is seen in his manifestations he 
 must be known at home. Until met in consciousness 
 nature cannot reveal him, prophets speak to little purpose, 
 Bible records are a tale of old. And this immediate ac- 
 quaintance is for the diligent seeking, — not with the lamp 
 of science, which would restrict it to the learned ; not with 
 the eye of philosophy, which would make it the special 
 privilege of the wise; but in the silent retreats of holy 
 meditation, which are accessible to all. Here we may come 
 " eye to eye with the saints, spirit to spirit with God, peace 
 to peace with Heaven." ^ Like one of the old mystics come 
 again, he maintains that if one, putting by all worldliness 
 and self-assertion and pride, will enter the silent confes- 
 sional within his breast, he shall meet and know his God.^ 
 The earnestness with which he enjoins this impels the con- 
 viction that it is out of his experience that he enjoins it. 
 Thus a clue to a truly theistic world is realized. God a direct 
 and first-hand acquaintance in the breast ; — every sod of 
 earth reveals him, and the heavens tell his glory. You 
 are dealing then, not with a cosmic force, but with a liv- 
 ing God, known within yourself and therefore recognized in 
 the thrilling life, the glowing beauty, the unvarying order, 
 the unbending righteousness of the world. You spend with 
 him the cloistered hour, then, looking out upon the uni- 
 verse, you are prepared to say, " Lo, these are his ways." 
 
 ^ Endeavors, p. 164. ^ /j/^/. pp. 164-165.
 
 152 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Let the order be ever held in view : first the interview in 
 the confessional, then the vision of a transfigured world ; 
 first within the soul the great Name whispered, then stars 
 flame it, winds quire it, waters murmur it; first the assur- 
 ance born of mystic communion, then for every pain its 
 comforter, for every sorrow a consoler close at hand. This 
 again and again he urges, lingering in eloquent warning on 
 the truth, that if the inward eye be darkened to His light 
 the outward eye shall not behold His glory. You shall see 
 no transfiguration till acquainted with the light that trans- 
 figures, or even read your Bible wisely till you know your 
 God. Our Hght, such as we have, we carry within us; and 
 he who in his soul knows not God is still in darkness, 
 though, " like the angel of the Apocalypse, he were standing 
 in the sun." Hence in his discourse there is often a tone 
 of severity towards those who, neglecting the easy and 
 obvious means, do thereby forfeit so great a joy. Their 
 God, such as they have, is a cosmic force, an issue of a 
 syllogism, a record in history, a priest's report, a propriety 
 of beHef, not a present and Hving and loving Friend. 
 Hence he remonstrates : " You say. He is everywhere : then 
 show me anywhere that you have met him. You declare 
 him everlasting : then tell me of any moment that he has 
 been with you." ^ With the thought of thus meeting God 
 in the confessional there comes also the thought of spirit- 
 ual fitness, which he presses with solemn earnestness. To 
 be ready for that august interview, what is required of us? 
 A mind with habitual intent upon the trivialities of life 
 does not turn with ease to its more serious concerns, and 
 with the spirit it is the same. It is only the disciplined eye 
 that shall behold the Invisible Presence ; it is only the dis- 
 ciplined ear that shall hear the Silent Word. An indolent, 
 careless, drifting soul, a soul from which all earnestness has 
 oozed away, whose meditation is but a disordered reverie or 
 
 ^ Hours of Thought, second series, p. 107.
 
 THE PREACHER 1 53 
 
 a vacant dream, — what fitness can it have to hold con- 
 verse in the Holy of Holies? For that mystic meeting it 
 is utterly without preparation. So he tells us that " the 
 heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on 
 no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern 
 at their prayers." 
 
 This thought of the immediateness of God's presence, 
 and the possibility of immediate knowledge of him, ever 
 hovers near his mind ; and he iterates it and reiterates it 
 with great power. His labor is to bring men to a first- 
 hand acquaintance with the Father of their spirits. To 
 this end he strives to show them that God is here, not 
 merely there ; that He is as well as was. Not that he 
 doubts of earlier inspirations, but that he is so sensible of 
 the need of new ones. He sees a prevailing tendency to 
 put the meeting of the human and the Divine far off in the 
 past, — "there, in old Palestine, we think, the august voice 
 broke for a moment the eternal silence," — a tendency 
 which means for the present an atheistic divorce from 
 God. We live, indeed, "in the house He built; but we 
 work in it alone, for He has gone up among the hills and 
 will only come to fetch us by-and-by." Our worship, 
 therefore, is not " bathed in the flowing tides of Deity, 
 but keeps dry upon the strand from which he has ebbed 
 away." " It has become a covimemoration telling what 
 once He was to happier spirits of our race, and how grate- 
 ful we are for the dear old messages that faintly reach our 
 ear, . . . the fragile and consecrated links between his 
 sphere and ours." ^ 
 
 Thus he pleads for what is with him the ground of all 
 conviction ; and thus he expostulates with those — the 
 many, not the few — who fail of its assurance. 
 
 But let us note his application of his truth to the prob- 
 lems of the interior life ; and, first, that of duty. It is 
 
 1 Endeavors, p. 310.
 
 154 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 evident that with such thought in the background, he will 
 find for duty's supreme imperative something other than 
 an earthly origin. Neither the utilities of life, nor any 
 inferences men may draw from them, speak to him the 
 ultimate word. Nor will he receive it from any Moses 
 coming down from Sinai ; but only at first-hand in the 
 temple where the Divine Voice declares it. So persistent 
 is this Voice, so constant its iterations, that even the inat- 
 tentive ear cannot wholly miss its tones. In the pleadings 
 of virtue, in the exaltations of self-sacrifice, in the remon- 
 strances of conscience, there it is. Whoever will explore 
 his thought on the great problems of moral obligation in 
 their profounder and larger statement may turn to the 
 Types of Ethical Theory ; but whoever will see how in his 
 daily conduct — his weak surrenders, his victorious sacri- 
 fices, the virtues that attract no notice and the faults he 
 tries to think are of no consequence — he has directly 
 to deal with God, may turn to his sermons. Your duty, 
 simple and lowly as men may regard it, in the last account 
 of it, is a mandate from the Universal Throne. The sense 
 of obligation that stirs within you is a " piercing ray of 
 the great Orb of souls." 
 
 To what heights he will raise duty, with what sanctities 
 he will clothe it, is sufficiently clear from this. Rendered 
 to such an one, its lowlier as its lordlier offices are sacred, 
 and they who dust the chambers, or carry the brick and 
 mortar of the world, kindled by his word, should feel their 
 humble service consecrate. 
 
 From duty we pass to worship. As the former in its 
 ultimate spring is a mandate from God, so the latter is our 
 free offering to him. In its nobler conception it is not 
 addressed to a heavenly Dispenser of Favor, but to a 
 Righteousness and Love, whom we meet in the cloistered 
 seclusion of our souls. Here, not merely manifest but in 
 very essence known, we contemplate him and adore.
 
 THE PREACHER 155 
 
 Perhaps there is no other theme on which he is so sure 
 to kindle as this. Worship is the soul's " surrender of 
 her narrow self-will, her prayer to be merged in a life 
 diviner than her own." Of all attitudes that which it 
 implies is at once our lowliest and our loftiest. " We 
 never hide ourselves in a ravine so deep ; yet overhead 
 we never see the stars so clear and high." There are two 
 promptings to it: the one the vision of Perfect Holiness; 
 the other the sense of sin. Hence it is marked by a two- 
 fold aspect, " breaking into strains, now penitential and 
 now jubilant," " pale with weeping, flushed with joy." 
 " Were we haunted by no presence of sin and want, we 
 should only browse on the pasture of nature : were we 
 stirred by no instinct of a holier kindred, we should not 
 be drawn towards the life of God." A little deeper does 
 he sink his plummet. Speaking of the communion of the 
 human spirit with the Divine, he says : " If communion, 
 then sympathy and resemblance too : for like only can 
 commune with like : when eye meets eye and knows it, 
 the same fire is alive in both : when affection answers to 
 affection, there is a common language of intelligence 
 between them ; and something in us there must be, some 
 possible love or thought or goodness, akin to the Infinite 
 Perfection and flowing forth to meet it." And " this it is 
 — this best element of us, that asserts its rights and strug- 
 gles to its place in every expression of religion." " Devo- 
 tion " — and here is the final statement — "instinctively 
 tries to lay down whatever separates from God, and to pass 
 wholly into what unites with him." ^ Thus it is the soul seek- 
 ing her own, contemplating the Supreme Beauty and yearn- 
 ing for its embrace. It asks no special favors, — ease, 
 comfort, the poor utilities men are wont to pray for; it 
 asks only to be merged and lost in God. As the legend 
 tells us, St. Thomas Aquinas once wrestling in prayer be- 
 
 1 Hours of Thought, second series, pp. 334-335-
 
 156 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 fore the crucifix, the imaged Saviour spoke down to him : 
 "Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward 
 wilt thou receive from me?" The ecstatic saint replied, 
 "Lord, only thee." 
 
 But the sense of sin and of its guilt, how of this? Of all 
 liberal preachers of modern days he has perhaps dwelt 
 most upon this dark theme ; and he has taxed his won- 
 drous rhetoric to make his lesson vivid. In his tone on 
 this theme, he often reminds one of the older theologians. 
 It is much the wont of our modern liberals to view sin 
 from the outlook of earth, from which it often seems much 
 like the mistakes of ignorance, the blunders of immaturity. 
 He, on the contrary, is wont to view it from the outlook 
 of heaven, where it is seen over against a perfect holiness 
 which it has affronted. "If I had not come and spoken 
 unto them, they had not had sin." But for the holiness 
 that confronts us our sin were not revealed to us. In that 
 confrontation, however, we are like the lying Peter under 
 the eye of Jesus, whose pure presence is a mirror to our 
 shame, in the dark consciousness of which we are only 
 capable of a biting and burning remorse, never mitigated, 
 all the more poignant, for the sorrow and tenderness with 
 which Jesus looks on Peter. Useless to plead that we 
 could not have done otherwise ; the soul by its very grief 
 and humiliation refuses to entertain the plea. However 
 the intellect may sophisticate, in the presence of that 
 Holiness, the soul is sensible of the dark disparity, wrought 
 by surrenders it has not made, admonitions it has not 
 heeded, beauties within its reach which it has not put on. 
 So Dr. Martineau is wont to preach.^ First the Holiness 
 into whose presence you are brought; next, by contrast, 
 the approximations to it which you have not made. Here 
 the Perfect Mirror ; out of it reflected to you the warts and 
 
 ^ See especially " Christ's Treatment of Guilt," Endeavors, p. 129; " The 
 Soul's Forecast of Retribution," Hours, second series, p. 132.
 
 THE PREACHER 1 57 
 
 wens that disfigure you. Over against you, the Father 
 robed in compassion and benignity, which make you sensi- 
 ble of the unseemhness of the rags you wear. In such con- 
 frontation what more natural than the cry : " Oh wretched 
 man that I am ! " Hence the interpretation he gives to 
 those protestations of unworthiness in which all higher 
 literature abounds, and which are characteristic, not of the 
 weakest, but of the best and bravest. Modern hberalism is 
 wont to treat them as exaggerated self-depreciation, in less 
 enlightened days quite the vogue of religious utterance, now 
 happily gone out of fashion, Dr, Martineau sees in them 
 the spontaneous and natural utterance of the soul in the 
 contemplation of the Supreme Excellence, and is awed 
 into humiliation before it. 
 
 But the problem of human pain — how of that? It is 
 one Dr, Martineau recurs to perhaps more frequently than 
 any other, as if the burden of human suffering were heavy 
 on his heart. His tone is not one of extravagant op- 
 timism; he does not commend the stoic's endurance ; his 
 endeavor ever is to lift the suffering into " conscious affilia- 
 tion with God," Thus, " as he pervadeth all things, a unity 
 is imparted to life and a stability to the mind which put 
 not happiness, indeed, but character and will above the 
 reach of circumstance." He draws illustration from the 
 example of the Christian's exemplar : " What difference 
 did it make to Christ, whether in the wilderness he did 
 fierce battle with temptation or sat on the green slope to 
 teach the people, and send them home as if God had 
 dropped upon their hearts amid the shades of evening : 
 whether he stood over the corpse, and looking into the 
 dark eyes, said, 'Let there be light,' ... or saw the angel 
 of duty approach himself in the dress of the grave, and on 
 the mournful whisper, * Come away,' tendered his hand 
 and was meekly led : whether his walk was over strewn 
 flowers, or beneath a cross too heavy to be borne ; — amid
 
 158 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the cries of ' Hosanna ' or the murderous shout? The 
 difference was all of pain; — none was there of conscience, 
 of trust, of power, of love." ^ It is to the like self-poise, 
 won through the consciousness of the Infinite Presence, 
 that he would lead the suffering ; — not to any mere com- 
 fort of their sorrows, but to a strength through him who 
 alone can impart it, serenely and patiently to bear them. 
 His ideal is not the unsuffering, but the unshaken man ; 
 and such he may be with whom there is direct and per- 
 sonal intimacy with God. 
 
 Of fear, too, when the crisis comes, the same prev^entive. 
 In his sermon on "Faith the Deliverance from Fear," is a 
 remarkable passage, it can surely be no mistake to quote 
 in full : " When, for instance, the ship has struck and 
 broken up, and its human shriek has gurgled away into 
 the relentless splash of waters ; and a single voyager, by 
 some marvel of escape, finds himself adrift in a boat alone ; 
 when the night settles down upon him and shuts him in 
 between the darkness above and the black deep below; 
 when the bursting wind and the slanting hail and the 
 plunging waves show that he is but reserved from the com- 
 mon fate to perish deliberately and in the private wilds of 
 nature : what, think you, has been the history of his 
 thought in such an hour? There may be many who 
 might await the moment with outward steadfastness ; but 
 only one, I suppose, who would sit there with a real light 
 of inward calm ; — namely, he to whom that solitude was 
 not absolute ; who could converse with a Presence be- 
 hind the elements, and listen to a voice other than the 
 wind's ; who knew the night to be but a seeming darkness, 
 and, though the stars were blotted out, felt the pure eye 
 of the Infinite upon him ; who could welcome the terror, 
 not as the end, but as a beginning, the pangs of an ever- 
 lasting birth. Such a one is but flung by the wildest 
 
 1 Endeavors, p. 103.
 
 THE PREACHER I 59 
 
 delirium of nature into the closer embrace of the eter- 
 nal God." 
 
 Thus, as preacher, may we illustrate his aim and 
 show the trend of his influence. By such preaching it is 
 plain that he could hardly have grounded men in the 
 dogmatics of his school ; in fact, in his preaching days, 
 he was sometimes criticised for failure in this direction. 
 The priestly homily of daily behavior, likewise, you will 
 not frequently look for in one who is the enthralled oracle 
 and bard of such truth. His leading, rather, is to a con- 
 templative and mystic piety. The atmosphere you breathe 
 with him is most elastic, the views he opens before you 
 are most expansive ; yet he leads you to live directly from 
 the Supreme Source of life. Under his spell you become 
 an habitii^ of the cloister; you learn the significance of 
 meditation, of communion, of prayer. 
 
 Of course it is not thought that the lesson thus empha- 
 sized by him is in form any novelty in the Christian pulpit. 
 It may, however, be most confidently said, that the per- 
 suasiveness and intense and burning reality with which 
 he presents it give his sermon a place which probably 
 that of no other modern preacher may claim. In doubt, 
 sin, loss, pain, fear, grief, his thrilling admonition is. Seek 
 the presence of your God. 
 
 Seeking, too, you shall ever find him. No, not ever; 
 for there are times and seasons when that high joy is 
 denied us. The movements of the spirit are tidal. We 
 repair to our Bethesda, but the angel that is wont to 
 trouble the waters has not come, or has gone. " In every 
 earnest life, there are weary flats to tread, with the heavens 
 out of sight, — no sun, no moon — and not a tint of light 
 upon the path below; when the only guidance is the 
 faith of brighter hours, and the secret Hand we are too 
 numb and dark to feel." ^ 
 
 ^ " Tides of the Spirit," ffours of Thought, first series.
 
 l60 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe pleasantly tells how many of the 
 congregation that listened to him in the Little Portland 
 Street Chapel sat with open note-books to jot down the 
 brilliants of thought that fell from his lips, and which they 
 could not suffer to float away upon the air. Certainly, if 
 they caught them all, they toiled with nimble pencils. 
 The language of no other preacher we can recall has such 
 frequent trick of running into poetic aphorisms. Emer- 
 son himself is scarcely more quotable; and the quotations 
 that cling to us as we read him are pregnant, not with the 
 wisdom of the intellect alone, but of the conscience and 
 the soul. In the pursuit of our gains or pleasures a voice 
 solemn and authoritative commands, " Take up thy free- 
 will, and come along." Is there a cruel cynicism within 
 you? "No grief deserves such pity as the hopeless 
 privations of a scornful heart." Elsewhere and further on 
 are you looking for associations that are holy? " Those 
 to whom the earth is not consecrated will find their heaven 
 profane," For the proper ordering of the humblest 
 duties, great principles are needed ; " to keep the house 
 of the soul in order due and pure, a god must come down 
 and dwell within, as servant of all its work." The great 
 achievements which we honor come forth from vicissitude, 
 without which history were a dreary commonplace ; a truth 
 which he states in brief, " There is no Epic of the cer- 
 tainties." Are you haunted by a pessimistic misgiving? 
 " Be it ours to doubt the glooms and not the glory of 
 our souls." Are you troubled by the inconstancy of your 
 better moods? Be comforted. He who gave to the 
 moon her phases and its summer and winter to the year, 
 in all the provinces of our nature has appointed the like 
 alternations. " God has so arranged the chronometry of 
 our spirits that there shall be thousands of silent moments 
 between the striking hours." Such are specimens of the 
 jewels that everywhere adorn his page.
 
 THE PREACHER l6l 
 
 Miss Cobbe likens his discourse, not to an " Alpenstock," 
 but to a beautiful, inlaid " crozicr." An Alpenstock it 
 rather seems to us, strong to lean upon in the most ven- 
 turous climbing, yet with ruby and pearl and jasper for 
 accessories. The strength is surely nowise impaired by 
 the beauty that adorns it. Where it ceases to be Alpen- 
 stock for climbing it becomes wings for flying, on which 
 without conscious effort we gain summits far more than 
 Alpine.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 
 
 From the preacher we turn to the theologian. Dr. Marti- 
 neau's theological attitude was always Unitarian ; and the 
 history of English Unitarianism on its doctrinal side is 
 almost ideally reflected in the history of his mind. He 
 received it as its earlier prophets, Priestley and Belsham, 
 left it; and early became the pioneer of its advance. 
 From the Liverpool Controversy to the publication of the 
 Seat of Authority , asking where Mr. Martineau stood was 
 very nearly the same as asking in what direction Unita- 
 rian thought was moving. It was rarely up with him, but, 
 often with manifest impatience, following after him. 
 
 I. The history of a moving intellect, and none other 
 can have a history, must be a record of changes. Of Dr. 
 Martineau, the theologian, therefore, our task requires 
 that we undertake such a record. We have seen where 
 he began. The services of his ordination reflect the atti- 
 tude of the church that ordained him ; and his, beyond 
 the shadow of a doubt, was in all essentials an accordant 
 mind. The conservatism that would fain hold liberal views 
 under ban at Andover or Columbia would be more than sat- 
 isfied were the out-going students assuredly no further away 
 from orthodox standards. There was a God, the Creator 
 of all things, infinitely powerful, wise, and holy ; and if the 
 close student may see reason to suspect that eighteenth- 
 century Deism colored the general conception of him, 
 why, so it does that of many an orthodox preacher even
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 163 
 
 now. The Bible was given by inspiration, and, rightly 
 interpreted, an unerring guide. Christ was a divinely 
 appointed teacher, whose commission was authenticated 
 by miracles; who came by his teaching, life, death, — pre- 
 eminently by his death, — to provide salvation for mankind. 
 Christian discipleship could be allowed to those only who 
 could thus receive him. There was also a judgment to 
 come, of which heaven and hell were the issues. To read- 
 ers who have orthodox traditions these statements look 
 familiar enough, and they are likely to ask how they who 
 could consistently make them could have been held unortho- 
 dox. The point of departure from the orthodox standards 
 in the declarations of this hour, which the trained theolo- 
 gian may detect but scarce any other, was in the concep- 
 tion of Christ. This departure was not on the view of his 
 character, his powers, his office, or the reverent and loving 
 fealty due him ; but, in the supreme and metaphysical 
 meaning of the word, of his nature. What say you of Christ, 
 — was he simply man? Had this question been asked 
 him by the council, Mr. Martineau would have answered 
 unequivocally 710. Was he very God? Again the answer 
 would have been fw. There was for him, then, only a mid- 
 way conception of a nature more than man, yet a created 
 nature, and so, far less than God : a divine nature poised 
 between the two. Mr. Martineau has himself told us that 
 the " departure from the orthodox Confession of Faith 
 went no further than Arianism ; " and he adds that " so 
 resolute was the aversion to any further step, that, on let- 
 ting fall an expression implying the simple humanity of 
 Christ, I had lost in Dublin the most attached friend I had 
 among my hearers, who took his household away from me 
 with lamentation and tears." ^ Now, Arianism, though 
 
 ^ A Spiritual Faith, Memorial Preface, p. viii. It may be well to remem- 
 ber that the pioneers of English Unitarianism — Lindsey, Lardner, and Priest- 
 ley — had several years before this event reached a Humanitarian view.
 
 164 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 often enough embraced, has never been a stable doctrine. 
 The being more than man, less than God, is reasonably- 
 sure to be surrendered to one or the other. Either he will 
 be lifted into Deity, and so orthodox faith be triumphant, 
 or he will be brought down to man, with the surrender of 
 everything distinctively orthodox. Reasoning from expe- 
 rience, we should say that Mr. Martineau and his fellow- 
 believers must either retreat from their Arianism or go 
 forward to Humanitarianism, with the probabilities much 
 in favor of the latter. 
 
 But there is another feature of their case that needs to 
 be kept in mind. These Presbyterians — we have already 
 noticed that it was as an English Presbyterian that Mr. 
 Martineau was ordained — were without a creed. As their 
 doctrinal standard they accepted simply the Bible ; and 
 they adopted with it, in the broadest meaning of the word, 
 the Protestant principle of free interpretation. To be sure, 
 there was an understanding that the free mind would " orb 
 about " within the Bible ; that while searching for its con- 
 tents it would never question its authority. The free m.ind, 
 however, cannot stipulate thus to behave. Freedom to 
 find truth in Matthew must imply freedom to detect error 
 in Paul ; freedom to inquire with result in any sense pre- 
 determined : freedom to find the contents of a book, yet 
 freedom only to find them true, may be to some a pleasant 
 ideal, but it is one on which experience has bestowed no 
 continuous smile. So much freedom is always perilous to 
 such limitation. The Mississippi is only kept to its channel 
 as the banks are high or the levees strong. The Protes- 
 tant principle has a noble sound ; yet Protestant wisdom 
 has prevailingly imposed upon it the restraints of creeds, 
 that its rising floods may not spread too wide. It is not 
 probable that an intellect so restless and so virile as Mr. 
 Martineau 's could have been held long within any barriers, 
 and the stronger they had been the more disaster in their
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 65 
 
 breach. As it was, not only was the central doctrine of 
 the faith an unstable one, but, save in a prevailing senti- 
 ment of those about him, there was no restraint at all upon 
 his intellectual movement. As was natural, therefore, fol- 
 lowing his own self-directing, he very early began — at 
 first we may well believe insensibly — to depart from the 
 standard of his ordination confession. How much was 
 really conveyed in the " expression implying the simple 
 humanity of Christ" cannot now be shown; and it is not 
 difficult to see how to his own mind it may not have seemed 
 dissonant with the Arianism of his church. But it is also 
 possible that his friend detected in him a real departure 
 from the faith unsuspected by himself, just as several years 
 later his greater friend, John Stuart Mill, detected his de- 
 parture from the Necessarian philosophy to which he still 
 supposed himself a faithful adherent. Our initial aposta- 
 sies we are by no means sure to be the first to discover. 
 
 Other evidences are not wanting that his mind was 
 early in motion. The doctrines of the faith he took up 
 as fresh problems, of which, not content with received 
 opinion, he would achieve a first-hand conviction ; and 
 the vigorous intellect that does thus is reasonably sure to 
 depart somewhere from the standards. Very early, too, 
 a new and peculiar influence flowed into his life, which, 
 in any adequate account of his mental history, would 
 require an ample page. It was the influence of Chan- 
 ning. We of later birth sometimes wonder how Chan- 
 ning's influence could have been so regal. We look into 
 his books ; there indeed is the quiet and transparent 
 style, fit vehicle of the noblest wisdom ; there is the 
 organism of thought, in its wholeness so complete, so 
 articulated part with part; there are the moral impera- 
 tives, the spiritual insights, the spiritual raptures, all cal- 
 culated in their immediate effect to constrain, to comfort, 
 to awaken and inspire. But the thought is so old that it
 
 1 66 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 is difficult to realize that it once was new; it is with effort 
 that we remember that it is now so familiar and every-day, 
 only because it has so permeated and leavened the think- 
 ing of our time ; because newspaper, essay, sermon, novel, 
 poem, — read in its light, too, the New Testament and the 
 Old, reflect it to us. To the contemporaries of Channing, 
 however, it came with the glory of a fresh inspiration. 
 It lifted them into another plane of feeling, in which the 
 past lay in another perspective and the future glowed 
 with another prophecy. Of this influence no one was 
 more profoundly sensible than Mr. Martineau. The 
 memorable discourses, preached at Baltimore in 1819 
 and in New York in 1826, reached Ireland just before he 
 entered upon his ministry. Writing of his friend, John 
 Hamilton Thom, then a young clergyman at Belfast, he 
 quotes from him words that might do quite as well for him- 
 self: " Others had taught me much ; no one before had un- 
 sealed the fountain in myself. He was the first to touch 
 the spring of living water, and make me independent even 
 of himself."^ Like testimony to his own measureless debt 
 to Channing Dr. Martineau bore to the present writer, 
 when from the summit of his octogenarian years he helped 
 him to a survey of that bright morning of his career. 
 
 From his ordination confession he hardly comes dis- 
 tinctly before us as a theologian until 1835, the year 
 before the appearance of the Rationale of Religioiis In- 
 quiry. In the January of that year he preached a sermon 
 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Manchester 
 New College,^ near the close of which he says : " The 
 plenary inspiration of the Scriptures was once an admitted 
 tenet among our Churches. It was supposed that the 
 evangelical authors performed only the mechanical process 
 
 1 A spiritual Faith ^y\.t.xx\ox\?i\ Preface, p. x. 
 
 '^ " Need of Culture for the Christian Ministry." Reprinted in Essays, 
 Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 6/ 
 
 of writing, and were, in fact, but amanuenses to the dic- 
 tation of the Holy Spirit. . . . All this is now changed. 
 The tendency among us [a tendency not, I think, likely 
 to be arrested] is towards the belief that the Sacred Writ- 
 ings are perfectly human in their origin, though recording 
 superhuman events ; that the Epistles abound in the dis- 
 cussion of questions now obsolete ; that the Gospels, with 
 one exception, were constructed from earlier documents, 
 whose origin it is impossible to trace, and whose fidelity 
 rests upon their internal character ; that even their precep- 
 tive parts will not yield the Christian morality pure to our 
 hands, till a mass of local and temporary elements have 
 been withdrawn." The cast of this passage makes it plain 
 that while the more orthodox view had once prevailed in 
 the liberal ranks, it had not recently done so, which is of 
 course nearly the same as saying that it was not prevail- 
 ing at the time of the ordination confession. Indeed, 
 Unitarians, while very stoutly maintaining inspiration, 
 very early conceived it to be found in the deeper mean- 
 ing of the Sacred Writings, not in the form of their struc- 
 ture. They held it to be spiritual, not mechanical. And 
 when we come to the Ratio7iale we only meet in more 
 elaborate statement the same general attitude. Its judg- 
 ment of the New Testament books is that " they are 
 perfectly human, though recording superhuman events; 
 that they were written by good and competent men, who 
 reported from their own memory, reasoned from their 
 own intellect; who received impressions modified by 
 their own imagination ; who interpreted the ancient 
 scriptures by their own rules, and retained the notions of 
 philosophy which they had been taught, and of morals 
 which approved themselves to their own conscience. 
 They saw and felt what they wrote, and they wrote truly." ^ 
 During the eight years since his ordination he has grown 
 
 ^ Third edition, p. lo.
 
 1 68 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 much, but his faith has undergone no marked transition. 
 He is bold and aggressive, and given to extreme compari- 
 sons ; yet he is safely within the lines of earlier and more 
 conservative Unitarianism. His attitude towards the Bible, 
 if that of a freeman, is yet most reverent ; Christ is the 
 central orb of his system; title to the Christian name 
 implies, not merely acceptance of him, but acceptance 
 of him as a supernatural being, together with the wonders 
 accredited to him.^ This position, called in question by 
 some of more radical mind, he defends in the preface 
 to the second edition, and qualifies rather than departs 
 from in the preface to the third edition, which appeared 
 in 1845. The ruling contention of the book is for Ration- 
 alism against Orthodoxy, — against Orthodoxy in that it 
 *' makes belief a duty of the Will, and judges men by their 
 creed; " for Rationalism in that it makes belief an "invol- 
 untary act of the Understanding, and judges them by 
 their character," ^ — and in this contention he is fervid, 
 cogent, and convincing. Reply, however, might have 
 been made to him, which his own later experience should 
 have verified, that the reason that assumes to judge in- 
 spiration will anon usurp the throne of authority. 
 
 We come now to the period of the Liverpool Contro- 
 versy, an event that summoned him to declare his mind on 
 a variety of themes in a somewhat careful and elaborate 
 manner. The preliminary correspondence, as we have 
 seen, came to a sudden termination in consequence of the 
 Unitarian party's refusal to justify their position by the 
 whole Bible as the " Word of God." " We all drew our 
 religious faith," says he, " from the Word of Christ." ^ 
 This was a very marked departure from the standard of 
 the confession ; and while there are passages in the Ra- 
 
 1 Rationale of Religions Inquiry, p. 70. 
 
 2 Preface to second edition, pp. viii-ix. 
 
 ' A Spiritual Faitk,'b'iemox\d.\ Preface, p. xiii.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 69 
 
 tionale that may foreshadow such an attitude, it is not 
 probable that he would have taken it, had the like exi- 
 gency arisen at the time that book was printed. But 
 personally he had gone further than this. All drew their 
 religious faith from the " Word of Christ; " but what was 
 that " Word " ? " While," says he, " Mr. Thom found that 
 Word in every saying which any Evangelist ascribed 
 to him, I could not refer the Johannine discourses to the 
 speaker of the Sermon on the Mount, or help feeling, in 
 the very differences of the Synoptic reports, limits to their 
 authenticity, not without traces of later thought." ^ How 
 long he has been coming to this position he does not tell 
 us, nor by what influences he has been guided ; but it is 
 plain that he has entered upon the way of which the 
 Tubingen school and the Scat of Authority will be the 
 issue. 
 
 To fix his attitude at this time more definitely, we will 
 briefly follow him through his several contributions to this 
 Controversy. His first theme was " The Bible : What it is, 
 and What it is not." In this discussion the conception of 
 a spiritual inspiration as opposed to a plenary and mechan- 
 ical, " as much higher than your cold, dogmatical, scien- 
 tific inspiration, as the intuitions of conscience are higher 
 than the predications of logic, and the free spirit of God, 
 than the petty precision of men," ^ rules all his reasoning. 
 This "great autobiography of human nature" — such he 
 calls the Bible — is the " Word o{ God," but — a distinc- 
 tion at which spirits were troubled sixty-one years ago, — 
 not the " Words of God." His teaching was that while the 
 spirit of God moved upon the souls of the Bible writers, 
 their understandings were left uncontrolled to use such 
 language as they would, to group events as they might, to 
 
 ^ A Spiritual Faith, p. xiii. 
 
 2 Letter to Rev. H. McNeile and others, " Unitarianism Defended," 
 Correspondence^ p. 41.
 
 170 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 weave their own moral sentiments into the narrative of 
 them, to drav/ their own inferences from them, to give 
 them a color, not always of exactest verisimilitude, from 
 what was local and peculiar to their time. The inspiration 
 is met in the constant yet progressive lesson of the infinite 
 power, the unerring wisdom, the unbending righteousness, 
 the constant providence, the unvarying love of God. This 
 it is that the Word of God proclaims, but through the 
 words of men. But in this record of inspirations where is 
 the culminating point? Why, in him of Nazareth. "He 
 is the central object, around whom all the ages and events 
 of the Bible are but an outlying circumference; and when 
 they have brought us to this place of repose, to return 
 upon them again were but an idle wandering." ^ To Christ 
 he looked in the spirit of most reverent discipleship as one 
 whom God had endowed with a far surpassing grace, and 
 in whose utterance his Word became articulate as in that 
 of none other. It had for him, too, this peculiarity, that it 
 " plunges us into the feeling, that God acts not there, but 
 here ; not was once, but is now ; dwells not witJioiit ns, like 
 a dreadful sentinel, but within ns as a heavenly spirit, be- 
 friending us in weakness, and bracing us for conflict." 
 " The inspiration of Christ," he goes on to say, " is not 
 any solitary, barren, incommunicable prodigy ; but dif- 
 fusive, creative, vivifying as the energy of God : — not 
 gathered up and concentrated in himself, as an object of 
 distant wonder; but reproducing itself, though in fainter 
 forms, in the faithful hearts to which it spreads."^ He 
 surely is wanting in sensibility who, reading these words, 
 detects no heart-throbs in them. 
 
 His evidence of inspiration is thus even at this early day 
 not external, but internal ; not in the letter of the Sacred 
 Volume, whose inaccuracies he points out in long detail, 
 but in its spirit. But how of miracles? Mr. Martineau 
 
 1 p. 4. - p. 7-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN I /I 
 
 believed in miracles, at any rate the miracles of Christ. 
 From the prevailing view of them, however, he takes a wide 
 departure. The miracle, as he holds, can prove nothing 
 true that is intrinsically incredible. " If, before your 
 eyes," says he, " a person were to multiply five loaves 
 into five hundred, and then say ' this is to prove the doc- 
 trines which I teach, that God is malignant, and that there 
 is no heaven after death,' — should you be converted, and 
 follow him as a disciple? Certainly not; the statement 
 being incredible, the miracle would be powerless. And 
 the inference I would draw is this : that the primitive 
 force of persuasion lies in the moral doctrine as estimated 
 by our reason and conscience, not in the preternatural act 
 displayed before our senses." ^ What then is the signifi- 
 cance of Christ's miracles? In answer he says, and his 
 language conveys a doctrine that early Unitarians struggled 
 hard to establish, " His miracles, surely, sprung from com- 
 passionate, not proselytizing impulses ; had a practical, not 
 a didactic air; were not formally wrought as preliminaries 
 to a discourse, but spontaneously issued from the quietude 
 of pity; they were not syllogisms, but mercies." 2 Another 
 very current conception of miracles calls forth his protest. 
 A year and a half earlier, Emerson had spoken of them as 
 " one with the blowing clover and the falling rain ; " and 
 somewhat thus Mr. Martineau regarded them. A preva- 
 lent habit of thought then, and we should not need to look 
 far to find it now, placed them in another category, and 
 gave them another sanctity. " The falling rain " ? Why, 
 that follows upon the laws of nature, decreed when the 
 world began. This miracle, on the contrary, is the 
 immediate action of God, and is a token of his presence 
 and his will. Against this Mr. Martineau inveighs : " In 
 whatever form it is expressed, it rests upon a postulate 
 which I hold to be false and irreligious; viz., that the 
 1 p. 25. "^ pp- 24-25.
 
 172 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 supernatural is Divine, the natural not Divine; that God 
 did the miracles, and since the creation has done nothing 
 else ; that Heaven gave a mission to those whom it thus 
 endowed, and has given no mission to those who are 
 otherwise endowed. All peculiar consecration of miracle 
 is obtained by a precisely proportioned desecration of 
 nature." ^ Here is obviously no attempt to depreciate 
 miracle, but a desire to give to the operations of nature the 
 like sanctity. His was not at all the deistical doctrine which 
 divorces God from immediate relation with the universe, 
 but the theistic conception that makes him immanent in 
 its life, and so regards the miracle but the peculiar exer- 
 cise of an Energy of which " blowing clover and falling 
 rain " are manifestations. He does not question the 
 exceptional, but would consecrate the familiar. It seems 
 difficult to detect a heresy here, yet meditated in relation 
 with a later attitude, it is difficult not to feel that the " way 
 which they call heresy " is entered upon. He would hold 
 the familiar as sacred as the strange ; but before the publi- 
 cation of the second series oi Endeavors, seven years later, 
 he will prefer the " customs of heaven " to the " anoma- 
 lies," " the dear old ways, of which the Most High is never 
 tired," to the " strange things which he does not love well 
 enough ever to repeat."^ One more stadium, and from his 
 preference for the " customs of heaven" he will discard the 
 " anomalies." 
 
 Mr. Martineau's second contribution to this Controversy 
 was an elaborate disproof of the proposition that " Christ 
 was God." Here his attitude is negative, and his own 
 view of Christ is not made prominent. Towards the close, 
 however, he makes this striking statement: "Jesus Christ 
 of Nazareth, God has presented to us simply in his inspired 
 humanity. Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but 
 
 1 p. 24. 
 
 2 Endeavors after the Christian Life, p. 311, American edition.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 73 
 
 as the true image of God, commissioned to show what no 
 written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral 
 perfections of Deity, We accept, — not indeed his body, 
 not the struggles of his sensitive nature, not the travail of 
 his soul, but his purity, his tenderness, his absolute devo- 
 tion to the great idea of right, his patient and com- 
 passionate warfare against misery and guilt, as the most 
 distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind." ^ 
 Enough surely for spiritual affinity, but too fluid and 
 indefinite for dogma. 
 
 His third lecture dealt with the " Scheme of Vicarious 
 Redemption." This was perhaps his crowning effort in 
 this Controversy. Of course all turns on the interpreta- 
 tion of the death of Christ ; so with a few vivid strokes he 
 places before us the scene of the Crucifixion, and then asks 
 what this means. The first impression is that it " requires 
 no interpretation, but speaks for itself; that it has no mys- 
 tery, except that which belongs to the triumphs of deep 
 guilt, and the sanctities of disinterested love ; " and with 
 this view he is content. He conceives the death of Christ 
 as " manifesting the last degree of moral perfection in the 
 Holy One of God ; " and believes that " in thus being an 
 expression of character, it has its primary and everlasting 
 value," He conceives it as "immediately procuring the 
 universality and spirituality of the Gospel ; by dissolving 
 those corporeal ties which give nationality to Jesus, and 
 making him, in his heavenly and immortal form, the Mes- 
 siah of humanity," ^ The natural features of the Cruci- 
 fixion, however, he is told present only the ** mere outside 
 aspect ; " that they are " wholly insignificant compared 
 with the invisible character and relations of the scene ; 
 which, localized only on earth, has its chief effect in Hell ; 
 and though presenting itself among the occurrences of 
 time, is a repeal of the decretals of Eternity," Thus he 
 
 1 p. 57- ^ PP- 5-6-
 
 174 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 glides into the doctrine of the Atonement, summoning 
 philosophy and Scripture to testify against it; and in his 
 powerful exposition they testify as they have seldom testi- 
 fied. His philosophical argument is the most impressive, 
 as probably the most congenial to his mind, but his Bibli- 
 cal is remarkable for its completeness. There is not a 
 prominent consideration ever deduced from the Sacred 
 Text in support of the doctrine, that he does not frankly 
 challenge. The issue is such as we should anticipate : the 
 death of Christ is spoiled of its dogmatic significance. 
 Here is no God enduring an infinite penalty, but a man 
 divinely appointed to show forth the measureless love of 
 God, and so win human souls to his embrace. It does not 
 placate the Divine, but Hfts up and redeems the human. 
 
 His next theme is the " Christian View of Moral Evil." 
 At this time he had not attained to the ethical doctrine of 
 his later years ; yet he is certainly a careless reader who 
 does not find in this discourse germs of which the Types of 
 Ethical Theory is the unfolding. 
 
 To exhibit the Christian view he does not exhibit it 
 alone, but passes in review the doctrine of two principles 
 that were held in Greece, — the philosophical doctrine 
 which, giving God an absolute monarchy, makes evil an 
 instrument in his hands for the furtherance of good ; and 
 the doctrine which theologians have drawn from the Bible, 
 which teaches a created spirit of evil or devil to which 
 moral evil is ultimately referred. These he discusses, — 
 the first two briefly, the last fully, — and discards as un- 
 tenable. Of course, under the latter head he reviews the 
 doctrine of the Fall with its manifold implications. Neither 
 God directly nor " through his dependant Satan," — neither 
 " by his general laws" nor by "vitiating the constitution of 
 our first parents,"^ — is he willing to conceive the ultimate 
 source of sin ; rather he holds God, in his essential nature,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 75 
 
 its enemy. Where, then, is its source? The New Testa- 
 ment, reflecting the moral consciousness with its " pro- 
 found sense of individual responsibility^' guides to it. 
 Christianity he finds pre-eminently a " personal " religion, 
 " establishing the most intimate and solitary dealings 
 between God and every human soul." " It is a religion 
 eminently naUiral ; eradicating no indigenous affection of 
 our mind, distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but 
 simply consecrating the obligations proper to our nature, 
 and taking up with a divine voice the whispers, scarce 
 articulate before, of the conscience within us." ^ This 
 sense of personal responsibility he finds impaired by " all 
 reference of the evil that is in us to any source beyond our- 
 selves." " To look for a remoter cause than our own guilty 
 wills . . . bewilders the simple perceptions of conscience, 
 and throws doubt on its distinct and solemn judgments." ^ 
 The practical result of this scheme of doctrine he finds 
 to be false views and fictitious feelings with respect both 
 to our own characters and to those of our fellow-men. 
 " That which can be vicariously incurred, or vicariously 
 removed, cannot be guilt; cannot, therefore, be sincerely 
 felt as such ; can awaken no true shame and self-reproach, 
 and draw forth no burning tears when we meet the eye of 
 God. It is a shocking mockery to call sorrow for an ances- 
 tor's sin by the name of penitence, and to confound the 
 perception [or, as it is termed, ' application,'] of Christ's 
 holiness with the personal peace of conscience : the one 
 can be nothing else than moral disapprobation, attended 
 by the sense of personal injury ; the other, moral approval, 
 attended by the sense of personal benefit; and mean and 
 confused must be the sentiments of duty in a mind which 
 can mistake these for the private griefs of contrition, and 
 
 ^ P- 34- 
 
 " pp. 34-35. It may be worthy of remark that in this lecture Mr. Marti- 
 neau reaches his first statement of the freedom of the will.
 
 1/6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the serenity of a self-forgetful will." ^ Thus he maintains 
 against the dominant theology, the fundamental principle 
 of a true ethic, which makes man ever the ultimate source 
 of his deed, and honors or abases him according to the 
 measure of his obedience. This he finds the verdict of 
 conscience, whose oracles the New Testament records and 
 consecrates. He uses throughout the language of the 
 philosopher, but he bears home upon the dominant creed 
 the imputation of being fundamentally dissonant with a 
 sound morality. At the same time he shows that the 
 canons of righteousness, the ultimate judge of creeds and 
 Scriptures, are within ; that it must be a false creed and 
 a spurious Scripture that a healthy conscience cannot 
 ratify. 
 
 His concluding lecture was of " Christianity without 
 Priest and without Ritual." He opens with a contrast of 
 prophetic with priestly and ritualistic religion which it is 
 still profitable to contemplate. The priest, as all cults 
 present him, is the representative of man before God. 
 He stands between the worshipper and his Deity ; without 
 his mediation there is no access to the grace of Heaven. 
 His office no one else can exercise ; there are interces- 
 sions that are only prevailing when he makes them ; 
 rites, ceremonies, incantations that are efiicacious only 
 when he employs them ; and their aim is not to superin- 
 duce a healthier state within the worshipper, — a penitent 
 heart, a surrendered will ; but to win the favor of an 
 unmindful or offended Deity. The Ritual, that is, is a 
 " system of consecrated charms ; and the Priest, the great 
 magician who dispenses them." This system, indeed, is 
 capable of great refinement as well as great grossness, yet 
 in its better as in its poorer ministration the same essen- 
 tial features cling to it. It always implies an idea of God 
 and his relation with humanity on which the nobler senti- 
 1 p. 37. 2 p. 6.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 7/ 
 
 ments cannot prosper. Human nature is presented to 
 us, "in contrast, not in alliance, with the divine;" and 
 ever the tendency is to those arguments and appeals that 
 impart a sense of widest separation. Man, instead of 
 being consecrated by the immediate fellowship of God, is 
 demeaned into an outcast from his presence. 
 
 In strongest contrast with the purely pn'es^Ij religion is 
 the prophetic. While the Priest is the representative of 
 men before God, the " Prophet is the representative of 
 God before men." Instead of carrying a petition up, he 
 brings a message down ; " instead of carrying the foulness 
 of life to be cleansed in Heaven, he brings the purity of 
 Heaven to make life divine. Instead of interposing him- 
 self and his mediation between humanity and Deity, he 
 destroys the whole distance between them ; and only 
 fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the 
 infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves 
 the creature alone with the Creator." ^ As is the differ- 
 ence in end, so is the difference in means. While the 
 Priest performs his rites or mutters his incantations, the 
 Prophet speaks the burning and the cleansing word. 
 The former is without forward vision : the sacerdotal 
 system from its very nature is stationary; to the latter 
 there is ever a fairer truth, a new obedience, a more 
 radiant ideal. The latter cares not for the instituted, but 
 for the true; not for rites, but for living worship; not 
 for the temple, but for the temple's God ; and the practical 
 working of the two it is easy enough to see. The former 
 involves a " distant Deity, a mean humanity, a servile 
 worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective rever- 
 ence; "2 the latter, " an interior Deity, a noble humanity, 
 a loving worship, an individual hoHness, and a prospec- 
 tive veneration." ^ 
 
 ' pp. lo-ii. Also Studies of Christianity, p. 42. 
 2 Ibid. p. 40. 3 /^/^. p, 4^. 
 
 12
 
 178 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Mr. Martineau, while making his contrast, has hovering 
 near his mind the Church of England, whose sacerdotal 
 tendencies it was easy to expose, though they are in 
 union with a prophetic spirit he might in justice have 
 more fully recognized. But how of Christianity? Is it a 
 religion of the priestly or of the prophetic type? His 
 answer is unequivocal and strong. " Christianity, then," 
 he says in closing, " is without Priest and without Ritual. 
 It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, 
 and repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was tran- 
 scendently THE prophet. He brought down God to this 
 our life, and left his spirit amid its scenes. The Apostles 
 were prophets ; they carried that spirit abroad, revealing 
 everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and the 
 proximity of their heaven."^ Such was his view of Chris- 
 tianity, with all that it implies. It was intended to lift up 
 man, not to reconcile God ; to redeem from sin, not to save 
 from hell ; to awaken, encourage, comfort, rebuke ; to win 
 to the recognition of the Eternal Beauty and the embrace 
 of the Infinite Love. 
 
 Such is the attitude of his mind during this memorable 
 Controversy, which closed in the spring of 1840. Certainly 
 he has moved far from the ordination confession ; but, 
 judged by the standards of to-day, he has reached no ex- 
 treme of radicalism. His mind is most elastic, and it is 
 restrained by no dogmatic barriers ; but he holds to the 
 moral, though not the plenary inspiration of the Bible; he 
 still believes in miracles ; the person of Christ is his cen- 
 tral light; and in essentially this attitude he will for some 
 time remain. In \'i/\\, 6X'~>c\x'?>%\x\^ Five Points of Christimi 
 Faith, he enumerates " Faith in the Moral Perceptions of 
 Men," in the " Moral Perfection of God," in the " Strictly 
 Divine and Inspired Character of our own Highest De- 
 sires and Best Affections," in " Christ " as God's ''perfect 
 
 1 Studies of Chrisiiamty, pp. 68-69.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1/9 
 
 and transcendent outward revelation^' in " Human Immor- 
 tality." Against what counter-theses these several points 
 are maintained, there is no need here to state. In 1845, 
 in a sermon on " The Bible and the Child," he disturbed 
 the peace of more conservative spirits by urging that the 
 Bible should not be crowded into the child's mind en 
 7nasse, but should be offered him with discrimination. 
 " This indiscriminate use of the Bible, as an infallible 
 whole," he tells his hearers, " fills the mind with a system 
 of confused and self-contradictory ideas, both of religion 
 and morals."^ In another passage he tells of three systems 
 of morals which he finds in the Bible, " most at variance 
 with each other in their general spirit and tendency." 
 They are those of Moses, of Solomon, of Christ; " respec- 
 tively perfect representations of the sacerdotal, the Epicu- 
 rean, and the spiritual type of human duty; " ^ and he can 
 see only moral bewilderment resulting from offering them 
 to the child as on an equal footing of divine authority. 
 Yet his attitude here is clearly implied in his Controversy 
 lecture of a year before. In 1846 he records dissent from 
 Theodore Parker's saying that if Christianity be true at all, 
 it would be just as true if "Herod or Catiline had taught" it. 
 The combination of a " true Christianity " with a " wicked 
 Christ," " he finds no less absurd than revolting." On 
 this principle, " the moral perfectness of Christ is not an 
 essential, but a subsidiary, support to Christianity; — a 
 delightful confirmation of his mission," but not a condi- 
 tion of our faith in him. The very contrary Mr. Marti- 
 neau finds true. " Prove what you will against his life," 
 Mr. Parker might be supposed to say, " his attested 
 doctrine remains." " Prove what you will against his doc- 
 trine," Mr. Martineau would reply, " his divine life re- 
 mains; and with more truth in it than in any proposition 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. p. 394. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 397.
 
 l8o JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 in the Bible or out of it." ^ In 1850, in a searching review 
 of Francis VV. Newman's Phases of Faith, he maintains the 
 moral perfection of Jesus, a view which in 1853, in a re- 
 view of New Phases, he more elaborately defends. In the 
 latter paper, too, he maintains the view that upon the per- 
 son of Jesus Christendom furnishes an " indispensable 
 commentary;" that a scrutiny of his lineaments as they 
 were first offered to the world yields not the person that 
 we know. " As Plato thought it needful, in his investiga- 
 tion of Morals, to study their embodiment in the magnified 
 scale and conspicuous orders of the State, so it is impossi- 
 ble to apprehend aright the person of Jesus without watch- 
 ing the spread of his shadow over the ages, and throwing 
 back upon him the characteristics of the Christian faith." ^ 
 The same year, reviewing R. W. Greg's Creed of Christen- 
 do?n, with subtler and fuller statement, he maintains the 
 like thesis respecting Christianity. We cannot know it in 
 its seed, that is, the written word of evangelist or apostle, 
 but only in its unfolding. " Inspirationy says he, " in giv- 
 ing the intensest light to others, may have a dark side turned 
 towards itself There is no irreverence in saying this, and 
 no novelty : on the contrary, the idea has ever been 
 familiar to the most fervent men and ages, of Prophets 
 who prepared a future veiled from their own eyes, and 
 saintly servants of heaven, who drew to themselves a trust, 
 and wielded a power, which their ever-upward look never 
 permitted them to guess." ^ This truth he copiously 
 illustrates from the Christian record by showing how 
 Christianity, though realizing far more grandly, yet failed 
 to realize the expectations of its founders. His conclusion 
 is that the '^primitive Gospel is not in its form, but only 
 in its spirit, the everlasting Gospel." In all this we see a 
 mind reverently dealing at first hand with the problems of 
 
 ' Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. i. pp. 182-183. 
 
 2 Ibid. vol. iii. p. 61. 
 
 2 Studies of Christianity, p. 2S6.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN l8l 
 
 the faith ; not emancipate from the past, nor seeking to be ; 
 yet calling no man and no creed master, and in the love of 
 truth earnestly but serenely following its light. 
 
 II. Thus we have surveyed what we may call the tentative 
 period of his theology. We meet in it no radical changes, 
 but rapid modifications, and always away from the domi- 
 nant standards of faith. The distance from the ordination 
 confession to the essays of the earlier fifties is long, but 
 the line of travel is a reasonably straight one. 
 
 We will now undertake to state his more settled and 
 characteristic doctrine. Preliminary to this, however, we 
 may observe that what we have called his tentative period 
 reaches just a little past the time when the "metaphysic 
 of the world " came home to him in Trendelenburg's class- 
 room. One who carries to the study of Dr. Martineau's 
 earlier theology a firm grasp upon his earlier philosophy 
 must sometimes be sensible of a dissonance between them. 
 Convictions deep as his life surge for utterance, which, 
 placed beside the doctrines of Hartley and the Mills, wear 
 an incongruous look. This conversion brought him to 
 himself, and gave him that spiritual philosophy without 
 which he could scarcely have known an intellectual har- 
 mony. We may venture to afiirm even more than this. 
 There is a connection, often enough observed, between a 
 mechanical philosophy and a vigorous dogmatism, and 
 a spiritual philosophy and intellectual freedom. Given the 
 former, the soul seeks through conventional and appointed 
 ways the God that otherwise it is not allowed to find. 
 Given the latter, and in the security of immediate knowl- 
 edge, the appointed ways — book, creed, ritual — lose 
 their importance. In a strange country one takes the 
 paths that are pointed out to him ; but 
 
 " He needs a guide no longer who hath found 
 The way already leading to the Friend."
 
 182 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 That Mr, Martineau's philosophical conversion yielded 
 him another theological creed we could not say; but 
 another 'theological temper it surely yielded him. In a 
 sermon already quoted, speaking of the " living union of 
 God with our humanity," he said, referring to the earlier 
 period, " Long did this faith pine obscurely within me, 
 ere it could find its way to any clear joy." After his con- 
 version, however, it pined no more, but became his ever 
 haunting and enthralling conviction. At the same time 
 he turned to the problems with which he had been 
 accustomed to deal, with correspondingly altered spirit. 
 Before there had been an apparent willingness to save 
 what he might: while ready to dare anything for the 
 truth, he was somewhat more than willing that certain 
 things should be true. Now he faces his problems with 
 scarce a prejudice as to the issue, concerned only that his 
 facts shall be indisputable, his postulates sound, his in- 
 ferences just. Meeting God as a daily friend, questions of 
 miracle and inspiration, of the date of the Pentateuch 
 or the authorship of John, may be tranquilly left to the 
 issues of learning and sound reasoning. 
 
 The basal principle of Mr. Martineau's theology is his 
 Theism. Many would say they are Theists because they 
 are Christian: on the authority of Christ they believe in 
 God. Mr. Martineau, on the contrary, is a Christian be- 
 cause he is a Theist. He believes in Christ, for he artic- 
 ulates a divine word which Jie has also heard. His 
 conception of God is not of an infinite Somewhat beyond 
 him, or of a Moral Ideal within him, but of a " Divine Mind 
 and Will," — distinctly that; and he meets with peremp- 
 tory challenge whatever " substitutes " for this. Especially 
 stern is he in dealing with pantheistic dissipations of it. 
 Most Theists pantheize^ at times; Mr. Martineau never 
 pantheizes ; and even the unsuspected tentatives towards 
 pantheism, be sure he will detect and unmask. Thus in his 
 
 1 See note, p. 403.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 83 
 
 criticism of Theodore Parker in 1845, while giving him 
 amplest recognition as a Christian thinker, he yet brings 
 him to judgment for his pantheizing. The American, 
 without due thought it may have been, was willing to 
 merge all inferior causes in one Supreme Cause, a view 
 which, rigorously followed, should have taken him quickly 
 to the plane, if not the orbit, of Spinoza. To this Mr. 
 Martineau replies that there is " one thing that must not 
 be overwhelmed, even by an invasion of the Infinite Glory. 
 Let all besides perish, if you will ; but when you open the 
 windows of heaven upon this godless earth, and bring back 
 the sacred flood to swallow up each brute rebellious power, 
 let there be an ark of safety built ... to preserve the Hn- 
 man Will from annihilation : for if this sink too, the divine 
 irruption designed to purify, does but turn creation into a 
 vast Dead Sea, occupied by God." ^ The like reservation is 
 one of the characteristic features of the great Study of Re- 
 ligioti^ and is implied in his multifarious writings through 
 all the forty years between. All causes operating in nature, 
 in the last century called second causes, he is willing to lose 
 in the First Cause ; but the human will he must reserve as 
 itself a spring of causal power. To the pantheizing flood 
 this is a dyke that he always opposes. Gravitation may 
 express a divine volition, but human activities have no 
 remoter spring than the human personality. But there 
 is another aspect of the problem which it is important 
 to notice : many forget, but Mr. Martineau never forgets, 
 that there is a doctrine of man that is essential to any 
 doctrine of God that is not pantheistic. They may stoutly 
 deny pantheism, but the view they present of man as mode 
 or phenomenon — anything but substantive and real — 
 makes pantheism the only tenable doctrine. In his essay on 
 " Nature and God " Mr. Martineau, brought to this theme, 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses^ vol. i. p. 170. 
 * See vol. ii. pp. 170-171.
 
 184 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 remarks in his pregnant way : " It is not enough that you 
 save the Divine personaHty, if you sacrifice the Human ; 
 without relation to which lesser, as substantive moral 
 object, the greater, left to shed affections only on its own 
 phenomenal effects, cannot sustain itself alive." ^ That is 
 to say, without a real man you have no support for the 
 conception of a real God. Yet another aspect of the 
 problem he is called to notice. In these latter days 
 the tendency of thought is much towards the Immanence 
 of God, which it is possible so to conceive as to obliterate 
 His personality. Observing in nature how all her opera- 
 tions are necessitated, not free, how can we think of the 
 immanent Source as free, not necessitated? He comes to 
 this consideration in 185 1, in his critique of Greg's Creed 
 of Christendom. " With an intellect," says he, " entirely 
 overridden by the ideas of Law and Necessity, no man can 
 escape the force of the common objections to any doctrine 
 of prayer, or of forgiveness of sin; and if those ideas pos- 
 sess universal validity, the very discussion of such doctrine 
 is, in the last degree, idle and absurd. But what if some 
 mediaeval schoolman, or some impugner of the Baconian 
 orthodoxy, were to suggest that, though Law is coextensive 
 with outward nature. Nature is not coextensive with God, 
 and that beyond the range where his agency is bound by 
 the pledge of predetermined rules lies an infinite margin, 
 where his spirit is free? And what if, in aggravation of 
 his heresy, he were to contend that Man also, as counter- 
 part of God, belongs not wholly to the realm of nature, 
 but transcends it by a certain endowment of free power in 
 his spirit? "2 Thus together with the Immanence of God 
 he maintains his Transcendence: beyond the realm of the 
 ever conditioned, the realm of the ever free. This view is 
 also a dominant feature of the Study of Religion ^-"^ and 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iii. p. 169. 
 
 * Studies of Christianity, p. 280. 
 
 * See vol. ii. pp. 138-142. Dr. Schurman sees in Dr. Martineau's doctrine
 
 THE CHRISTI/VN THEOLOGIAN 1 85 
 
 through all the years between, it was one of the constants 
 of his thought. In all deaUng with the thcistic problem, 
 he guards the idea of personality, no champion of thcistic 
 faith more valiantly. His man is a living soul, no sequent 
 in an order of phenomenal succession, or modal apparition 
 of another nature; his God is a living, a righteous, and 
 a loving God ; and the latter he would hold untenable 
 without the former. 
 
 The Immanence of God provides for the stability of the 
 cosmic order : the various law of the outward universe is 
 the decree of the Immanent Will. At the same time His 
 Transcendency provides for His free communion with the 
 spirit in man. The fuller statement of this doctrine must 
 be reserved for a later page ; ^ enough to note here that 
 while on the one hand it consecrates the universe with the 
 Divine Presence, and yields that order which makes sci- 
 ence possible, on the other hand it provides that possibility 
 of personal relationship which religion ever asks. Thus it 
 becomes the basal provision for a second doctrine which 
 he maintains with great cogency and fervor, that of inspi- 
 ration. We have seen how, in his tentative period, he 
 wrestled with the prevailing standards of this doctrine, how 
 against the theory of plenary inspiration, which made 
 prophet or apostle but the passive agent of the Holy Spirit, 
 he maintained an inspiration that left the prophet free to 
 use language as he had learned it, to report facts as he 
 had observed them, to reason according to his natural 
 skill ; an inspiration that moved the soul, but did not dic- 
 tate to the tongue or pen. In his earlier tentatives 
 towards this view, his teaching wears an indefinite look, — 
 
 of Transcendency " an unconscious survival from the deistic conception of 
 God's relation to the universe." {Belief in God, p. 176.) Dr. Schurman is 
 a writer who weighs his words ; but one who places beside typical deism the 
 theism of Dr. Martineau will surely be impressed, not by resemblance, but 
 by contrast. 
 
 ^ See book iii., " Pantheism."
 
 1 86 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 it needs must wear such when placed beside the old me- 
 chanical theory which he repudiated. He was brought, 
 however, to a more definite statement through a challenge 
 he was compelled to make of the indefiniteness of another, 
 and that, again, Theodore Parker. Inspiration, says the 
 latter, "is the light of all our being; the background 
 of all human faculties; the sole means by which we gain 
 knowledge of what is not seen and felt, the logical con- 
 dition of sensual knowledge; our human way to the world 
 of Spirit." ^ This is perfectly consistent with the pantheiz- 
 ing tendency we have already marked in him ; and it is as 
 an expression of this tendency that his speculation draws 
 from Mr. Martineau the criticism in which his own maturer 
 views of inspiration are first distinctly outlined. If so 
 much is inbreathed by the Divine, what then, we may ask, 
 is achieved by the human? If in such measure we are 
 dependent upon God, our own resource is nothing, a view 
 which no consistent theist could allow. " Were we to 
 attempt a solution," says Dr. Martineau, " we should com- 
 mence from the division of all Agency into the two cate- 
 gories of the Human Will, and the Divine Will : we should 
 endeavor to determine the circle of the former ; and what- 
 ever lay wholly beyond it, though still within the limits of 
 Consciousness and of Law, we should refer to the latter. 
 Not everything, however, that must be ascribed immedi- 
 ately to God, can be called Inspiration. He acts oitt of 
 the Spirit, or in Nature, as well as wit/mi the Spirit, or in 
 our Soul ; and we must, therefore, again exclude the 
 whole of the former sphere, and reserve only the chaj'ac- 
 teristic faculties of man. If it were maintained that there 
 were a plurality of these, a further reduction might be 
 allowed, till the attribute alone remained which manifests 
 itself in worship, — the consciousness of moral distinctions, 
 and reverence for moral excellence and beauty. What- 
 
 1 Discourse of MaUers Pertaining to Religion, fourth Am. edition, p. 205.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 8/ 
 
 ever gifts are found in this province of the soul, which are 
 not the produce of human will ; which have been neither 
 learned nor earned ; which, without the touch of any 
 voluntary process, appear in mysterious spontaneity; are 
 strictly the Inspiration of God." ^ The like dissent from 
 our American prophet, and the like affirmative doctrine, 
 he puts forth again in the Study of Religion. " A reason," 
 says he, " that does no thinking for itself, a conscience that 
 flings aside no temptation and springs to no duty, affec- 
 tion that toils in no chosen service of love, a ' religious 
 sentiment' that waits for such faith as may 'come in' to 
 it," — all conclusions fairly drawn from Parker's teaching, 
 — "negative their own function and disappear." ^ Again, 
 in his wonderful discussion of " God in History," ^ he says : 
 "In order to save the personal power in man, and to leave 
 him any real partnership in history, we must concede him 
 a mental constitution of his own, — a trust of both intel- 
 lectual faculty and moral will ; and must limit the divine 
 part to the intuitive data, from which every activity of our 
 inner nature must start." " Each power of the soul," he 
 maintains, " has its own appropriate object to which it 
 feels its way, — reason to truth, imagination to beauty, 
 conscience to right. The presentation of these to us is 7iot 
 our own doijig; the regular pursuit of them is."^ This 
 thesis, as he is writing of history, he illustrates in a large 
 way by reference to the Greek, the Hebrew, and the Teu- 
 tonic mind. To the Greek there was " a haunting feeling 
 of an indwelling divineness embodied in the cosmos, and 
 interfused through all its parts, including man as one of 
 them ; for, to the Greek, the universe and human life never 
 appeared as in their essence antitlietic to the divine, but 
 rather a clothing and manifesting it, and moulded by its 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, a7id Addresses, vol. i. pp. iSo-iSi. 
 
 2 Vol. ii. p. 170. 
 
 8 Seat of Authority , p. 116. * Ibid.
 
 1 88 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 inner thought; "^ the Jew, ruled by a moral conception, 
 bore witness to the ''moral govejnimcnt of the world;" 
 and, as the Greek " interfused the divine essence through 
 the cosmic spaced' followed the " divine footsteps down the 
 tracks of historic time,'' and made the " course of history 
 a highway for his God ; " ' while to the Teuton belongs 
 peculiarly that "sense of personal relation between the 
 single soul and the Spirit of God, which is the mainspring 
 of private sanctities, and releases the heart from the con- 
 straint of law into the freedom of love."^ 
 
 Thus he finds a threefold divine initiative, — in the 
 sense of that glory that transfigures the universe, of a 
 Righteousness that bends the curves of history, of per- 
 fection in the individual soul. These are given, not found. 
 Herein, not in a mechanical controlling of men's faculties, 
 he finds the truth of inspiration ; and by a conviction of 
 this, as firmly held as was the older doctrine by Melanch- 
 thon or Calvin, his own work is done. 
 
 Here then we have a relation of persons, — always that : 
 a giver and a receiver; an upturned eye, a down-flowing 
 light, the light of the eternal Sun. Of persons, be it again 
 emphasized, not of Essence and mode, not of Reality and 
 appearance, but of Soul and soul. 
 
 But more than inspiration is provided for in this rela- 
 tion. Between persons there may be communion, — mind 
 responsive to mind, affection answering to affection ; and 
 though one be infinite and the other finite, the disparity 
 makes the grace no less possible. Still 
 
 " The spirit of the worm beneath the sod, 
 In love and worship, blends itself with God." 
 
 This theme is much dwelt upon by Mr. Martineau, though 
 less in the way of doctrinal exposition than of mystic con- 
 templation. The truth is avouched to him by experience ; 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 117. 2 y^/^_ p_ u^^ g /^/^/. p_ ^^.y
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 1 89 
 
 in the private confessional he has met his God too often 
 to allow question as to the possibility of the interview. 
 Rather he would contend that of all persons in the uni- 
 verse, God is the most easily accessible. Herein, we 
 hardly need say, is involved his view of prayer. A super- 
 ficial scepticism, instructed only by natural law, cavils at 
 prayer. It does not avail to feed the hungry, stay the 
 storm, hold aloof the canker-worm, keep the pestilence 
 at bay. No, Mr. Martineau would say, what the decrees 
 of the Infinite Will have fixed, prayer cannot avail to 
 unfix. The laws of physical nature relent not in their 
 sway, and man, so far as a physical nature, is subject to 
 them. But in the realm transcending nature which as a 
 spiritual being is his home, and where God in His tran- 
 scendency is, the two meet on other terms.^ Here is not 
 fixity, but freedom. Here the soul meets not decrees, 
 but admonitions; is shown not an order, but a beauty; 
 and here it may pour out its needs and God dispense his 
 grace, while all the functions of the physical nature go on. 
 The pantheist who allows God and man to meet only in 
 nature, and the deist who, banishing God wholly from 
 nature, leaves man wholly within it, may find no easy 
 reconciliation of law and prayer. But a theist of the 
 type of Mr. Martineau finds no call for reconciliation, 
 for there is not even an apparent dissonance between 
 them ; and he can say, as Mr. Martineau has said, " I 
 know of nothing in the constitution of the universe at all 
 at variance with our natural faith in a personal inter- 
 course with God, in his openness to our appeal and our 
 susceptibility to his spirit." ^ Man so far as he belongs 
 to nature must experience according as God has decreed ; 
 as a spiritual being he may receive as God may give. 
 
 ^ See Study of Religion,\o\.\\. pp. 179-181. 
 
 - Sermon, " The Prayer of Faith," Hours of Thought on Sacred Things 
 second series.
 
 190 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Prayer may not avail to neutralize the malaria's poison, 
 or to float the shattered vessel to the haven ; it may, 
 however, bring strength to the tempted, courage to the 
 fearful, comfort to the sorrowing, resignation to the rebel- 
 lious, faith to the doubting, peace to the troubled ; and 
 these through God's answering grace. 
 
 But more yet is implied. A relation of persons opens 
 the way to a relation of ruler and subject, and hence, 
 through the self-ordering of our conduct, obedience or 
 disobedience. We can submit to a fate, we can yield to a 
 law, but we can obey only a person. 
 
 We must defer to a later page Mr. Martineau's justifi- 
 cation of the supreme holiness of God; sufiice it here to 
 say that in the presence of that holiness we recognize the 
 rightful disposer of our lives. It is ours, indeed, through 
 the august prerogative of freedom, to elect the disposal; 
 His will, as communicated to us, we may make our guide 
 unto righteousness, or we may repudiate it unto sin; but 
 there is the alternative, offered to every one to whom a 
 vision of right has been given. This or that, this better 
 or that poorer, — soul, which wilt thou? and according to 
 our choice is our spiritual aHgnment. Sin, — that is Mr. 
 Martineau's oft-used word, and he speaks it with an impres- 
 sive solemnity. Liberal preachers have been wont to shun 
 it. Man they have treated as half-educated, over-tempted, 
 a blunderer; Mr. Martineau says plainly simmer; and, like 
 Wesley or Whitefield whose example he often recalls, he 
 directs his burning speech to the awakening of a sinning 
 nature to the saving sense of its condition. His sin, in- 
 deed, is not like that of Calvinism, corruption through 
 another's transgression ; it is a defilement or disease self- 
 incurred, and for which no extenuating plea can be offered. 
 Long practice of disobedience may numb us to the sense 
 of its enormity; for " it is of the essence of guilty declen- 
 sion to administer its own anaesthetics ; " and so the soul
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 191 
 
 may suffer less the deeper is its ignominy; but the down- 
 ward way was entered when first, a nobler and a baser 
 offered, choice was made of the baser, and the deeper and 
 deeper turpitude was only incurred as the like choice was 
 repeated. In another feature too he departs from the cus- 
 tomary tone of many liberal theologians : in disobedience 
 he allows no gradations. As spiritual beings we are judged 
 not by the thing we do, but by the service we render, 
 whether it be to God or devil ; and this he holds that the 
 unhardened soul, by its sense of guilt and remorse, con- 
 fesses. In a vivid picture of Peter's anguish ^ after the 
 denial of his Master, he imagines the customary palliatives 
 addressed to him: This, indeed, Peter, is very bad, but 
 take heart ; you could have done much worse. To be 
 sure, you told a lie, but you did not tell two. You only 
 denied your Master, you did not traduce him, you did not 
 kill him. There is Judas now; think of his betrayal and 
 how much worse was that. To this, Peter, speaking true to 
 the witness within him, can only reply, — and these words 
 Mr. Martineau puts upon his lips: "Go to, thou fool and 
 blind ; Satan gave me the lie to tell ; but he put no mur- 
 derer's dagger in my hand ; what more then could I do for 
 him than I have done? " A little further on he says : " Ap- 
 pealed to by the actual competitors for our will, we well 
 know which is the higher, expressing the will of God ; and 
 which the lower, representing his aversion. There is no 
 third thing present; and the difference between the two is 
 all that there can be : it is something infinite, being beyond 
 all qtiantity, and giving an antithesis of quality, contrasted 
 as beauty with horror, as the zenith with the nadir, as the 
 smile of heaven with the frown. There is then no second 
 bestxn Duty; and the remorse which makes us feel, when 
 we have fallen, as traitors and accursed, flying from the 
 tempestuous face of God, reports to us the awful truth: 
 1 Hours of Thoni^ht, second series, p. 142.
 
 192 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 had we been devils, we could have done no worse ; we did 
 the whole evil we were bid to do." ^ 
 
 But if sin, there may be pardon ; on the placability of 
 God he delights to dwell. Sins forsaken are the Father's 
 smile regained. But there is also punishment : and this 
 not mere consequences of wrongdoing such as we daily 
 experience, — poverty from wasteful indulgence, loss of 
 confidence from dishonest dealing, impaired health from 
 dissipated habit, — it is something more strictly penal, more 
 retributive. Though sin may administer its " anaesthetics," 
 and the drugged soul become insensible to its shame, yet 
 it shall somehow and somewhere be awakened from its 
 torpor; its dark record it shall read; its evil deeds it shall 
 confront, and have full and clear experience of the holi- 
 ness it has insulted. The doctrine of the older Universal- 
 ists which, after the experience of this life, allowed saint and 
 sinner to begin all over again on equal terms in another 
 one, is none of Mr. Martineau's ; rather the inevitable 
 workings of sin, the fact that " guilty declension administers 
 its own anaesthetics," so that deeper guilt may make well- 
 nigh insensible to guiltiness, and remorse at last may lose 
 its fang, carries his mind to the future for the experience 
 of that justice which in this life is not executed. Future pun- 
 ishment, that he teaches. How that may be in the future 
 which cannot be now he does not affirm with definiteness, 
 but he has his visions. The " transition of Death " he 
 holds to be large enough to " open free play for many a 
 penalty that has remained only potential here." With the 
 changes of " body, mind, society and scene " that it brings, 
 " the old resources for slighting contrition and evading the 
 misery of wrong may well have come to an end." To 
 this thought he recurs again and again, and his vivid elo- 
 quence carries it home with a power that is sometimes 
 terrible. R. H. Hutton, recounting Mr. Martineau's ser- 
 1 Hours of Thought, second series, pp. 142-143.
 
 THE CIIRTSTL\N THEOLOGIAN I93 
 
 vices to himself, said that he had inspired him, as the Cal- 
 vinists had failed to do, with the " fear of hell." " There 
 are passages in his writings," said he, " which have filled 
 me in moments of temptation and trial, with a dread which 
 hardly any living writer could have produced." He made 
 special reference to the vivid picture of the " maniac of 
 remorse" at the close of the sermon on "Christ's Treat- 
 ment of Guilt," ^ a passage which it cannot be amiss to 
 quote in full : — 
 
 " It is remarkable how slight a suggestion is occasionally 
 sufficient to bring back vast trains of emotion. There are 
 cases in which some particular function of the memory ac- 
 quires an exquisite sensibility : and usually, as if God would 
 warn us what must happen when our moral nature is di- 
 vorced from the physical, it is the memory of conscience that 
 maintains this preternatural watch. In many a hospital of 
 mental disease [as it is called] you have doubtless seen a mel- 
 ancholy being, pacing to and fro with rapid strides, and lost 
 to every thing around ; wringing his hands in incommuni- 
 cable suft'ering, and letting fall a low mutter rising quickly 
 into the shrill cry ; his features cut with the graver of sharp 
 anguish; his eyeHds drooping [for he never sleeps], and 
 showering ever scalding tears. It is the maniac of re- 
 morse ; possibly indeed made wretched by merely imagi- 
 nary crimes ; but just as possibly maddened by too true a 
 recollection, and what the world would esteem too scrupu- 
 lous a conscience. Listen to him, and you will often be 
 surprised into fresh pity, to find how seemingly slight are 
 the offences, — injuries perhaps of mere unripened thought, 
 — which feed the fires, and whirl the lash, of this incessant 
 woe. He is the dread type of hell. He is absolutely se- 
 questered [as any mind may be hereafter], incarcerated 
 alone with his memories of sin ; and that is all. He is un- 
 conscious of objects and unaware of time : and every guilty 
 
 1 See Endeavors after the Christian Life. 
 13
 
 194 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 soul may find itself, likewise, standing alone in a theatre 
 peopled with the collected images of the ills that he has 
 done ; and turn where he may, the features he has made sad 
 with grief, the eyes he has lighted with passion, the infant 
 faces he has suffused with needless tears, stare upon him 
 with insufferable fixedness. And if thus the past be truly 
 indestructible ; if thus its fragments may be regathered ; if 
 its details of evil thought and act may be thus brought 
 together and fused into one big agony, — why, it may be 
 left to ' fools ' to ' make a mock at sin.' " 
 
 Whoever lingers over this passage sufficiently to take 
 home its meaning will surely feel that the punishment it 
 implies lacks nothing of severity. The older theologians 
 used different terms, but, a few lurid spirits excepted, it 
 may be doubted if they provided a hell more terrible than 
 this. For an evil soul to awaken out of a spiritual torpor, 
 and with clear vision see the evil it has done ; to become 
 vividly conscious of low appetites that have been given 
 rein, of passions that have not been restrained, of griefs that 
 have been cruelly inflicted, of perfidies that have been 
 practised, of lies that have been told, the compunctions 
 that should have saved from them being smothered for the 
 while ; for the seducer to realize the baseness of his deed, 
 the traitor the enormity of his offence, the murderer the 
 horror of his crime ; the veil of forgetfulness so securely 
 drawn over the past suddenly lifted, the turpitude all plain, 
 and the soul seeing itself in its revealing blackness, — is 
 there other torture it would not take in exchange for its 
 utter self-loathing and remorse.? With this punishment in 
 its moral aspect also there is absolutely no fault to find ; 
 it is only right : it is the soul's own record that it contem- 
 plates ; it is itself it sees mirrored in its own deed, itself 
 as it is, but did not need become. The old doctrine of 
 retribution offends the moral consciousness, and so clouds 
 the righteousness of the universe; this one the moral
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGL\N 195 
 
 consciousness ratifies, and so sees in it a manifestation of 
 that righteousness. Between the two there is another 
 difiference : the older doctrine stipulates the sufifering as a 
 finality; to Mr. Martineau, here as there, it has an insep- 
 arable relation with remedy. The doctrine of Plato, that 
 the wise transgressor will seek, not shun, his punishment, 
 has seemed to many rather ideal than practical; to Mr. 
 Martineau, sufifering for sin if dreadful is yet altogether 
 desirable, not to be asked reprieve from, but to be prayed 
 for, — Smite, Lord, for thy mercy's sake spare not. 
 Through the punishment a sense of the soul's estate is 
 borne in upon it; the truth and right of the universe, 
 otherwise trampled and discredited, are vindicated. The 
 soul, forever denied such suffering, he would hold, indeed, 
 not favored, but defrauded. But more and deeper, in the 
 nature of things, suffering must ever attend the awaken- 
 ing of the soul to its ill estate, the realization of the purity 
 and high joy it has put by. As one numbed by cold and 
 at length become insensible, awakened by medicinal arts 
 from stupor nigh to death, has experience of a searching 
 agony, the attendant and the witness of returning life, so 
 with the sinning soul, aroused to a consciousness of its 
 estate : its contrition and its shame are incident to the way 
 of recovery. They imply that at least a thrilling glimpse 
 of the higher beauty has been given it, in contrast with 
 which its unseemliness is manifest. That beauty is its 
 possible attainment; but its via sacra, for a period, at 
 least, must be a via dolorosa. Before it hard and dark 
 looms the mount of Purgatory, and only up its steep 
 ascent and through its cleansing fires can the forsaken 
 Paradise be regained. 
 
 Thus these several items of doctrine, inspiration, com- 
 munion with God, prayer, sin, forgiveness, punishment, 
 flow from that relation of persons which he maintains so 
 strenuously.
 
 196 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 It needs not to be shown that these doctrines, though 
 philosophically maintained, are Christian; in their ultimate 
 thought, however unique in their explication, they are the 
 staple of Christendom. But what in its later stages is his 
 view of Christ? The Arianism of his ordination con- 
 fession went, and a Humanitarian view — strictly that — 
 came to its place. Christ became to him distinctly man, 
 not a celestial somewhat between man and God. With the 
 change of nature there was a corresponding change of 
 office : Christ ceased to be Lord and Saviour ; he became 
 teacher, exemplar, guide, brother, friend. 
 
 Was this change attended with a lower tone of feel- 
 ing? Did it make Jesus less dear to him, his word less 
 persuasive, his example less inspiring? The contrary 
 were the rather true: the critic and philosopher experi- 
 enced the ever-intensifying ardor of the disciple's loy- 
 alty. Settle the question of Christ's nature as you may, 
 and define his office as you will, the personality that 
 transfigures the Gospels had ever the homage of his 
 heart. 
 
 Those who have been troubled by his arraignments of 
 prevailing forms of theology have often had but dim per- 
 ception of the hold that Jesus had upon him. In 1850, 
 in his review of Phases of Faith, he fervidly maintained 
 Jesus' moral perfection. " We must persist," says he, " in 
 presuming Jesus to be perfect till shown to be imperfect. 
 We derive our estimate of him wholly from the picture 
 presented in the Gospels, . . . and so long as this picture 
 presents no moral imperfections, we must decline supply- 
 ing them out of the resources of fancy. In presuming 
 Christ to be perfect, we simply refuse to suppose a draw- 
 back on what we see from what we do not see, and insist 
 on forming our judgment from the known, without arbi- 
 trary modification from the unknown. No doubt Jesus, as 
 a being open to temptation, was intrinsically capable of
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 197 
 
 sin : but this, as a set-off against the positive evidence of 
 hoHness, no more proves actual imperfection, than the 
 mere capacity for goodness in the wicked proves their 
 actual perfection." A Httle further on he adds : " Christ 
 had the liability to sin, not because he was hiima7i, but 
 because he wdjs, free ; and whatever presumption of imper- 
 fection arises hence, would have arisen no less, had he 
 been an angel of the highest rank. All souls are of one 
 species : or rather, are lifted above the level where diver- 
 sity of species prevails, so as to range, not with Nature, 
 but with God."^ Three years later, in reviewing a second 
 edition of Phases, he maintains the same attitude, but 
 wishes to form judgment, not alone from the lineaments 
 of Jesus as shown in the New Testament, but also from his 
 grace as manifest in Christian history. " We admit," says 
 he, " and maintain that to the Person of Christ Christen- 
 dom supplies an indispensable commentary ; and that to 
 judge of him as of a private neighbour by puzzling out 
 his lineaments beforehand, instead of observing the action 
 of his individuality upon mankind and the mingling of his 
 influence with the currents of time, is not unlikely to lead to 
 an estimate of him other than that which we defend. But 
 the measure of the grandest beings cannot be taken by 
 any private standards or contemporary memoirs : and his- 
 tory is their biography writ large. ... As Plato thought 
 it needful, in his investigation of Morals, to study their 
 embodiment in the magnified scale and conspicuous orders 
 of the State, so it is impossible to apprehend aright the 
 person of Jesus without watching the spread of his shadow 
 over the ages, and throwing back upon him the character- 
 istics of the Christian faith," ^ In his review also of Renan, 
 ten years later, the like august moral estimate, if less speci- 
 
 1 Essays, Revinvs, and Addresses, vol. iii. pp. 3S-39. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 61. See also essay by Edward Caird, " Christianity and the 
 Historical Christ," New World, vol. v.
 
 198 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 fically emphasized, is yet implied ; ^ and yet again in 1890, 
 in the Seat of AutJiority, though the language is not so 
 unqualified, it is plain that Jesus wears to him a moral 
 grace that lifts him to a peerless height.^ This attitude 
 does not imply the belief that all moral insights were 
 given Jesus, nor that all moral issues lay clear before him; 
 it does not imply the absence of temptation and struggle; 
 nay, these limitations may be conditions of being, in the 
 strict sense, moral at all. It does imply, however, that 
 whether insights were clear or dim, in whatever struggle or 
 whatever pain, he was faithful to the Higher Will. This 
 aspect of his character held the heart of Dr. Martinbau in 
 steadfast discipleship. No critic has dealt with the Chris- 
 tian record more unsparingly than he ; and no cloistered 
 saint was ever more responsive to its central light. 
 
 Some of the more special and individual attitudes of his 
 mind respecting Christ are very interesting. A few years 
 ago there was undertaken a revision of the Common 
 Prayer in use among English Unitarians, a book first 
 published in 1862, and of which "insensible changes" of 
 sentiment made desirable some " changes " in the text. 
 Naturally Dr. Martineau's views were solicited, and he 
 wrote out in full the changes he would have made. In 
 transmitting them to the clergyman who had the enter- 
 prise in hand, he wrote, " I can take no interest in any 
 book of common prayer that does not recognize the 
 unique place of Jesus Christ." When eighty-six years of 
 age, he was asked if this language was still true to his 
 mind, and he answered that it was. That " unique place," 
 however, must be such as Dr. Martineau could give, and 
 that was quite definitely shown in his critical emenda- 
 tions. It is no very uncommon circumstance to meet a 
 Unitarian clergyman who dislikes the name Christ; it 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iii. p. 333. 
 
 2 See especially p. 651.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGLVN I99 
 
 designates an office which he feels that Jesus did not 
 hold. Dr. Martineau, on the contrary, though he long 
 ago repudiated the Messiahship of Jesus, and was anxious 
 to relieve him of all pretence to it, yet held on to the 
 name, and used it freely and reverently. In the case of 
 one so scrupulous as he in the use of terms, this cannot 
 be thought to follow as mere habit from the usage of an 
 earlier day; and had he been questioned, he not improb- 
 ably would have claimed, that while Jesus was not at all 
 the Christ of Old Testament prediction, he yet holds, by 
 a holier anointing, the office of Christ in the trust and 
 affection and reverence of Christendom. The name Son, 
 too, as applied to Jesus, is one that he very frequently 
 used, and for which he had a very evident liking. He 
 had, indeed, a profound conviction of universal Sonship, 
 as he who reads his sermon on " The Finite and the 
 Infinite in Human Nature " ^ may learn. The Pauline 
 distinction between "creature" and "sons," a created 
 nature seen in all structures around us and in the physi- 
 cal organism of man, and a begotten nature, met in 
 man's inmost spirit, he accepted and illuminated and 
 glorified. But of this latter he, like Paul, found in 
 Christ the supreme illustration ; nay, as he taught, it 
 is the penetrating radiance of his life that awakens us to 
 its more vivid realization. On the other hand the terms 
 " Lord " and " Saviour " he disliked and would not use ; 
 they were impregnated with a meaning that was not true 
 to him. His critical changes in the Common Prayer are 
 mainly illustrative of these attitudes. For " in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord," he substitutes " by thy beloved Son." 
 Instead of " everlasting joy and felicity, through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord," he would say "the everlasting joy to 
 which thy glorified Son hath led the way." " For thy 
 mercy's sake in Jesus Christ our Lord," he transforms 
 
 ^ Horns of Thought on Sacred Things, first series.
 
 200 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to " of thy compassion, shown in the tender mercies of 
 Jesus Christ." " We bless thee for . . . the redemption 
 of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ," he cancelled in 
 favor of " we bless thee for . , . sending thy Son to be 
 the light of the world." " Everlasting joy and felicity, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord," he changed to " ever- 
 lasting joy and felicity to which thy glorified Son hath 
 led the way." For " through our Lord Jesus Christ " 
 he wrote " nearer the spirit of thy Son." " Grant us 
 every blessing in Christ Jesus our Lord " he would ex- 
 punge in favor of " make us joint heirs with Christ as 
 children of God," Where the text reads " we beseech 
 thee, O God, to hear and to accept us as true disciples 
 of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord," he would have peti- 
 tions offered " with the submission of children, and the 
 perfect trust of thy beloved Son." For the phrase 
 " Our Saviour " he sometimes substituted " Jesus Christ," 
 and sometimes " Forerunner." " Through him whom 
 thou hast exalted to be unto us a Prince and Saviour," 
 he changed to " As we look unto him who was tempted 
 as we are, and yet without sin." These changes indi- 
 cate with sufficient clearness the " unique position." It 
 is not that of an outward potentate, nor that of an 
 official Saviour, but that of the supreme prophet of the 
 soul ; of one endowed with eye clear to the Beatific 
 Vision, and with power to magnetize unto its joy. 
 
 III. Interesting as are his attitudes as a theologian, 
 there is a spirit behind them that interests us even more. 
 This controversialist who stood so valiantly for his truth, 
 yet believed in a unity of spirit, and strove to show the 
 way to it. An absolutely free intellect was indeed indis- 
 pensable to him, and he would have held dearer any lone- 
 liness and isolation with this, than any fellowship without 
 it; but this allowed him, as he would religiously have
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 201 
 
 allowed it to any other, the differences that should have 
 made fraternal worship impossible would have needed to 
 be very radical indeed. Of course where there is united 
 service there must be points of intellectual sympathy : no 
 group of people can come together in the worship of God 
 unless there be a common belief that there is a God ; or in 
 discipleship of Christ, unless in some sense they, in com- 
 mon, recognize him as their master. But the difference is 
 incalculable between ultimates of belief such as these and 
 requirements of doctrine such as the sects impose; and 
 Dr. Martineau dreamed his dream — the foolishness of 
 his day, but possibly the blessed reahty of a wiser fu- 
 ture — of a worship in approaching which these require- 
 ments shall not be required ; when theological animosities 
 shall no longer keep apart those whom a common love 
 should otherwise unite. He also dreamed his dream of 
 a Church deeply based upon the religious sentiment, toil- 
 ing on from age to age, changing its doctrines as new 
 light comes, yet without breach in the continuity of its 
 life. Here are two distinct conceptions, though they 
 express one spirit. The former deems it possible to find 
 points of union amid existing diversities; the latter 
 dreams of an organization of which doctrinal features 
 shall not be dominant and obtrusive. No abatement of 
 the profound research, no rest for the restless mind, 
 no truce even to polemic strife. You need not make 
 your zeal for truth the less because you magnify your 
 love. 
 
 The former was borne in upon him, as it has been borne 
 in upon so many others, by contemplating sectarian divi- 
 sions in contrast with the common truth out of which they 
 spring. Scattered through his various writings are many 
 tentatives towards reconciliation, but one stands out con- 
 spicuously before all others, a remarkable paper entitled 
 " A Way out of the Trinitarian Controversy," first pub-
 
 202 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 lished in the Christian Reformer in 1886.^ If he could 
 show Unitarian and Trinitarian a basal truth in which both 
 agree, it would seem possible to bring to an end one of 
 the most stubborn and bitter antagonisms of Christian his- 
 tory. This he does in a manner unique, noble, persuasive, 
 worthy of his great intellect and his great heart ; though 
 one which neither Trinitarian nor Unitarian has as yet 
 shown any marked interest to embrace ; and it is probable 
 that the wearisome and profitless contention must go on 
 many years longer. It is something, however, that the 
 way is laid open ; the manifest possibility may yet tempt 
 to the beautiful achievement. 
 
 Looking into the depths of the problem of the Divine 
 Nature, whence only any worthy conception of it is to be 
 drawn, he finds Unitarian and Trinitarian strangely misun- 
 derstanding each other. The cardinal Unitarian affirma- 
 tion is what? Why, " One God in one Person." But 
 what is the Unitarian's working conception of this one 
 Person? The Unitarian genius has been, prevailingly, 
 little speculative, little mystical. It has an impatience of 
 whatever doctrine cannot be presented with distinctness of 
 outline. Accordingly the Unitarian has conceived his 
 God rather practically, and as he is met in his relation 
 with the universe, as its Creator and Sustainer. With 
 what God is in himself, or was before the creative fiat 
 went forth, he gives himself but slight concern. His God 
 is not an abstract essence, but an active agency. He is 
 the " Source of nature, Soul of souls. Lord of the earth, 
 and Fountain of Grace, appears under every aspect that is 
 divine, and fills to our thought the whole space that is 
 accessible to affection, trust, and adoration." ^ 
 
 ^ To be found also in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. See also an 
 admirable paper on the same subject by James M. Whiton, in the New 
 World, vol. ii. 
 
 ^ Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. p. 529,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 203 
 
 Such is the Unitarian's one God in one Person. Over 
 against this the Trinitarian offers the conception of one 
 God in three Persons. Here to many minds is a source of 
 confusion: One God, three Persons. It contradicts arith- 
 metic ; and while it is fiercely maintained on one side 
 that arithmetic must stand, it is maintained as fiercely on 
 the other side that arithmetic must stand contradicted. 
 Many Trinitarians and most Unitarians might well thank 
 Dr. Martineau for his luminous exposition of this riddle. 
 If we use the word " person" here in the distinct and defi- 
 nite sense in which we are accustomed to employ it, the for- 
 mula undoubtedly yields us three natures whose oneness it 
 is quite impossible to conceive; and that multitudes un- 
 equal to the subtleties of Greek speculation so use it, and 
 thus find in their Trinity a Tritheism, is apparent enough. 
 But this, though a misconception to which the doctrine is 
 peculiarly liable, is not at all its meaning. To come to its 
 meaning, our idea of personality must part with its clear 
 distinctness; "we must melt, as it were," says Dr. Marti- 
 neau, " its edges away, till the sharp outline is gone, and 
 we can no longer tell where one ends and another begins, 
 for both merge in a common ground. We must think of 
 the three persons as so many nuclei of intenser light, 
 [what figure could be happier?] distinguishable amid the 
 universal element of divine thought, around which the 
 attributes cluster with a certain preferential afiinity, with- 
 out, however, ceasing to exist in the same essence, of which 
 all are alike affirmable. In short, the ground colour of the 
 doctrine is laid in the Greek Pantheism, which conceived 
 God as the thinking power of the universe. In compari- 
 son with this infinite element. Personality, implying con- 
 centration and distinction of qualities, appeared finite and 
 inadequate. To reconcile the two, — to retain the mystic 
 breadth of the one, with the human intensity of the other, 
 personal differences were superinduced upon a Divine
 
 204 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 essence that underlies them ; and the absolutely One is 
 revealed as relatively Three." ^ If Trinitarian apologist 
 has ever offered a more satisfactory account of his doc- 
 trine, we have not met it. 
 
 From this account of the doctrine it is easy to see that 
 distinct predicates respecting the First Person should be 
 difficult to form. He may be vaguely conceived like 
 space without worlds, or like life without living beings; 
 but of him little can be said. Accordingly, while multi- 
 tudes of Trinitarians talk of the doings of the Father as 
 familiarly as of those of the " elder Lord Shaftesbury," the 
 Trinitarian creed deeply studied gives them no warrant 
 for so doing. The creed indeed speaks of the First Per- 
 son as " Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things 
 visible and invisible ; " but this does not distinguish him 
 from the Second Person, of whom it is affirmed that " by 
 him all tilings were made!' A harmony of these two 
 statements is easily realized by remembering that the 
 creative act is peculiarly the Son's; that only as acting 
 through the Son is it referred to the Father. And accord- 
 ant with the creed is the teaching. The fashioning of the 
 world, the creation of man, the shaping of the long drama 
 of history, the redemption, the final judgment, are not of 
 the Father, but of the Son. Whatever is done is through 
 the agency of the Son. " The one fundamental idea by 
 which the two personalities are meant to be distinguished 
 is simply this ; that the first is God in his primeval 
 essence, — infinite meaning without finite indications ; the 
 second is God speaking out in phenomena and fact, and 
 leaving his sign, wherever anything comes up from the 
 deep of things, or merges back again." ^ 
 
 The reason, then, why the First Person yields so few 
 predicates is plain enough : " The moment anything arises, 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, atid Addresses, vol. ii. p. 530. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 532.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 205 
 
 it is the Son." Around him, therefore, as their natural 
 centre cluster all events: all phenomena of nature, life, 
 history, through which an impression of the Divine is 
 borne in upon us. The firmament showeth the handiwork 
 and the heavens tell the glory of the So)i ; and since all dis- 
 tinctive tokens of the Divine are thus of him, the Father is 
 but a " blank of infinite possibility, — the occult potency of 
 all perfection, but the realized stage of none ; " and though 
 we may say he is " the abyss how deep," or " the heaven 
 how high," he yet offers no peculiar power or grace by 
 which the mind can lay hold upon him. He is necessary 
 as a background to our thought, but presents no outline 
 in the foreground. He is as the vault that holds the stars, 
 yet were itself inscrutable and unguessed but for them. 
 
 This most fruitful exposition it is not needful to follow 
 further. The way out of the Trinitarian Controversy, as 
 he would show it, is through the recognition of a common 
 conception under different names. The Trinitarian's Son is 
 essentially the Unitarian's Father. The Unitarian's Father 
 is anything but a colorless and metaphysical Absolute; 
 he is the creating, sustaining, guiding power of the uni- 
 verse, its manifest wisdom, life, and love ; and the Trinita- 
 rian's Son is just that. When the Unitarian says Father, 
 the Trinitarian, understanding him from his own mind, 
 supposes him to refer to that impalpable abstraction, the 
 First Person of his Trinity, in whom the Unitarian, as 
 such, has scarcely any interest at all. Not unnaturally, 
 therefore, the Trinitarian conceives a coldness and love- 
 lessness fundamental in the Unitarian faith, a misjudg- 
 ment scarcely intelligible to the Unitarian. On the other 
 hand, when the Trinitarian says Son, the Unitarian is 
 almost sure to limit his view to the Jesus Christ of history, 
 and he is quite aggrieved that a man should thus be lifted 
 to a God. To the Trinitarian, however, the historic char- 
 acter is only the earthly apparition of a power and grace
 
 206 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that know no time limitations, but are coexistent with the 
 life of God. " The ' Son ' comes before his mind, not as an 
 historical personage at all, but as God's eternal expression 
 of himself, — the thought he puts forth in all his works 
 and ways, manifested through all ages by nature and 
 history; but concentrated with unique brilliancy in the 
 character and existence, the holy life and redeeming work 
 of Jesus." In short, it is the like power, the like wisdom, 
 the like grace that under different names they both con- 
 template ; the Father of the one is the other's Son; and 
 on the basis of this recognition, the two may come 
 together, not indeed throughout, but on the common 
 " under-truth " of their faiths. Dr. Martineau concludes 
 with a reflection which multitudes can but approve, but 
 which few are likely soon to embrace : " Let the advo- 
 cates of each compare them together from this point of 
 view, with mind open, not to words only, but to the real 
 thoughts they contain, with temper sensitive to sympathy 
 rather than to divergency, and there is hope that we may 
 yet all come into the unity of faith, and true knowledge 
 of the Son of God."i 
 
 Such is his attitude on this divisive problem, and in 
 these profound and reconciling words we may see a pre- 
 vailing temper of his mind in dealing with the beliefs of 
 men. Living so much in relation with the " under-truth 
 that feeds the roots of all our faiths," he found bases of 
 agreement there scarce credible to less thorough minds. 
 So while on critical grounds none were more exacting in 
 their demands than he, he was yet haunted by the sense 
 of an underlying unity of faith which it grieved his great 
 heart that so few others should recognize. Indeed it may 
 be doubtful if there was a Protestant communion that he 
 could not have joined, if the prescribed conditions had 
 been only the root convictions. He could have wor- 
 
 ^ Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. p. 538.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 20/ 
 
 shipped with those whose doctrinal attitude was farthest 
 from his own, and then labored to show them the better 
 way, as he would have rejoiced also to be shown. In 
 fact, while his theological affiliations were Unitarian, his 
 religious affiliations were with the deep souls of Christen- 
 dom ; and it was an open secret that his religious affilia- 
 tions counted with him for more than his theological. 
 
 This brings us to a second conception. " The under- 
 truth that feeds the roots of all our faiths," he could com- 
 mend to the attention of the great religious bodies, hoping 
 it might charm them to a broader sympathy. Within 
 his own religious fellowship, however, he could at least 
 attempt to legislate in its behalf; and this he did. Doing 
 it, however, he found that the sympathies of the great 
 majority of his brethren were not with him ; and for 
 many years, on the practical application of the " under- 
 truth," he and they were not of accordant mind. Thus 
 it happened that while theologically the prophet of the 
 more advanced Unitarianism, ecclesiastically, in his deep 
 mind and heart, he was not Unitarian. This attitude, 
 which to some has seemed peculiar, should at least be 
 explained. 
 
 What shall we make basal in religious organization? 
 Shall it be some rapture of the soul or some conception 
 of the intellect? Shall it be worship or dogma? Suppose 
 a group of people who may be able to say, " We love 
 God " and " We believe in the Unity of the Divine 
 Nature," — which shall they put forward as expressing 
 their cardinal interest and invite men to co-operate with 
 them in cultivating and extending, the love or the belief? 
 Shall the basis of their organization be religious or shall 
 it be theological? The practical difference, whether one 
 or the other, is very great. If they organize on the 
 belief in the Divine Unity, make dominant, that is, the 
 fact that they are Unitarians, however tolerant may be
 
 208 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 their professions, they make impossible the approach of 
 any sincere soul that is not Unitarian ; if on the love of 
 God, they put forward a principle to which all aspiring 
 souls may respond. Trinitarians are quite as likely as 
 Unitarians to love God, and, agreeing to disagree, they 
 can kneel one beside the other at a common altar. Here, 
 however, in the far prevailing judgment of men, is an 
 insuperable difficulty: they cannot agree to disagree. 
 Unless they believe alike, they cannot pray together. 
 
 Dr. Martineau did not so hold ; he deemed it possible, 
 and held it wise, to organize on the love and not the 
 dogma. Allowing that some measure of agreement is 
 necessary in the religious grouping of men, the necessary 
 extent of this he yet held to be greatly exaggerated ; and 
 he dreamed his dream of a church in which indeed the 
 Unitarian shall have a place, but which shall be primarily 
 and declaredly Christian rather than Unitarian. He never 
 indeed overlooked the fact that intellectual sympathies will 
 inevitably have much to do with the bringing of men to- 
 gether ; that men will, to a wide extent, differentiate them- 
 selves on lines of belief; but this fact he held not to make 
 necessary a theological dominance in a body organized 
 for the nurture of religion. 
 
 The intensity of his feeling on this point is related to two 
 or three matters of history to which he frequently refers. 
 English Presbyterianism, into whose ministry he was 
 ordained, would, as we have already seen, impose no 
 doctrinal tests. Beginning with the severer type of doc- 
 trine of Baxter's time, it had taken new light as it had 
 come, had advanced and meliorated and expanded, until 
 at length it reached the confines of Unitarianism ; or 
 rather we might more accurately say, while yet prevailingly 
 Trinitarian, Unitarianism had become quite common within 
 its rank. Then indeed an effort was made to bring the 
 organization to a declaredly Trinitarian basis; and at the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 209 
 
 Salter's Hall Convention in London, in 17 19, the debate 
 was earnest. But these Presbyterians, however prevail- 
 ingly they may have disliked Unitarianism, refused to part 
 with their liberty; they would consent to no doctrinal 
 test whatever. Here was to Dr. Martineau a model 
 that he liked to contemplate — "a living church with 
 chaneine creed," — and one which he never wearied of 
 commending. 
 
 But now another incident. In the year 1825 the British 
 and Foreign Unitarian Association was formed. Here 
 was a contrast: the convention at Salter's Hall, though 
 preponderantly Trinitarian, for the sake of fellowship 
 of those of another mind, refused to declare itself so ; 
 the convention at Finsbury Hall declared the organiza- 
 tion that it formed Unitarian. Which offered the more 
 marked example of tenderness for intellectual conviction, 
 the Trinitarians who would take no stand that should 
 banish Unitarians from their fellowship, or the Unitarians 
 who took a stand that made the fellowship of any but 
 Unitarians impossible? It should be possible for the 
 candid Unitarian to see how Dr. Martineau might see 
 that more conspicuous example in the former. It ought 
 to be said that the form in which the question came 
 before these respective bodies was different, and that 
 therefore there was not an exact parallelism in their con- 
 duct. At Salter's Hall the question was. Shall the minis- 
 ter coming to our rank be required to subscribe to the 
 doctrine of the Trinity? and the answer, after long debate, 
 was no. At Finsbury Hall they found themselves Unitarian 
 and named themselves accordingly, and why should they 
 not? Certainly no ethical objection is to be urged against 
 their conduct, and most felt that the action was practi- 
 cally wise. But however unlike the circumstances of the 
 two bodies, and however dissimilar the things they re- 
 spectively did, it is difficult to disown the fact that 
 
 14
 
 2IO JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the Unitarians turned away from the large inclusiveness 
 which Presbyterianism from first to last proclaimed and 
 exemplified. 
 
 Yet another incident, of painful but illuminating sugges- 
 tiveness, was soon to occur. In England, as in America, 
 the largest liberty and the most catholic sympathy have 
 been the profession and even the boast of Unitarians; 
 their ability to maintain this noble claim with the Uni- 
 tarian flag ever in the van, was brought to a proof that 
 proved it wanting. In the time of Charles II., a benevo- 
 lent woman. Lady Hewley, of Presbyterian affiliation, be- 
 queathed certain funds for religious and charitable uses. 
 These, placed in the care of those in religious sympathy 
 with her, at length came into the hands of Unitarians. 
 The question arose among the enemies of Unitarianism, 
 whether Unitarians could be the lawful custodians of funds 
 given by one who was not a Unitarian, and who never con- 
 ceived their being administered in the interest of Unita- 
 rianism. But if these funds could be taken away from 
 Unitarians, why not also the chapels which Presbyterian 
 money had built, and which had come into Unitarian hands 
 through the fact that their congregations had become 
 Unitarian? In less than a decade after the organization 
 of the Unitarian Association, the Unitarians were called to 
 meet this twofold issue before a legal tribunal. The plea it 
 needed to impress upon the court was that the Presby- 
 terians were an undogmatic and purely Christian body 
 which, unrestrained by creed, had through the slow modi- 
 fication of opinion come to the Unitarian attitude, and that 
 the Unitarians, also an undogmatic and purely Christian 
 body, were their natural successors and heirs ; that one 
 with Lady Hewley in the deep fellowship of the spirit, 
 they only differed from her as, after an interval of two 
 hundred years, it was inevitable that they should differ. 
 But at once it was seen that the name Unitarian which
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 211 
 
 they had taken made impossible the claim that they were 
 an undogmatic body. It said, by the clearest implication, 
 that the large fellowship of the spirit which was the all- 
 ruling feature of Lady Hewley's worship had been put 
 by, and that, too, in the interest of a dogma that was none 
 of Lady Hewley's, To meet the exigency, therefore, there 
 was formed in a committee-room of the Association a new 
 organization under the Presbyterian name, to make in 
 court the contention impossible to itself.^ This series of 
 incidents, — the noble action of the Salter's Hall conven- 
 tion, the adoption of the Unitarian name, and with it a 
 dogmatic standard, at Finsbury Hall, an act that brought 
 the Unitarians into the sharpest contrast with the Presby- 
 terians, the action to which the Association was driven in 
 the Lady Hewley suit, together made a deep impression 
 upon the mind of Dr. Martineau.^ 
 
 The contention turns on the employment of a name ; 
 and some earnest spirit asks. Why not employ it? If 
 you are Unitarian, w^hy not call yourself such? Indeed, 
 why not? Dr. Martineau not only concedes your right, 
 but urges it upon you as a duty so to do. No man has 
 more earnestly pressed the importance of distinctly formed 
 and frankly declared religious conviction than he, and no 
 man has taken to himself the Unitarian name by more 
 fervid proclamation. But if an individual should do thus, 
 why not a group of individuals to whom Unitarianism is 
 
 ^ The case was decided against the Unitarians. The funds were trans- 
 ferred to Trinitarian custody, and the chapels were lost. The latter, how- 
 ever, were restored to the Unitarians by act of Parliament in 1S44. 
 
 2 On this subject he has left a considerable record. See " Address, on 
 Occasion of Laying the Foundation Stone of a New Church in Hope 
 Street," Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. ; also " The Unitarian Posi- 
 tion," vol. ii., and " Church- Life .' or Sect-Life ? " and " New Affinities of 
 Faith," in the same volume. In the Theological Revie'w, April, 1S66, he 
 printed an article on " The Living Church through Changing Creeds," 
 and at the National Conference held at Leeds, April, 18S8, he gave an 
 address, afterwards printed in pamphlet, on " Church Organization."
 
 212 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 a common conviction? Again why not? If the cardinal 
 and all-directing purpose be to persuade men of the 
 Unity of the Divine Nature, why, talie name accordingly. 
 A Unitarian society is thus as legitimate as a temperance 
 society, or an historical society. Like these it stands for 
 a distinct and definite purpose that may be very wise, but 
 to the subordination of all else. These illustrations may 
 guide our thought to the point at issue, as Dr. Martineau 
 conceives it. Is your church but as a temperance or an 
 historical society? He answers no. "A man's ' Church' 
 must be the home of whatever he most deeply loves, 
 trusts, admires, and reveres, — of whatever most divinely 
 expresses the essential meaning of the Christian faith 
 and life." ^ Does the doctrine of the Divine Unity em- 
 brace all this under its shelter? As one takes reckoning 
 of whatever he most deeply loves, trusts, admires, and 
 reveres, of whatever most divinely expresses to him the 
 essential meaning of the Christian faith and life, how little 
 of it does he find in association with this dogma ! So far 
 as the dogma is divisive, — and the limits of permissible 
 fellowship under it are the narrowest, — in insisting that 
 his ecclesiastical structure shall be built upon it, he turns 
 from the home with which so many affections are asso- 
 ciated, and elects an isolated hermitage. Instead of the 
 spiritual and universal and eternal, he builds upon the 
 speculative and the individual. The contrast is empha- 
 sized by a further distinction on which it is profitable to 
 meditate : On the former a cJmrch may be builded ; on 
 the latter only at most and best, a sect. "It is the con- 
 scious sameness of spiritual relations," says Dr. Martineau, 
 "that constitutes a Cliurch; it is the temporary concur- 
 rence in theological opinion that embodies itself in a creed 
 and makes a Sect in the proper sense." "The very life 
 and soul of the former," he continues, " so far as we are con- 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addi-esses, vol. ii. j). 376.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 213 
 
 cerned, is in the feeling and proclamation of unity in spite 
 of difference. The essence of the latter is in the accen- 
 tuation of difference amid unity, — in the imitative accep- 
 tance of the very principle and mode of thought whence 
 other sects arise." He adds, " We are bound, I must 
 think, to hold our particular form of personal opinion on 
 a very different tenure from the spiritual affections which 
 bring successive generations to kneel in our churches ; to 
 treat the former as a life interest, the latter as a freehold 
 in perpetuity; and to beware of fixing upon worshipping 
 assemblies and an ecclesiastical body whose life runs on 
 through centuries, the mutable types of thought special 
 to our own time." ^ From this point of view we can 
 surely understand him when he adds, " To a Unitarian 
 Society, — just as to a Reform Society, — I would willingly 
 belong, but of a ' Unitarian Church ' I could never be a 
 member." 2 
 
 That utterance such as this should draw upon him some 
 severities of criticism, especially from those who mistake 
 sectarian zeal for Christian steadfastness, was doubtless 
 inevitable ; ^ but the thoughtful Unitarian, out of his own 
 experience, should at least understand him. Where is 
 there such an one who does not realize that his spiritual 
 affinities run wide of his theological relations? The books 
 he turns to, not for theological instruction, but for reli- 
 gious nurture, which most arouse him, elevate him, com- 
 fort him, strengthen him, how prevailingly are they the 
 production of other than Unitarians ! The heroes of the 
 faith whose example most enkindles, and of whose deeds 
 of love and sacrifice he most likes to tell, wandering back 
 from heaven as they went thither, he knows could only 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. pp. 372-373- 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 374. 
 
 ^ If any one wishes to see specimens of such criticism, let him turn to 
 the Christian Reformer for 1859, and the files of the Ingiiirer for the same 
 period.
 
 214 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 disown the fellowship that implied acceptance of his 
 dogma. He looks upon illustrious contemporaries, toil- 
 ing with a devotion he can but reverence, and diffusing a 
 life which he is sure is the light of men ; and he knows by 
 unmistakable tokens that in the deeps of the spirit he is 
 one with them : — 
 
 " One in the freedom of the truth, 
 One in the joy of paths untrod, 
 One in the soul's perennial youth, 
 One in the larger thought of God; " 
 
 yet the hand-clasp which this oneness should make spon- 
 taneous and glad is rendered impossible through a name 
 he has assumed and a flag he carries. For while in a 
 beautiful sense it is true that 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make," 
 
 and that spiritual sympathies may roam free whatever the 
 restrictions of dogma ; yet is it also true, that no other 
 restrictions so isolate, no other separations so separate, as 
 dogmatic ones. To men of shallow natures this situation 
 may be satisfactory : they may live within a sectarian en- 
 closure and yearn for no larger love ; but to a susceptible 
 and fervid nature like Dr. Martineau's, it is scarce toler- 
 able. Any such can feel with him when he writes, " that 
 I find myself in intellectual accordance with the Socini, or 
 Blandrata, or Servetus in one cardinal doctrine, — and that 
 a doctrine not distinctively Christian, but belonging also 
 to Judaism, to Islam, and to simple Deism, — is as nothing 
 compared with the intense response wrung from me by 
 some of Luther's readings of St. Paul, and by his favorite 
 book, the ' Theologia Germanica.' " ^ Such also can 
 understand how, to be torn away from the great company 
 of devout souls, in which Wesley and Keble and Pascal 
 and St. Augustine are enrolled, and with whom his spirit 
 
 1 JSssays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. p. 376.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 21$ 
 
 is most deeply affiliated, he should regard " an unnatural " 
 and " an inadmissible fate." His attitude, if some had not 
 apparently found it incomprehensible, we should say was 
 the clearest possible. Be faithful to your intellect, he 
 would say, — always that ; seek the truth with all earnest- 
 ness, and proclaim it with all fervor. But building a 
 church, the central feature of which should be an altar, 
 not a doctrine, make basal and prominent the truth that 
 unites, not the speculation that divides. You hold to the 
 Love of God and the Divine Unity ; hold fast to the Divine 
 Unity, but rear your church to the Love of God. Let the 
 doctrine be your personal conviction ; let the Love be 
 your public confession. In the one you hold to a theory 
 in which a few shall agree with you, in the other to a sen- 
 timent in which Christendom is at one with you. Others 
 by dogmatic barriers keep you away from them, see to it 
 that by no dogmatic barrier do you hold them away from 
 you. They may not come at your invitation, none the 
 less let yours be the open door and the proffered welcome. 
 Bring yourself, not merely into mystic sympathy, but into 
 open relation with all reverent and aspiring souls. Let 
 there be one church however small and feeble, theological 
 indeed in the privileges of its members, but religious in its 
 aim, and in all the features of its organization. Thus has 
 he pleaded with his brethren, shut out from the dominant 
 churches by a Trinitarian orthodoxy, yet bent on estab- 
 lishing a Unitarian orthodoxy over against it. This lan- 
 guage, it must be said, speaks true to the conscious purpose 
 of few Unitarians : in England, as in America, they have 
 proclaimed the largest liberty. Come with us, they have 
 said, believing what you must, and no question shall be 
 asked you ; and they have sometimes been quite troubled 
 in spirit that an invitation so cordial should be received so 
 coldly. The Trinitarian might say. Your invitation has a 
 generous sound, but I cannot ignore the fact that you
 
 2l6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 organize on a view of the Divine Nature the very opposite 
 of mine. However you talk of the worship that unites, 
 you have drawn with unmistakable distinctness the line 
 that divides. Your temple door stands hospitably open, 
 but over it is inscribed Unitarian. Dr. Martineau puts 
 himself in the Trinitarian's place, and clearly sees that by 
 that inscription the Unitarian makes his own pretension 
 impossible; that by making the way of approach a 
 dogma, he bars away from the large fellowship of the 
 spirit; and this, vividly conscious of spiritual affinities and 
 eager to place their claims before every other, he felt to 
 be an unnecessary and a sad mistake.^ 
 
 The ecclesiastical ideal of Dr. Martineau, expressed 
 in the happy title of one of his essays, was a " Living 
 
 ^ It is pleasant to find that others looking across the line of sectarian 
 division from the opposite direction may reciprocate his feeling. Thus 
 A. H. Craufurd, in his C/trtstiatt Instincts and Modern Doubt, speaking of 
 Dr. Martineau says : " I cannot help feeling painfully that a church which 
 has no room in it for the devoutly Christian genius of Dr. Martineau is a 
 national church only in a very defective way. It does indeed seem strange 
 that we should exclude from our worship and our fellowship that saint and 
 seer who has in our time been by far the best and noblest exponent of the 
 essential verities of our Master's religion. To claim for ourselves that we 
 are nearer to Jesus than he is would indeed be a thing most absurd and im- 
 pudent. To put, or even seem to put, a stigma on the greatest religious 
 teacher of our age is a thing from which we may well shriuk. We grateful 
 and devoted followers do indeed know well that 'the disciple is not above 
 his master,' but immeasurably below him. All the present nominal leaders 
 of our church taken collectively would not make one James Martineau. 
 How, then, can we presume to banish from the fold of Christ this His 
 greatest and most faithful servant and son ? How can we hurl at him the 
 harsh and unchristian anathemas of the Athanasian Creed f For my part I 
 will freely own that, when I am supposed to be declaring that he shall 
 'without doubt perish everlastingly ' by reason of his Unitarian errors, I find 
 myself instinctively exclaiming as I see him soaring upwards into the divine 
 presence, ' He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; ' ' My Father, my 
 Father ! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' It will indeed be 
 well for us if only a small portion of his sacred spirit shall descend upon 
 us. We do not even dare to hope, as Elisha hoped concerning Elijah, ' that 
 a double portion' of his sublime spirit may descend upon us. When /le goes 
 his mantle is not likely to fall on any successor." (pp. 259-260.) This in 
 some points may seem an exaggcratiou ; but the attitude is noble.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 21/ 
 
 Church through Changing Creeds ; " or, what means the 
 same thing, a " Progressive Theology amid sameness of 
 Spiritual Relations." ^ But this can obviously never be save 
 where " spiritual relations " are the ever dominant ones. 
 The weakness that has been the evil genius of Protes- 
 tantism, which makes necessary a new church as the 
 organ of a new religious conviction, must surely pursue 
 it, while, recognizing free inquiry, we yet build upon 
 dogmatic foundations. Continuity of life there can be 
 none for the church that does not build upon the deeper 
 love and diviner aspiration. The fathers may conceive 
 that they are building for the sons, but the sons must 
 excommunicate the fathers. The " changing creed," where 
 creed is the fundamental fact, makes impossible the " liv- 
 ing church." This consideration, brought before the vivid 
 imagination of Dr. Martineau, has counted for much. 
 Very early his stand was taken. In 1848, in an address 
 on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of 
 his new church in Liverpool, he spoke these eloquent 
 words : " VVe know what we believe ; we love what we 
 believe ; we plainly tell what we believe ; I am a Uni- 
 tarian ; you, who meet here from week to week, are 
 doubtless Unitarian too ; but the society of worshippers, 
 of which we are only the living members, and the Church 
 erected here, of which we shall be but transiettt tenants, 
 these are not to be defined as Unitarian. To stamp them 
 with such a doctrinal name, would be to perform an act of 
 posthumous expulsion against many noble dead whom it 
 is an honour to revere ; and perhaps to provoke against 
 ourselves, from a future age, the retribution of a like ex- 
 communication. In refusing to commit our churches to a 
 determinate system, we protest against the imputation of 
 the least indifference to truth. We simply carry out, in 
 affairs of religion, the rule which is followed in all wise 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. p. 372.
 
 2l8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 endowments for the advancement of knowledge. . . . In- 
 stitutes of Science and halls of learning are created, not 
 to sustain the theories of their day, however earnestly 
 adopted by the first founders ; but in the assurance that 
 Nature and the human intellect will ever seek to converse 
 together, and that a place that aids their meeting will be 
 a welcome heritage to any age. . . . And why may not 
 our Churches rise, not in blind expectation of perpetuity 
 for the present types and classifications of theology, but 
 in pure faith that God and the human soul will ever seek 
 each other ; and that, so long as Heavenly Mercy shall 
 stoop, and earthly aspiration rise, a court of audience for 
 trust and prayer cannot be obsolete." ^ 
 
 The glance here is mainly backward ; he is not willing 
 to excommunicate the fathers. But there is also a forward 
 look ; true and vital as he may hold his beliefs, he would 
 not fasten them upon the sons as a condition of entering 
 on their churchly heritage. An academy dedicated to 
 science, the ever progressive interpretation of nature, is 
 ideal in its conception ; but an academy reared in other 
 times to perpetuate and diffuse the theory of phlogiston, 
 or of cataclasms, or the corpuscular theory of light, all 
 once believed and expounded by the best minds of the 
 world, would wear to-day a singular look. So far as suc- 
 cessful in its aim it could only perpetuate an anachronism, 
 — as churches reared in the interest of dogma have surely 
 done. This to Dr. Martineau is an intolerable thought. 
 That truth may freely unfold, the problems of thought 
 must be met by the unpledged mind. The Unitarian 
 objection to creeds, he holds never to have been so suc- 
 cessful on the intellectual side disproving their truthful- 
 ness, as on the moral side challenging their rightfulness. 
 To his fellow-beHevers he says : " In clearing your con- 
 science and uttering your truth to-day, respect the con- 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 439-440.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIAN 2ig 
 
 science and the truth of to-morrow. You are mortal ; the 
 Church is immortal; your own portion of it counts, and is 
 to count, by centuries. In your personal action on your 
 own time, use without stint the right, discharge without 
 fear the duties, of an ingenuous Christian soul. But in 
 providing for the Future, which belongs to other con- 
 sciences and not to yours, — in speaking for the Church 
 into which you were born and from which you will die, 
 — remember that your concern with it is not discretion- 
 ary, but fiduciary; beware of entailing upon it a perma- 
 nent tribute to your own opinions; and see to it, that you 
 close not against another age any door which you found 
 open for your own." ^ 
 
 Such was his attitude, and such the difference, long 
 continued and sometimes earnest, between him and his 
 Unitarian brethren. They would establish a Unitarian 
 Church ; he pleaded for a Church of God and Christ. 
 They would build upon a doctrine, he upon a reverence 
 and a love. They would organize to fight down an error, 
 he to build up a faith. They would take to themselves a 
 dogmatic designation, he would have found a religious 
 one, or at least one carrying no dogmatic suggestion. 
 The regret on both sides was considerable: on theirs, 
 that their theological leader could not be also in the 
 broadest sense their ecclesiastical co-laborer; on his, that 
 the close fellowship of his brethren was not quite com- 
 patible with the larger fellowship of his heart. 
 
 That the same religious societies, organized as Dr. 
 Martineau would have organized them, would have done 
 better religious work, any one has a right to believe or to 
 disbelieve; but one thing is certain, that Unitarianism as 
 a counter-orthodoxy, whether in England or America, has 
 had no marked success. Its Unitarian proclamation has 
 been rather a gauntlet it has thrown down, than an invita- 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. ii. pp. 383-3S4.
 
 220 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 tion it has put forth; it has been driven to much self- 
 explanation; its tone has been critical, its temper cold. 
 This may not have been because its emphasis was on the 
 wrong interest, — the dogma from which it takes its name 
 rather than the love that it should serve, — but many have 
 thought so, and among them Dr. Martineau. 
 
 In recent years too, especially in England, Unitarianism 
 has shown a marked tendency to secularization, the prob- 
 lems of society winning from the interest once given to the 
 profounder problems of the faith, than which no tendency 
 could have been more foreign to the spirit of Dr. Martineau. 
 In this tendency, too, the Unitarian is not sharply distin- 
 guished from other bodies ; it only conspicuously illus- 
 trates a spirit that is abroad, which Dr. Martineau, watchful 
 of all phases of religious phenomena, viewed with a regret 
 which only his profound trust could comfort. In a letter to 
 the present writer, in answer to a question as to the out- 
 look from the summit of his years, he replied : " You 
 ask me in what light old age presents to me the world I 
 am so soon to quit. Often do I wish that I could see it 
 dressed in such a radiant sunshine of immediate promise 
 as cheers the nonagenarian vigor of our dear friend, Dr. 
 Furness.i But did I not 'live by faith,' — had I to 'live 
 by sight ' of the social and spiritual tendencies preponder- 
 ating now, I should breathe my parting word in tune more 
 with Jeremiah than with Isaiah. For our httle Israel's 
 participation in the future of English religious history, I 
 have less and less hope every year. But all the Divine 
 possibilities remain locked in our humanity, and sure, 
 either here or there, to free themselves into realization. 
 Resting in this, I can lay to sleep all impatient haste, and 
 wait His time," 
 
 1 This letter was written in 1892.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 
 
 Behind belief is a reason for believing. What is the ' seat 
 of authority,' or the ultimate support of religious belief? 
 Keeping ourselves within Christian boundaries, and dis- 
 carding mere eccentricities of opinion, we find three answers 
 to this question. 
 
 First, there is that of the Roman Catholic. His ulti- 
 mate authority is his Church. Its origin is divine : it is 
 the earthly embodiment of a heavenly ideal ; its head is 
 the vicegerent of Christ and speaks in his name. The 
 natural attitude before it, therefore, is one of reverent sub- 
 mission. To question is irreverence, to doubt is impiety. 
 
 The second is that of the evangelical Protestant. His 
 appeal is to an infallible Bible. The Scriptures, Jewish and 
 Protestant, are a message by which heaven makes known 
 its will to man. Theories of inspiration have differed ; — 
 was it only an illumination of the intellect? or did the 
 Holy Spirit subdue the mind of prophet and apostle to 
 its thrall, and make them the amanuenses of its word? 
 These questions suggest divergent theories on which con- 
 tention has sometimes been earnest; but under both alike 
 the doctrine of inerrancy has been maintained. The reve- 
 lation has, indeed, been allowed to have been progressive, 
 more primitive when the law was given by Moses, more 
 fully unfolded when the prophets spoke ; but in this pro- 
 gressive feature we have been shown a divine economy 
 which adapts the lesson to the learner. By such consider-
 
 222 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ation, together with rules of interpretation which explain 
 the obscure by the clear, the morally doubtful by the 
 morally indubitable, which see in seeming discrepancies 
 but surface denials of profounder harmonies, is the august 
 thesis maintained. Here, says the apologist, is the oracle 
 of Heaven's will. Here is wisdom without alloy of error, 
 light and no darkness at all, beauty and no blemish any- 
 where. To one who holds the Bible thus there is no ques- 
 tion of authority. Will he learn respecting God, his 
 nature, his will? of man, his origin or destiny? of sin, per- 
 dition, redemption? the ethics that are unerring, the wor- 
 ship that will be accepted, the faith that will save? — 
 why, he will open this book and learn. 
 
 These two forms of authority we distinguish as outward. 
 They speak to man as from the skies, whose depths his 
 unaided vision may not penetrate. Listen to the apologist 
 of either, and the supreme and only assurance is in its 
 word. Man only guesses till it instructs, and is ever a 
 wanderer without its light. 
 
 The third answer is that of the philosopher, who finds 
 the ultimate warrant of conviction, not without, but within. 
 Grant truth offered from without, still, he will argue, it 
 must be received within ; and receiving implies, not pas- 
 sive acquiescence, but active embrace. Merely granting a 
 teaching true, as the unlettered man may grant the for- 
 mula of the asymptote, is surely not a receiving to which 
 we can attach a religious value ; but only that in which 
 the teaching is met with responsive embrace. But this 
 implies what? Simply that the mind shapes its judgment 
 according to criteria of its own. It is not enough that a 
 dictum be true; in order that I may receive it, it must be 
 true to me. If dissonant with my intellect or conscience, 
 however I may assent to it outwardly, I inwardly repudi- 
 ate it; and it is rather luggage that I carry than light upon 
 my path. As respects truth in general, so as respects
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 223 
 
 the distinction between truth in its human proclamation 
 and its divine. TelHng me tJds is divine truth, made 
 known through inspiration, that is mere human truth, 
 reached through investigation, is to Httle purpose unless 
 there be that within me which marks the difference : some 
 deep sense that discerns the peculiarities of the divine 
 speech or the intonations of the divine voice. Such sense 
 our philosopher will claim. The soul, he will say, not 
 only proves all oracles but discriminates them as of earth 
 or of heaven. 
 
 Thus the ultimate warrant of religious belief he finds, 
 not without, but within. He does not, indeed, claim for 
 all men the ability to find this warrant, but that it is within 
 the range of human faculty. He finds it in the " summit 
 minds," which, through the unity of the race, represent the 
 unfolded possibilities of all. From the mountain crest 
 they report the vision to those upon the slopes below. 
 Herein is the element of just thought in the claim of out- 
 ward authority. Human society is not an association of 
 equals; everywhere is the relation of dependence, those 
 of dimmer upon those of clearer vision. The parent must 
 be authority to the child, the teacher to the pupil, the 
 statesman to those that follow him. The fundamental 
 truths of science, the great principles of social organiza- 
 tion, met and dealt with in all the practical relations of 
 life, — how many can render an ultimate account of them? 
 Men may be found who claim to put by outward author- 
 ity ; yet their social ethics, their business rules, their 
 political maxims, their literary judgments, their philo- 
 sophical opinions, closely examined, confute them. These 
 illustrations, however, hardly illustrate the authority 
 claimed for Church and Bible. The child gives up the 
 parent's guidance at last, and walks wisely in ways of his 
 own selecting ; the pupil outstrips his master ; the states- 
 man may be forsaken for another leader ; the science we
 
 224 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 learn from an Agassiz we may surrender with a Darwin, 
 and the Social Physics of a Comte we may give up for the 
 Sociology of a Spencer. In all these cases the mind acts 
 freely, following by natural attraction what seems to it the 
 clearer light. Not thus, however, are we permitted to 
 treat Church or Bible, which, speaking from above reason, 
 demands its surrender rather than seeks its persuasion. 
 
 The Catholic and Protestant, while most fiercely con- 
 tending with each other, unite in common abhorrence of 
 such a philosopher. He is rationalist, infidel, mere theist, 
 or whatever other bad thing, according to the time and 
 tenor of debate, it is most convenient to call him. He is 
 apt, too, to intensify the dislike of both by holding either 
 under the like adverse judgment. Whether on easier 
 terms with the followers of Luther or of Hildebrand, 
 whether for practical use he may prefer the Bible or the 
 Hierarchy, he finds no better warrant in one than in the 
 other for the tremendous claim of infallibility, and so of 
 ultimate outward authority; and in the argument with 
 which he exposes the pretensions of either, the other may 
 see the indictment of his own. He has, not unlikely, a far 
 kindlier feeling for either than either cherishes towards the 
 other; both he may allow to be depositories of divine 
 truth and to convey the monitions of the Divine Spirit; 
 and here again either is displeased at seeing the other 
 allowed to be the almoner of a grace of which it claims 
 to be the sole dispenser. These attitudes may wear a 
 very human look, but they are not without deep reason. 
 Neither could allow the claim of the other without the 
 destruction of itself To an infallible authority any rival 
 must be a pretender. It discredits its own title when it 
 admits the legitimacy of another. In another aspect, too, 
 the common objection to the philosopher may be seen to 
 be well taken. On the assumption that there is an out- 
 ward authority that is the ultimate support of religion, the
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 225 
 
 structures of Catholic and Protestant dogma are reared ; 
 in this transfer of the seat of authority from without to 
 within, a new departure is undertaken than which no other 
 could be more revolutionary. Our philosopher may be 
 one of ready sensibility and most generous appreciation ; 
 to the noble work of the Catholic Church he may bear 
 most willing testimony; the great lessons of Holy Writ he 
 may ponder with surrendered heart. His, however, is just a 
 natural response to a truth or a divineness that has beamed 
 upon him. He embraces it for no other reason than 
 because it justifies itself to his interior nature. His theol- 
 ogy will be no system of dogma supported by Scripture 
 texts or the decrees of councils, but a body of convictions, 
 won it may be through divine provocation, but with the 
 soul for its central light. 
 
 Undoubtedly the predilection of most men is for an out- 
 ward authority, a voice that speaks to them a decisive 
 word. It is not strange, therefore, that, accustomed to its 
 tone, they do not surrender it with glad alacrity, and that 
 they look with a prevailing distrust upon a competing 
 doctrine that implies a transition so momentous. An in- 
 ward authority, that suggests to them mere personal 
 opinion, personal idiosyncrasy, a hazy talk of intuitions, a 
 vaporing of ideals ; — where, they ask, is the all-persuad- 
 ing and unifying truth? That a wide acceptance of an 
 inward authority would involve difficulties is very proba- 
 ble, though it might prove with respect to this, as with so 
 many other matters, that " the evils from which we suffer 
 most are those that never come." It may be that man, by 
 nature a religious being, would find his way to a proxi- 
 mate unanimity of thought; that his worship, while in 
 spirit more real, would be no more multifarious than now. 
 In ethics there is no prevailing appeal to an outward 
 standard, yet the Moral Philosophy of the world is classi- 
 fied on two or three lines of thought. Men who must 
 
 •5
 
 226 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 have an outward authority in religion are very apt to 
 be intuitionahsts in their ethics, and while looking to the 
 Bible for their faith, find in conscience their criterion of 
 right; yet on a wide survey, with minor differences, noth- 
 ing is clearer than their large ethical agreement. How 
 should it be otherwise with religion under the like rule? 
 But while a prevailing recognition of an inward authority 
 would involve difficulties, the outward authorities present 
 difficulties far more grave, because pertaining, not to their 
 working, but to their inmost nature. Are they what they 
 are claimed to be? They are fervidly proclaimed infal- 
 lible ; — are they so ? The Protestant is reasonably sure of 
 the absurdity of the Catholic pretension, but is his own 
 more secure? That, reasoning a pj'iori, we should find 
 sounder presumption in favor of an infallible book than of 
 an infallible church, it were hard to say ; while, dealing 
 with facts after the wont of men, it is doubtful if a more 
 formidable bill of particulars can be offered against the 
 Catholic pretension than the Protestant. Possibly, too, if 
 Protestants were as eager to see their faith through Catho- 
 lic eyes as they are to exhibit the Catholic faith through 
 their own, they might see in one important point the logical 
 superiority of the Catholic doctrine. The Catholic teach- 
 ing that inspiration was not given once for all, but is ever 
 continued to the Church, is of great practical significance. 
 When the Catholic urges that, granted an infallible Scrip- 
 ture, we have yet no infallible guidance without an infal- 
 lible interpretation, how can we confute him? When he 
 further urges that through the help of the Holy Spirit the 
 Church is able to supply this, though we may be sceptics 
 as to the fact, how can we fail to see that its assertion 
 gives a consistency to his scheme of doctrine which the 
 Protestant is not allowed to boast? Infallible guidance! 
 How do the warring sects of Protestantism bear out the 
 Catholic contention of the impossibility of this !
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 22/ 
 
 I. Still, however, the Protestant doctrine demands to be 
 dealt with on its own merits. The recoil from the Catholic 
 claim of authority led the reformers to their tremendous 
 emphasis of a counter-authority. An infallibility was 
 appealed to, to counterpoise an infallibility. Here was no 
 blending, as Dr. Martineau would say, of divine and un- 
 divine elements, which, in order to read the Bible wisely, 
 we must learn to distinguish ; in every feature it was 
 divine, and so to be received without discrimination, as 
 Luther would have had Carlstadt "swallow the Holy 
 Ghost, feathers and all." Its various writings were but 
 varieties of a common inspiration, a Chronicle as truly as 
 a Psalm, a Proverb as a Beatitude. The consequence was 
 a critical study of the Bible such as was never devoted to 
 any other literature. It may be easy to " call spirits from 
 the vasty deep," but who can forecast what they will do 
 when we have called them? The spirit of critical inquiry 
 thus invoked was destined to achieve results unlooked for 
 and unwelcome. The view of the New Testament wuth 
 which the reformers began was about that which the un- 
 critical reader receives from its cursory reading. Here, said 
 they, is a message of one who came from God, — Messiah, 
 Logos, Second Adam, — who authenticated his divine com- 
 mission by miracles ; who dying rose again and went back 
 to his native heaven. For the record of his wonderful words 
 and deeds we are indebted to two biographers who were of 
 a group of twelve immediate disciples, and yet two other 
 biographers who were companions, one of an immediate 
 disciple, the other of a great thirteenth disciple. Follow- 
 ing these biographies, and written by one of these biog- 
 raphers, is an account of the formation of the early 
 Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, together 
 with its constitution, the conversion, labors, travels, suffer- 
 ings, of the great thirteenth ; next a series of twenty-one 
 letters, one written by a brother of the Divine One, six by
 
 228 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 immediate disciples, and fourteen by the thirteenth disciple, 
 all conveying a varied exposition of the faith, and the 
 practice consistent with it. Such was the picture, so easy, 
 so natural. The intense study of the text, however, of 
 necessity brought to light what was there: remarkable 
 agreements indeed of the Gospels one with another, yet 
 also remarkable differences between them, — differences 
 which reverent faith might be willing to ignore, but whicK 
 a reverent reason could not possibly reconcile ; a gulf no 
 arch could span between the first three Gospels and the 
 fourth, inconsistencies in the Acts, anachronisms in the 
 Epistles. One after another these manifold difficulties 
 appeared, forcing the inevitable questions : Are these 
 writings one and all of apostolic origin? Are Matthew 
 and John, with measureless differences between them, both 
 the work of immediate disciples? The claim is that they 
 were written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; can 
 the Holy Spirit be held chargeable with manifold dis- 
 crepancies? The sequel, were it not known, might easily 
 be guessed : an exploration, intense in its eagerness, of 
 whatever documents might yield a fact or a suggestion. 
 There was a plunge into textual criticism ; — granting the 
 original manuscripts inspired, copyists may have committed 
 errors, interpolations even may have crept in ; a plunge 
 into the earlier literature of the Christian age to wring from 
 it its testimony ; the severest analyses of the New Testa- 
 ment writings, and collation of part with part ; the most 
 rigid comparison of language, the most careful scrutiny of 
 peculiarities of literary style. Dealing with such con- 
 siderations, there appeared a line of critics, Reimarus, 
 Lessing, Paulus, Bretschneider, De Wette, who were com- 
 pelled to repudiate the accepted doctrine, met by an array 
 of Orthodox apologists, eager to maintain the traditional 
 faith, and yielding nothing that noble scholarship and 
 dexterous reasoning and profound conviction could hold.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 229 
 
 At length appeared the school of Tubingen under the lead 
 of Strauss and Baur, which was destined to fix the vogue 
 of nineteenth-century rationalism, and on which accord- 
 ingly all Orthodox batteries were to concentrate their fire. 
 
 The peculiarities of this school are too widely diffused to 
 need rehearsal; enough for us to know that Dr. Martineau 
 early studied and embraced it. In his writings his affilia- 
 tion with this school does not distinctly appear, though 
 variously hinted, until his celebrated review of Renan ^ in 
 1863. It was then, however, a matter of not less than 
 fifteen years' standing, as a letter^ to the writer testifies. 
 In this letter he remarks : " Baur's masterly handling 
 of his historical materials had impressed me so much 
 before my year's visit, with my family, to Germany in 
 1848-49, that I had hesitated whether to take up our abode 
 [for study and education] at Tubingen or in Berlin." ^ 
 From this time to the publication of the Seat of Ajithor- 
 ity in 1890, the general features of the Tubingen criticism 
 held the allegiance of his mind. 
 
 To this volume we now come. In dealing with the New 
 Testament writings the first question is. Do they come 
 from the sources they purport to come from? Are they 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, attd Addresses, vol. iii. 
 
 2 Dated June 12, 1897. 
 
 3 It may be fitting that I should say here that it was his sympathy with 
 Tubingen that rallied the opposition of his fellow-sectaries to his appoint- 
 ment to the college professorship of which the story is told on an earlier 
 page. On that page the color may have been laid somewhat too lightly. 
 The course of the opposition amounted almost to a trial for heresy ; and to 
 his sensitive spirit was well-nigh unendurable. In case it accomplished its 
 end he had serious thought of seeking a field of labor in America ; for 
 knowledge of which fact I am indebted to a letter from Mr. Martineau to 
 Rev. William R. Alger, bearing date of April 3, 1S57, which Mr. Alger 
 kindly lets me use. There was among English Unitarians at that time a very 
 prevalent and quite violent " Germanophobia," a rabies quite prevalent in 
 America also, and which is now occasionally met. On the principle similia 
 similihus curaiitur, it can usually be soothed by a treatment that provides a 
 little more knowledge of German.
 
 230 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 of apostolic origin? The familiar headings, "according 
 to Matthew," " according to John," carry no affirmative 
 weight; ^' accordi?ig to" does not necessarily mean (^j / it 
 may as easily mean, Siich is the tradition haftded on to us in 
 association with the name of Matthew, or with the fiame of 
 JoJin ; to many it might more easily mean this. To the 
 Epistles, indeed, a name, as of Paul or Peter, is attached ; 
 but in settling the question of the authorship of an ancient 
 writing an associated name can signify little against an 
 incongruous internal evidence. Should there, for instance, 
 be brought to light a brief biography of some ancient 
 worthy, purporting to be the work of Plutarch, we should 
 have not the slightest hesitation in repudiating its preten- 
 sions to Plutarchan authorship if its style was incongruous 
 with Plutarch's ; if it gave support to ideas the opposite of 
 those we know to have been Plutarch's ; if it contained 
 allusions to events that have occurred since the time of 
 Plutarch. Of course, in dealing with this kind of evidence 
 there may be scope for differences of opinion : character- 
 istics may not be so pronounced as to be at once decisive ; 
 but this order of criticism would be of itself objected to by 
 no mind competent to appreciate its value. Dr. Marti- 
 neau, applying it to the New Testament Epistles, arrives at 
 the conclusion that but six of them, i Thessalonians, 
 Galatians, Romans, i and 2 Corinthians, and Philippians, 
 are of apostolic origin. " The other epistolary writings," 
 says he, " which set themselves forth under an apostolic 
 name, remain unattested till the fourth generation from 
 the death of Christ, and in nearly all of them there are 
 such evident traces of a post-apostolic time, so many 
 thoughts unsuited to the personality of the reputed author, 
 that the ordinary favourable presumption is broken down ; 
 and, however excellent the lesson which they contain, we 
 must confess, as we receive them, that we listen to an 
 unknown voice." ^ 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, pp. iSo-iSl.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 23 1 
 
 This seems destructive criticism : fifteen of the twenty- 
 one Epistles denied apostoUc authorship. Enough there 
 are, scholars with laurelled brows, who take a different 
 view from this; comparatively few would coincide with 
 this judgment in its fulness ; yet one need not look further 
 than the encyclopaedias in familiar use to find weighty 
 reasons why the fifteen are severally rejected, together 
 with names of men accounted wise who consider those 
 reasons valid. The peculiarity of the attitude of Dr. 
 Martineau and his school is that they hold in gross a nega- 
 tive view which many others hold distributively. Few will 
 go as far as he ; many will meet him at some points with 
 critical sympathy; and in none of his judgments is he 
 without the support of illustrious authority. 
 
 We come now to the Gospels. The interest here is, of 
 course, intense ; and a line of reasoning or a literary dis- 
 covery that should put their authenticity beyond dispute 
 would be greeted with a rapture that could be evoked by 
 scarce any other. 
 
 For most obvious reasons the Gospels are commonly 
 discussed under two divisions, — the first three, called the 
 Synoptics, and the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 I. Synoptics. Of none of these have we autograph 
 manuscripts, and the names associated with them are 
 merely traditional. On the line of external criticism, the 
 most that the Orthodox theologian can hope is to find 
 definite traces of them at a date sufficiently early to 
 make the tradition probable. Now the Apostles were 
 men, not boys, and at the death of Jesus must have 
 been close upon, if not beyond, maturity ; and age 
 must erelons: dim their vision. To make the Orthodox 
 contention secure, it has been held necessary to show 
 beyond reasonable doubt the emergence of these Gos- 
 pels out of the first century. This, however, has not 
 been achieved. There is no reasoning that makes the
 
 232 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 hypothesis more than speculatively tolerable ; and there 
 are no circumstances, the tradition itself excepted, not 
 explainable on the reverse supposition. 
 
 Dr. Martineau begins his discussion of the authenticity 
 of these Gospels by comparing the " vestiges " of their 
 use in two periods of time. In the last quarter of the 
 second century references to them are accompanied by 
 their names, which " are absent from all prior citations of 
 words now extant in them." ^ The significance of this 
 fact he draws from a comparison of Irenaeus and Justin 
 Martyr. The former, writing probably between i8o and 
 193, quotes the Gospels by their names, and gives reasons 
 why there should be four of them and no more. 
 
 Here all is plain. No one doubts that Irenaeus knew 
 the four Gospels that we use. ■ Turn back now a genera- 
 tion to the writings of Justin Martyr. He makes numer- 
 ous citations which carry our minds to equivalent passages 
 in our Gospels. But observe that he never quotes them 
 by number or by name, but refers to " Memoirs of the 
 Apostles." Now, Orthodox apologists fervidly contend 
 that the " Memoirs " used by Justin were the Gospels 
 Irenaeus knew, a contention which Dr. Martineau and his 
 school find irreconcilable with the facts : First, the fact 
 already referred to, that Justin gives no hints of the 
 authors or the numbers of the Gospels, but quotes always 
 as if from a " single anonymous production." Secondly, 
 the fact that while his quotations easily suggest equivalent 
 passages in our Gospels, they are scarce ever identical 
 with them. Indeed, while his quotations are very many, 
 only five are " exactly true to Matthew and Luke." It has 
 been frequently urged that Justin quoted from memory, 
 and, sure that he was right as to the substance, was indif- 
 ferent to verbal accuracy; and support for this view is 
 claimed from inaccuracies in his quotations from the Old 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 181.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 2^3 
 
 Testament as well. Dr. Martincau, however, feels that this 
 will not do, for the reason that " the same differences 
 are constant through repeated quotations of the same 
 passage," and that " they differ, both in frequency and 
 character, from concomitant inaccuracies " in quoting the 
 Old Testament.^ Thirdly, and to many probably ,the 
 most significant fact of all, Justin quotes from his " Me- 
 moirs " matter which is not in our Gospels. " Compar- 
 ing these phenomena," says Dr. Martineau, " with the 
 citations of Irenaeus, we seem to be in contact, at an 
 earlier date, with the unfashioned materials of Christian 
 tradition, ere yet they had set into their final form, . . . 
 tradition called indeed ' apostolic,' but by the vagueness 
 of that very phrase betraying its impersonal and unac- 
 credited character." He further remarks that " historical 
 memorials which are to depend for their authority on the 
 personality of their writer cannot afford to wait for a 
 century ere his name comes out of the silence." ^ 
 
 But does their internal character ratify this judgment? 
 Do they not of themselves bear out the claim that they 
 proceed at first and second hand from eyewitnesses and 
 independent writers? To Dr. Martineau's close scrutiny 
 they yield precisely the opposite conclusion. We all 
 know how we should treat two or more writings convey- 
 ing the same material in the like or in identical phrase ; 
 we should say that, granting one to be original, the others 
 were taken from it; or that all the writers must have 
 received from a common source. The contrary judg- 
 ment, that all wrote independently, we should pronounce 
 psychologically incredible. Yet we meet precisely this 
 phenomenon in the study of these Gospels ; " the same 
 recitals repeated in either two, or all of them, with such 
 resemblance in substance, in arrangement, and even in 
 language, as totally to exclude the possibility of original 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 1S3. 2 /^;^. pp. 183-184.
 
 234 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 and separate authorship." ^ Dr. Martineau makes a very 
 suggestive comparison of these Gospels with the Fourth 
 Gospel. The Fourth Gospel all agree is no compilation: 
 it wears all the characteristics we should look for in the 
 creation of an independent mind. It affords Dr. Martineau, 
 therefore, a standard of judgment of what we may expect 
 in an independent account of the ministry of Christ. 
 Two-thirds of its matter he finds peculiar to itself; while 
 the remaining third, though dealing with events reported 
 by the synoptists, " presents them under aspects so new, 
 that the identity is often difficult to trace, or is even open 
 to doubt." ^ Dividing these Gospels into one hundred 
 and seventy-four sections, he finds fifty-eight of these 
 common to them all ; " twenty-six, besides, to Matthew 
 and Mark ; seventeen, to Mark and Luke ; thirty-two, to 
 Matthew and Luke." Thus the unshared elements are 
 but forty-one, of which thirty-one are in Luke, seven in 
 Matthew, three in Mark. 
 
 This is a telling consideration to one who weighs it well. 
 There is another, however, which to many may be more sig- 
 nificant. The casual and uncritical reader of the Synoptics 
 is likely to be little aware how small a portion of the story 
 of the life of Jesus is told. From the Jordan to Calvary 
 is a period of about four hundred and fifty days. Of these, 
 the events of not more than thirty-five are narrated. A 
 silence respecting whole months together, " now three, now 
 two," breaks the continuity of the sacred story. A record 
 of only thirty-five days, or only one-thirteenth of the brief 
 period, is furnished us by the synoptists. What can be the 
 meaning of this fact? — three records made by independ- 
 ent narrators, yet twelve-thirteenths of the great ministry 
 passed over in total silence ! Dr. Martineau raises the 
 question how this could possibly be. If these Gospels are 
 in any sense the work of attendants of Jesus, how is it 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 184, ^ Ibid. p. 184.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 235 
 
 that all keep within the narrow circle of one-thirteenth of 
 his ministry? How is it that none afford us a glimpse 
 of any portion of the labor or the rest of the twelve- 
 thirteenths? Why this fulness of detail respecting thirty- 
 five days and this silence respecting four hundred and 
 fifteen? The natural inference from this fact is hard to 
 parry: we are mistaken in supposing these writings to be 
 the record of eyewitnesses of the work of Jesus. " Even 
 if," says Dr. Martineau, these writings " were independent 
 selections from a mass of contemporary memorials, pre- 
 serving fragments only of the life of Christ, they could not 
 all alight upon materials lying within such narrow range ; 
 for the flying leaves, scattered by the winds of tradition, 
 would be impartially dropped from the whole organism of 
 that sacred history, and, when clustered by three disposing 
 hands, could never turn out to be all from the same branch." 
 He adds the reflection that the " vast amount of blank 
 spaces in which they all have to acquiesce betrays a time 
 when the sources of knowledge were irrevocably gone ; 
 and their large agreement in what remains, that they were 
 only knitting up into tissues, slightly varied, the scanty 
 materials which came almost alike to all." ^ Such are 
 specimen considerations of his profound and eloquent 
 argument. His conclusion is that these Gospels are " com- 
 posed of mixed materials, aggregating themselves through 
 three or four generations." As such they are, of course, 
 anonymous writings ; and the mighty claim for them as the 
 records of eyewitnesses is gone. Are they, then, to be 
 discarded? Not so ; only an untenable theory respecting 
 them is to be put by. Their native value is still very great, 
 after all deduction of disputable theory respecting them. 
 In their inmost kernel "we approach, no doubt, the cen- 
 tral characteristics of the teaching and the life of Christ. 
 But the evidence of this is wholly internal, and has nothing 
 
 ^ Seat of Authority, p. 185.
 
 236 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to authenticate it except our sense of the inimitable beauty, 
 the inexhaustible depth, the penetrating truth, of the hving 
 words they preserve and the hving form they present. Of 
 our witnesses we know nothing, except that, in such cases, 
 what they tell as reality, it was plainly beyond them to 
 construct as fiction." ^ 
 
 2. TJie Foiirtli Gospel. Great as has been the interest 
 in the " synoptic problem," the controversy over the Fourth 
 Gospel has been the more earnest. Without disparaging its 
 companion Gospels, there is no denying the fact, the pre- 
 vailing Christian consciousness being our witness, that the 
 Fourth Gospel has, through its mystic heights and depths, 
 a religious value beyond any of them ; and multitudes there 
 are who, brought to the necessity of choice, would, like 
 Luther, surrender the Synoptics and hold fast to John. 
 The more widely prevailing conception of the person of 
 Jesus, and one of the leading doctrines of the Church are 
 drawn from its page. Besides, in its literary structure it 
 wears a character to which the New Testament critic at- 
 taches great significance. While even a cursory reading 
 of the Synoptics bears in upon us the impression, which 
 critical study makes welinigh irresistible, that they are 
 largely a recast of previously existing material, not so the 
 Fourth Gospel, It is surely an organism, conceived and 
 brought forth by one mind. It wears the indisputable 
 features of independent authorship, a matter of supreme 
 moment with those who would establish its apostolicity. 
 From the urgency of so many considerations it would have 
 been surprising indeed had not the Orthodox contention 
 for its genuineness been both stubborn and fervid. 
 
 But the logic of facts, however obscured, can never be 
 controverted ; and while it is true that the Johannine issue 
 as shaped to-day is not precisely as Baur left it, it is by no 
 means as he found it ; and where the Gospels are most 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, pp. 1 88- 1 89.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 237 
 
 profoundly and dispassionately studied, the general fea- 
 tures of his criticism were never more widely recognized.^ 
 How stands the external evidence of the genuineness of 
 this Gospel? So far as quotations or references can bear 
 testimony, it is only a question whether it was first used 
 somewhat after or somewhat before the middle of the sec- 
 ond century. Dr. Martineau examines a great number of 
 citations of writers both orthodox and heretical, and adopts 
 the later date. The earliest citation which he is willing to 
 recognize as from our Gospel he finds in a fragment of 
 Apollinaris about 175. The earliest citation from the 
 Fourth Gospel together with its author's name he finds in 
 a defence of Christianity by Theophilus, who could have 
 written but little before the year 180. The John whom 
 Theophilus mentions, however, is not designated as one of 
 the Twelve; that designation is not met till we come to 
 Irenseus ; ^ and the fact that he used our Gospel his numer- 
 ous citations place beyond doubt. Its use in the seventh 
 decade of the century, and from thence a spreading famil- 
 iarity with it, is thus reasonably plain. Stepping back from 
 this date, however, he finds no satisfactory indication of 
 acquaintance with it, rather facts that suggest the reverse 
 conclusion. He finds that it was known by the Valentinians 
 (about 180), but not by Valentinus (about 160); known 
 by the Marcionites (about 170 to 180), not by Marcion 
 (about 150). Such are his judgments after a critical 
 examination of all known data ; and the fact that this 
 Gospel was not known by these masters and was known 
 by their disciples is at least accordant with the judgment 
 
 1 See essay on " The Fourth Gospel " by Emil Schiirer, Contetnporary 
 Review, vol. Ix. 
 
 2 In estimating the testimony of Irenasus, Dr. Martineau is led to a dis- 
 cussion of the question whether the John of whom Irenaeus tells on the 
 authority of Polycarp is not John the Presbyter confounded with John the 
 Apostle, both of whom, according to Eusebius, dwelt at Ephesus. For this 
 discussion, which is extremely interesting, I have no space, and must be 
 content with referring the reader to the Seat of Authority , pp. 192 seq.
 
 238 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that it came into use between their dates. The critical 
 battle is hottest, however, over Justin Martyr. Dr. Marti- 
 neau, examining his citations, comes to the conclusion 
 that this Gospel was probably not known by him. He 
 quotes one passage that has been much debated : " For 
 Christ said, unless ye be born again, ye will not enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven. But that it is impossible for those 
 who have once been born to enter into the wombs of those 
 who bare them, is plain to all." Of course this carries us 
 to the earlier verses of the third chapter of John, which 
 Dr. Martineau translates, " Jesus answered and said unto 
 him. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, unless a man be born 
 from above [a rendering to which the Revised Version 
 gives a marginal support], he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God." The points of Justin's departure from the Gospel 
 are plain. But may they not be accounted for by the 
 supposition that he indulges in memoriter quotation, in 
 which, faithful to the sense, he is careless of the letter? 
 So many have thought, and Justin's Old Testament quota- 
 tions make it plain that verbal accuracy was not a consid- 
 eration that weighed heavily upon him. But it happens 
 that in the Clementine Recognitions Dr. Martineau finds 
 the same passages quoted with these identical variations ; 
 and he concludes that " this concurrence of two independ- 
 ent writers in a set of variations on the same text must be 
 due to some common cause ; " and he asks, " What else can 
 it be than the use by both of them of a source deviating 
 from the fourth Gospel in these points?" He finds it 
 impossible to doubt " that that source embodied an earlier 
 tradition, on which the Johannine version afterwards re- 
 fined." ^ This hypothesis doubtless harmonizes the con- 
 ditions, and under the spell of Dr. Martineau's eloquent 
 reasoning many may feel that Orthodox oppugnance to it 
 must spring solely from interest in a rival one. Such may 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 202.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 239 
 
 well fortify their candor by remembering that the reverse 
 view, that Justin used our Gospel, is held, not to mention 
 a host of others, by Ezra Abbott, by Schiirer, and by Kcim. 
 The judgment of the last two is especially significant, since, 
 while they allow that Justin used the Gospel, they deny 
 that an Apostle wrote it. 
 
 The conclusion of Dr. Martineau, based on notices of 
 the early use of the Gospel, therefore, is that it could not 
 have originated earlier than the fifth decade of the second 
 century. This judgment implies an allowance of a rea- 
 sonable time for its distribution " from the place of its 
 nativity to the literary centres of the church and of the 
 Gnostic sects." ^ 
 
 But turn now to the Gospel itself; — does its internal 
 character ratify this judgment of its late origin? Have we 
 not a reasonable guarantee of an eyewitness in the veri- 
 similitude of its narratives? So Schleiermacher held, and 
 so multitudes of the good and wise still hold. This con- 
 sideration is undoubtedly very persuasive, but it is only to 
 be surrendered to in the absence of irreconcilable facts. 
 We can easily see how an American Defoe, placing him- 
 self by the side of Bunyan, might* so delineate his career 
 that the first impression even of careful readers would be 
 that the work was the record of an eyewitness and com- 
 panion. But did a more careful scrutiny detect words that 
 have come into our language within the last century; did 
 we find in it an allusion, however covert, to the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, or the Transcendental Philosophy, — 
 we should say that while verisimilitude is to be praised as 
 ait, it is quite possible that it may be a source of illusion. 
 
 An early tradition, that later times have not been will- 
 ing to part with, referred the Fourth Gospel and the 
 Apocalypse to the same author, — the Apostle John. If, 
 however, the latter-day view, which Harnack received 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 208.
 
 240 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 from a pupil and published with his own great support,^ 
 shall prevail, this is no longer a relevant consideration. 
 This view regards the Apocalypse as a Christian recen- 
 sion of an originally Jewish document; and Dr. Marti- 
 neau's analysis of it reveals elements which may be as 
 early as A. D. 66, and other elements that cannot be of 
 earlier date than A. D. 136.^ This view Orthodox con- 
 servatism can hardly like ; but that it relieves the Fourth 
 Gospel of an incubus rather than takes from it a support 
 may be fairly argued. For those who have been zealous 
 to maintain the tradition have had to deal with the embar- 
 rassing question, how two writings in all respects so dis- 
 similar could have been the product of the same mind. 
 The contention has usually been that the Apocalypse was 
 the earlier writing, and that the Apostle after its com- 
 position, through a mellowing of sentiment and growing 
 familiarity with the Greek language and contact with 
 Greek culture, achieved his preparation to write the 
 Fourth Gospel. The reasonings, however, by which this 
 thesis is supported are likely to bear in upon the mind 
 the feeling that they are all but indefensible ; while the 
 search for analogies only succeeds in making their ex- 
 istence scarce credible. Leaving behind all other con- 
 siderations, take account of the contrast of language and 
 literary form. The Greek of the Fourth Gospel is of the 
 best in the New Testament; that of the Apocalypse is 
 simply barbarous ; while, as respects the peculiarities of 
 style by which the workings of a mind are shown, com- 
 parison of the two reveals only contrast. As to the date 
 of the Apocalypse, the most orthodox criticism has rarely 
 placed it earlier than about the middle of the seventh 
 decade of the first century, a time when the son of 
 
 1 For Harnack's account of this interesting incident, see Seat of Author' 
 ity, p. 225. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 227.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 24 1 
 
 Zebedee must have been well past the more vigorous 
 period of life, and have entered into the stage when 
 habits of mind are not easily modified. The supposition 
 that between this date and that stadium in life to which 
 tradition assigns the production of the Fourth Gospel he 
 could have achieved the marvellous change which the 
 later writing must imply, a change obliterating all trace 
 of the mind that brought forth the earlier one, is little 
 short of psychologically incredible. The conviction of 
 Dr. Martineau, as that of many another profound scholar, 
 is that " never will the same mind and hand produce two 
 such books, till * all things are possible to men ' as well as 
 ' to God.' " ' 
 
 Undoubtedly the apostolic origin of this Gospel is more 
 easily defended when it stands alone than when it is asso- 
 ciated with the earlier writing. But now, another con- 
 sideration. Grant that the literary features of the Gospel 
 make the supposition that it could have been written by 
 the author of the Revelation incredible, will they allow us 
 to think of it as the work of a Palestinian Jew? and we 
 may make the consideration more significant by remem- 
 bering that the son of Zebedee was not by vocation a 
 scholar but a fisherman, " unlearned and ignorant," when 
 he accepted his call to be an apostle. Again the literary 
 aspects of the Gospel come before us. It is not to be 
 pretended that the Greek of the Fourth Gospel is up to 
 the standard of the classic age ; yet it is good Greek, 
 fluent, graceful, as of one long familiar with its use. Only 
 the exigencies of a theory could ever lead to the thought 
 of it as the late acquisition of one whose birthright was an- 
 other tongue. So strongly has this consideration weighed 
 with some, as Ewald and Bunsen, that, while believing 
 the Apostle to have been substantially the author of the 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 218. This point is very fully discussed by 
 J. J. Tayler in his book on the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 16
 
 242 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Gospel, they have conceived that he must have employed 
 literary help from the more learned around him. The 
 tradition that John wrote the Revelation, which is Hebrew 
 turned into Greek, has, from its literary features, provoked 
 no challenge, the composition being such as would naturally 
 be expected of him. Were the Gospel represented as com- 
 ing to us, not merely from some centre of Greek culture, but 
 from one well known to represent that culture, no surprise 
 would be excited ; the composition would be held worthy 
 such a source. As the case stands, while we are hardly com- 
 petent to say that the Gospel could not have been writ- 
 ten by such a Jew, we are in a position to require that 
 whatever collateral testimony there may be shall favor 
 this assumption. Unfortunately for it, however, the testi- 
 mony favors the reverse assumption. When Dr. Marti- 
 neau says, "No companion of Jesus could have placed the 
 scene of the Baptist's testimony to Jesus in ' Bethany 
 beyond Jordan,'^ — a place unknown to geography; or have 
 invested Annas as well as Caiaphas with the preroga- 
 tives of high priest ; or have represented that office as an- 
 nual ; or have so forgotten Elijah and Nahum as to make the 
 Pharisees assert that ' out of Galilee ariseth no prophet,' "^ 
 possibly he states the case rather strongly. Grant, how- 
 ever, these errors in geography and history possible to one 
 born and reared and long active in Palestine, it is surely 
 more easy to think them of a stranger to its scene and life. 
 Barely credible in a " companion of Jesus," they were quite 
 credible in a companion, say, of Clement of Alexandria. 
 But another consideration buttresses the foregoing. The 
 attitude of the writer, as shown alike in the letter and the 
 spirit of his teaching, is that of a foreigner, not a com- 
 patriot or friend. The manner of speaking of " the Jews," 
 
 1 The King James Translation reads "Bethabara;" but the Greek is 
 " Bethany." 
 
 2 Seat of Authority, p. 212.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 243 
 
 " the Jews' passover," " the passover, a feast of the Jews," 
 shows the disdainful appraiser of a Hfe in which he could 
 never have participated. As far as we are able to trace 
 the Apostle John, he represents a Judaic Christianity; he 
 is one of the founders of the Church of Jerusalem, and 
 views with no friendly mind the apostolate of Paul, and 
 his freer Gospel ; yet the writer of the Fourth Gospel 
 gives no hint that he is of the Jewish race, that he ever 
 thrilled with a Judaic sympathy, that the " feasts of the 
 Jews " were the feasts of his fathers, and within recent 
 memory his own. Dr. Martineau very forcibly remarks: 
 " No Israelite, sharing the memory of the \ao<; ^eoO, could, 
 like the evangelist, place himself superciliously outside 
 his compatriots, . . . and reckon the Jews among the 
 common eOvrj of the world." He brings this spirit the 
 more distinctly to view by placing it in contrast with that 
 of Paul, — Paul in all the years of his apostolate pursued 
 by the unrelenting malice of his countrymen; yet neither 
 his " heart nor faith was ever so alienated from the tradi- 
 tions and inheritance of his people as we find the spirit 
 of the fourth Gospel to be." On the contrary, " so far 
 as he was an exile from them, he grieved at the separa- 
 tion; he looked back on them with regretful affection, 
 and forward to reunion with yearning hope. The univer- 
 sal religion which he had gained was not opposed to 
 theirs, but its proper consummation, if they would only 
 take it all." He adds : " That, while the Gentile mission- 
 ary speaks of his brethren in this tender voice, one of the 
 elder apostles should set his face as flint against them, 
 and treat their place in the world as the stronghold of all 
 that is earthly and undivine, is hard to conceive ; and the 
 contrast suggests rather the suspicion that we are trans- 
 ported into the age of Marcion and the anti-Jewish 
 Gnostics, whose Christianity was not a development but a 
 defiance of the Israelite religion."^ 
 
 1 Seat of Aiithority, pp. 212-213.
 
 244 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 The argument, however, that is weighty beyond all others 
 against the Johannine origin of this Gospel is drawn from 
 a comparison of it with the Synoptics. Doubtless the 
 far prevailing conviction is, that the Synoptics, whether 
 written by their reputed authors or no, transmit to us the 
 Palestinian tradition. But this being the case, such are 
 the differences between them, it seems clearly impossible 
 to maintain the like for the Fourth Gospel. The thesis wont 
 to be put forth by reconcilers is, that the Fourth Gospel 
 was written after the Synoptics and with intent to fill out 
 their narrative. Where outside the brain of the apologist 
 the suggestion of this is found, in what aspect of the nar- 
 rative itself, it were difficult to say. We should say that 
 the most obvious characteristics of this Gospel make this 
 thesis utterly untenable. An actor in this world's affairs, 
 surveying the records of others, may write to complete 
 their incompleteness, to correct details that have been 
 misreported, or to draw from events another meaning. 
 But " in executing this purpose," says Dr. Martineau, " he 
 will necessarily work upon their main program, and find 
 room within its outline for filling in the forgotten details, 
 and retouching the faded or mistaken colours. The story 
 will act itself out on the same field and in the same period : 
 only it will be enriched by new episodes, and gain some 
 varieties of light." But when we come to the Fourth 
 Gospel we find nothing of this. Its writer, " totally 
 disregarding the organic scheme of his predecessors, con- 
 structs the history afresh ; so that the sparse points of 
 contact . . . are but tantalizing concurrences, that supply 
 no links of consecution, and leave the new story com- 
 pletely outside the old." ^ 
 
 The more salient features of this comparison need not 
 here be presented in fulness of detail, so wide is the famil- 
 iarity with them. Did we not know that what men see 
 1 Seat of Authority, pp. 215-216.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 245 
 
 depends very often upon the point from which they look, 
 the fact that men can face the contrast between the 
 Synoptics and John, and bcHeve both to be authentic his- 
 tories of Jesus, would seem strange enough. We know 
 that the same events may convey very different impres- 
 sions, that the same truth may be offered in most diverse 
 aspects, and that outside the Providence of God we no- 
 where meet such bewilderments as in the phenomena of a 
 great life. These facts may well teach us caution in our 
 judgments upon the Gospel records, than in dealing with 
 which the apparent is never less likely to be the measure 
 of the true. But however such considerations may save 
 us from the hasty and superficial judgment, they only 
 blind or warp us if they prevent us from drawing from 
 facts their natural inference ; and that they are likely to do 
 this, especially when they buttress a theory we would hke 
 to see prevailing, experience only makes too evident. To 
 apply this reflection to the noble rank of scholars who 
 to-day maintain the Johannine authorship of the Fourth 
 Gospel may seem scarce respectful. The liability, how- 
 ever, to construe facts by predilections, to see, that is, 
 according to the point from which we look, is one from 
 which intellectual acquirements however great are not 
 a sure protection, or Bacon and Agassiz would have 
 another record. 
 
 In dealing with the Johannine problem let us change the 
 point of view, and note what might then be — reasoning 
 on a basis of probability — the Orthodox attitude towards 
 it. Let us suppose the Christian Church built upon the 
 Synoptic records alone, the Fourth Gospel, though writ- 
 ten, lost to sight, buried in some ancient library, and now, 
 in the closing years of the nineteenth century, like the 
 Gospel of Peter, first brought to view. We can imagine 
 the acclaim with which it would be put forth : Here is 
 another Gospel, written by John, the disciple whom Jesus
 
 246 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 loved ; the original — it must be that, whence Justin 
 Martyr drew those strange quotations, the fourth of Ire- 
 naeus, who held that there should be four, neither more nor 
 fewer; it is surely the document of which we find so many 
 traces in the Christian literature of the latter part of the 
 second century, and which we have so long wanted to see ; 
 which the Marcionites and the Valentinians knew, which 
 ApoUinaris cited and Theophilus refers to by its name. It 
 is nobly written, it is rich in the profoundest spiritual in- 
 sights. More important than anything else, its portrait 
 presents other features of the great Person, its narrative 
 other details of the great story. Let the canon long closed 
 be opened to receive it, that Christian faith and worship 
 may be instructed from the record of our Lord in its 
 completeness. 
 
 The interest of Christendom would be at once aroused, 
 and the Gospel would speedily be translated into all Chris- 
 tian tongues. Its literary completeness would be at once 
 apparent; its mystic heights and depths would be dis- 
 cerned ; the sage would ponder it with delight and the 
 saint with ecstasy ; but the proposition to open the canon 
 to give this new-found Gospel place beside the long famil- 
 iar Three would certainly be a grave one, and, unless 
 summarily and widely repudiated, would prompt to the 
 most animated discussion. The great divines of the 
 Church, Protestant and Catholic, swayed by reverence for 
 the canon, and with as yet only a literary interest in this 
 candidate for a place in it, would weigh with jealous mind 
 all arguments favorable to its reception, and meet with 
 forward interest every opposing consideration. The line 
 of study, it is needless to say, would be that of comparison 
 of this Gospel with those already recognized ; and this 
 could not fail to bring into view the vast differences 
 between them. The intrinsic value of this document is 
 indeed very great, some Lightfoot would argue, but not
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 247 
 
 on that ground alone can we allow it canonicity. Allow- 
 ing that the three Gospels so long in use are still to be of 
 the canon, it is clear that any fourth that shall stand beside 
 them must in its more general features be in accord with 
 them. Now here is an invincible difficulty in the way of 
 admitting this Fourth Gospel to the companionship of the 
 Three, — the difference between them; difference in aim, 
 in the central Personality, in style of teaching, in detail of 
 events; — the biography of the latter cannot possibly be 
 cast in the mould of the former. The aim of the Three is 
 simply narrative. While the critical may detect in the 
 several writings the individuality of the writer, find Mat- 
 thew, for instance, the more national in his interests, Luke 
 the more universal, and Mark the least doctrinal, there is 
 no mistaking the fact that their purpose is to set down in 
 due order the details of Christ's ministry. The ruling fea- 
 ture of this Gospel on the other hand is argument; its 
 distribution of material is to illustrate a thesis, not to 
 exhibit a career. It is a philosophical disquisition, and 
 though the writer treats of the Christ, it is from the feet of 
 Plato. The great Personality — how different in the two? 
 In the Three he is the Messiah of Jewish hope ; there is 
 the most studious care, especially in ]\Iatthew, to show in 
 him the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. He comes 
 through the gate of mortal birth ; and whatever may be 
 said of the discrepancies in the genealogies of Matthew 
 and Luke, it is perfectly plain that they aim to connect 
 him with the hne of David. In this Gospel there is noth- 
 insf of this at all. He is the Logos come out of heaven 
 and become incarnate. Of ancient Scripture there is 
 scarce the suggestion that he is the fulfilment ; of the line 
 of David it conveys no hint; of birth, of childhood, that 
 he grew in years or in wisdom, there is nothing in the 
 record to indicate. Li short, with only this record before 
 us we should conceive him without yesterdays, without
 
 248 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to-morrows, as befits the Eternal Word. And, consonant 
 with this contrast, there is a difference in their early his- 
 tory. The Messiah comes to John for baptism, for thus 
 it became him to fulfil all righteousness ; but the Word, 
 so far as the record shows, was not baptized. The Mes- 
 siah is tempted of the devil ; the Word should experience 
 no temptation, and this Gospel shows none. The conven- 
 tional usages of earth and the seductions of Satan, — what 
 have they to do with this Radiance of God? The style 
 of teaching is wholly different. In the Three the far 
 prevailing method is the parable, — without a parable 
 spake he not unto them. In this writing this style is 
 wholly wanting. In its stead we find long discourses 
 which it cannot be supposed were reported from the 
 Teacher's lips, and which it is scarce possible to believe 
 that memory could have treasured. A comparison of the 
 miraculous in either brings us face to face with another 
 contrast. In the Three the miracles most frequently met 
 are cures of demoniacs ; — from the prevalence and the 
 vividness of the belief in demons in the Palestine of this 
 period, this is but natural. In this John, however, there 
 is not a single example of this miracle. How is it that 
 it should make such impression upon Matthew and none 
 upon a fellow-disciple? The last miracle of this Gospel 
 is the stupendous miracle at the grave of Lazarus ; yet 
 this is known to the writer of this Gospel only. How 
 could such an event fail to impress all who witnessed it 
 and all who heard of it? Was it known to the writers of 
 the Three? — how could they then have preserved silence 
 respecting it? But the difficulty deepens. This miracle, 
 as this Gospel tells us, was the impulse to the plotting 
 against Jesus that led to his arrest and crucifixion ; and it 
 is past comprehension how the writers of the Three could 
 severally tell the story of the crucifixion and know noth- 
 ing of its immediate cause, or, knowing, suppress it in
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 249 
 
 their narrative.^ In the distribution of events, too, we 
 meet an irreconcilable difference. According to Matthew 
 and Luke, the expulsion of the traffickers from the temple 
 was at the close of the Teacher's ministry ; according to 
 this Gospel it was at the beginning. The scene of the 
 ministry as offered by the two is unmistakably different. 
 According to the Three the Teacher devotes his labors 
 almost wholly to Galilee, going up to Jerusalem near 
 their close to bear his testimony and receive his martyr- 
 dom. According to this Gospel he labors chiefly at 
 Jerusalem, making only excursions into Galilee. As 
 respects the period over which the ministry extended, we 
 meet also a difference that it is impossible to harmonize. 
 Turn over the narratives of the Three as you will, you can 
 make out from them a ministry of but little more than a 
 year. This writing extends it to nearly three years. 
 Finally, a difference, in statement brief but in significance 
 overpowering, in the date of the last supper of Jesus and 
 his disciples. According to the Three this supper was 
 the Jewish passover; according to this writing it could 
 not have been the passover at all. The date of the 
 passover was definitely fixed; it was always the 14th 
 of the month Nisan, and any Jewish child could have 
 given it. According to the Three the meal was taken 
 on the evening of that day, and Jesus was crucified on 
 the day following. But according to this writing the 
 meal must have been taken on the evening of the 13th 
 Nisan, for Jesus died on the passover day. Here is 
 irreconcilable contradiction where mistake on the part of 
 a disciple had been scarcely possible. These differences, 
 none of them unimportant, taken together are of great 
 significance ; and they make the proposal to receive this 
 writing into the canon utterly untenable. If the Three 
 possess the elements requisite to canonicity, among which 
 
 1 See K.t\m, Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. pp. 179-180.
 
 250 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 must surely be a faithful record of our Lord's ministry, 
 this writing, then, cannot do so ; and to give it a place 
 with them is to imperil all, through its dissonance with 
 them. On the canon as it is, the Church is securely 
 builded ; in thrusting under it this writing we must im- 
 peril its foundations. By all of the sense of sacredness in 
 which we hold the Three, and by all of conservative in- 
 stinct we must resist this proposal. Is this a fancied issue? 
 None the less it illustrates our thesis, that what men see 
 often depends, not alone on the facts they contemplate, 
 but also upon the direction in which they look. That 
 under these circumstances such would be the Orthodox 
 attitude towards the Johannine problem there cannot be a 
 doubt. Orthodoxy, in this issue, would be anti-Johannine. 
 They would be heretics who would receive the Gospel 
 into the canon. We return to Dr. Martineau to say that 
 the facts which under such circumstances would array 
 Orthodoxy against this Gospel are a portion of the facts 
 on which he bases his argument against its apostolic 
 origin. In view of them he holds it impossible to main- 
 tain that the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel both come 
 out of the apostolic circle. 
 
 But are there any internal features of this Gospel that 
 especially accord with the external evidence of its late 
 origin? To Dr. Martineau the fact is all but indisputable. 
 As respects the origin of the Logos doctrine, which the 
 Proem states and the subsequent narrative is arranged to 
 illustrate, there has been on the one side a more than will- 
 ingness to find it the utterance of a Jewish thought, on the 
 other a conviction unshadowed by a doubt that its root is 
 in the Alexandrian type of Neo-Platonism. With the 
 champions of the latter view is Dr. Martineau. With a 
 brief statement of the doctrine, first, as presented by Philo, 
 and, secondly, of the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus 
 Christ as taught by Christian philosophers, he goes on to
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 25 I 
 
 say : " In this form it did not come upon the stage until the 
 middle of the second century; when Christianity, released 
 from its first enemy by the destruction of the Jewish State, 
 turned round to face and to persuade its Pagan despisers, 
 and searched the philosophic armoury for weapons of 
 effective defence; and most of all when converts from 
 heathenism, as Justin Martyr and Athenagoras, addressed 
 themselves on behalf of their adopted faith to those whom 
 they had left behind. From the apostolic age this concep- 
 tion was entirely absent : not a trace of it is to be found in 
 the Pauline letters, which work their way to similar issues 
 by other tracks of thought; and not till we listen to the 
 Apologists in the time of the Antonines does this new lan- 
 guage fall upon the ear. It was borrowed from the Greek 
 yvcoai^, so fruitful of speculative systems in that age of 
 peace and letters, and was compelled to take up into its 
 meaning the Christian facts and beliefs. The fourth Gos- 
 pel breathes the very air of that time : it weds together the 
 ideal abstractions of the Gnostic philosophy, and the per- 
 sonal history of Jesus Christ; and could never have been 
 written till both of them had appeared upon the scene. It 
 is, indeed, itself a Gnosticism, only baptized and regen- 
 erate ; no longer lingering aloft with the divine emanation 
 in a fanciful sphere of aeons and syzygies, but descending 
 with it into a human life transcendent with holy light, and 
 going home into immortality." ^ 
 
 By another pathway of thought he comes to the like 
 conclusion. Religious opinions, as we view them in his- 
 tory, wear often a transitory look, but viewed on the scale 
 of a human life the most evanescent of them have a consid- 
 erable endurance. The Christian doctrine of the Nature 
 of Christ passed through various stages, yet it was more 
 than three centuries before it reached a final statement. 
 Three of these stages Dr. Martineau finds within the Gos- 
 pel narrative. 
 
 1 Sea^ of Authority, p. 237.
 
 252 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 The frequent designation of Jesus in the Gospels is Son 
 of God. When did he become such? Grant him in any 
 sense an earthly nature, such as it was supposed that the 
 Messiah would be, when did the higher nature take up its 
 abode in him? This question, "never contemplated, in- 
 deed, by those who first used it [the designation] in its 
 stereotyped Jewish sense," was " sure to be started as soon 
 as it came with the surprise of freshness upon hearers who 
 had to construe it for themselves." ^ The earliest answer 
 Dr. Martineau finds to have been, at the baptism. In illus- 
 tration of this view he goes behind the Synoptists, to the 
 Gospel according to the Hebrews, which he holds to embody 
 an earlier tradition. Here at the baptism of Jesus the 
 voice from heaven speaks in the language of the Psalmist, 
 "Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee." At 
 the consummation of the rite the Spirit descends upon 
 him, and he who before was but the son of David becomes 
 the Son of God. Dr. Martineau also calls attention to the 
 fact that this view was long held by the Ebionites, who 
 through the second and third centuries stood fast by the 
 faith of the first ; and he holds what most readers will un- 
 doubtedly confess, that the first chapter of Mark, with whom 
 " the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 God," is with the baptism, conveys the like impression ; 
 and he feels that nothing can be plainer than that " the 
 genealogies which give the pedigree of Joseph, and are in- 
 tended through him to link Jesus with the house of David, 
 must have been drawn up under the influence of this belief 
 as to the conditions that were to meet in Messiah, — an 
 earthly lineage and a heavenly investiture."^ 
 
 Here is a distinct type of doctrine, the sway of which 
 we have warrant for believing was considerable. 
 
 But sooner or later the question must arise, was sure to 
 arise as the new faith pushed out into wider fields, How 
 
 1 .5"^^/ of Authority, p. 238. ^ jbid. p. 239.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 253 
 
 can sonship be conferred? Filiation is not a gift; it holds 
 by an immediate title. If it is not, it cannot be. Probably 
 through the working of some such thought as this, the 
 union of the divine nature with the Messiah's human na- 
 ture was next conceived to have been at his birth. Hence 
 appeared the stories of miraculous conception of which 
 those in Matthew and Luke are probably the earlier. 
 This is the second type of doctrine, and now the third: 
 Birth brings upon the theatre of this world a nature that 
 was not here before, but " can the divine be born? " Grant 
 that at Messiah's birth a divine nature mingled with liis 
 human nature, was it generated then? Did it not come 
 down from heaven, where it had a pre-existent life? Pre- 
 existent ! was it ever non-existent? Can we think of it 
 otherwise than as expressing the life of God in the mystery 
 of eternal generation? " It was inevitable, that, under the 
 influence of this mode of thought, the sonship to God 
 should yet retreat back another step beyond all temporal 
 limits, and become pre-existent to the whole humanity of 
 Jesus ; so that nothing in him should be new to this world, 
 except the corporeal frame and mortal conditions v/hich 
 were needful to his relations with men." ^ This is the 
 doctrine of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 Here are three types of doctrine, each opening into the 
 wider ranges of speculation, and capable of an interest 
 that is profound and a hold that is strong. Their several 
 periods of ascendant interest it is impossible now to show ; 
 but that the first two ran their course and the third reached 
 its blossom within the first century is to Dr. Martineau an 
 incredible supposition. Yet if the Orthodox view be the 
 true one, this course was run and this blossom attained 
 within the active period of one man. 
 
 We need not follow this line of study further. For these 
 insurmountable reasons, Dr. Martineau cannot allow the 
 
 ^ Seat of Authority, p. 241.
 
 254 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Gospels, in the structure in which we know them, to be the 
 product of the apostoHc age. Neither in the Synoptics 
 nor in John do we find a disciple's record of the great 
 ministry. The records that we read come to us from a 
 later age, in the light of whose beliefs and hopes and 
 sufferings and struggles they must be interpreted, and he 
 thus interprets them. Of the greatest intrinsic value, 
 they are thus none the less discredited as to the primary 
 contention respecting them ; and the claim for them as an 
 ultimate outward authority is no longer tenable. 
 
 II. This wears to some a destructive look, but what is 
 destroyed .-' Dr. Martineau deals a heavy blow at accepted 
 theories, and shocks a reverence that subsists upon them. 
 It is but fair, however, to remember that his too is a 
 reverent spirit, and only just to beheve that it is in the 
 spirit of reverence that his blows are given. 
 
 Let the critic suspend his function and the philosopher 
 speak for a moment. You believe in inspiration, you say; 
 you are assured that God could not have been so in- 
 different to the spirits he has created as to leave them to 
 grope in the dark, vouchsafing them no beam of his great 
 light; and that through these New Testament records a 
 beam of that light has been borne to them. It may sur- 
 prise some earnest soul to be told that the above state- 
 ments only fail to convey Dr. Martineau's mind as they 
 fail in fulness. He too believes in inspiration, and that 
 through these records a beam of the divine light has been 
 imparted. But he also believes that it is through another 
 beam cast on your own soul that you distinguish it ; that 
 it is only through the divine in you that the divine is 
 apprehended by you. But here is a point on which you 
 and he radically differ: you will have this record divine 
 not only in its spirit, its prompting, its awakening light 
 and its vitalizing power, but in its letter too ; its cast of
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 255 
 
 thought, its detail of narrative, its moral reflections, its 
 historical allusions. Paul's metaphor of the treasure in 
 earthen vessels you cannot, in dealing with this problem 
 allow to give you guidance; you "want not the treasure 
 only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of 
 the crystal of the sky." To Dr. Martineau, not only does 
 the record fail to satisfy this want, but the want is intrin- 
 sically impossible of satisfaction. For "whatever higher 
 inspiration visits our world must use our nature as its 
 organ, must take the mould of our receptive capacity, and 
 mingle with the existing life of thought and affection. 
 How then can it both assume their form and escape their 
 limitations? how flow into the currents of our minds with- 
 out being diluted there? how dissolve itself in them with- 
 out any taint from their impurity ? You cannot receive the 
 light on a refracting surface, and yet expect it to pursue 
 its way still straight and colourless. And the soul of a 
 man, especially of one fit to be among the prophets of the 
 world, is not like a crystal, a dead medium of transmission, 
 which once for all deflects what it receives, and has done 
 with it ; but a living agent, whose faculties seize on every 
 influence that falls upon them, with action intenser as the 
 appeal is more awakening." ^ 
 
 Thus, then, we are brought to this : In the achieve- 
 ment of the higher work of the world God and man co- 
 operate. In the complete result, however fair, divine and 
 human elements are commingled. Grant with God the 
 initiative, with man is the elaboration. It follows that the 
 discrimination of the two, to him who will think justly, is 
 a matter of paramount interest. But how may this be? 
 Not without effort on our part ; to be " carried blindfold 
 into the Eternal Light " is not allowed us. But where are 
 the tests by which we may mark the distinction? The 
 answer is, Not without, but within, " in the methods of 
 
 ^ Seat of Author ity, p. 289.
 
 256 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 just thought, the instincts of pure conscience, and the as- 
 pirations of unclouded reason. These are the Hving pow- 
 ers which constitute our affinity with God, and render 
 what to Him is eternally true and good, true and good 
 to us as well ; and their selecting touch alone can part 
 asunder the entangled crowd of acts and things, and from 
 their conflicting meanings single out for us the idea which 
 is His, and the spirit which He loves." ^ 
 
 Thus your claim for the New Testament record, which 
 the critic finds such various and such weighty reason to 
 set aside, the philosopher finds incongruous with just 
 thought. It implies that you have received from God 
 what it were impossible for God to give. Here, then, you 
 say, is the end of Revealed Religion. Better so, in calm 
 sincerity be it said, than that your claim should be valid. 
 Men with nature and human experience before them, and 
 their own unaided reason within, have found their way to 
 the soul's Alpine summits where the air was free and a 
 glory thrilled them ; and when you sigh over the hardness 
 of their lot, the reply may be. Better their lot than yours, 
 with a revelation that enables you to dispense with the 
 laborious discrimination of true from false, and right from 
 wrong ; and so far as the New Testament has been held to 
 do this, it has only blessed mankind in spite of it. As the 
 non-use of any faculty or power means its enfeeblement 
 and decay at last, the revelation that should supersede the 
 hard exercise of reason and conscience in the determina- 
 tion of ultimate truth were not God's blessing, but his 
 curse; and while in this stricture upon the doctrine we 
 go beyond its widely prevalent application, we do not go 
 beyond legitimate inference. But is it so certain that 
 Revealed Religion has no longer any tenure if the preva- 
 lent view of inspiration be untenable? One thing is cer- 
 tain, that Dr. Martineau thinks otherwise ; no Orthodox 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 297.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 257 
 
 divine stands more insistently for Revealed Religion than 
 he. He is drawn much to the study of Natural Religion, 
 but to Revealed Religion he gives the prior place; for 
 without it, as he holds, Natural Religion were without 
 a guiding light. His comparison of the two is full of 
 suggestion: "Natural Religion is a human elaboration 
 which sets more or fewer steps between ourselves and 
 God. It is a method of mediate knowledge, carrying us, 
 by successive stages of advance, out of the finite into the 
 infinite : there are media without, as we pass the facts of 
 the world in review before us, and move from the narrower 
 through the wider order to the cause which embraces all : 
 there are media within, as our own reason weaves up 
 feeling and perception into its premisses, and so marshals 
 its premisses as to conquer its conclusion." But what 
 then? Clearly this: So far as "God naturalises himself 
 in order to be discerned, constructs a cosmos to be the 
 mirror of his thought, covers it with greater and lesser 
 circles of intersecting laws, executed by a delegated physi- 
 ology from within, he is not presented, but represented^ ^ 
 Here, if you please, is his manifestation, but not himself; a 
 witness of his wisdom and his power, but not his person- 
 ality; and through the study of this is Natural Religion 
 won. , Revealed Religion, on the other hand, finds its 
 possibility, not as God is "represented," but as he is "pre- 
 sented.'' Its knowledge is not jnediate, but immediate, 
 Spirit present with spirit, living God with living soul. 
 And this is possible, not as man ascends into the Divine 
 Presence, but as God comes with revealing light into the 
 human. " Where," he tells us, " the Agent is Divine, and 
 the recipient human, there can be nothing for the mind to 
 do but let the light flow in, and by the lustre of its pres- 
 ence turn each common thought to sanctity : the disclo- 
 sure must be self-disclosure ; the evidence, self-evidence ; 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 304. 
 17
 
 258 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the apprehension, as we say, intuitive ; something given, 
 and not found." ^ This, as is more than once brought out 
 in the preceding pages, is Dr. Martineau's initial truth. 
 Religion begins with it, and in its light runs its career. 
 While the common phrase gives us Natural and Revealed 
 Religion, Dr. Martineau, true to the order of his concep- 
 tions, would reverse the terms, and tell of Revealed Reli- 
 gion and Natural. Until the soul has apprehension of a 
 God, the eye cannot discern his tokens. 
 
 Thus is Dr. Martineau a prophet of Revealed Religion, 
 though it must be confessed that his utterances have not 
 the familiar sound of those who have been held the special 
 custodians of this. But let us see through his inferences 
 the more special features of his thought, (i) The condi- 
 tions of revelation being two, God and a human soul, it 
 follows that between them can be no mediator. Immediate 
 divine knowledge can never be at second hand. As many, 
 therefore, as " know him at first hand, so many revealing 
 acts have there been ; and as many as know him only at 
 second hand are strangers to revelation." They may hold 
 what has been given to another, but, " in passing through 
 media to them," it has lost its character as Revealed, and 
 has become Natural Religion. " Take away the fresh 
 Divine initiative, and the immediate apprehension which 
 it gives cannot pass laterally from man to man : no one, in 
 the absence of God's living touch, can put us into com- 
 munion with him, and make him known to us as his own 
 spirit would. Nothing spiritual, nothing Divine, can be 
 done by deputy ; and the prophets are no vicars of God, 
 to stand in His stead among alien souls, and kindle in them 
 a flame unfed by the Light of lights." ^ But (2) is there, 
 then, no part which the prophet may bear in revelation? 
 Grant that he alone is immediately enkindled, can he in 
 no sense communicate the sacred fire? Yes, in a most 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 305. ^ study of Rdigion, pp. 307-308.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 259 
 
 important sense he may do this. For the order of depend- 
 ence of feebler upon mightier natures here finds illustra- 
 tion. Under the rule of Providence the higher is ever for 
 the lower, and the prophet of God for the service of all. 
 There is no mistaking the fact that when the prophet 
 speaks a sense of the divine may be experienced where it 
 was scarce known before. It is, however, only awakened 
 where before it slumbered. The impulse " gives no new 
 reality : it only interprets what is already there ; flinging a 
 warm breath on the inward oracles hid in invisible ink, it 
 renders them articulate and dazzling as the hand-writing on 
 the wall. There is no change in the object within sight; 
 only the film is wiped away that concealed or confused 
 what was close at hand. The divine Seer does not convey 
 over to you his revelation, but qualifies you to receive 
 your own." Dr. Martineau goes on to tell us that this 
 " mutual relation is possible only through the common 
 presence of God in the conscience of mankind ; " that the 
 fact " that the sacred fire can pass from soul to soul is the 
 continuous witness that He lives in all ; " and that " were 
 not our humanity itself an Emmanuel, there could be no 
 Christ to bear the name." " Take," says he, " this Divine 
 ground away, . . . and no inspiration given to one can 
 avail to animate another. He may indeed tell others what 
 has been revealed to him, and they may take it on his 
 word, and pass the report on ; but this is not repeating 
 his experience : it is believing testimony, not seeing 
 God." ' 
 
 But the substance of revelation — what is that ? Is it the 
 history of the cosmos, the origin of man, the Israelites 
 in the wilderness, the conquests of Joshua, the Levitical 
 priesthood, the exploits of Samson, the deeds of Saul? 
 Does it forecast the future ; tell of a kingdom that shall 
 pass away, of a deliverer that shall come? Does it 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, pp. 308-309.
 
 260 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 announce the end of the world, a final judgment, an 
 ultimate salvation and reprobation? Do we read it literally 
 in the texts of Judges and Isaiah and Ezekiel, in the 
 genealogies of Matthew and Luke, in the colloquy of 
 Mary and Elizabeth, in the rhapsody of Zacharias, in the 
 arguments of Paul, in the visions of the Apocalypse? 
 Such has been the teaching; but such is not the teaching 
 of Dr. Martineau. " In virtue of its immediate or intuitive 
 character," says he, " Revelation must always open our 
 eyes to what really is or ought to be, not to what has hap- 
 pened, is happening, or will happen.'' He illustrates by 
 reference to space and time, the contents of which are 
 won through the senses, the memory, the understanding, 
 while space and time themselves are intuitively given. 
 He adds: "The immediate self-disclosure of God to the 
 human spirit, similarly carries in it the consciousness of a 
 present Infinite and Eternal, behind and above as well as 
 within all the changes of the finite world. It brings us 
 into contact with a Will beyond the visible order of the 
 universe, of a Law other than the experienced consecution 
 of phenomena, of a Spirit transcending all spirits, yet com- 
 muning with them in pleadings silently understood. But 
 it recites no history ; it utters no Sibylline oracles ; it 
 paints no ultramundane scenes ; it heralds neither woes 
 nor triumphs of ' the latter days.' " He concludes with a 
 judgment which to some may seem severe, but from which 
 the consistency of his mind forbids him to flinch : " So 
 foreign are such apocalyptic things from the essence of 
 ' revelation,' that they exemplify the lowest aberrations of 
 ' natural religion.' " ^ 
 
 "The Bible, then, is no revelation, is it?" asks some 
 offended spirit. " These rhythmic sentences, seeming so 
 logical and fair, bring us to the abyss of infidelity at last." 
 Undoubtedly the difference between your judgment of the 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 311.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 26 1 
 
 Bible and his is very great, though your language hardly 
 speaks true to him. He tells as fervidly as you of divine 
 quickenings that thrilled the hearts of Hebrew seers, and 
 through them awoke their people to a vivid consciousness 
 of God ; of one who out of communion with heaven spoke 
 in tones that, reverberating across the abyss of eighteen 
 centuries, are still the world's chief melody. You find its 
 inspiration in the meaning of its texts, he in the fire of the 
 prophet's soul. Hence follows the difference between you 
 and him, as he would state it. While with him revelation 
 implies the soul and God in the simplest and most normal 
 relations, with you it is " apocalyptic " in its gift. No con- 
 trast could be clearer than this, or in the broad survey of 
 religion more frequently presented. To great multitudes 
 the apocalyptic concomitant seems indispensable. A rev- 
 elation from God, — surely some portent must attend it. 
 It cannot be the burden of a common soul, — some super- 
 natural messenger must bring it. How shall we distin- 
 guish it, if its communication be attended by no marvel? 
 To Dr. Martineau — and always there are those like him 
 — the apocalyptic does not signify, or, so far as it does, 
 offends rather than assures. While you must have in 
 some sense the wind and the earthquake and the light- 
 ning, he is well content with the still small voice. His 
 feeling, indeed, is stronger than this : he places " Apoca- 
 lyptic Religion " and " Revealed" in contrast as mutually 
 exclusive types : if revealed then not apocalyptic, if apoca- 
 lyptic not revealed. For the soul only can receive reve- 
 lation, and nothing apocalyptic can appeal to it. The 
 apocalyptic can only be addressed to the senses or the im- 
 agination ; and, while it may overwhelm as a wonder, it can- 
 not penetrate as a light. Its place, if it have any, is within 
 the embrace, not of Revealed, but of Natural Religion. 
 But again the question. How in the absence of apocalyptic 
 accessories can a revelation be known to be such? Dr.
 
 262 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Martineau's answer is that the Divine Word authenticates 
 itself, and needs no apocalyptic witness to its origin. 
 
 This rich field we need not explore further. Dr. Marti- 
 neau's attitude is plain, likewise his wide departure from 
 prevailing standards. These Scriptures he would explore 
 under the guidance of natural reason, while prevailingly 
 they are read in apocalyptic light. He rejoices to receive 
 the heavenly treasure they convey, and to that very end is 
 eager to discriminate the terrestrial vessel that contains it. 
 Prevailingly they are seen through a haze of marvel in 
 which treasure and vessel are indiscriminately blended. It 
 is enough for him to receive the spiritual illumination that 
 they bring, and, from the inspiration they impart, to be 
 assured of inspiration at their source. Prevailingly their 
 inspiration is an a priori assumption, which, reasoned 
 however it may be, the text according to its letter cannot 
 satisfy. To him, inspiration is illumination of the spirit 
 through immediate contact with God. Prevailingly it 
 is miraculous dictation. As of the Christian records, 
 so of their central figure. To him, he is a human friend 
 and brother, who, living in the consciousness of God, 
 became the oracle of his grace. Prevailingly he wears 
 an apocalyptic halo, his beauty not a blossom of earth, 
 but a marvel from the skies. In his treatment of the New 
 Testament presentation of this person we now follow him. 
 
 III. The New Testament offers us three conceptions of 
 Christ, — the simply Jewish, the Pauline, and the Johan- 
 nine. They are of the Messiah, the Second Adam, and 
 the Incarnate Logos. To all of these Dr. Martineau de- 
 votes a copious and fruitful page. The earlier, however, 
 is the root of the other two, and a conclusion respecting it 
 is by implication a conclusion as respects them. We shall, 
 therefore, follow him only through his discussion of the 
 Messianic claim.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 263 
 
 Though Jesus Christ may be the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever, his features have differed from age to age 
 according to the eyes that have contemplated them. To 
 the Jews vv^ith whom his ministry began it was inevitable 
 that he should be looked upon in the light of the Messianic 
 expectation. Grant that " Messiah was but the figure of 
 an Israelitish dream," yet was he the master light of Israel's 
 seeing, the comfort of his griefs, the fulfilment of his un- 
 extinguishable hope. A great one should come of the 
 line of David, who should regenerate his people and rule 
 the world. Measured by this expectation, Jesus was re- 
 pudiated by the great mass of his countrymen ; to them 
 he did not fill out this august figure. By his few immediate 
 followers, however, he was believed to be Messiah; and 
 on their proclamation of this belief the Christian Church 
 began its career. So much is certain ; but now a ques- 
 tion : What was the attitude of the mind of Jesus towards 
 this hope ? That, a growing boy, he received it from his 
 parents, is most probable; that, entering upon manhood, 
 it was a haunting assurance, we need not doubt ; and that, 
 when he began to preach, " The time is fulfilled, and the 
 kingdom of God is at hand," his language reflected this 
 great expectation, is reasonably certain. But thrilling to 
 the vision of Messiah's kingdom, did he conceive himself 
 the Messiah ? This, too, is the all but universal conviction, 
 both of believers who \vould magnify him and of doubters 
 who would discredit him. It is preached throughout 
 Christendom ; a recent author, treating of Christ's knowl- 
 edge of the Old Testament, pleasantly tells how his interest 
 in its pages was enhanced by seeing in them glowing fore- 
 casts of himself. Beyond a doubt, too, his Messianic claim 
 is on the surface of the Synoptic narratives. Dr. Mar- 
 tineau, however, treats it as made, not by Jesus for himself, 
 but as foisted upon him by his followers ; and devotes his 
 learning and acumen to relieving Jesus from what he con-
 
 264 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ceives an unwarranted and so derogatory pretension. Dr. 
 Martineau is not alone in this view ; but his arguments are 
 sufficiently novel to give them more than ordinary atten- 
 tion ; and not a few even of those most friendly to his gen- 
 eral scheme of thought have hesitated to embrace them.^ 
 
 Admittedly a Synoptic teaching, why doubt the record ? 
 To evangelical faith this, of course, is impossible. To one, 
 however, to whom the laws of criticism apply to the New 
 Testament, as to all other writings, a doubt may be sup- 
 ported by considerations that are not slight. The charac- 
 ter of the books yields a tentative suggestion of great 
 weight. They are not in their ruling purpose narrative, 
 but argument. Their aim is, not to furnish a biography 
 of Jesus, but to set forth this very thesis respecting him. 
 Look, for instance, at the first of the three in the order of 
 the canon. " It is," says Dr. Martineau, "compiled through- 
 out in a dogmatic interest. . . . The position which it aims 
 to establish, viz., that the life it relates is that of the future 
 Messiah, is present everywhere : it supplies the principle 
 of selection with which the writer passes through the tradi- 
 tions and records ready to his hand : he drops as irrelevant 
 whatever does not help his thesis : he weaves together ex- 
 clusively the incidents and sayings which admit of being 
 turned to its support. ... If here and there, in the inter- 
 vals of the compiler's logical vigilance, words that transcend 
 his theory or incidents that contradict it lie embedded in 
 his story, the truth is betrayed by the only signs of which 
 the case admits ; and such rare instances, like the solitary 
 organic form detected in rocks that never showed such 
 traces before, may tell a story of the past significant out 
 of all proportion to their size. It is only by reasoning 
 from such internal marks, that we can ever hope to recover 
 the simple outline of the truth." ^ 
 
 ^ .See especially essay by J. Estlin Carpenter, Unitarian Review, vol 
 xxxvi. 
 
 2 Seat of Authority, ^'^. 330-331.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 265 
 
 This is unsparing criticism ; and many, embracing it as 
 a just account of these writings, would summarily reject 
 them as without historic value. Not so Dr. Martineau. 
 Criticism to him is not merely a surgeon's lance, but a rod 
 of divination also ; and he applies it to these writings to 
 see what positive conclusion it will draw from them. 
 Grant that the attitude and manifest purpose of the com- 
 pilers should make us wary of their conclusion, does a 
 scrutiny of their materials yield any facts that justify a 
 different conclusion ? While beyond a doubt these writ- 
 ings reflect the conviction of the age out of which they 
 come, are they faithful to the age of which they treat, and 
 especially to him in whom centres all their interest? Dr. 
 Martineau holds otherwise ; and as a newly discovered 
 fossil in the rocks may rule the construction of wide 
 ranges of scientific inference, so from certain " slight but 
 speaking indications " he draws from the Synoptics a con- 
 clusion exactly the reverse of that which they were severally 
 written to justify. 
 
 He draws his first critical inference from a study of the 
 names by which Messiah is designated. These are three : 
 the Son of David, the Son of Man, the Son of God. In 
 the age that brought forth the Synoptic writings these 
 were undoubtedly interchangeable terms ; they meant one 
 and all Messiah. But in the prior age when Jesus walked 
 among men, were they so? Dr. Martineau finds uncon- 
 scious testimony that they were not in an unequal use of 
 them that could not have been accidental.^ 
 
 By his countrymen Jesus was spoken to and spoken of 
 as the Son of David. "Is not this the Son of David?" 
 ** Thou Son of David, have mercy on us." " Hosanna to 
 the Son of David." Their startled inquiry, their appeal 
 for help, their wondering exclamation, employ always this 
 designation. Of course it was appropriate to Messiah, as 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 333.
 
 266 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to any one of David's line. The point to notice is, that 
 they knew him by no higher title. Put against this the 
 title Son of God, and you vault from earth to heaven. 
 Did we meet as coming from their lips, " Is not this the 
 Son of God?" "Jesus, thou Son of God," " Hosanna to 
 the Son of God," we should need no other evidence that 
 this supreme title was current with them. Their non-use 
 of it is the clearest possible negative testimony that it had 
 no currency with them. Dr. Martineau holds the designa- 
 tion " Son of God " to have been given its Messianic mean- 
 ing by the Christians themselves, as it is not used in any 
 pre-Christian literature in this sense ; while in the earliest 
 of our Gospels, that of Mark, it is only so used " by the 
 demons he cast out, and the Satan who tempted him," ^ 
 who through their supernatural and devilish nature were 
 supposed to have special discernment of him as their divine 
 and invincible antagonist. Indeed Dr. Martineau holds 
 that the title " Son of God " was bestowed upon Jesus " in 
 virtue, not of the Messianic office, but of the heavenly 
 nature, discovered in his person : and was, therefore, first 
 freely given to him by his disciples after his passage to 
 immortal life." ^ He draws support for this conclusion 
 from a distinction made by Paul, who speaks of Christ 
 
 1 There are two apparent exceptions which he notes. One is the ques- 
 tion of the High Priest, " Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? 
 And Jesus said, I am." [Mark xiv. 6i, 62.] Dr. Martineau finds it hard 
 to reconcile this open avowal with repeated shrinking from and even pro- 
 hibition of the claim ; and made, according to the narrative, within the 
 hearing of no friendly ear, he gravely doubts if dependence can be placed 
 upon so exceptional a detail ; and this especially when he remembers that 
 "ere it could be set down as matter of history, it had become the equal wish 
 of Jewish accusers and of Christian disciples to fasten upon the crucified 
 the highest Messianic pretensions, the one as proof of imposture, the other 
 as a warrant for their faith." The other seeming exception is the exclamation 
 of the centurion at the Cross [Mark xv. 39], " Truly this man was the Son 
 of God." Coming from a Roman, Dr. Martineau holds that this language 
 can have no Messianic meaning, but only one compatible with a heathen's 
 conception of divine things. Seat 0/ AuiAori/y, pp. 233-334- 
 2 /itd. p. 334
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 26^ 
 
 as " of the seed of David according to the flesh ; and de- 
 clared to be the Son of God with power, according to the 
 Spirit of hoHness, by the resurrection from the dead."^ 
 This was in harmony with a ruhng idea that " it was the 
 spiritual constitution of beings more than human " which 
 brought their nature " into antithesis with the animal life 
 and affinity with the essence of God." Accordingly, until 
 the exigencies of a theory required it, this august title 
 could hardly have been applied to the Son of David here 
 on earth ; but only to his spiritual essence, free of incarna- 
 tion and lifted into heaven. 
 
 Neither then in the title " Son of David," nor in the su- 
 preme title " Son of God," do we find evidence that Jesus 
 was regarded by those around him as the Messiah ; evi- 
 dence that should be held assured in the face of more gen- 
 eral and opposing considerations. We come next to the 
 Son of Man. It is by this title that Jesus designates him- 
 self, and from its meaning as he uses it we must judge 
 whether he claims the Messiahship or no. The phrase was 
 not of his inventing : it was current in his time ; the Scrip- 
 tures that he read were full of it. Its meaning, too, far 
 from being fixed, was extremely fluid. " Behold even the 
 moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his 
 sight. How much less man, that is a worm? and the son 
 of man, which is a worm ? " ^ " What is man, that thou 
 art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest 
 him? " ^ " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of 
 man, in whom there is no help."^ In these passages and 
 many others like them it is plainly the human species that 
 is contemplated. The Scriptures say " son of man " where 
 we say simply " man." There are, however, other passages 
 that show another use. " Son of man, stand upon thy feet, 
 and I will speak unto thee." ^ " Then said he unto me, 
 
 ^ Rom. i. 3-4. 2 JqI) XXV. 5-6. ^ Ps. viii. 4. 
 
 * Ps. cxlvi. 3. 6 Ezek. ii. i.
 
 268 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Hast thou seen this, O son of man?"i " Understand, O 
 son of man." 2 Here it is applied in the form of address to 
 the individual, and is equivalent to our phrase, " O man; " 
 though as this use of it is met in only one passage outside 
 of Ezekiel, where it occurs eighty-nine times in the address 
 of Jehovah to the prophet, Dr. Martineau conceives that it 
 may have a tacit reference to the Seer's office. There is 
 yet one other use of this title, met in one passage only : 
 " I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son 
 of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
 Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. 
 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a king- 
 dom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve 
 him." ^ This passage has attracted a good deal of atten- 
 tion, not alone for its striking imagery, but also for the 
 suggestion of a person to whom this title peculiarly be- 
 longs ; and not a few have been anxious to maintain that 
 here is contemplated a personal Messiah. A little careful 
 reading, however, should make it plain that we are not 
 dealing here with a person but with a personification. As 
 the Seer has conceived successive heathen nations under 
 the figure of the lion, the bear, the leopard, and another 
 " beast " to which he gives no name, so now he personifies 
 humanity under the image of the Son of man. 
 
 Such were the uses of the phrase in the Old Testament. 
 We come now to the New Testament. With the support 
 of current usage Jesus could easily draw the title to him- 
 self; he could apply it to another; after the analogy of its 
 address to the Seer in Ezekiel, or instructed by the mystic 
 imagery of Daniel, he could apply it to the anticipated 
 Messiah. Using it in any of these ways, he would have 
 been intelligible to those about him ; and examples from 
 his sayings that to the unprepossessed reader would sug- 
 gest two of these uses would not be difficult to find. But 
 ^ Ezek. viii. 15. ^ Dan. viii. 17. ^ Dan. vii. 13-14.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 269 
 
 now the question presses : Did he give the title a new use 
 by drawing it to himself as Messiah ? Are the two titles, 
 as we meet them in the New Testament, of equivalent 
 meaning? Where he says "Son of man," could we with- 
 out violence to his meaning substitute " Messiah"? Such 
 is the traditional view, which the Synoptic writings seem 
 clearly to support, but which in their very text Dr. Mar- 
 tineau finds reason for referring to the prepossession of 
 their compilers. 
 
 At the threshold of this study a question obtrudes itself: 
 Did Jesus in his speech use language with a view to intel- 
 ligent impression, or did he consciously use it in such 
 manner as to mystify those who heard him? If we recoil 
 from the latter supposition as unworthy of him, we seem 
 driven to interpret his words in harmony with the former. 
 We turn now to his earliest use of this title in our canon : 
 " The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; 
 but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." ^ Is 
 this equivalent to saying, The foxes have holes, and the 
 birds of the air have nests ; but I, Messiah, have not where 
 to lay my head ? In theological treatises it would not be 
 difficult to find exposition to this tenor. Yet so far as 
 the record shows, this utterance is responded to by no 
 surprise, no challenge of incredulity, no exclamation of 
 wonder, such as must surely have been in any group of 
 Israelites of that period to whom it had been declared that 
 the Messiah was among them. The Messiah, the great 
 Deliverer of whom prophets told and for whom Israel 
 longed, — can we imagine how the word would have passed 
 from lip to lip, and countenances lowered with anger or 
 glowed with exultation, according as they saw a blasphe- 
 mous pretender or him who should fulfil their hope? The 
 evangelist's silence as to any such effect of this language is 
 unconscious testimony that it bore home no such meaning. 
 
 1 Matt. viii. 20.
 
 270 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 If, then, " Son of man " here means " Messiah," Jesus uses 
 a phrase which has one meaning to his hearers of which 
 he is certainly aware, and another to himself which he 
 makes no effort to make plain. 
 
 As we read on, we meet the phrase in a series of pas- 
 sages, scattered through the larger portion of the active 
 ministry. " But that ye may know that the Son of man 
 hath power on earth to forgive sins." ^ " Ye shall not 
 have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be 
 come."^ "The Son of man came eating and drinking."^ 
 "For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day." ^ 
 " He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man." ^ 
 "The Son of man shall send forth his angels."^ All these 
 passages, notwithstanding the Messianic sense we find in 
 them, apparently conveyed none to Jesus' hearers. There 
 seems no reason to suppose that they attached other mean- 
 ing to the phrase as it fell from his lips than when they 
 read it in their Scriptures or heard it in the synagogue. 
 
 Of the fifteen months which, as Dr. Martineau reads, is 
 the utmost scope which the Synoptics allow to the minis- 
 try of Jesus, the above citations are drawn from the record 
 of more than fourteen. It must be an acute eye that can 
 detect any growing explicitness as to the significance of 
 this title ; in them all alike Jesus uses it as if speaking to 
 those familiar with it, and with no apparent effort to trans- 
 form their meaning of it. Yet by comparison of texts the 
 theory has been ingeniously worked out that Jesus made a 
 progressive disclosure of his Messiahship. Dr. Martineau 
 examines this, but cannot accept it. There is, indeed, in 
 all these Gospels from first to last an intensification of the 
 Messianic idea, — of that all readers are sensible. But the 
 question may be asked whether this is due to progressive 
 revelation on the part of the Master or growth in the mind 
 
 1 Matt. ix. 6. "^ Matt. x. 23. ^ Matt. xi. 19. 
 
 * Matt. xii. 8. ^ Matt. xiii. 37. 6 Matt. xiii. 41.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 2/1 
 
 of the disciples, and " retrospectively read back between 
 the lines of his reported life." ^ In the consideration of 
 this question Dr. Martineau is brought to Peter's con- 
 fession in the region of Csesarea Philippi. 
 
 The refutation of Dr. Martineau's thesis, most will agree, 
 is here if anywhere ; let us, therefore, read the passage 
 through his eyes, not neglecting to use our own. Galilee 
 and its triumphs have been left behind ; Jerusalem with its 
 new experiences and its undoubted perils is before. Dr. 
 Martineau we may well believe not wrong when he con- 
 ceives the disciples and the Master to be in different 
 moods : they in the exultation of anticipated triumph, he 
 in pensive meditation upon the coming struggle. In a 
 pause upon the way he asks the judgment of others and of 
 themselves respecting him. " Whom do men say that I, 
 the Son of man, am?" They answer John the Baptist 
 or one of the prophets. " But whom say ye that I am? " 
 The answer is, "Thou art the Christ."^ Dr. Martineau is 
 not to be disputed when he says : " If the term, ' Son of 
 Man,' was only a synonym for ' the Christ,' and Jesus had 
 been habitually applying it to himself through the previous 
 year or years, there is no room for his question addressed 
 to them, and their answer was a mere tautology." ^ It seems 
 perfectly clear, if this is authentic language, that to within 
 seventeen days of his death he drew this title to himself in 
 no Messianic sense whatever. Further, if the question, 
 "Whom say ye that I am?" is asked with a view to elicit- 
 ing a confession of his Messiahship, it is hardly less clear 
 that up to this time he had not been known, even in the 
 inmost circle of his friends, as the Messiah at all. Thus 
 the evangelists unconsciously make plain the fact that the 
 Messiahship of Jesus, which from first to last is on the sur- 
 face of their writing, up to this date had not been learned 
 
 ^ Seat of Authority, p. 347. 3 Matt. xvi. 13-16. 
 
 * Seat of Authority, p. 339.
 
 2/2 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 in any walks with Jesus ; and compel us to think of it as 
 cast back from later years when theories were wrought out 
 respecting him. 
 
 Another consideration presses : When the question nar- 
 rows to "Whom say ye that I am?" and Peter answers, 
 "Thou art the Christ," does Jesus accept the title? So 
 evidently the evangelists would have us believe, but here 
 again their unconscious testimony bears the other way. 
 He meets the confession by peremptorily enjoining 
 silence.^ The common interpretation of this is : Yes, I 
 am Messiah, but do not mention it. Why not mention it? 
 Shall the ambassador of God withhold his credentials? 
 If indeed the Messiah, what was there to do but mention 
 it? "Was then the Messiahship a private prerogative, 
 which could be clandestinely held ? Was it not rather the 
 ultimate national test which he was forced to offer for the 
 judgment of Israel?"^ The reasons that are wont to be 
 assigned for silence, set over against the reasons that 
 should have impelled proclamation, are incredible for 
 their weakness ; and it is easier to doubt the evangelist 
 than to think such trifling of the Master. If all is not 
 made plain, yet none the less light breaks upon us when 
 we conceive the command not to report that he was Mes- 
 siah a posthumous refashioning of a repudiation of the 
 claim: "Silence! to not a creature are you to say such 
 a thing again ! " ^ Does this seem a charge of literary 
 dishonesty? I see rather the influence of prepossession, 
 which in honest intellects has more than once played 
 pranks as grave as this. But is the context consistent 
 
 ^ I do not forget the blessing of Simon Bar-jona and the gift of the 
 keys. The fact, however, that this striking passage is found only in 
 Matthew, that Mark and Luke while giving all other details of this inter- 
 view yield no hint of anything like it, compels me to hold with those who 
 doubt its genuineness. 
 
 "^ Seat of Authority, p. 352. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 349.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 2/3 
 
 with this view? "From that time forth began Jesus to show 
 unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, 
 and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and 
 scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." i 
 — Killed and raised again the third day ! Unless we are 
 dealing in these words with that to which criticism cannot 
 apply, we have surely an order of events thrown back 
 upon lips that could not possibly have told of them. But 
 grant to Jesus a presage of suffering and death, what 
 significance could its announcement have to the mind of 
 Peter? Was any idea further from the Jewish mind than 
 that of a slain Messiah? To Peter such a forecast on the 
 part of his Master must mean the utter rejection of his 
 confession. In their significance to his mind, the com- 
 mand that he tell no man the great truth of his Messiah- 
 ship together with intelligence that he was about to die 
 could only be hopeless contradictories ; and the most 
 hopeful reconciliation of the two passages seems clearly 
 to be through Dr. Martineau's transformation of the first 
 one. But when Peter is told of death, is he not told of 
 resurrection too? If the former bears in upon him the 
 thought of defeat, should not the latter mean to him a 
 surpassing triumph? So clearly it would seem. He, 
 however, reads with other eyes than Dr. Martineau's to 
 whom this record, taken at its surface value, bears no 
 insuperable difficulty. Peter's rebuke, " Be it far from 
 thee. Lord : this shall not be unto thee," ^ makes it per- 
 fectly plain that if anything was said about resurrection 
 he did not hear it ; that his mind is ruled by thought of 
 defeat and ignominy alone. Here, too, we need to take 
 account of the conduct of Jesus. Does he comfort by 
 correcting his disciple, as so easy for him to do? Does 
 he say, " Peter, you mistake ; I told you of my death, 
 indeed, but did I not speak of resurrection also? Would 
 
 1 Matt. xvi. 21. 2 Matt. xvi. 22. 
 
 18
 
 2/4 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 you withhold me from a temporary darkness which shall 
 be the prekide to such matchless light? restrain me from 
 the contest which, because the hardest of all, shall prove 
 me the supreme of conquerors"? His stern language 
 rather is, " Get thee behind me, Satan : thou art an of- 
 fence unto me." ^ Nothing seems plainer than that he 
 takes the apostle's attitude, than that he forecasts the 
 hard issue at Jerusalem and nothing beyond it. " If," 
 asks Dr. Martineau, " Jesus knew and had just said that 
 he should ' lay down his life that he might take it again,' 
 if, having explained that this was the Divine gateway to 
 the Messiahship, he was going to Jerusalem on purpose 
 to pass through it, how is it possible that he should meet 
 the apostle's suggestion as an alternative, and thrust it 
 away as a temptation ? " He adds : " It is only in the deep 
 darkness of the soul, where nothing is clear but the nearest 
 duty and its instant anguish, and the issue is shut out by 
 the midnight between, that any Satan can slink in with 
 pleas of ease and evasion." ^ The testimony, therefore, 
 though unconscious seems irrefutable, that no resurrection 
 forecast could have had place in this interview, that we 
 here deal with a later faith woven into the structure of 
 earlier memorials ; and that Jesus and the apostle are 
 alike contemplating a martyrdom unrelieved by vision of 
 aught beyond it. 
 
 Of course this inference is irreconcilable with the 
 Messianic claim ; but is not the traditional view of this 
 passage supported elsewhere in the sacred narrative? 
 However unsatisfactory its impression when we study it 
 alone, may we not draw confidence of its genuineness 
 from later utterances of the Master? After the Transfig- 
 uration, did he not charge his disciples that they tell no man 
 of this "until the Son of man be risen from the dead" "i^ 
 
 ^ Matt. xvi. 23. 2 Seat 0/ Authority, p. 350. 
 
 * Matt. xvii. 9.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 2/5 
 
 In forecast of his Passion does he not tell how the chief 
 priests and scribes " shall condemn him to death, and 
 shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, 
 and to crucify him : and tJie third day he shall rise 
 again " ? ^ At the close of the last meal with his disciples 
 did he not comfort them with the assurance, *' After I ant 
 risen again, I will go before you into Galilee " ? ^ So testi- 
 fies the record surely ; and if the assurance is to be held 
 genuine because clearly " written in the book," faith may 
 ask no more, and we may dismiss our difficulties with 
 the passage we have reviewed as pertaining to its rhetoric 
 only. But change the point of view. Allowing these 
 assurances to have come from the lips of Jesus, did the 
 after conduct of the disciples in any manner reflect them ? 
 What should have been their conduct? — What were 
 ours, for instance, if in earnest talk with a friend about 
 to die he should bear in upon us assurance, " I go away 
 indeed, but on the third morning after I will return ; per- 
 haps in other form and lineament, and with other eyes 
 than look upon you now, yet in my inmost reality the 
 same"? Should we not comfort his lingering pain, and 
 with a smile turn away to make ready for his welcome? 
 Yet the ordeal finds the disciples totally unprepared. 
 The assurance so often breathed yields them no support ; 
 of the promise to go before them into Galilee — a thing 
 impossible to forget — they have no remembrance until 
 an angel at the open sepulchre brings it back to them.^ 
 Their conduct, in short, was precisely such as had been 
 most natural had no such word of cheer been spoken to 
 them. How explain this failure of the Master's word 
 even to gain lodgment in the disciples' memory? Were 
 resurrections such ordinary occurrences at Jerusalem that 
 a promise of one might be crowded out of mind by the 
 
 1 Matt. XX. 19. 2 Matt. xxvi. 32. 
 
 8 See Matt, xxviii. 7, 8, 9, 10, il. Compare John ii. 22.
 
 2/6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 press of Other interests, like the letters or the invitations 
 of a busy man? Could they think him dead and not 
 remember? Could they sorrow for him and not recall? 
 We are here dealing with a difficulty of which the standard 
 theories of the New Testament provide no reconciliation. 
 Dr. Martineau's statement may not be the final word ; 
 but he seems in accord with human nature and the laws 
 of the human mind and the literary methods of the time 
 when he says: "Every feature of the tragedy, as it 
 occurred, took them by surprise ; and not till they after- 
 wards discovered that just these things ' the Christ ought 
 to suffer and to enter into his glory,' did they feel sure 
 that he must have known and voluntarily met it all, and 
 have said enough to let them know it too, had they not 
 been ' slow of heart to believe what the prophets had 
 spoken.' " ' 
 
 The conclusion, then, drawn from unconscious testi- 
 mony, is that the Messiahship of Jesus has anything but 
 the sure support that is claimed for it ; that his application 
 to himself of the title " Son of man " does not necessarily 
 imply it ; that the Messianic claim, in short, though put 
 forth by the evangelists, may be none of his. Nor for 
 support of this judgment are we left to unconscious testi- 
 mony alone. There are sayings attributed to Jesus that 
 seem strained and unnatural if we suppose him conscious 
 that he was the Messiah. Dr. Martineau dwells on the 
 fact, which others besides him have discerned, that in 
 his forecasts of the downfall of Jerusalem and of the con- 
 vulsions of the world, events prelusive to the coming of 
 the Son of man, not one of the evangelists makes him 
 speak of the drama as " belonging to himself." Always 
 he speaks in the third person of the Son of man.^ "Then 
 shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven." ^ " So 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 351. * Ibid. p. 354. 
 
 ' Matt. xxiv. 30.
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CRITIC 21^ 
 
 shall also the coming of the Son of man be." ^ " Ye know 
 neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man 
 Cometh." ^ " When the Son of man shall come in his glory, 
 and all the holy angels with him." ^ Regarding these 
 passages as forecasts of the Messiah, as one yet to appear, 
 they would have been as to their form as appropriate to 
 the lips of John or Peter as his own. To another pecu- 
 liarity of Jesus' use of language Dr. Martineau calls atten- 
 tion : He always speaks of the co7?tmg of the Son of 
 man ; never of his coming back. If Jesus draws the title 
 to himself as Messiah, and contemplates death as a far 
 country through which he will travel ere entering upon his 
 office, — the same personality that is with them now to be 
 with them once more, his language is wholly inappropriate. 
 He was here then ; his future coming should be a coming 
 again or a returning. 
 
 These considerations have critical weight, but there is 
 clearly another of more vital significance to Dr. Martineau : 
 His profound reverence for the person of Jesus is troubled 
 at the thought of him as drawing to himself the fulfilment 
 of that " Israelitish dream." The Messianic claim to his 
 mind does not befit the lowly yet trusting and self-sur- 
 rendered brother of his heart. Jesus of Nazareth is most 
 dear to him ; the Messiah of Jerusalem repels rather than 
 draws him. Descent from heaven, miraculous powers, which 
 so enrapture others, to him are harmful and grotesque 
 accessories to the spirit of the Beatitudes and Calvary. 
 To discredit the former is to relieve the latter of that which 
 bedizens and dishonors it. This, indeed, is not woven into 
 the structure of his argument, but it is clearly one of the 
 under-considerations that most deeply move him. 
 
 It is a long way we have travelled, and the end is — 
 what? Prevalent theories of inspiration have been dis- 
 carded, the apostolic origin of the Gospels has been de- 
 
 1 Matt. xxiv. 39. 2 Matt. xxv. 13. » Matt. xxv. 31.
 
 2/8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 nied, the cardinal doctrine of the person of Jesus on which 
 the Church is reared has been shown untenable. Some 
 troubled spirit asks, What have we left? Dr. Martineau 
 answers — God ; and with him everything essential. While, 
 too, in his investigations he has been guided by the love of 
 truth, and the desire before all things to proclaim it, any 
 reader of him may see that it is in the cause of God and 
 to promote His purer and more spiritual worship that he 
 toils, yes, and destroys. In his view, and in that of multi- 
 tudes besides him, miraculously given Scriptures and an 
 apocalyptic Christ are not unqualified helps to spiritual 
 religion ; rather they carry hindrances that are grave, and 
 if ever they were of high service to this end, that day is 
 passed. In the Scriptures taken in their simplicity, soul 
 seeking in them what speaks to soul, there is bread of life; 
 while in the daily walk to have him of Nazareth for com- 
 panion is to experience the light of God upon the path ; 
 but that this measure of blessing may remain it seems 
 imperatively demanded that infallibilities and apocalyptic 
 Christologies should pass. The signs of the times, reflect- 
 ing the trend and temper of the human mind, yield support 
 to this judgment. The defence of these to-day is too 
 labored to be persuasive, and, instead of strengthening faith, 
 they extend and intensify scepticism. Do you say that 
 without these the Church will crumble, that in the teach- 
 ings of Martineau is the potency of this dark consequence? 
 Then I differ. As I ponder these teachings the vision that 
 haunts me is of a deeper conviction, a more vital piety, a 
 more confident trust, a closer walk with God. But if 
 crumble it must, then for truth's sake let it. Let the temple 
 fall, and amid its ruins we will take comfort from the 
 thought that the walls of the firmament still stand : and 
 with the lights gone out and all voices silent, we will fix 
 our gaze upon the sheltering and enfolding heaven.
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER OF RELIGION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 We come now to Dr. Martineau's contribution to the phi- 
 losophy of reHgion. In the forefront of all inquiries in this 
 field is the question of knowledge: What can we know? 
 What themes are within the range of human faculty? Dr. 
 Martineau's thesis is a " Divine Mind and Will ruling the 
 universe." The first question is not whether this thesis is 
 true, but whether it is one with which the mind is com- 
 petent to deal. Phenomena I am allowed to say I know. 
 Through all my senses they are borne in upon me ; I group 
 them in their orders, I discover their relations, I detect 
 their laws ; but through them alone I do not come to a 
 Divine Mind and Will. Here clearly is assumption of 
 something other than phenomena, and which he must press 
 beyond their confines to justify ; and the question of our 
 times is whether these confines do not fix the limit beyond 
 which human intellect may not go. Time was when this 
 question could have awakened no anxiety ; when he who 
 would investigate the higher problems of human interest 
 approached them nothing doubting that in the human 
 mind was capacity for dealing with them. The era of this 
 happy confidence passed when men saw the significance of 
 Kant's philosophy.
 
 280 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 For from Kant we date the prevailing trend of modern 
 agnosticism. I say Kant, not forgetting Hume, who has 
 been held by some the master of those who do not know. 
 In recent years his views have been the ward of men of 
 science. Professor Huxley calls him the " protagonist of 
 Agnosticism," from his pen a generous but candid praise. 
 He was, however, too near to being the despair of thought 
 to fix its vogue even in the domain of agnostic theory. 
 Agnosticism, while denying us the certainty we call 
 knowledge, may yet leave us the certitude we call faith, 
 and in some measure must do so in order to establish 
 an ascendency with us. Hume conducts to scepticism, 
 and leaves us but its hopeless blank. 
 
 It will help us to see these two agnosticisms together. 
 Hume finds the origin of all our ideas in sensations. The 
 organism receives impressions ; the ideas of the mind are 
 copies of these ; and this view unfolded and applied is his 
 doctrine. But there are ideas which we cannot refer to 
 individual impressions. Yes, impressions occur in definite 
 relations, and the mind takes ideas from these. They 
 occur, for instance, in succession, a fact that passes into 
 the mind as the idea of time ; they occur simultaneously, 
 and hence the idea of space. Time and space are the 
 mental presentation of these two orders of impressions ; 
 and other meaning they have none with which the phi- 
 losopher need concern himself. But there are other ideas 
 which thinkers had supposed to come out of the mind it- 
 self, as identity and causality, and which we are able to 
 trace to no impressions. For instance, identity. It seems 
 to me the tree I look upon from my window is the object 
 I saw standing there yesterday, and that the man who read 
 Hume's Essays last week was the very man who is thinking 
 about them this morning. The tree may have greener or 
 browner leaves to-day, may have lost a number or put 
 forth a few ; yet it seems to me I use language the natural
 
 KNOWLEDGE 28 1 
 
 and unforced meaning of which is true when I say it is the 
 same tree. Likewise the thinker of this morning may be 
 in some particulars other than the reader of a week ago ; 
 but the difference seems to me to He on the surface of a 
 fundamental identity. Every such consideration Hume 
 meets with the comprehensive denial that any interior 
 principle of things or of ourselves can be known. What 
 we have in either case is a close resemblance of impressions, 
 which, however close, are really different. The congeries 
 of impressions received to-day is so like the congeries of 
 impressions received yesterday that the mind conceives 
 them the same. Identity, that is, is an illusion. So the 
 relation of cause and effect which seems to rule the world. 
 We see the sun shine and the ice melt, medicine given and 
 pain relieved ; and so ever a prior event and a sequent one, 
 and regard the sequent event as contingent upon the prior, 
 and as occurring through its agency. Here Hume breaks 
 with us. Sequences of events may be plain enough, but 
 causal law he will allow none. In the sequences that pass 
 before us it is just the sequences that we see, not any bond 
 between them. There is what we call antecedent, and 
 there is what w'e call consequent ; but that unity between 
 them that makes them two aspects of a composite phe- 
 nomenon he will not suffer us to affirm. Events, he would 
 say, are conjoined, but how can we say they are united? 
 The origin of the causal idea he thus explains : Certain 
 impressions always occur in pairs and in the same order ; 
 and so from multiplied experience of these there results a 
 subjective cohesiveness between them, which compels us, 
 discerning one member of the pair, to look for the other 
 one. The idea of cause means nothing more than a habit 
 of the mind which results from long experience. 
 
 The issue of this we need no deep insight to discover. 
 Identity denied me, I am with respect to my interior nature 
 but a congeries of fleeting impressions ; causality discred-
 
 282 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ited, I can pass, by no reasoning, from the appearances 
 with which I deal to a reahty out of which they spring. I 
 am thus doubly doomed to ignorance, from a limitation of 
 my faculties which will allow me to know nothing real and 
 from the constitution of things which will allow nothing 
 real to be known. A congeries of impressions is obviously 
 incapable of a knowledge of realities ; and, given whatever 
 phenomena, if the causal clue be wanting, an angel's intel- 
 ligence should find in them no meaning. Real knowledge 
 implies a persistent Ego and an intelligible order; Hume 
 yields us a congeries of phantasms and a universe of phan- 
 tasmagoria. And the final result? — The sensible, yes, 
 but no gleam of a supersensible ; phenomena, but no abid- 
 ing ground of them ; the oscillating wave of appearance, 
 but no changeless deep ; stars rolling and burning, but no 
 heaven that holds them ; order and beauty, reverence and 
 wonder, but — no soul, no God. 
 
 Kant proved Hume's doctrine and found it wanting. 
 He found that the mind did not merely register impres- 
 sions, but also contributed to impressions somewhat from 
 itself From myriad sources impressions are received ; the 
 mind construes them in the relations of space and time, 
 which are moulds within it, not realities beyond it. Here 
 is a most radical departure from Hume's doctrine. The 
 latter teaches that space and time are learned by experi- 
 ence, the former that the mind brings them to experience 
 out of its own nature as mind. In the perceptive act these 
 are the mind's contribution. In the cognitive act the mind 
 brings its contribution likewise. Outwardly there is offered 
 us the accidental, the phenomenal ; the mind furnishes the 
 substantive, the noumcnal. Attribute we cannot divorce 
 from entity ; yet entity is not offered to the senses, but is 
 brought by the mind itself to what were phantasm with- 
 out it. So of causality. All I perceive, indeed, is a prior 
 event and a sequent one. Were I merely a registry of
 
 KNOWLEDGE 283 
 
 impressions, the order of events here, antecedent and con- 
 sequent, would be all that would impress me ; and, though 
 from repetition of this order the appearance of one might 
 suggest the other, I should discern no closer relation be- 
 tween them. But a closer relation, the relation of cause 
 and effect, I do discern ; and, as I cannot receive this 
 through the senses, the mind must contribute it. It must 
 be a part of the a priori equipment with which I meet and 
 construe the world. 
 
 Thus, then, the images and conceptions of my mind I 
 may not refer to sensuous experience alone, for the mind 
 has part in them. Experience furnishes the raw material 
 of which they are formed ; the mind fashions them. They 
 are shapeless bullion as the mind receives them ; it moulds 
 them into coin, and stamps them with Caesar's image and 
 superscription. But, observe, with this result: sijice they 
 are formed within my mind I can ajffirin for them no out- 
 ward validity. Were the mind a camera, the image within 
 it might be a faithful counterpart of the object before it; 
 but since the mind is not a camera but a die, the features 
 of the image are such as the mind has given it. Had I 
 one a priori endowment more, or one less, the difference 
 would be confessed in the structure of my world. The dog 
 follows in the path of his master ; he receives impressions 
 as his master receives them. Yet that his world and his 
 master's are very different worlds, is probable ; and the 
 difference should find explanation in the different moulds 
 in which their worlds are respectively fashioned. All of 
 which illustrates the Kantian doctrine that my world is 
 only my world. It is his oft quoted dictum that " Mind 
 makes Nature ; " which is his way of saying that we project 
 out from ourselves the sceneries we look upon. To this 
 result we come : The impressions we receive from the 
 outer world are fashioned by the mind into an ideal 
 structure, which, because ideal, cannot be real.
 
 284 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 But this is not all. Of the three departments of the 
 mind, the perception, the understanding, the reason, there 
 remains the last. The question is whether, through this, 
 we may not reach the object of our quest. He studies it, 
 but to the like negative result. The reason, as he con- 
 ceives it, is as the sky over our heads, the seat of the un- 
 conditioned, to which the judgments of the understanding 
 are ever pressing, and in which their unity is realized. We 
 need not follow the steps of his analysis. He finds in the 
 reason three ineradicable ideas, — of an Immortal Soul, an 
 Infinite Universe, an extramundane God. Here they are, 
 and because of them, the belief in realities answering to 
 them is natural if not irresistible. But from idea to reality 
 can we cut out a logical pathway? Kant says no; and, 
 one after another, he pulverizes every argument that main- 
 tains the contrary. With earlier philosophers these ideas 
 had been an arch by which they crossed over to the 
 country of their heart and hope. Kant blew up the arch. 
 Thus the mind was entirely insulated. Its world was wholly 
 within. Mountains towered, oceans heaved, suns glowed, 
 God was, eternity hovered on the view, in idea and in idea 
 only. 
 
 Such, as seen against Hume's, is Kant's agnosticism. 
 The two philosophers are perhaps as far apart in their 
 influence as in the fundamentals of their doctrine. While 
 religion has recoiled from Hume as a speculative Mephis- 
 topheles, it has found in Kant an ally and a friend. On 
 the a priori foundation which he laid but on which he 
 could not build, others have builded, and felt their temple 
 resting on the granite pillars of the world. Yet with re- 
 spect to the great problem of knowledge they were in about 
 like measure agnostic. The latter locks you up at home 
 with a priori semblances ; the former sends you abroad 
 amid empiric phantoms, yourself a phantom. Kant will 
 allow no converse with realities, though he finds in the mind
 
 KNOWLEDGE 285 
 
 the ineradicable forms of them ; Hume will grant no reali- 
 ties with which to converse. The former finds no highway ; 
 the latter dreams no whither. Hume is the spirit that 
 denies ; Kant is suggestive of bafifled hope. To the seeker 
 of Elysian Fields Kant says, This route is impossible ; 
 Hume offers conduct to an abyss yawning and black, which 
 no bridge may span, no sail or wing may cross. 
 
 The foregoing sketch shows agnosticism in two aspects, 
 that which will not let me know a world around me and 
 that which denies me knowledge of a soul and God. Dr. 
 Martineau pronounces judgment upon both. First, as logi- 
 cally first in order, he deals with the question whether the 
 images of the mind must necessarily be thought dissonant 
 with the objects and relations around us. 
 
 I. In his general philosophy Dr. Martineau sets out with 
 Kant. The Kantian doctrine that the mind gains percep- 
 tion of an outer world through space and time, regarded as 
 a priori forms, mended in some of its details, he makes his 
 own by adoption. Time and space, whether objectively 
 real or no, are subjective means by which the mind takes 
 the world into itself. They give form to the other- 
 wise formless impressions. Time arranges them in their 
 sequences, space spreads them in their co-existences, and 
 thus the orderly picture is furnished us. The categories 
 of the understanding, too, while in some details he mends 
 the Kantian exposition of them, his intellect, by its strongly 
 marked a priori tendency, is prepared to welcome. No 
 writer of modern times has looked more confidently within 
 himself for the fashioning principles of philosophic judg- 
 ment. Here, however, he diverges from his philosopher. 
 As set over against the Kantian idealism, his attitude is 
 that of unflinching reahsm. One concession to it he 
 makes, if the admission of a fact so obvious can be called 
 a concession : the outer world of our psychology " comes
 
 286 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to US as postulated, not as demonstrated." ^ The forms 
 within the mind we can correctly study without respect to 
 its postulates, whether they be true or no. These forms 
 may be the mental presentations of objective realities or 
 they may be subjective illusions, and " either supposition 
 is compatible with assent to the psychology of the critical 
 philosophy." ^ It seems to me the picture world within 
 me has a counterpart in an actual world outside of me ; 
 yet, speaking with the fear of logic before my eyes, it 
 need not be so. Very likely Orion hangs above me, a 
 real object answering faithfully to my vision ; but possibly 
 " some god paints the image in the firmament of the 
 soul ; " and possibly, and this is the ideal theory, the mind 
 is the demiurge of its own constellations. The presence 
 in thought of these alternatives there is no denying ; and 
 if Kant's speculation proceeded on the assumption that 
 neither of them can be logically removed. Dr. Martineau 
 declares that the position would be " unassailable." To 
 balance, however, between two unprovable and irrefutable 
 hypotheses was not of Kant ; rather he set forth the claims 
 of one with an emphasis that meant the repudiation of the 
 other. Because in the forming of experience the mind is 
 a factor, his contention is that we can know only our ideas; 
 nay, more, that between the object of my contemplation 
 as something beyond me and the form of it as presented 
 within me there is a hopeless contrariety. There seems 
 to many students an arbitrariness in thus urging the claims 
 of one alternative with scarcely a provisional recognition 
 of the equally valid claims of the other. Accordingly Dr. 
 Martineau, as the critic of Kant's agnosticism, brings for- 
 ward the alternative hypothesis as at least entitled to a 
 hearing. It is barely possible that things may be pre- 
 sented truly. The form within the mind may correspond 
 with the object beyond it; — the supposition that it does 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 66. ^ /j/^_ p_ 5^^
 
 KNOWLEDGE 28/ 
 
 SO is at least worth trying. It is true that we cannot set 
 the form within against the thing without, and so prove an 
 agreement between them ; but neither, in Hke manner, can 
 we prove a disagreement. The theory of disagreement is 
 an inference from an ingenious doctrine of the working of 
 the human mind ; the theory of agreement is supported 
 by the general faith of the intellect, which Dr. Martineau 
 sees no clear need to surrender. Nor does he find it diffi- 
 cult to convict Kant of inconsistency here ; for the faith 
 which his doctrine repudiates he yet acts upon. Kant 
 always affirmed external realities, however he might fasten 
 upon us the doom of ignorance respecting them. But 
 what is the warrant of his belief in them? Why, the 
 general faith of the intellect, or, as Dr. Martineau states 
 it, "confidence in an intuitive necessity of thought."^ 
 When asked, however, to allow objective validity to their 
 mental representation this faith is not sufficient. It will do 
 for the things in themselves, of which, apart from the bald 
 fact of their existence, he allows no knowledge ; but for 
 the validity of the images of them it will not do. They 
 are fashioned within the mind according to forms or 
 moulds of its own, so they can be in the likeness of 
 nothing beyond them. The dilemma here to all except 
 the most transcendental of transcendental philosophers is 
 serious ; for belief in the harmony of these representations 
 with the things about us it is impossible to surrender. 
 That is to say, we are compelled to believe it, and yet it 
 cannot be true. And with the like reasoning Dr. Martineau 
 deals with the root doctrine of the Kantian agnosticism, 
 that of space and time. According to that doctrine these 
 are inward forms, not outward realities ; like griefs or joys 
 they pertain to the mind, and with it pass away; were all 
 minds to vanish, space and time would be no more. The 
 whole external scene, therefore, is clothed in illusion. Dr. 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 69.
 
 288 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Martineau very pertinently asks, " If the ' forms ' and 
 ' categories ' of the mind are good authority for ' never 
 doubting ' existences beyond it, why will they not serve as 
 guarantee for the externality of Space and the continuity 
 of Time irrespective of our senses? " ^ The things in them- 
 selves, transcendental objects of which no predicates can 
 (be named, — how is it that we believe in them? Through 
 " an intuitive necessity of thought." Why do we deny the 
 reality of space and time? On the ground that they are 
 only an " intuitive necessity of thought." Dr. Martineau 
 holds with respect to these parallel beliefs that by the like 
 necessity of thought both should be justified or both dis- 
 credited ; in other words, that, through the faith by which 
 Kant held to his realism, he' should have enlarged its 
 border, or that, through the scepticism by which he limited 
 it, he should have gone forward to its repudiation. 
 
 We come to his most radical departure from his philoso- 
 pher. While Kant holds space and time to be merely a 
 priori forms of perception, and therefore, so far as seem- 
 ingly objective to us, illusory, Dr. Martineau holds that 
 the fact of their being subjective does not imply the im- 
 possibility of their being objective also ; and so, while lay- 
 ing tribute to their subjectivity for the great service that 
 it yields, he maintains that we may still hold fast to our 
 natural trust in the " veracity of our faculties." This is 
 departure from the critical philosophy in one of its most 
 characteristic features. Time does not, like a pleasure or 
 a grief, cease when we cease to be conscious of it ; space 
 spreads out its co-existences whether there are eyes that 
 behold them or no. Professor Caird thinks it most absurd, 
 on Kantian principles, to suppose the forms of consciousness 
 to represent things as they are. Of course it is, for on 
 Kantian principles what seems beyond me is thrown out 
 from within me ; and belief in its reality can only follow 
 1 Sttidy of Religion, vol. i. p. 69.
 
 KNOWLEDGE 289 
 
 from illusion. Not thus with Dr. Martineau, to whom 
 space, while as to its apprehension a priori, is yet empiri- 
 cally real : and the categories that organize the world 
 within him are mental presentations of relations that pre- 
 vail around him. 
 
 This criticism we will pursue no further. While accept- 
 ing Kant's psychology in its more general features, we see 
 on what line of cleavage he yet departs from him, and the 
 position that he gains from which to repudiate his agnos- 
 ticism. Kant finds no exit by which thought can go out 
 into relation with the outer world ; to Dr. Martineau a 
 door is ever open. Kant draws his philosophy wholly 
 from within : that fields blossom or stars burn is without 
 significance to his speculation. Dr. Martineau goes out 
 into the universe, seeking light as to its mystery in its laws 
 and forces. Kant, because of the assumed dissonance of 
 the world of consciousness with the realities of things, can 
 have no dealing with the latter; Dr. Martineau, from their 
 assumed harmony, construes the latter by principles drawn 
 out of the former. The thesis that the senses show things 
 as they are cannot indeed be proven; but the '' bona fides 
 of our intuitive witnesses " which the unphilosophical 
 world accepts, he though a philosopher accepts also ; and 
 assured through this that he has access to " fellow beings 
 and an external scene," he feels himself within reach of 
 " other truth than the mere self-consistency of our ideas ; " 
 and that " our judgments may be tested by the agreement 
 of their affirmed relation with the real one." ^ 
 
 11. But allow that we have found our way out of the 
 prison-house of idealism, and have come into the presence 
 of objects " not made by our consciousness," still the prob- 
 lem of knowledge is not settled. Grant that the world we 
 contemplate is not an illusion, can we affirm that we see it 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 75. 
 19
 
 290 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 rightly? I cannot get past the fact that between the sub- 
 ject and the object of knowledge there must be " copart- 
 nership ; " and that the aspect in which it will be presented 
 to me will depend not alone on what it is, but also on what 
 I am. Were I a dog, it would be a dog's world that I 
 should know; were I an angel, an angel's world. As I am 
 a man, my world must be a man's world, neither less nor 
 more. The point of contention, of course, is as to the 
 man's world. To the dog my account of the world, could 
 he understand it, might seem very exaggerated ; to the 
 angel, very inadequate : yet within my human range may 
 it not be true? The question, though very interesting, 
 were hardly vital, were it not for the dual aspect in which 
 my world comes before me. As I contemplate it, it is not 
 merely a scene of fleeting appearances, but is construed in 
 the relations of cause and effect, finite and infinite, that 
 which appears and that which is. The spiritual factors 
 here, however, encounter objection from a prevalent em- 
 piricism which is not lightly to be put by. Its objection is 
 commonly put forth in the doctrine of the relativity of knowl- 
 edge, in an examination of which Dr. Martineau meets it. 
 
 This doctrine is probably far less frequently doubted 
 than the conclusion that is drawn from it. Its meaning, 
 stated in its fulness, is that only as man comes into rela- 
 tion with the universe can he know it. As thus stated, it 
 wears no bodeful look ; yet it is seized upon by scientists 
 like Huxley and theologians like Mansel as barring away 
 from that higher knowledge which man has ever striven 
 most zealously to win. After all your brave speculations, 
 say they, it is only the relative you can know. Granted ; 
 but precisely what does this signify? To Dr. Martineau, 
 instead of implying a doom of ignorance, the doctrine of 
 relativity has seemed to set forth the very law by which 
 knowledge is won. Gaining knowledge is establishing re- 
 lations. Telling me, therefore, that I know only the rela-
 
 KNOWLEDGE 291 
 
 tive is simply telling me that I do not know what I do not 
 know. But we are told that the implication is that we can- 
 not know the absolute; but what is that? The absolute is 
 the unrelated. The doctrine, then, comes to this, that 
 with that with which I cannot be related I cannot enter 
 into relation. Further, if I could become related with it, 
 then ipso facto it would become related with me ; and then 
 it would cease to be absolute. That I cannot be related 
 with the unrelated is undoubtedly true ; but what knowl- 
 edge this truth shuts me away from it is not easy to see. 
 To know the absolute would imply knowing without the 
 condition of knowledge, — seeing without light, hearing 
 where there is no sound, breathing and living and moving 
 in vacuo, — the aim, not of sane, but of insane ambition. 
 My vision of reaHties no doubt a deeper wisdom might im- 
 prove ; and under the scrutiny of 
 
 " the crowning race 
 Of those that eye to eye shall look 
 On knowledge," 
 
 they may seem inadequate enough ; yet they may be 
 something other than ignorance hopeless and entire. The 
 ancient Gaul, peering over the water, saw banks of fog for 
 the most part ; yet through their rifts gleamed now and 
 then a crag which revealed to him England, — not, indeed, 
 the England of the geographer and the geologist, but an 
 England that did at least interrupt the vacancy of ocean ; 
 an England, too, of which his descendants were destined 
 to know much, yet of which, after whatever conquests of 
 knowledge, there should be ever a measureless residuum 
 unknown. 
 
 This may seem a summary way of disposing of an ob- 
 jection so frequently met, and the courtesy of debate may 
 require that we look a little further. Of the two forms of 
 knowledge which the intuitionalist claims, the empiricist is
 
 292 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 willing to allow only one. When, therefore, against the 
 apparent and phenomenal, the intuitionalist places the real 
 and the causal, he opposes the objection that we can know 
 only the relative. The pertinence of this objection is the 
 point to consider. Is the assumption of other than em- 
 pirical knowledge, knowledge through the intellectual as 
 through the perceptive faculties, made untenable by the 
 law of relativity? Of course knowledge of the thing in 
 itself — of nature in itself, soul in itself, God in himself — 
 we may not claim ; for the phrase is coined to denote that 
 which, though in the " sphere of being," is not in the 
 " sphere of thought ; " and of which, therefore, knowledge 
 cannot be assumed without a manifest contradiction. But 
 why may not the intellectual faculties do their work under 
 the law of relativity, establishing relations in the realm of 
 the supersensible, as the perceptive faculties in the realm 
 of the sensible? This the intuitionalist strenuously claims, 
 surrendering without ceremony the pretence of knowing 
 things out of relation ; but maintaining, in Dr. Martineau's 
 language, that the " relativity of cognition imposes upon 
 us no forfeiture of privilege, no humiliation of pride," and 
 that " there is not any conceivable form of apprehension 
 from which it excludes us." A little further we will quote 
 him : " The intellectual relations into which different 
 natures may enter with a given object may be more or 
 fewer ; and the remembrance of the paucity open to us 
 and the numbers that may be out of reach, though within 
 the range of richer capacities, is fitted to adapt our temper 
 to our place : but to dispense with all intellectual relations 
 in the act of intellection can be no object of ambition to 
 any waking man : the very statement is like one of the 
 senseless knots of some nightmare dream." ^ 
 
 Dr. Martineau points out what may often be forgotten, 
 that the law of relativity must apply to all our faculties, 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 113.
 
 KNOWLEDGE 293 
 
 not a part of them only; and that all must share in the 
 limitations it implies. If because of it I must distrust my 
 intellectual apprehensions, I should likewise be doubtful of 
 my sensible perceptions. Eyes and ears are under the 
 sovereignty of this law as really as the intuitions of the 
 reason. The misgiving, therefore, with which, because of 
 this law, I regard the latter should weaken my confidence 
 in the former ; and the confidence which, notwithstanding 
 this law, I feel in the former should brace my assurance of 
 the latter. The man of science believes in eyes and ears, 
 notwithstanding relativity ; why then so doubtful of our in- 
 tellectual cognitions because of it? But does not philoso- 
 phy deal with the ultimates of thought? Indeed it does; 
 but how in doing so it necessarily departs from the law of 
 relativity is not, from our present point of view, apparent. 
 Contemplating the supersensible on the one side as the 
 sensible on the other, man may receive according to his 
 measure, which is precisely what the law of relativity 
 allows. The philosopher indeed tells of infinite and 
 eternal, as the man of science tells of the indestructibility 
 of matter, the indestructibility of force, infinite time, space, 
 power. Herbert Spencer declares both orders of concep- 
 tion inconceivable, and we may grant them so. This fact, 
 however, does not prevent our establishing under one 
 as under the other those ever widening relations which 
 progressive knowledge implies. The truth is that to the 
 mind as to the eye it is given to discern in miniature what 
 may not be grasped in immensity. There is given me just 
 a point of light, and I tell of Jupiter or Sirius. There is 
 an image bounded by the periphery of my retina, but it 
 bears in upon me the sweep of the Milky Way. So while 
 I can receive space and time and power only according to 
 the measure of my faculty, it is given me to perceive that 
 the measure of my faculty is not the measure of them. 
 Empirical observation alone can affirm what it can itself
 
 294 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 embrace: space enough for the stars to float in, time 
 enough for whatever record, power equal to what power is 
 seen to accomplish; but such measured language ex- 
 presses the mind of no man; and the empiricist, off his 
 guard, will use the dialect of the a priori philosopher. 
 Within him is a certitude that the space that enfolds 
 the stars has no boundary beyond them, and that the 
 stream of power that flows before him is no measure of 
 the fountain. The analogy may be suggestive rather than 
 exact; let it stand, then, for what it suggests, viz., that the 
 measure of our receiving is not the measure of our appre- 
 hending. The cause that works its effects before me, 
 meeting the causal principle within me, becomes the 
 miniature of a universal causality. Without that prin- 
 ciple, it were but a sensible appearance, limited, fleeting, 
 isolated ; meeting that principle, it is seen to be a mani- 
 festation of the ever-constant and universal. 
 
 Another form of the agnostic doctrine is presented in 
 the Comtean dictum that all we know is phenomena. To 
 which, in Dr. Martineau's philosophy, the obvious reply 
 is that without noiinicna we cannot know phenoriiena. 
 Were it laid down that we can know nothing witJiout 
 phenomena, the doctrine would be indubitable. Until 
 appearances are offered I suspect no realities ; until ef- 
 fects are seen I suspect no causes. The converse, also, 
 with slight modification of language, can be maintained. 
 Grant that the initial awakening is with effects, they are yet 
 only fortuitous events till I discern a cause in relation with 
 them ; and appearances are without meaning till I see 
 them on a background of reality. These correlates Dr. 
 Martineau likens to the Siamese twins, always met together, 
 and not to be separated without the destruction of both. 
 In short, to know one thing we must needs know two 
 things : knowing only phenomena, we know nothing. Till 
 I see a background I discern no foreground ; a dynamic
 
 KNOWLEDGE 295 
 
 without a static, the finite without the infinite, matter with- 
 out spirit, effect without cause, — of these how is concep- 
 tion possible? "Mental action is dualistic, not monistic." 
 In his critique of Mansel, Dr. Martineau, treating of these 
 correlates, says : " They come into existence before our 
 thought together, and have their living meaning only in 
 pairs; one of the two giving us the constant and ontologi- 
 cal ground, the other the phenomenal manifestation. The 
 attempt to think away the finite from the presence of the 
 infinite, or vice versa, must inevitably fail; and of the 
 two schemes to which the attempt gives rise, viz., that 
 which says ' entities only can be known,' and that which 
 says ' phenomena only can be known,' both are to be un- 
 hesitatingly rejected. Two other possibilities remain, viz., 
 the Idealism which, treating all ' relation ' as a subjective 
 economy of ours, pronounces that we know neither ; and 
 the Realism which, taking relations in the mind as ex- 
 ponents of relations out, decides that we know both. It 
 is on this last alone that, in our view, a sound philosophy 
 can take its stand." ^ 
 
 What, then, is the explanation of this doctrine so fre- 
 quently and so dogmatically put forth : all we know is phe- 
 nomena? This: Of the two elements of knowledge which 
 we hold all knowing to imply, that of the variable and the 
 constant, the phenomenal and that of which phenomena 
 are, the former only, in the common meaning of the term, 
 is learned ; the latter is the prime condition of learning. 
 The one I roam the fields of space and time to gather, 
 the other I take with me as I go. Other distinctions are 
 apparent enough. The latter from age to age is quanti- 
 tatively the same ; the former is infinitely cumulative. Of 
 our gatherings from the fields of space and time we can 
 definitely tell : we can classify them, analyze them, organ- 
 ize them, generalize them. Of soul, however, there are 
 
 ^ Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, Mol. iii. pp. 135-136-
 
 296 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 few predicates ; substance defies analysis ; the infinite we 
 cannot classify. Here we deal with that which comes 
 before us only in our meditations, and then as a presence 
 that we apprehend, and not a form that we discern. And 
 of these contrasts is born the habit of regarding knowledge 
 as of that only which we can learn, accumulate, define, 
 classify; which we can record in histories, build into 
 sciences, utilize in our arts, weave into the multifarious 
 web of our literatures. And here, of course. Dr. Marti- 
 neau joins issue. Substance, he maintains, is not less 
 really known because we cannot analyze it, nor the infinite 
 because we cannot classify it. As truly as the sensible 
 forms, these come before the mind ; and are of all sensible 
 knowledge the condition. Our fullest account of them 
 may be brief, but they pervade our thought and interpene- 
 trate our every conception. " The unity and simplicity 
 and unchangeableness of a cognition do not identify it 
 with ignorance. And since to the correlative of phenom- 
 ena this permanence must from its very function belong, 
 and otherwise it would itself become phenomenal and 
 demand its own permanent behind, any disparagement of 
 its intellectual claims on this ground forgets the very 
 conditions of human knowledge." ^ 
 
 In yet another form is agnostic doctrine brought us in 
 the teachings of Herbert Spencer. Certain noumena he 
 also recognizes, as Cause and Power. These are implied 
 alike in our scientific and in our religious conceptions. 
 They introduce us, however, not to a reality we can know, 
 but to a reality impossible to be known. His ultimate truth, 
 climbed to by whatever stairway of thought, is the Unknow- 
 able. From the borders of phenomena he looks out, not 
 upon a blank, but upon a mystery. Over against the relative 
 he meets an absolute the existence of which he must con- 
 fess, but knowledge of which is impossible. If he simply 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 122.
 
 KNOWLEDGE 297 
 
 meant that it cannot be fully known, known as we know 
 the forms around us, or as the truths we inductively es- 
 tablish, he would be in accord with the seers and bards 
 and prophets from Isaiah to Tennyson. This, however, 
 is not his meaning. He would rather maintain that be- 
 yond knowing that it is, we have no possible knowledge 
 of it. That it is, we may affirm with certainty ; what it 
 is, we have no faculty to tell. 
 
 Dr. Martineau raises the question whether this is a " ten- 
 able distinction." " Is it possible," he asks, " to have as- 
 surance of a real existence, which yet remains to the end 
 an utter blank? Do we know the fact by a vacuum in 
 thought, or by a thought itself? If the former, how can a 
 subjective nothing tell us of an objective something? If 
 the latter, how can there be a thought with nothing think- 
 able?"^ And with all his carefulness of thought and all 
 his skill of expression, Mr. Spencer does not save himself 
 from inconsistency. This Unknowable he describes as a 
 " Power." A Power? — if he knows it to be this, then it is 
 not wholly unknowable. But of this Power he has the 
 courage to shape affirmations. It is " eternal; " — if eter- 
 nal, then not temporal. It is "omnipresent;" — then it 
 is never absent. It is one ; — then not many. It is the 
 cause of all phenomena ; — then not itself an effect. His 
 language is not only that of affirmation, but also that of 
 differentiation. Dr. Martineau finds this " hst of predi- 
 cates," though " scanty indeed when measured by the 
 requisites of religion, too copious for the plea of nes- 
 cience." And he adds, " Wherever I can distinguish, there 
 I know ; and do I not distinguish this 'absolute' from all 
 that is related to it, and thus get it, as counter term, into 
 relative apprehension? Is it not, among noumena, differ- 
 ent from Space, from Time, from Substance? If I can say 
 all these things about it, it is no longer competent to me 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 124.
 
 298 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 to designate it as the absolutely Unknowable. To know 
 that an object is, yet know nothing that it has, is impos- 
 sible, because contradictory. This negative Ontology, 
 therefore, which identifies * the supreme reality ' with total 
 vacuity, and makes the infinite in Being, the zero in 
 thought, cannot permanently poise itself in its precarious 
 position : it must either repent of its concessions to real- 
 ism [which it is too philosophical to do], and lapse into 
 the Scientific commonplace ' all we know is phenomena; ' 
 or else advance, with what caution and reserve it pleases, 
 into ulterior conceptions of the invisible cause, sufficient 
 to soften the total eclipse into the penumbra of a sacred 
 mystery." ^ 
 
 Thus, reviewing the several forms of agnostic doctrine, 
 Dr. Martineau finds them wanting. The Idealism that 
 insists that our conceptions, because formed within our- 
 selves, are without objective validity, he finds postulated, 
 not proven ; and he renounces it in the name of the " bojia 
 fides of our intuitive faculties." For agnostic pretensions 
 derived from the doctrine of relativity he finds no warrant, 
 since the establishing of relations is the method of attain- 
 ing knowledge, not a checkmate to its quest. The doc- 
 trine that all we know is phenomena he finds suicidal ; 
 while the doctrine of the Unknowable, which teaches that 
 we may know there is a reality, yet know nothing about it, 
 he finds self-contradictory. 
 
 Thus, agnosticism in all its forms failing to make good 
 its pretensions, he comes confidently back to the free use 
 of his faculties, the senses reaching into the world without 
 and the moulding forms within. Through these, co-oper- 
 ating in his conceptions, he is given appearance, playing 
 upon a deep of reality ; a stream of effects, a fountain of 
 cause ; a world of shadows with a sun behind. 
 
 1 Siudy of Religion, vol. i. pp. 124-125.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 
 
 Thus does Dr. Martineau assure himself of the com- 
 petency of the human mind to attain knowledge that is 
 not borne in through the senses, and which cannot be 
 reached through inductions : knowledge of the substan- 
 tive as against the accidental, of the real as against the 
 phenomenal. 
 
 In doing thus, however, he acts the part of a bridge- 
 builder who solidly constructs his abutment ere he throws 
 his arch. His aim is to connect earth and heaven : to 
 reach, that is, on lines of human reasoning, a full assurance 
 of the reality of God. These lines are two, — a strictly in- 
 tellectual and a moral ; their postulates he finds in the 
 reason and the conscience. It is the inferences from the 
 moral consciousness which stir him most; and Professor 
 Upton is undoubtedly right in regarding this, "with its 
 progressive ethical ideal and its unconditional imperative, 
 as the main source of that form of theism which vital 
 religion always tends to assume as men become civilized 
 and distinctly recognize the paramount authority of Con- 
 science and the transcendent worth of moral character." ^ 
 Still, in no period in which man is capable of speculative 
 inquiry, can the vast question whether it is possible to 
 construe the universe in relation with an Intelligent 
 Creator, be other than an enthralling one ; and no one has 
 it ever more enthralled than Dr. Martineau. His contribu- 
 
 1 The Hibbert Lectures, 1893, p. 194.
 
 300 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 tion to it, too, is a unique page. Living in the nineteenth 
 century, and not only learned in its philosophy, but steeped 
 in its science, he has constructed an argument on this high 
 theme, which prior to the middle of our century would 
 have been hardly possible. Of all his multifarious writings, 
 too, it is probably the crowning page. Though his thought 
 ramifies widely, its salient features may be shown in our 
 answers to two questions: (I.) Do we draw from the 
 causal idea the conclusion that there is an Intelligent 
 Cause? If so, (II.) Does the universe in its intellectual 
 aspects ratify or discredit this conclusion? 
 
 I. The Causal Idea. 
 
 I. With cause as a fact we are on the easiest possible 
 terms. When we bring it seriously before our thought, how- 
 ever, how many problems start up ! In every manifestation 
 of cause there are two terms, a prior and a sequent one. 
 The latter may be any change within us or without, and is 
 suggestive of little speculation. When we inquire, how- 
 ever, as to the agency that produces the change, we take 
 hold on one of the crucial problems of philosophy; and a 
 modern teacher hardly exaggerates when he claims that 
 the attitude of one's mind towards this problem " shows 
 whether he be idealist or materialist, positivist or tran- 
 scendentalist, fatalist or believer in free will, theist or 
 atheist." ^ 
 
 There are two prevalent theories of the origin of the 
 causal idea: one refers it to experience, the other to 
 intuition. The former maintains that through the order 
 of events we are led to it ; the latter, that to the order of 
 events we bring it. From these theories of the origin of 
 the idea, there follow two theories of the nature of cau- 
 sality To the experience philosopher, there is an antece- 
 1 Francis Bowen, Friticeton Review, January-June, 1879, p. 615.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 3OI 
 
 dent followed by a consequent, and more than this he will 
 not suffer us to affirm ; to the intuitionalist, there are an an- 
 tecedent and consequent and a link that binds them together. 
 The one sees a constant relation; the other sees this and 
 also an indissoluble bond. These theories are respectively- 
 known as the theory of pheitomena and of force. They 
 have not the field entirely to themselves ; but they alone 
 require recognition in the discussion now before us. 
 
 The phenomenal doctrine — what is it? In its modern 
 form it dates from Hume; and in his writings may still be 
 found its strongest and most winning presentation. Up to 
 his time the necessary connection between the terms of 
 the causal relation was secure, and philosophers reasoned 
 as common people talked. The antecedent did not merely 
 go before, it was efficient ; the consequent did not merely 
 follow after, it was effect. The emphasis of necessity 
 should be felt here. Not only did the consequent follow 
 upon the antecedent, but it must. Water, brought into 
 contact with heat, not only will be converted into steam, 
 it must be. The tides do not merely follow the moon, 
 they must do so. There was held to be not merely the 
 uniformity which experience shows, but a necessity that 
 compelled it. The two terms of the relation, indeed, were 
 held to be but different phases of a composite phenome- 
 non. Hume, however, dislocated them. He is moving, it 
 should be borne in mind, upon lines of empirical thought, 
 pressing Locke's sensationalism to the last conclusion. 
 Nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses, 
 was Locke's dictum. But, says Hume, the link between 
 phenomena, in which the causal principle is supposed to 
 be found, is not offered to the senses. I am sensible of 
 the wind's blowing and the leaves' rustling, of the sun's 
 shining and the snow's melting; but an intimate con- 
 nection through which one term follows upon the other, I 
 do not see. That events are conjoined, my experience
 
 302 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 teaches me ; but it does not teach me that they are united 
 But how explain, then, the practically universal conviction 
 that they are united? Hume finds the explanation in a 
 habit of thought, born of a uniform experience. In our 
 experience thunder follows lightning; so after the flash 
 we look for the thunder; or, hearing the thunder, we 
 doubt not that it has lightened ; and so in all relations in 
 which we are accustomed to meet the like antecedent 
 attended by the like consequent. There is implied here 
 in Hume's reasoning, not a fact without, but an illusion 
 within ; a cohesiveness of ideas, not a link between phe- 
 nomena. Whatever knowledge we have is wholly through 
 experience ; a priori element he allows none ; and expe- 
 rience, while recording what is, has no oracle as to what 
 must be. Better work has doubtless many times been 
 done, but work has rarely been better done than this. In 
 the development of thought it perhaps was needed, and 
 Hume did it once for all. Even now, after a century's 
 debate, few who read him, however braced by an antago- 
 nistic philosophy, can be insensible of the persuasiveness 
 of his clear and subtle and dignified argument. Lan- 
 guage can scarcely tell the antagonism he provoked. All 
 our doing and all our thinking imply the union of the 
 terms of the causal relation ; and dissolving it was, in 
 Hutcheson Stirling's figure, like " drawing the linchpin 
 out of existence." Scepticism could achieve a no more 
 paralyzing result than must follow a distrust of the neces- 
 sary constancy of cause and effect; and no wonder men 
 who cannot depart from the lines of experience still strive 
 to reach through experience that necessary bond, which 
 Hume's impervious logic shows that no experience can 
 find. Literally and vividly accepted, Hume's doctrine 
 should mean, not the end of philosophy only, but the 
 collapse of science as well. And yet how near at hand 
 was the very possible experience which should have in-
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 303 
 
 clined him to suspect [if, indeed, he ever doubted] that 
 there was somewhat not embraced in his speculation. 
 From his study where he meditated, suppose him to 
 have gone to the kitchen where his cook was preparing 
 his dinner, and there seen the familiar spectacle, a fire 
 with water boiling over it ; and suppose the cook, not an 
 expert in empirical philosophy, to have spoken of the 
 fire as making the water boil, emphasizing that necessity 
 which the contents of every teakettle seems to confess un- 
 der pressure of 212° Fahrenheit. "No," the philosopher 
 should have said ; " you use language without discrimina- 
 tion. What you can affirm is antecedent and consequent : 
 a fire and water boiling over it. In affirming that the fire 
 makes the water boil you imply a necessary bond between 
 the two phenomena, which observation does not show; 
 and which empirical doctrine, therefore, cannot allow." 
 " But," we may suppose the cook to argue, " the water 
 never boils save when there is a fire under it, and it al- 
 ways boils when I make a fire under it, if I keep it over 
 the fire long enough." " Yes," the philosopher we may 
 suppose to reply, " no doubt such is your uniform ex- 
 perience ; and that, by the way, is the explanation of the 
 idea of cause that so strongly possesses you. By long 
 association in the mind the thought of boiling water has 
 come to suggest that of heat as its essential condition ; 
 and so by a very natural illusion a link between the ideas 
 is mistaken for a necessary bond between the phenomena." 
 The cook had no doubt marvelled at the wonders of phi- 
 losophy, and replenished the fire to keep the water boiling. 
 Comte, building on the basis of Hume's scepticism his 
 structure of Positive Philosophy, extended the influence of 
 his master, if he did not add to the significance of his 
 teaching, Hume was no scientist; by the keenest of meta- 
 physical arguments he discredited the grounds of meta- 
 physics. Comte was no metaphysician, but was eminent
 
 304 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 in science ; and he had both the strength and the weakness 
 of an exclusively scientific mind. Facts he wanted, and he 
 had the genius to gather them and to organize them. At 
 the same time, speculation was peculiarly offensive to him. 
 Hume's teachings voiced an antipathy he could not have ut- 
 tered so persuasively, and he requited the service he found 
 in them by making science their custodian. His compre- 
 hensive dictum was, " All we know is phenomena; " and 
 in the letter that he sends us, he allows no reading between 
 the lines. " Every proposition which is not reducible, in 
 the last resort, to a simple statement of fact, particular or 
 general, must be without real and intelligible sense." Our 
 knowledge he severely restricts to the observed contents 
 of space and time, grouped in their relations of succession 
 and resemblance. While others talk of cause and effect, 
 he, with his master, knows only antecedent and consequent. 
 All inquiry into causes he holds to be utterly futile. Of the 
 word " cause," together with others of dynamic import, he 
 would reform or discontinue the use ; and in his later writ- 
 ings the word " cause " is consistently avoided. Whatever 
 is more than phenomena, in their sensible and ordered 
 presentation, he refers to metaphysics, always with him a 
 realm of spectres. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, the great Positivist's greater disciple, 
 explains his master by telling us that it is " efficient, as 
 distinguished from physical causes, that he rejects ; " that 
 the causes he thus dogmatically repudiates are such as are 
 " not themselves phenomena." " Like other people," he 
 adds, " he admits the study of causes in every sense in 
 which one physical fact can be the cause of another. But 
 he has an objection to the word cause ; he will only con- 
 sent to speak of Laws of Succession, and depriving him- 
 self of the use of a word which has a Positive meaning, he 
 misses the meaning it expresses." ^ In thus explaining 
 
 1 Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, pp. 53-54.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 305 
 
 and criticising his master he tells us of himself. The word 
 "cause" he wishes to retain " for the purpose of distinctly 
 designating . . . the relatiofis of succession which so far as 
 we know are unconditional." ^ On another page he tells us 
 that when he speaks of the cause of a phenomenon he does 
 not " mean a cause which is not itself a phenomenon." ^ 
 He is shaping the canons of inductive research; and the 
 causation which he expounds is, he tells us, without preju- 
 dice to the conception of efficient cause. Yet it would be 
 plain, even if he did not tell us, that he considers the re- 
 vived interest in this a remarkable illustration of what 
 has been aptly called the " peculiar zest which the spirit 
 of reaction against modern tendencies gives to ancient 
 absurdities." ^ 
 
 That is to say, underneath the various dynamic changes 
 he allows no dynamic constant. Heat he knows, and light, 
 electricity, magnetism ; but the presence in the universe 
 of a power of which these are manifestations, he has no 
 mind to perceive. As with him, so also with his school. 
 They tell of an order of succession of which they have 
 learned through observation, but nothing of a power which, 
 since it is not revealed through observation, can only be 
 discerned through a deeper faculty. The nexus natures, 
 therefore, which the intuitional philosophy always main- 
 tains, they do not find. In its place they affirm — and it is 
 plain that they can affirm no more — an unconditional uni- 
 formity ; unconditional, that is, as far as observation can 
 show. Mr. Mill speaks in disapproving tones of the 
 " many who ^oliot believe . . . that there is nothing in 
 causation but invariable, certain, and unconditional se- 
 quence." ^ The language of necessity he does not like to 
 use ; enough for him that, the " sum of conditions " being 
 prepared, an event will occur. According to this view the 
 
 1 Logic, bk. iii. chap. v. p. 209. 2 /^/^ p. 196. ^ Ibid. p. 209. 
 
 * Logic, Harper & Brothers, iS/o, p. 522. 
 
 20
 
 306 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 antecedent is not, in the accepted meaning of the word> 
 cause, but forerunner. It is prophetic, not mandatory ; it 
 declares what is to be, not what must be. The consequent 
 is its faithful attendant, not its necessitated vassal. It is 
 punctual, and so, according to all experience, calculable ; 
 and this is all that we can say. The sun, returning from 
 his winter solstice, announces that summer is coining, it 
 does not declare that summer must come. The moon gives 
 intelligence that the tides are following her; but affirms no 
 necessity that conditions them unalterably upon her move- 
 ments. The exploding cannon thunders a warning of the 
 speeding missile, but we may not refer to it an impelling 
 force. This last illustration suggests one employed by a 
 distinguished master of this school whom Dr. Martineau 
 summons to judgment. Dr. Bain is displeased with the 
 common language which tells us that a flying cannon-ball 
 has " power to batter walls," regarding the word " power " 
 a " pure expletive or pleonasm whose tendency is to create 
 a mystical or fictitious agency." Flying cannon-ball fol- 
 lowed by battered wall is enough for him.^ Thus in the 
 occurrence of events all we can affirm is a time order. 
 Causation is reduced to a uniform succession, phenomenon 
 following upon phenomenon. By such a track, if track it 
 may be called, it is vain to think of reaching an Ultimate 
 Cause ; and with phenomenalism for our only light, a the- 
 istic interpretation of the world is impossible. By a thread, 
 however fine, we may find our way out of whatever laby- 
 rinth at last; with no thread at all, we wander and go " no 
 whither." This doctrine, indeed, leaves upon the mind the 
 feeling that there is no out to which to find the way, that 
 the universe we have been wont to think intelligible is but 
 a Cretan maze of matter and its properties. 
 
 What is there, then, in this doctrine that wins it so con- 
 siderable a favor? This: It is precisely the doctrine which 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 155.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 30/ 
 
 the scientist can safely work by. The succession of phe- 
 nomena, and the fact that they are ahvays calculable, are all 
 he needs to know; and beyond this, on scientific lines, it is 
 futile to inquire. That atom acts on atom or body on body, 
 we may believe ; but he has no scientific need to ask or 
 warrant for believing. There is also no denying the fact 
 that considerations of ultimate cause have not gone well 
 with scientific investigation ; that, dominating the mind de- 
 voted to science, they have had a vitiating influence. The 
 scientific thinker is, therefore, only to be commended for 
 holding fast to the canons by which scientific work is done 
 and taking cognizance of no others. In recent years, how- 
 ever, he not only has held fast to his own canons, but he 
 has tried to make them canons for all thinkers. Hence his 
 conflict with the metaphysician and the theologian. For, 
 however the unconditional sequence of events may satisfy 
 the demands of science, it really satisfies no mind : the 
 august question of cause is too obtrusive to be put by. 
 The empiricist, just a little off" his guard, finds it difficult to 
 be true to his empiricism, but in his use of language often 
 betrays a haunting sense of that which his empiricism 
 should make it impossible for him to say. Dr. Martineau 
 has collected numerous examples of this, — expressions 
 natural enough in themselves, but absurdly contradictory 
 of the empirical standards of the minds that coined them.^ 
 Given a theory which does violence to a natural faith of 
 the intellect, and pen or lips will rarely fail of its betrayal. 
 
 There is another consideration that gives this doctrine 
 favor. It is the aim of the thinker to find a working prin- 
 ciple of thought which he may safely use in dealing with 
 all possible problems, he, of course, being the judge as to 
 what problems are possible. The proof of a path is not 
 alone its easy entrance, but also the jungle into which it 
 leads. There are those to whom the speculations of meta- 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 153-154. Also Seat of Authority, pp. 23-24.
 
 308 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 physics are but a jungle, and who therefore put up at the 
 entrance of the paths leading into them, No passage here. 
 That is to say, they withhold an interpretation that may 
 seem suitable for a particular order of phenomena by rea- 
 son of the mazes into which it may conduct them. When 
 Mill's Logic first appeared, his friend, W. B. Carpenter, 
 calling attention to a passage in which he defines the 
 " cause of a phenomenon to be the antecedent, or the con- 
 currence of antecedents, upon which it is invariably and 
 unconditionally consequent," ^ pointed out that " when this 
 assemblage of antecedents is analyzed, it is uniformly found 
 resolvable into two categories, which may be distinguished 
 as the dynamical and the material ; the former supplying 
 \\\Q force ox power to which the change must be attributed, 
 whilst the latter affords the conditions under which that 
 power is exerted." Mr. Mill replied that the distinction 
 was " one of metaphysics, not of logic." ^ Certainly he had 
 easy warrant for holding his logic apart from metaphysics ; 
 any careful thinker would do that. Knowing a little of Mr. 
 Mill, however, we can see how the force of the eminent 
 scientist may at once have suggested to him the jungle, 
 the intellectual perils of which had led Comte to expurgate 
 the very word from his vocabulary. We may prefer to see 
 one plunge into the jungle, doubting not that he may find his 
 way through at last. Yet to Mill and his school the jungle 
 has that impenetrable look that forbids the plunge ; and 
 beyond question they can tell of many a brave intellect 
 that has been hopelessly entangled there. Two men were 
 once somewhat warmly discussing a problem of thought, 
 when one reminded the other of the dubious consequences 
 to which his doctrine would lead him. " Consequences ! " 
 replied the friend ; " talk to me of consequences ! I will 
 go to hell for the consistency of my intellect ! " The calm 
 
 ^ Loffic, Harper & Brothers, 1870, bk. iii. chap. v. p. 204. 
 2 Nature and Matt, p. 350.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 309 
 
 rejoinder was, " When I find my thought leading me in that 
 direction, I will revise my premises." On thought's battle- 
 field many a warrior, fearless and true, shall be found in 
 like manner prudent. The jungle we now come to, and, 
 taking counsel of our courage rather than our prudence, 
 we will dare the plunge. 
 
 What, however, we call the jungle may not be such to 
 all : the metaphysics, to a Comte or Mill so hopeless, to a 
 Martmeau may look garden-like and clear. All the ex- 
 perience on which the empiricist builds, the intuitionalist 
 may also have ; but he combines it with data peculiarly 
 his own, without which philosophy were an impossibility, 
 an absurdity to him. The eye that sees antecedent and 
 consequent he holds to be not the eye that sees cause ; 
 and when he finds cause the issue of an empirical argu- 
 ment it wears to him an alien look. It is apt, too, to 
 suggest to him a native and a priori conviction, which the 
 sturdiest empiricism may find it hard to suppress, and 
 which has stolen into the argument to the enrichment of 
 its conclusion and the confusion of its logic. Or, if not 
 this, he is sure to find it cut down to an empirical signifi- 
 cance ; and he is likely to approve the stalwart consistency 
 of a Comte, who rejects a name when the conception for 
 which it stands is not provided for in the cardinal postu- 
 lates of doctrine, and to be critical of those who, like Mill, 
 retain the name while they eviscerate its meaning. The 
 cause of which the empiricist tells, " invariable ante- 
 cedence," " sum of conditions," and whatever else, is no 
 cause at all to him, only the outward and sensible method 
 by which the cause accomplishes its work. His cause 
 is not a condition, but an agent ; not a means, but a power 
 that uses means. But this, while its manifestations may 
 be plain to the senses, can in itself only be known through 
 intuitive discernment. 
 
 We here come to a view of causation with which every
 
 310 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 modern discussion of it must settle before proceeding far, 
 that of Kant. Hume, as we have seen in the previous 
 chapter, found in antecedent and consequent only a pair 
 of uniformly related experiences ; the causal link between 
 them he did not find ; and in this, as an empiricist, he was 
 true to the canon of his thought. In the supposed argu- 
 ment with his cook we may think the cook to have the 
 better side; yet, speaking strictly from experience, the 
 philosopher is right : all the senses take note of is fire and 
 boiling water. And now Kant : The events that pass be- 
 fore us, whether in nature or in human life, we learn only 
 from experience ; through the senses they enter into us. 
 But, entering into us through the senses, the mind meets 
 them with certain elements of knowledge which it contrib- 
 utes out of its own nature as mind ; and of these elements 
 the idea of cause is one. In the act of giving our experi- 
 ences intelligible construction it brings this to them. The 
 idea is not before the mind until the experiences are 
 offered ; but it comes at their summons. Every event 
 must have a cause ; so says, not experience, which were 
 incapable of an affirmation so sweeping, but the mind 
 uttering its own oracle. With this dictum an inwrought 
 principle of its constitution, it meets and organizes our 
 otherwise fugitive and chaotic experiences. This view Dr. 
 Martineau reflects when he speaks of causality as the 
 " noumenal interpretation of empirical existence." Be- 
 tween him and Kant, however, there is this important 
 difference to which, though pointed out in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, we can but once more recur : While 
 Kant, according to the genius of his system, holds the 
 causal principle only subjectively, regarding the causal 
 nexus as necessary to the intelligibleness of our concep- 
 tions, but refusing to go out beyond them, Dr. Martineau 
 finds it a subjective counterpart of what is objectively true. 
 While Kant finds our conceptions moulded by the causal
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 311 
 
 category, and so, while necessarily true to us, not necessarily 
 true to things, Dr. Martineau finds in the causal category 
 a discernment of a nexus between the events which are the 
 data of our conceptions. The former says, Our intelligi- 
 ble world is organized by causal relations ; the latter, The 
 world is intelligible, first, because a causal principle rules 
 it, and, secondly, because in man is an eye that discerns 
 that principle. Without the latter the scene I look upon, 
 however related part with part, were unintelligible because 
 incoherent to inc ; without the former I should have 
 within me only a fictitious impression of a relation that 
 does not prevail without me. As Dr. Martineau expounds 
 the doctrine, it gives to events an orderly relation which 
 the senses lay hold upon ; but it links them by a causal tie 
 which the mind perceives intuitively. Its distinguishing 
 feature is the mental discernment of a dynamic equal to 
 whatever change. It does not tell where the real seat 
 of change may be ; that must be sought through obser- 
 vation ; but having found it, the dynamic bond between 
 it and the phenomenon that is conditioned upon it is 
 avouched to us a priori. 
 
 Thus do the pheiiomejtal and the dynamic theories of 
 causation stand before us. The one relies wholly upon 
 empirical observation ; the other makes no quarrel with 
 observation, but rests ultimately on a dictum which the 
 mind puts forth a priori. The one identifies cause with 
 invariable antecedence ; the other maintains a constant 
 dynamic. On which side is the weightier reason compari- 
 son only can show. Here we come more directly on the 
 trail of Dr. Martineau's thought. 
 
 Dr. Martineau opens his presentation of the dynamic 
 theory by calling attention to the necessity which, in all 
 minds not preoccupied by a countervailing theory, cau- 
 sality seems to involve. " The blow of the steam-hammer 
 which welds two masses of iron, the combustion of the
 
 312 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 furnace which runs the metal out of the ore, the rush 
 of the torrent which buries a homestead in gravel, the 
 gale which drives the ship upon the rocks, the summer 
 warmth which decks the earth with foliage and flowers," 
 he declares to be " hardly reducible, even in the imagi- 
 nation of an empirical philosopher, to mere pioneers of 
 the phenomena they announce." ^ In the antecedent he 
 reads decree, not prophecy; it is Olympian, not Delphian 
 in its tone. The consequent he maintains to be, not a 
 *' new item of fact," but implicated with the antecedent 
 as one side of a composite phenomenon. He brings the 
 attitude of his mind into strong relief by a series of ques- 
 tions. He asks, " Which order then gives the more rea- 
 sonable account of our mode of thinking — that for us 
 causation owes its 'necessity' to customary succession? 
 or, that in itself it owes its customary succession to its 
 necessity? In other words. Is our belief in causation 
 identical with our belief in Law? or with our belief in 
 Power? or, to vary the expression once more, does it 
 mean belief in the uniformity of nature? or in the deriva- 
 tive origin of phenomena? " ^ This latter alternative we 
 may cling to as the most characteristic, and say that in 
 Dr. Martineau's philosophy cause implies the " derivative 
 origin of phenomena." Here blend two conceptions which 
 it is important that we discriminate. We may think of phe- 
 nomenon as ' derived' from phenomenon, or we may think 
 of the source whence the phenomenal as such is ' derived.' 
 The latter is, of course, the ultimate of inquiry, in which 
 alone religion is interested. But here is a point of which 
 it is well to take cognizance : while through the former 
 inquiry we seek a key to the latter, it is not until we 
 answer the latter that we reach more than a provisional 
 answer to the former. A Laplace, looking into the starry 
 heavens in inquiry as to their origin, may find scientific 
 
 I Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 146. ^ /^j/^/, p. j^j,.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 313 
 
 satisfaction in the conception of a fire-mist, through the 
 interaction of whose forces those glowing orbs rolled into 
 being. But the final answer is not gained until there is 
 answer to the further question, how " out of the bosom 
 of eternal rest " originated the infinite movement which 
 fire-mist transformed into stars illustrates. This particular 
 phenomenon I may proximately explain by reference to 
 another; but the phenomenal as such I can only derive 
 " from that which is other than phenomena." Other than 
 phenomena, however, " is presentable in thought only 
 under the form of Being or of Power, of which the latter 
 alone can do what is wanted." ^ So, then, the physical 
 event that passes before my observation I must refer at 
 last to an ultra-physical agency. In these terms we state 
 in advance the conclusion to w^hich we hope to come. 
 
 Let us extend our comparison of the empirical and the 
 metaphysical doctrines a little further. Mr. Mill maintains 
 a uniform succession of events, and with this leaves the 
 problem of causality. Dr. Martineau sees this as clearly 
 as he, but looks beyond it. The cause he seeks is not 
 found until a principle is reached which is not merely 
 the occasion of phenomena, but their producing agency; 
 and this principle can be only a force or power. Cus- 
 tomary succession, uniformity of nature, law, — these af- 
 ford him no ultimate account of anything. They show 
 him a method, but of efficiency they tell no tale. Law, 
 which in common speech many are wont to endow with 
 such potentialities, attracts no masses, combines no mole- 
 cules, darts no sunbeams, hurls no lightning, sends no 
 rain, is ultimate account of no movement of matter, no 
 function of life, no activity of mind. Rightly conceived, 
 it shows only the how of things, not at all the why ; its 
 significance is fully stated when we say, Thus works the 
 dynamic of the world, and not otherwise; or, everything 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 149.
 
 314 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 according to law, but nothing by it/ And this quah'fica- 
 tion, which clears the way for a dynamic of which law 
 only declares the method, leaves to our inductive inquirers 
 all they want. Science, dealing only with phenomena, 
 reaches its ultimate aim with the determination of their 
 law of succession, and whether the determining principle 
 is held to be the properties of matter, or the investigator 
 may make his own the ecstatic cry of Kepler, " I think 
 thy thoughts after thee, O God," it is neither more as- 
 sured nor less so. The angel which Kepler conceived 
 so to guide the movement of the planet that its radius 
 vector should describe equal areas in equal times was 
 nothing to science ; but the law these terms enunciate 
 was of measureless significance. It is an unfaltering con- 
 stancy upon which science builds, and with this assured 
 the man of science works his problems, leaving it to others 
 to settle whether there be any agency in events beyond 
 the power of crucibles and microscopes to find. 
 
 But another consideration. The uniformity of nature 
 we learn only by experience. But what we learn by ex- 
 perience, by further experience we may unlearn ; and the 
 cautious scientist is likely to accompany his forecasts with 
 the proviso, " no undiscovered fact disturbing my calcula- 
 tions," or, " the constitution of things remaining as it is." 
 So, if the causal principle were indeed nothing more than 
 invariable antecedence, then were it, as Mr. Mill teaches, 
 empirically learned, with need of the ever amended state- 
 ment which advancing knowledge is likely to bring to all 
 our empiricisms. But herein is the very point at issue. 
 Dr. Martineau's causal principle, though seen through uni- 
 formity, is an efficiency. The uniformities of nature are 
 not without significance in the study of causality : we read 
 
 1 " Laws of order are not yet causes ; and if we know anything of causes, 
 we know more than Laws." From essay, " Is there an Axiom of Causality .' 
 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iii. p. 574.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 315 
 
 off from them a lesson of method ; we infer from them, not 
 merely an agency, but a steadfast agency behind them. 
 But suppose the uniformities all away, and in place of 
 order, disorder wherever we turn ; suppose events fortui- 
 tous, abnormal, or with no antecedent in sight, should we 
 conceive them as occurring without power? Men have 
 believed in marvels enough, — charm, magic, miracle; the 
 sick healed by a touch, the dead called from the grave, 
 heroes without human mothers, saviours virgin-born ; but 
 have they ever believed the more stupendous miracle, an 
 event without producing agency? An event that passes 
 before me may often enough seem unaccountable, but it is 
 only so because I do not see the source of an agency that 
 I am sure is there. I may conceive it occult, magical, 
 supernatural, and thus render a mistaken account of it; 
 but will it ever occur to me, or can sophistry ever per- 
 suade me, that no producing power is there? This con- 
 sideration Dr. Martineau presses with great vigor and 
 clearness. " What we learn from experience, from experi- 
 ence we may unlearn ; and if B, which we had regarded 
 as the effect of A, surprises us by dispensing with this 
 antecedent, we shall have no difficulty in looking out for 
 another to which it may be credited. But, however long 
 we might be baffled in our search, would it ever occur to 
 us that the event was not only without this cause, but 
 without any ? that the originating power which was not 
 herey was nowhere ? On the contrary, the very eagerness 
 of curiosity which ensues on our surprise is but the pres- 
 sure of the axiom of causation, reasserting the derivative 
 origiji of all phenomena : we know the missing power to 
 be somewhere; but where is it then? Nay, more: were 
 phenomena released, not only from this order or that 
 order, but from all perceptible order, and turned from a 
 regiment into a rabble, did they defy prediction, and 
 startle us every instant like a flash of lightning or a shoot-
 
 3l6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ing star, they would none the less be to us the expression 
 of some power. . . . Belief which would thus cleave to us 
 alike in a chaos as in a kosmos, can be no induction from 
 the observed uniformity of nature, but must be an a priori 
 law of thought brought by us to the interpretation of the 
 world." 1 
 
 His doctrine concisely summarized, is this : To the study 
 of nature causahty is brought; through the study of nature 
 uniformity is found. 
 
 In the foregoing pages the language of necessity has 
 been frequent ; the fact is that it is utterly unavoidable in 
 any intelligent discussion of causation ; and this for the 
 reason that to the unsophisticated intellect necessity clings 
 undivorcibly to the idea of cause, a fact with yet further 
 implications which we need to notice. Every effect, we 
 say, must have a cause. The emphatic word here is must, 
 implying necessity unvarying and absolute. This empiri- 
 cists have striven hard to educe from their doctrines ; but 
 however ingenious in construction, the argument which is 
 consistently empirical cannot proclaim necessity. Through 
 experience we may affirm the results of experience, and a 
 rule of probability that is derived from its oft repetition ; 
 but beyond this — what? Mr. Mill tells us that "What- 
 ever has been found true in innumerable instances, and 
 never found to be false after due examination in any, we 
 are safe in acting upon as universal provisionally, until an 
 undoubted exception appears ; provided the nature of the 
 case be such that a real exception could scarcely have 
 escaped our notice ; "^ and this seems to offer us the canon 
 of inductive inquiry in the fulness of its scope and with its 
 obvious limitation. But whatever else it may provide, the 
 necessity we are contemplating is clearly not within its 
 provisions. A provisional necessity, indeed, were a bewil- 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 14S-149. 
 
 2 Logic, Harper & Brothers, 1870, bk. iii. chap. xxi. p. 342.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 317 
 
 dering thought. The truth is that the causal apprehension 
 far outruns any knowledge of causes given by experience. 
 Events I may meet on the right hand and on the left of 
 which no cause is discernible. From any morning's walk 
 I may bring home a score of observations of events which 
 I cannot set in order of causal relation. Do I, therefore, 
 believe the events uncaused? Not so. Though I see no 
 cause I know there must be one, — must, — affirming a 
 necessity which the widest dealing with empirical logic 
 cannot eradicate from within me. Where experience has 
 no word, or where, indeed, its oracles are discredited, this 
 must yet dominates my mind. Is it said that from familiar- 
 ity with the causal relation I acquire a habit of mind which 
 I carry to experiences in which I do not find that relation, 
 and mentally supply an undetermined antecedent, assured 
 through my experience that an antecedent must be there, — 
 interpret, that is, the chaos in which occasionally I wander 
 by the rules of the cosmos in which I habitually move? 
 Then is it necessary to show that such account is true not 
 merely of my mind, educated in this century of science, 
 but that it is true also of the human mind in its origin and 
 history? Did that apprehension dawn with the discovery 
 of the relation of antecedent and consequent, and was its 
 growth attained through repeated observation of this rela- 
 tion? The contrary would seem to be true. The primi- 
 tive man lived practically in a world of phantasmagoria. 
 The orderly sequences of events, so plain to us, he had no 
 eye to see ; but against the supposition that he was with- 
 out the causal apprehension his very superstitions bear 
 witness. The nereids with which he peopled the sea, the 
 naiads he found in the fountains and streams, the genii of 
 forests and mountains, the demons that rode on the storm, 
 the smiling divinities of health and plenty, the fiends of 
 famine and of pestilence, all tell of a causal sense which 
 meant behind events the presence of an executing power.
 
 3l8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 The doctrine of the scientific school is but a latter-day 
 disputer of a race-old conviction. The conclusion is re- 
 sistless that the belief in efficiency behind effect is not 
 merely a well-reasoned judgment, but comes from the mind 
 out of its a priori store. Here we find explanation of the 
 necessity we link with the causal idea : the mind cannot 
 conceive the limitation of its own principles ; therefore the 
 causal principle it must hold to be unconditional and uni- 
 versal. Hence to what it learns empirically it applies this 
 principle as a constructive rule, doubting it no more than 
 it doubts the mathematics which it draws from the same 
 source, and applies with absolute confidence in their truth. 
 Every event must have a cause, — no space, no time, no 
 eternity, can negative this broad affirmation. 
 
 Thus the phenomenalism of the scientific school. Dr. 
 Martineau, speaking for the causal sense, refuses to indorse. 
 While the former maintain only a succession of events, 
 the latter is obliged to maintain also the derivative origin 
 of phenomena. Phenomena, however, can only be derived 
 from a power that is other than phenomenal ; a dynamic 
 constant, behind all change yet immanent in it. 
 
 Manifest in all change, yet its unchanging source, im' 
 manent in nature, yet a " Force behind Nature " ! I quote 
 the language of an eminent scientist,^ whose illustration, 
 too long to appropriate, I yet may paraphrase. We enter 
 some vast factory and study its heaving and bewildering 
 machinery. This machine, which we first study, is plainly 
 connected with another, on whose movement its movement 
 is conditioned. But the second machine we soon discover 
 to have a like relation with a third, the third with a fourth; 
 and, having found the clue, we may follow from one ma- 
 chine to another throughout an apartment, and there at 
 length find a belt which seems to connect all these machines 
 with something out of sight, seeking which we find our- 
 
 1 W. B. Carpenter, Nature and Man, p. 350.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 319 
 
 selves in another apartment devoted to different machines 
 all connected in like manner. So through apartment after 
 apartment we find movement conditioned upon movement, 
 one machine through a hundred intermediaries responsive 
 to another; and there is a conceivable order of mind to 
 which this language should convey the explanation ; indeed 
 the phenomenalism we have reviewed has in these machines 
 a not unfitting illustration. To us, however, further in- 
 vestigation is permissible, and passing down beneath the 
 factory, we find a wheel to whose swift revolutions all this 
 complex movement is due, and this driven by a cataract 
 foaming and thundering there. The movement within the 
 factory is thus explained by a force outside of it and yet 
 immanent within it. In like manner to the intuitionalist 
 the fact that explains the complex movement of nature 
 is a force beyond it or behind it, yet immanent in it. 
 Without the sensible the supersensible were not offered to 
 our thought; as without the supersensible the sensible were 
 incoherent and unintelligible. For the understanding of 
 each and the hope of ulterior problems we grasp them 
 as correlates. The factory and the cataract outside of it, 
 nature and the force behind it, would be the one incompre- 
 hensible, the other never dreamed of, but for the relation 
 in which we meet them. Having thus met them, however, 
 we may, if our minds so incline us, turn to the machinery 
 of the factory to study its adjustments, — nature in her 
 countless phenomena, — with light shed from a knowledge 
 of the source of its mighty energy ; or we may follow up 
 the stream, — the force behind nature, — to the headland 
 whence it flows. It is the latter enterprise that now invites 
 us. 
 
 2. But before we come to the consideration of the " force 
 behind nature " it may be well to bestow a closer scrutiny 
 upon force in nature. A few years ago we had knowledge, 
 as we supposed, of forces. Mechanical force we knew,
 
 320 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, — we were 
 on easy terms with all of them. Their look was familiar; 
 with their habits we were well acquainted ; and though 
 they surprised us now and then with some undiscovered 
 virtue, and though we could not tell whence they came nor 
 whither they went, yet from their honest appearance and 
 regular behavior, we could not doubt that such as they 
 appeared to be, in very truth they were. At length, 
 about the middle of the century, an eye, turned upon them, 
 saw, as it were, a little behind them ; and lo, an astonishing 
 discovery ! Where we had supposed was plain and obvious 
 dealing with us was really an endless masquerade. These 
 forces which seemed so honest were really of the nature of 
 faeries, constantly putting off their own and putting on one 
 another's graces ; and all so deftly done that though car- 
 ried on, not in any green-room, but on the very proscenium 
 of nature, the most searching eyes, from Aristotle to Sir 
 Humphry Davy, did not detect the secret. The discovery 
 was made that the chemical action that paints my portrait 
 is in other dress the familiar agent through whose smiling 
 presence I may use my eyes ; that the electricity that 
 flames and startles, clothed in different attributes, is the 
 servant that cooks my food, and that the unerring pilot 
 that in all weathers tells the sailor what his bearings are, 
 is in other guise my errand boy, not like the nimble Puck, 
 promising to " put a girdle round about the earth in forty 
 minutes," but stipulating to run round it at the speed of 
 eight times in one minute. This discovery, in which was 
 the potency of revolution, came too late for Comte, and was 
 young science when Mill was mature philosopher. 
 
 Illustrations of this truth are on every hand. Every one 
 knows that hammered iron becomes hot, — every-day illus- 
 tration of mechanical action converted into heat. The 
 same thing is seen again when a man by threshing his 
 hands succeeds in warming them, or an Indian, by rubbing
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 321 
 
 dry sticks together [if he ever does], produces fire. The 
 sailor tells us that by the churning of the sea in a storm 
 the water becomes warmer, and Professor Tyndall accepts 
 his testimony. Illustration takes wider range. The energy 
 of falling water, transformed into electricity, lights the 
 streets and homes and shops of Buffalo, does service by 
 the smelting of iron at her forges, and drives the complex 
 machinery of her industry. Here at the beginning is the 
 energy of a falling mass ; it is converted into heat, into 
 electricity, into light, into mechanical energy, whence it 
 comes forth heat again. Every noisome sink-drain, every 
 swamp from which malaria rises, every decaying vegetable 
 or putrefying animal, tells of chemical action which is heat 
 lost to its identity. Of light transformed into chemical 
 action every photograph bears witness. Magnetism is 
 convertible into electricity, electricity into magnetism. 
 Further, an exact mathematical equivalence prevails here, 
 so that the dynamic value expressed in foot-pounds of one 
 mode of energy may be written down in degrees centi- 
 grade of another, and in amperes of another. 
 
 Strange this ceaseless process of transformation, which 
 yields us " fairy tales of science " in comparison with 
 which the most poetic folk-lore is dullest prose ! But are 
 we dealing with distinct forces? The conclusion of science 
 rather is that these are not several forces, but only modes 
 of Force. They are manifestations, not essences ; phe- 
 nomena, not dynamic permanents. Plurality is abolished ; 
 we have no longer forces, but Force. The dyjiamic of the 
 world is one ! 
 
 But Force,^ — we come now to the supreme question, — 
 what, in its ultimate essence, is it? We know its manifes- 
 
 ^ I am aware that the term preferred in these days is " Energy." Having 
 taken " Force," however, from Dr. Carpenter's illustration, I have thought it 
 best to hold on to it. Further, it is the word Dr. Martineau uses through* 
 out his discussion. 
 
 21
 
 322 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 tations; in its inmost nature, is it like any of these? This 
 is one of Dr. Martineau's questions. With the dynamic 
 permanent before his mind he asks : " Which of its phases 
 represent it most truly? Does it resemble a universal 
 elasticity, like steam ; or a universal quivering, like light ; 
 or a universal conscious mind, like thought in man? or 
 must we say that probably it is like none of these, and that 
 all its phases wz^represent it? " ^ This seems a reasonable 
 question ; but bringing it to these manifestations severally, 
 however you may press it, they return no answer. But 
 though severally they are thus uncommunicative, perhaps 
 through some grouping of them we may attain a clue to 
 the answer that we seek. These modes of Force Dr. Mar- 
 tineau finds it possible to arrange in a scale of higher and 
 lower. He says : " It is impossible, on looking at the 
 faces of these assembled forces, to assign the same rank to 
 all, or miss the traits of graduated dignity which make 
 them rather a hierarchy than a committee. The delicate 
 precision with which chemical affinity picks its selecting 
 way among the atoms, is in advance upon the indiscrimi- 
 nate grasp of gravitation at them all. The architecture 
 of a crystal cannot vie with that of a tree. The sentiency 
 of the mollusk is at an immeasurable distance from the 
 thought which produces the Mecaniqiie Celeste. Hence, 
 in the company of powers that conduct the business of 
 nature, a certain order of lower and higher establishes 
 itself, which, without settling every point of precedency, at 
 least marks a few steps of ascent, from the mechanical at 
 the bottom to the mental at the top. All equally real, all 
 equally old, they are differenced by the work they have to 
 do." 2 
 
 The dignity may be obvious ; but here, as in human life, 
 dignity may be climbed to or descended from. Could 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 22. 
 
 2 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 236-237.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 323 
 
 we scientifically bridge the gulf between chemical and 
 vital, between vital and mental phenomena, we should 
 embrace in ascending and descending scale all zones of 
 terrestrial existence within the correlations of the one 
 dynamic, — the working idea of Evolution, which we ten- 
 tatively embrace. Could we now find the order by which 
 these correlations succeed one another, we might come 
 through this to the manifestation that is initial to all the 
 rest, and see in that at least a suggestion of the reality 
 that it manifests. Did this order proceed ever from me- 
 chanical action up, then in mechanical action we should 
 see that nearer resemblance ; if from mind down, then that 
 nearer resemblance would be in mind. Unfortunately for 
 any hope in this direction, however, the order of succes- 
 sion can be made out in either direction ; and if from 
 mind at the top we may trace the correlations to mechani- 
 cal action at the bottom, so may we trace them also in 
 the reverse direction. Hence there may be two schools 
 of thought, to one of which, mind, and to the other, me- 
 chanical action, is the phenomenon through which the 
 causal agency is earhest manifest. The one may argue up 
 from mechanical action and the other down from mind ; and 
 we are as yet in no position to adjudicate between them. 
 
 There is, however, yet another aspect of the problem 
 which calls for notice. We have treated the correlations 
 as up the scale or down ; given the initial movement at 
 either end of the scale, are all forms of energy then 
 pledged to follow from it? Yes, if the conditions of all 
 are provided, a truth that carries an interesting implication. 
 If we arrange our scale with physical force at the bottom, 
 and above it the chemical, the vital, the mental, it requires 
 no deep insight to perceive that while each lower may 
 make shift without the higher, each higher implies the 
 lower. For instance, while there can be no chemical 
 change without heat, heat may have a vast range of
 
 324 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 phenomena without the conditions of chemical change. 
 In a world of one substance, as gold, in which, of course, 
 chemical change were impossible, heat might play its part 
 with only one order of function less than now. So, while 
 life may not be where there is no chemical change, chemi- 
 cal change may have vast range where there is no life ; 
 given the inorganic realm alone, it will never promote 
 itself into the higher one. This is said in remembrance of 
 the many claims of a way found open from the simply 
 chemical to the vital, claims always brought to confusion 
 by the finding that the " living thing was on the wrong side 
 to begin with." Finally, while thought may imply life as 
 its condition, life may have a vast career without any rela- 
 tion with thought ; and research and speculation have 
 utterly failed to show or guess how the former can blos- 
 som into the latter. It seems clearly impossible, therefore, 
 to work the evolution from the base up without a series 
 of gifts the need of which is the paralysis of evolution. 
 Begin at the top, however, and with mind all below it 
 is given by implication. Grant the presence of thought 
 and will, and be sure " they will appropriate vital power; 
 as life, once in possession, will ply the alembics and the 
 test-tubes of its organic laboratory ; and chemical affinity 
 is no sooner on the field than it plays its game among the 
 cohesions of simple gravitation." To the claim, therefore, 
 often put forth, that given one type of Force we have with 
 it all others, the answer is that that depends on wJdch one ; 
 a conclusion to which Dr. Martineau gives utterance when 
 he says, " If all force is to be conceived as One, its type 
 must be looked for in the highest and all-comprehending 
 term; and Mind must be conceived as there, and as di- 
 vesting itself of some specialty at each step of its descent 
 to a lower stratum of law, till represented at the base 
 under the guise of simple Dynamics." ^ 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. p. 600. Also same vol. pp. 
 237-239-
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 325 
 
 Thus much, at last, we come to as mere observers of 
 the phenomena of Force : Of these, mind is the all-com- 
 prehending phenomenon. This indeed is something, but 
 let us take care not to magnify it unduly. Still we are 
 dealing only with phenomena; the Power they represent 
 cornes as yet with no distinctness before our vision. 
 Though the supremacy of mind may be suggested, obser- 
 vation finds for it no verification. Still it is the phenomena 
 of the unitary Power that we have before us, not its ulti- 
 mate nature. Its manifestations are plain, but its essence 
 is still illusive. This is as it should be ; for in our study 
 we have been using only the observing and classifying 
 faculty, to which, as already shown, the reality of Force 
 is not revealed. Where its reality is given, there, if any- 
 where, should its nature be made plain ; and here we 
 turn from outward observation to the testimony of the 
 interior man. 
 
 In seeking within myself for light upon the ultimate 
 nature of Force, my first study must be of Force as it is 
 given me to exercise it. Suppose for a moment my only 
 apprehension of Force to be drawn from my exercise of 
 it, what account of it should I render? My various activi- 
 ties — my work, study, play — we will suppose the same 
 as now. An observer without community of nature with 
 me would see in them no more than I see in the conduct 
 of the bee or the beaver ; and we can easily conceive him 
 to arrive at some such theory of them as I of the doings 
 of the animals or insects I may study. But however he 
 might explain them, / should know them to issue from 
 my will. So far as other than automatic or zoological, 
 this would inevitably be my account of them. Force I 
 should know, and know only, through the execution of 
 my will. Will-directed force, will-causality, — no other 
 would be conceivable by me. This supposition, however, 
 while serving well enough for a tentative illustration, is
 
 326 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 inherently impossible. Of my own force, unantagonized 
 by force other than mine, I can know nothing. Were I 
 simply passive, the force that on every hand assails me 
 would simply stream through me ; — I should be like the 
 sponge in the endless wash of the sea. So, were I active, 
 if my activities encountered no resistance, then they would 
 be like sunbeams shot out into a perfectly transparent 
 atmosphere ; and I should be unconscious of effort be- 
 cause acting through an unresisting medium. As through 
 simple passivity I could not know of aught around me, 
 so through unchallenged activity I could not know my- 
 self. That is to say, through resistance to my will is con- 
 sciousness of it awakened. The causal power within me 
 is countermated by a causal power beyond me ; and to 
 know either I must have experience of their antagonism. 
 Now, since I could have no apprehension of causality in 
 the universe but for causality at home, it is evident that 
 from myself as a centre I carry it abroad. From my own 
 experience as an agent I gain my conception of an agency 
 everywhere. But cause at my own centre is Will ; will- 
 causality is all the causality I know. The ultimate sig- 
 nificance of cause beyond me, found within me or not 
 found, is will. Force, as an ultimate essence, then, is Will. 
 In the antagonism of self and not-self there is simply will 
 opposed to will; — will within, expressed in activities of 
 body and brain ; will without, expressed in the order of 
 the world ; will within, flowing out in contest with the 
 elements, in the subduing of nature, in the creation of arts, 
 in the building of civilization ; will without, guiding planets, 
 flashing sunbeams, immanent in chemical combinations 
 and in vital functions. Cause in the sense of efficient 
 simply must mean this to us. 
 
 The form of argument here, however, is that of analogy, 
 and there is another, which, if to the ordinary mind not 
 more persuasive, to the logician may be more satisfactory.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 327 
 
 The moulding principles of our knowledge, causality with 
 the rest, come, as we have seen, from the mind at the call 
 of experience. Even the correlations of physical forces 
 are to empirical observation only successions of phenom- 
 ena; the unitary Force they represent is not manifest 
 to the eyes, and is only intuitively discerned. But cause, 
 as it is given us to know it, is of the will ; in the very 
 mould, therefore, where our experiences are formed the 
 volitional stamp is set upon them. Ordinarily we may 
 not think this ; when we contemplate an event, we refer 
 it to a cause unqualified by any epithet. But when we 
 reflect on the ultimate nature of cause, we find will impli- 
 cated in the very idea. To the relation of events this is 
 brought by the mind, and because of the mind we must 
 think it, and what we Diiist think we must believe true. 
 To Dr. Martineau the reasoning from analogy may be 
 persuasive, but in these terms we come nearer to his 
 characteristic thought. On a point of so much signifi- 
 cance, though in a passage of considerable length, it is 
 better that he speak for himself In his crushing rejoinder 
 to Professor Tyndall he says : " To witness phenomena, 
 and let them lie and dispose themselves in the mere order 
 of time, space, and resemblance, is to us impossible, ^y 
 the very make of our understanding we refer them to a 
 Power which issues them : and no sooner is perception 
 startled by their appearance than the intellect completes 
 the act by wonder at their source. This ' power,' how- 
 ever, being a postulate intuitively applied to phenomena, 
 and not an observed function found in them, does not 
 vary as they vary, but mentally repeats itself as the needed 
 prefix to every order of them : and though it may thus 
 migrate, now into this group, now into that, it is the dwell- 
 ing alone that changes, and that which is immanent is 
 ever the same. You can vary nothing in the total fact, 
 except the collocations of material conditions; out of
 
 328 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 which, as each new adjustment emerges, the persistent 
 Power eHcits a different result. Instead of first detecting 
 many forces in nature and afterwards running them up 
 into identity, the mind imports one into many collocations : 
 never allowing it to take different names, except for a 
 moment, in order to study its action, now here, now there. 
 If this be true, if causality be not seen, but thought, if 
 the thought it carries belongs to a rule of the understand- 
 ing itself, that every phenomenon is the expression of 
 power, two consequences follow : the plurality of forces 
 disappears : and, to find the true interpretation of the One 
 which remains, we must look not without but within ; not 
 on the phenomena presented, but on the rational relations 
 into which they are received. Power is that which we 
 ineajt by it ; nor have we any other way of determining 
 its nature than by resort to our own self-knowledge. The 
 problem passes from the jurisdiction of natural science 
 to that of intellectual philosophy." ^ He then, after much 
 the same fashion as that employed in the preceding pages, 
 finds his way to the conclusion that the universe is per- 
 vaded by a Will. 
 
 The One Force so variously manifest is Will. Elusive 
 when studied in its outward manifestations, it reveals its 
 identity to the eye wisely directed to interior self-scrutiny. 
 Is this anthropomorphism? Such it has been the fashion 
 to call it ; and in its character as such, scientific thinkers 
 like Tyndall and Huxley have seen the last reproach of 
 the faith of Martineau. Yet Professor Tyndall finds in 
 matter the " promise and potency of all terrestrial life," 
 which looks much like Martineau's anthropomorphism 
 taken in reverse; and whether with better reason on its 
 side it need not take long to see. What is matter? Be- 
 tween the Epicureans, who wanted nothing more than its 
 ultimate atoms to build a universe, and Bishop Berkeley, 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 240-241.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 329 
 
 who denied its reality, the accounts of it are how many 
 and how divergent ! Certainly, if spiritualism is a creed of 
 perplexities, materialism, as judged by its history, is not 
 less such. The existence of matter what warrant of it 
 have we? The last word we can say of it is that it is 
 an affection of our minds. Is spiritualism to be held un- 
 trustworthy because it is reasoned from ourselves, and 
 materialism, resting ultimately upon the like reasoning, to 
 be received with unquestioning faith? With certainty may 
 I affirm that matter is such and such because I must think 
 it, and must the conception of mind, born of an analogous 
 necessity, be repudiated as baseless? Is the former so 
 brave a philosophy? Is the latter so feeble a puerility? 
 " The existence of a Universal Will," says Dr. Martineau, 
 " and the existence of Matter stand on exactly the same 
 basis, — of certainty if you trust, of uncertainty if you dis- 
 trust, the principia of your own reason." ^ And with 
 respect to anthropomorphism in its larger features, we 
 may appropriate from his titanic wrestle with Professor 
 Tyndall this weighty deliverance : " If I am to see a ruling 
 Power in the world, is it folly to prefer a man-like to a 
 brute-like power, a seeing to a blind? The similitude to 
 man means no more and goes no further than the suprem- 
 acy of intellectual insight and moral ends over every 
 inferior alternative : and how it can be contemptible and 
 childish to derive everything from the highest known 
 order of power rather than the lowest, and to converse 
 with Nature as embodied Thought instead of taking it as a 
 dynamic engine, it is difficult to understand. Is it absurd 
 to suppose mind transcending the human? or, if we do so, 
 to make our own Reason the analogical base for intellect 
 of wider sweep ? How is it possible to look along any line 
 of light traced by past research, and, estimating the con- 
 tents which it reveals, and leaves still unrevealed, to 
 
 ^ Essays, Revictus, and Addresses, vol. iv. p. 247.
 
 330 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 remember that along all radii to which we may turn, a 
 similar infinitude presents itself to any faculty that seeks 
 it, and yet to conceive that this mass of truth to be known 
 has only our weak intelligence to know it? And if two 
 natures know the same thing, can they be other than 
 like?"^ 
 
 Thus through a long pathway of thought he reaches his- 
 conclusion ; and with it the great postulate of theistic faith 
 is gained. The world expresses an Infinite Will ; its laws 
 are decrees ; in deciphering its hieroglyphic we follow up 
 a Divine Intelligence on Hnes by which it issued forth. 
 The dictum of the French savant, " The heavens declare 
 the glory of Herschel and Laplace," yields to the refrain of 
 the Psalmist which it travesties ; and philosophy, grown 
 jubilant, breaks into rhapsody. 
 
 " Thou visitest the earth and waterest it : 
 Thou greatly enrichest it, 
 The river of God is full of water: 
 
 Thou providest them corn, when thou hast prepared the earth : 
 Thou waterest the furrows abundantly, 
 Thou settlest the ridges thereof. 
 Thou makest it soft with showers, 
 Thou blessest the springing thereof, 
 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, 
 And thy paths drop fatness." 
 
 3. It hardly needs to be said that Dr. Martineau means 
 by Will what we mean by it, the executive function of In- 
 telligence. In heaven as in earth, it discriminates and 
 determines. There comes before our minds the blind im- 
 pulse which Schopenhauer called Will. To Dr. Martineau 
 a blind impulse, acting but not discriminating, were 
 Fatalism, not Will. Causing implies willing, but " aimless 
 force, force that cannot define its own path, but may fly 
 off in any radius without prejudice to its identity, misses 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 247-248.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 33 1 
 
 the essence of causality."^ That essence, as the will 
 declares it, is in having an aim, and choosing a pathway, 
 and declining " all radii but one." The objection to the 
 argument from Design, that designing means choosing and 
 choosing implies limitation, has no favor in his eyes. To 
 select always from ever present alternatives is of the Infi- 
 nite Will, and is involved in an infinite prerogative. Power 
 to do is not infinite unless there go with it the power not 
 to do. In the denial of choice Omnipotence is denied. 
 
 A question of method here arises. Where do we find 
 the types of Divine volition? The rain nourishes the corn, 
 but spreads devastation through the river's overflow ; water 
 slakes my thirst, but it may also drown me ; I could not 
 live without the sunshine, yet it may generate a miasma 
 that shall cut short my life ; the conditions that make the 
 harvest bountiful bring forth the pests that destroy it ; and 
 where nature is most affluent in smiles man is most exposed 
 to the fever's breath, the wild beast's ravage, and the ser- 
 pent's fang. These contrasts, contemplated with reference 
 to the Supreme Will, have yielded conclusions how diverse ! 
 Scepticism has found in them justification of its doubt; 
 simple faith has explained them by the alternation of his 
 moods, the kindlier experience telling of his grace, the 
 harsher of his wrath. There is yet another, which we may 
 perhaps call the stoic temper, which finds utterance in the 
 words of the prophet Isaiah : " I am the Lord, and there is 
 none else. I form the light, and create darkness : I make 
 peace, and create evil : I the Lord do these things." 
 
 Our personal vicissitudes are so engrossing to ourselves 
 that it is often hard for us to think of them as not a matter 
 of immediate concern in the legislation of the universe ; and 
 it is sometimes felt to be a cold philosophy that refuses to 
 see the direct agency of Heaven in the exigencies of our 
 travel, or the issues of our pathology ; yet such negative 
 
 ^ Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 244.
 
 332 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 conclusion is essential in Dr. Martineau's philosophy, which 
 finds the types of Divine volition not in the details of ex- 
 perience, but in the ruhng forces of the world. In his own 
 language, " Every law represents one thought and is the 
 explicit unfolding of one comprehensive and standing 
 volition." ^ The single volition, that is, is represented 
 by one law with all it carries. When the decree went 
 forth, Let there be light; it was not stipulated that it 
 should not dazzle my eyes, or be unattended by other 
 inconvenience to me and to other sublunary creatures. In 
 light we have a " single genus of power," a " dynamic 
 constant," that holds its course and works its effects in 
 apparent indifference to particular grievances that may be 
 laid to its charge. So in the appointment that the rains 
 fall, the convenience of my journey is not taken into con- 
 sideration. Heat seems appointed to its tasks without 
 respect to the myriad seemingly unfriendly contingencies 
 that hang upon its action ; chemical action holds on its 
 way regardless of the pestilence it may generate ; electri- 
 city I must handle circumspectly, or while serving me it 
 may kill me. A law with its full budget of consequences, 
 changeless and passionless, — this is what the volition 
 seems to signify. In its origin a decree of Will, it is left 
 to be one of the fixed and ever calculable habits of nature. 
 And despite all our incidental inconveniences and even 
 suffering, how much better so ! The problem of wisdom 
 and goodness in the universe belongs to later pages ; but 
 we may here wander from our path so far as to remark 
 that through this invariableness the discipline of man and 
 the possibility of his knowledge of the universe are pro- 
 vided. But something more than this is wanted, something 
 this fixity, if carried up through all the zones of our moral 
 and spiritual nature, would render it impossible to believe; 
 and Dr. Martineau finds a way to it. In his critique of 
 
 ^ Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 222.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 333 
 
 Professor Tyndall is a remarkable passage in which he 
 asks : " Does anything forbid us to conceive similarly of 
 the cosmical development ; that it started from the freedom 
 of indefinite possibilities and the ubiquity of universal con- 
 sciousness ; that, as intellectual exclusions narrowed the 
 field, and traced the definite lines of admitted movement, 
 the tension of purpose, less needed on these, left them as 
 habits of the universe, and operated for higher and ever 
 higher ends not yet provided for ; that the more mechan- 
 ical, therefore, a natural law may be, the further is it from its 
 source; and that the inorganic and unconscious portion of 
 the world, instead of being the potentiality of the organic 
 and the conscious, is rather its residual precipitate, formed 
 as the Indwelling Mind of all concentrates an intenser 
 aim on the upper margin of the ordered whole, and espe- 
 cially on the inner life of natures that can resemble him? " ^ 
 The purpose of this passage is to exhibit a very possi- 
 ble relation of volitions left to be the laws of matter with 
 higher and more elastic operations of the Divine Will. This 
 is a thought never far from the mind of Dr. Martineau. 
 Whatever constraints the Divine Mind may impose upon 
 nature, higher up, where he deals with conscience and the 
 soul, the constraint relaxes. With whatever confidence we 
 may calculate, we still may pray. While science, from the 
 divineness that pervades its field, may well be devout, it 
 does not follow that devotion, at its altitude, should be 
 scientific. Rather here is a place where the free spirit of 
 man meets the free spirit of God. 
 
 Like other speculators of like tendencies of mind. Dr. 
 Martineau braces his intuitionalism by a survey of Nature, 
 gathering up the accordant notes she ofters him. Of them- 
 selves alone they might not satisfy him ; bringing to their 
 study, however, an a priori warrant for his faith, they serve 
 most admirably as illustration. The notes of purpose in 
 
 1 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iv. pp. 249-250.
 
 334 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 nature, reasoning on the basis of human analogy, are 
 neither few nor insignificant. " If they are apparent in the 
 structure of a cottage," he asks, " are they absent from the 
 hut of the beaver and the nest of the wasp ? Does the gran- 
 ary of the farmer provide for the future any better than the 
 storehouse of the squirrel? Is there more skill in a pair of 
 spectacles, than in a pair of eyes? — in a guitar, than in the 
 vocal chords of a Malibran or a Stanley? — in the hunter's 
 snare, than in the spider's web? — in the lover's serenade, 
 than in the nightingale's song? — in the oars of a boat, 
 than in the fin of a fish?"^ That here is adaptation to 
 ends which squirrel and bee and beaver could not have fore- 
 seen, is plain. Originality is ours ; it is not theirs. We can 
 plan and build for the future : of foresight and intention 
 they cannot do so. To us is reason ; to them is instinct. 
 Through the possession of reason we are fitted for our 
 province, and are left in charge of it ; they, a part of na- 
 ture, are directed by its Indwelling Spirit. Through our 
 reason we purpose and perform ; through their instinct 
 works the Reason of Reason. 
 
 One result of this doctrine of causation is evident: the 
 old distinction between First Cause and second causes dis- 
 appears. Save as man in the exercise of his free will is a 
 second cause, there is no cause in the universe but God. 
 Material causes, so called, are only material conditions, 
 physical forces but physical means, man's free will but the 
 unnecessitated agent of a Power that is over all, and in all, 
 and through all. The universe is enchanted by an Infinite 
 Will, through which suns blaze and civilizations blossom; 
 and whose purposes unfold in the issues of history. 
 
 II. The Intellectual Aspects of the Universe 
 
 The consideration incidentally touched upon in the 
 closing paragraph of the above statement must now be 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 247.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 335 
 
 more explicitly dealt with. Does the universe ratify the 
 result reached by the study of the causal intuition? In its 
 processes, widely surveyed, do we trace the presence of 
 Mind? With these questions the argument from Design 
 or Final Causes is before us. The argument stands not 
 where it stood in the times of Paley and Bridgewater Trea- 
 tises ; though they mistake who suppose that these writ- 
 ings have lost their persuasiveness ; and they more gravely 
 mistake who suppose the interest in this argument is mate- 
 rially less than a century ago. The philosophy of Evolu- 
 tion, indeed, presented the universe in another aspect; 
 and some of the writings of its earlier expounders, as the 
 Lay Sermons, the Belfast Address, and the First Principles, 
 were certainly disquieting to the teleologist. If mecha- 
 nism could do so much, what need of God? The net result 
 as seen in the mind of to-day, however, is probably not 
 less faith, but more caution. We turn to the universe not 
 with less confidence that Design is there, but with the 
 sense of the need of a deeper insight and a broader out- 
 look. This is well ; for we were acquiring a facility for 
 tracing Design which was bringing the argument into dis- 
 repute through a cumbersome mass of puerilities. The 
 illustration of Paley, a watch picked up on a heath, digni- 
 fied and masterful as he used it, imitated by feebler minds, 
 brought into literature a multitude of supposed Designs, 
 which might often be looked upon as ingenious parody 
 were it not for their evident sincerity; and there was 
 appositeness as well as humor in the remark of Hegel that 
 " though wine be useful to man, neither religion nor 
 science is profited by supposing the cork-tree to exist for 
 the sake of the corks which are cut from its bark to serve 
 as stoppers for wine-bottles." ^ 
 
 There are two ways in which the marks of intelligence 
 in nature may be used in theistic arguments. The one is 
 
 1 Quoted from Schurman's Belief in God.
 
 33^ JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 as proof: Here is Design, it is argued, therefore there 
 must be a Designer. Alike in a watch and in a world, 
 intelligent adaptation implies intelligence. The orderly- 
 arrangement of words that results in an In Memoriam or a 
 Sordello is no chance affair; the orderly detail of nature 
 that brings forth an eye or an ear no more such. This is 
 the Paleyan argument, though of date far earlier than 
 Paley. 
 
 The second use of it is as illustration. Having the con- 
 viction that there is a God, the believer may see in the 
 order of the universe the tokens of His wisdom. Knowing 
 God already, he looks abroad and says. These are His 
 ways. With his faith the aspect of the universe is accord- 
 ant. What he carries to it, that he finds. 
 
 Now the former of these, the Design argument proper, 
 has had illustrious recognition. Socrates used it in his 
 way, Plato also, and Cicero; Kant treated it with respect; 
 Mill coldly confessed its validity. Yet there have never 
 been wanting those who could not feel its persuasiveness; 
 who, though willing enough to confess the universe the 
 handiwork of God, have yet felt the human mind unequal 
 to the divination of its meaning: have found its scope too 
 vast, or its symbolism too mysterious. Thus Descartes, 
 who, as he believed, proved to absolute certainty the being 
 of God, would have nothing to do with Final Causes. 
 " We must not be so presumptuous," says he, " as to think 
 God has taken us into his counsels." Also, while for this 
 reason many earnest theists have been unwilling to use the 
 argument, there have been theists not less earnest who 
 have doubted its absolute validity. For instance. Dr. F. H. 
 Hedge, while allowing to it " great theological value," 
 could not find in it that complete demonstration which its 
 prophets claim for it.^ " The truth of an hypothesis," says 
 he, " which seems to solve a given problem is not estab- 
 
 ^ See " Critique of Proofs of the Being of God " in Ways of the Spirit.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 337 
 
 lished by that solution, unless the solution is complete;" 
 and he adds, ** If it fails to satisfy that condition, it is sim- 
 ply the best hypothesis, nothing more." To this rigorous 
 requirement he finds the argument unequal. With what- 
 ever array of facts it may be justified, still he holds that 
 the opposite contention has not been logically invalidated ; 
 that still it may be maintained that the necessities of exist- 
 ence are such, rather than that thus a Divine Intelligence 
 appointed. Of the two hypotheses the latter may seem 
 the more reasonable, but that does not make the former 
 untenable. The argument may comfort belief; but, in 
 effect he asks, did it ever win a Comte or a Laplace from 
 unbelief? Further he points out the significant circum- 
 stance that the great expounders of the argument have 
 gone to Nature " not to ascertain an unknown fact, but to 
 justify an assumed one." Believers when they sought her, 
 they were simply better assured believers after their inter- 
 view with her. Had they gone to this interview with minds 
 blank to the idea of God, he is very doubtful if they would 
 have returned from it with the radiant faith they have illus- 
 trated. In this we should certainly agree with him. The 
 Deity we find in Nature we first meet within ourselves; 
 and the Hebrew prophet had surely not admonished. Lift 
 up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these 
 things, had he not known, had he not heard, had it not \ 
 been told him from the beginning. Dr. Hedge further \ 
 says that Paley and the Bridgewater writers " have brought • 
 to view the exquisite adaptations of Nature, and, on the \ 
 supposition of a God for its author, have abundantly illus- ' 
 trated the wondrous skill of the Creator." It was, then, 
 the second or illustrative use of Design that he would 
 recognize. Though it may not suffice to establish the 
 existence of God, it may show the wisdom of God, if 
 already known. With this view Dr. Martineau is in clear 
 accord. He betrays, indeed, an interest in the Paleyan 
 
 22
 
 338 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 doctrine which his American contemporary does not 
 reflect; but in the structure of his brilliant argument it is 
 God that shows him Nature, not Nature that shows him 
 God. His inquiry is to " ascertain whether the world 
 answers, in its constitution, to our intuitive interpretation of 
 it as the manifestation of intellectual purpose." ^ So plain 
 is this relation of thought in his argument that it is simply 
 astonishing that his doctrine should ever have begn mis- 
 taken for the Paleyaa. Like most other profound students 
 of Natural Theology during the last century, he has given 
 very evident attention to Paley's writings : yet the attitude 
 of the two minds is entirely different. fWhile Paley would 
 say to the atheist. See these marks of Design ; either 
 discredit them or, for consistency's sake, be an atheist no 
 more, Dr. Martineau would say, See these marks of 
 Design ; how beautifully they ratify the intuition of an 
 Intelligent Cause. ■ For the security of the primary pos- 
 tulate of his faith Dr. Martineau does not need Final 
 Causes ; like Descartes, he could have maintained it, as 
 he achieved it, by philosophic insight alone. The form, 
 however, which it takes in his speculation, that of Intelli- 
 gent Will, makes its justification by Nature especially 
 desirable ; and the two placed over against each other, 
 Will as philosophically found and Will as traced in the 
 processes of Nature, together make a course of doctrine 
 both weighty and impressive. 
 
 The line of contention of the advocate of Final Causes is 
 Intelligence versus Automatism. Are the adaptations we 
 meet in nature the happy hit of unintelligent forces, or did 
 an Intelligence direct them? Or, more accordant with Dr. 
 Martineau's attitude, an Intelligent Being granted, do we 
 find in nature the tokens of His action? 
 
 What are the tokens of intelligent action? Dr. Mar- 
 tineau specifies three : selection, combination, gradation. 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 258.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 339 
 
 Through these, intelligence, as we know it, ever executes 
 its tasks. Of many possibles it selects one ; various selec- 
 tions it brings together into a harmonious whole ; and 
 throughout the structure it subordinates minor ends to 
 larger ones. These features are ever met in the works of 
 men, as a watch, a house, a railway, a book, a statue, a 
 picture, a school, a creed, a government. For instance, 
 a book. Of many possible Hnes of thought or groupings 
 of fact the author selects a few; these few, through suc- 
 cessive chapters, he brings into harmonious relation ; and 
 throughout the whole he is ruled by a law of gradation by 
 which minor matters open the way to those of larger im- 
 portance. From works of human intelligence these marks 
 are never absent; and meeting them in nature, it is reason- 
 able to say. Either Intelligence has been here, or unin- 
 telligent forces have blindly simulated its methods. 
 
 In the presence of these alternatives, one of course may 
 embrace either, but which he will embrace will depend, so 
 teaches Andrew Seth,^ on whether the philosophical or 
 the strictly scientific spirit rules him. Science can hardly 
 be teleological ; but philosophy, however variously it may 
 conceive, cannot permanently give up, teleology. The 
 aim of philosophy is to rationalize the universe ; and, out- 
 side the crudest materialism, that is not likely to be con- 
 ceived as having a rationale which is not in some sense the 
 offspring of Reason and ruled to its ends. The signifi- 
 cance of this consideration is so prevailing that, however 
 an occasional philosopher may decline teleological judg- 
 ment, philosophy, true to the principle of its life, will yet 
 dare it. The difference between Dr. Martineau and the 
 schools now in the ascendant is not one of teleology and 
 no teleology, but turns on the question where the war- 
 rant of teleological judgment may be found. They find 
 it in what they conceive to be the great end of Crea- 
 
 1 Man's Place in the Cosmos, pp. 56-58.
 
 340 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 tion ; he sees it here, and also in many a detail by which 
 that end is being furthered. Let us follow him in his 
 illustrations. 
 
 I. Selection. Do we find this in nature? We know 
 how man dealing with the products of nature may select: 
 how a florist, finding a rose of peculiar tint, by a process 
 of selection may propagate and improve it ; how the 
 poultry fancier will in like manner improve his brood, and 
 how the experimenter upon domestic animals may pro- 
 duce sheep of finer wool, and cows of richer milk, and 
 horses of fleeter foot. We know also what naturalist, after 
 contemplating this kind' of selection, turned to nature with 
 the question whether she also selected ; and how, in 
 answer to his question, she flashed upon him, with all its 
 measureless implications, the great law of Natural Selec- 
 tion, There is, then, selection in nature ; and the denial 
 of it would require that our latter-day natural history be 
 rewritten. It is divined from the intelligent action of man ; 
 shall we say it is of nature's automatic action merely, or 
 shall we refer it to an Intelligence that, using nature as its 
 instrument, directs the choice? 
 
 Illustrations of this law any student can easily supply 
 for himself There is one, however, on which Dr. Marti- 
 neau especially dwells ; which through the ingenuity of 
 his presentation has gained considerable attention. It is 
 drawn from a study of the anterior limbs of vertebrate 
 animals. In skeletons we find in them a unity of plan, 
 and a like relation of this part to the whole ; and yet what 
 possibilities ! " The changes," says he, " that might be 
 rung upon them by extension or contraction of size, by 
 altered proportions of their members, by readjustment of 
 weight, by shifting their leverage, by modifying their 
 muscular apparatus, are endlessly in excess of all actual 
 types." ^ Now what has limited the number of these 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 259-260.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 34 I 
 
 actual types? We cannot think of them as "accidental 
 variations ; " on the contrary, all agree that the hmits of 
 variation have strict " reference to the medium in which 
 the creature is to live ; reducing it to the pectoral fin of 
 the fish and the paddle of the seal ; or extending it into the 
 wing of the bird, itself elongated by the primary feathers 
 which grow from the fingers; and in terrestrial animals 
 terminating it with the hoof or toe for progression, the 
 claw for battle, the hand for prehensile use." ^ 
 
 How shall we explain this adaptation of the organ to the 
 conditions of the creature's existence? Why in its form is 
 it so strictly relative to the creature's environment? There 
 are those who answer that it is the environment itself 
 which equips the creature for life within it. Now environ- 
 ment can undoubtedly do many things, but are there not 
 limits to its achievements? However fishes may leap into 
 the air, the fin shows no tendency to become a wing ; and 
 though semi-aquatic birds are much in water, they show 
 no tendency to take on the structure of its finny inhabi- 
 tants. " Except in mythologic tales," says Dr. Martineau, 
 "no fisherman, like Glaucus of Anthedon, can betake him- 
 self to his own element and become a marine inhabitant 
 indistinguishable from the fish, even though he has an im- 
 mortality to do it in. Nor could any air that blows help the 
 arms that beat it to grow into wings ; whatever force was 
 called into action by incipient attempts to fly would work 
 in opposition to such direction of development and sweep 
 away its first beginnings." His reason for this conclusion 
 seems plain : " TJie waters and the atmosphere can never set 
 up histrwnents of resistance to themselves.'''^ However, 
 then, the environment may be a foster nurse to develop 
 an organ incipiently provided, its absolute provision is not 
 within its possibilities. For this, then, we must turn from 
 the environment to the organism. Dr. Martineau dwells 
 
 ^ Siudy of Religion, p. 260. ^ Ibid.
 
 342 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 at length upon two views of the genesis of this : one the 
 pre-formation theory of the earher physiologists who held 
 that the organism was potential in the egg or germ, so 
 that in its production there was only needed the course of 
 development. That is to say, the structure is in its every 
 part pre-formed in the embryo, which unfolds according 
 to a "directing and organizing idea" or "vital design," a 
 view which, of course, only pushes the selectioji back to the 
 source of that " vital design^ The other view is that of 
 epigenesis, and is far in the ascendant in our time. The 
 embryos of man and of many of the animals below him are 
 at an early stage indistinguishable one from another. The 
 theory is that the distinguishing features which appear 
 later are not developed but added on. According to the 
 former view, the whole precedes the parts ; according to 
 the latter, the parts precede the whole. Now it is held by 
 some that this latter view is inimical to the Design argu- 
 ment. Dr. Martineau, however, conceives the reverse. 
 " For," says he, " if we want to conceive of development 
 within a purely physical circle of processes, with a mini- 
 mum of temptation to enquire beyond, surely the gradual 
 increase of a given form in all its dimensions at once 
 leaves us less to ask, than the successive aggregation of 
 heterogeneous organs of which no hint had before been 
 given." ^ Also so valiant an advocate of Design as Janet 
 would, in the interest of his doctrine, adopt this view in 
 preference to the earlier one.^ Surely a ship is none the 
 less a work of Design because not pre-formed in the 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 261. 
 
 2 "Given," says he, "an organism in miniature, I could easily compre- 
 hend that the growth and enlargement should take place by purely mechani- 
 cal laws. But what I do not comprehend is that a juxtaposition or addi- 
 tion of parts, which only represents external relations between the ele- 
 ments, should be found, little by little, to have produced a work which I 
 would call a work of art if a Vaucauson had made it, but which is much 
 more complicated and delicate than one of Vaucauson's automata." Fittal 
 Causes, p. 139.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 343 
 
 timber, but brought together part by part. With one of 
 these theories as with the other the hypothesis of Design 
 will work equally well ; and to a Huxley or a Haeckel we 
 may say that finding out how a thing is done is not the 
 same as proving that God did not do it.^ 
 
 Thus there is selection in nature ; and such seems its 
 meaning. But (^2^ is therQ cojnl?inatw/i also? The student 
 of Darwin is familiar with correlation of growth, a truth 
 recognized by Cuvier a half-century before Darwin, and 
 made his guiding light in his wonderful reconstructions of 
 extinct animals from fossil remains. Every part so implies 
 another part that, given any bone, a " person who possesses 
 an accurate knowledge of the laws of organic economy may 
 reconstruct the whole animal." Here within the organism, 
 correlation is, of course, but another word for combination ; 
 but combination, in Dr. Martineau's use of the word, has a 
 much wider application. Here is combination of part with 
 part ; there is also combination of " organic change " with 
 a " special direction of muscular activity." At approach 
 of winter the frog, the snake, the tortoise, seek a fitting 
 place for their winter's sleep ; at the approach of the birth 
 season the smelt in the lake seeks the brook ; the salmon 
 ascends the river ; the bird builds its nest ; the caterpillar 
 weaves its web; — the stirring of the reproductive impulse, 
 which none will pretend that these creatures understand, 
 is synchronized by these acts of preparation. A woman 
 approaching maternity gets ready a cradle ; and her action 
 we say is intelligent. Can we then say that the like action 
 
 ^ In the above sentence I detect myself borrowing from Miss Cobbe. 
 The passage is so apposite that I cannot err in quoting it entire: "It is a 
 singular fact that, whenever we find out how anything is done, our first con- 
 clusion seems to be that God did not do it. No matter how wonderful, how 
 beautiful, how infinitely complex and delicate has been the machinery that 
 has worked, perhaps for centuries, perhaps for millions of ages, to bring 
 about some beneficent result, — if we catch a glimpse of the wheels its 
 divine character disappears. The machinery did it all. It would be altc 
 gether superfluous to look further." Darwinism in Morals, p. 5.
 
 344 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 on the part of these lower creatures is merely automatic? 
 We grant these creatures without intelligence ; but is intel- 
 ligence wholly unrelated with their conduct? It must be 
 so, or the intelligence of nature, which is the intelligence 
 of a Mind that ordains nature, must work through them 
 and direct them. 
 
 There is another combination of organism with nature, 
 and of this illustration is endless. Seasonal for the child's 
 need is the flow of its mother's milk, and in the art of 
 appropriating it the child needs no instruction ; and the 
 human babe, as Dr. Martineau remarks, is here on terms 
 of exact equality with the young of other mammalia 
 whether of the earth or the sea. But more suggestive 
 than this is the provision of far lower creatures for their 
 offspring. Every spring the caterpillar weaves its web 
 upon our apple trees, never upon our beeches or maples, 
 guided by a foresight surely not its own to the tree 
 whose leaves will yield food for its young. The burying 
 beetle seeks the carcass of some small animal, as a frog 
 or a mouse, with the aid of its fellows covers it with 
 sand, and then deposits its larvae within it; which thus find 
 right about them their appropriate aliment. The case of 
 the pompoles is perhaps more striking. When mature, 
 the insect lives on flowers. Its larvae, however, are carniv- 
 orous ; and so the mother places in the nest where her eggs 
 are deposited the body of a spider or caterpillar, thus pro- 
 viding for her young a food suited to them, but which she 
 could not eat. Not less suggestive is the phenomenon of 
 migration. That other creatures should like to change 
 their abode with the season, to man seems natural enough; 
 but in the manner of their doing so there is food for reflec- 
 tion. Dr. Martineau quotes the example of shoals of tur- 
 tles that " regularly swim from the bay of Honduras to the 
 Cayman islands, near Jamaica, — a favorable spot for laying 
 their eggs, — and make this distance of four hundred and
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 345 
 
 fifty miles with such precision, that in thick weather ships 
 can sail under the guidance of their rustling in the water." ^ 
 Then there is the flight of birds through hundreds of miles 
 of trackless space, yet ruled by an accuracy which the cal- 
 culations of the mariner cannot surpass. " We can ima- 
 gine readily enough," says Dr. Martineau, " how changes 
 of temperature might awaken in these birds a desire to 
 secure perpetual summer by keeping a second country 
 house not deserted by the sun ; but by what mysterious 
 sympathy between their nature and the latitudes and lon- 
 gitudes of the earth their Hnes of flight are directed, by 
 what magnetic needle within them they trace their unerr- 
 ing path, by what secret chronometry they hit upon the 
 date of passage and keep the appointment with their 
 old habitat, is inexplicable except as part of the intel- 
 lectual combinations of the world." ^ 
 
 There is another combination on which Dr. Martineau 
 lingers with very evident interest : it is that provided for 
 in the complete absence of one of the related elements. 
 A hearing-trumpet invented by one totally deaf, or a mi- 
 croscope by one totally blind, would not be thought of as 
 produced without intelligence ; rather they would be re- 
 ferred to an intelligence that was preternatural. But the 
 ear is an instrument for hearing, in complexity and delicacy 
 infinitely beyond any of man's devising, and the eye an in- 
 strument for seeing, compared with which our microscope 
 or telescope is but clumsy apprentice work. Yet both are 
 formed in entire insulation from the medium in which they 
 are to act : the ear where are no aerial vibrations, the eye 
 where is no light. When, however, they emerge into the 
 " element " in relation with which they are to perform their 
 ofiice, this wondrous adaptation ! Certainly the philoso- 
 pher may be entitled to respectful consideration who sees 
 here something akin to a pre-established harmony. Now 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 293. 2 /^/^. p. 294.
 
 346 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 there are those who will argue that though the ear and the 
 eye are formed in insulation from their element, they are 
 yet formed within the matrix of a being who has them in 
 perfect adjustment with that element. Be it so: we are 
 given a point in their genealogy, but are told nothing of 
 their genesis. Here the evolutionist brings forward his 
 explanation : Light forms the eye, sound forms the ear ; 
 and hence the harmony. Given a clot of protoplasm, light 
 acting upon it will call forth an incipient eye and sound 
 waves an incipient ear; and from this beginning, which is 
 next to nothing. Natural Selection will carry on the pro- 
 cess to completion. Again be it so; yet myriad objects 
 are beaten upon by these twofold vibrations, and no nerve 
 of sight or of hearing appears in them. That thus they 
 may be formed within the protoplasm, they must be poten- 
 tially there. Ability to awaken on the one side implies 
 ability to be awakened on the other. In the protoplasm 
 must be eye and ear of earlier date ; and the fact that 
 light and sound perform a part in their development is not 
 in the slightest degree dissonant with our thesis. Again it 
 is legitimate to urge that finding out how a thing is done 
 is not the same as proving that God did not do it. 
 
 3. We come next to gradation. In nature do we find 
 this? Indeed we do. Without entering into the study 
 of the vegetable or animal economy, which we could not 
 pursue without recognizing a system of means and ends, 
 which to many a thinker has borne sufficing testimony, 
 we may draw our illustrations from the larger features of 
 the evolutionary story. Saying nothing of the earlier 
 chapters, a molten and a frozen world, which, if we took 
 note of nothing else, we might leave to the rule of unde- 
 signing forces, we come to life, and it is difficult not to see 
 in the prior processes a preparation for this. Allow that 
 there were only elements before ; now they have found 
 an end in an organism which they support. All the myr-
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 347 
 
 iad forms of vegetable growth are simply the chemicals 
 of nature organized ; and in the organization is the first 
 stage in the upward gradation manifest. 
 
 The chemical, then, for the vital ; but the vital is not 
 the final. Beyond merely organized is conscious exist- 
 ence. The vegetable has clearly a raison d'etre in the 
 support of the animal. 
 
 But beyond conscious life is self-conscious ; we reach 
 another and a higher stage when we come to man. With 
 him, too, terrestrial being culminates ; and for him, in 
 some sense, all below him. On this point language needs 
 to be guarded. It is not pretended that the lower forms 
 of existence have no end save the service of man, that 
 the world is ordered in contemplation of him alone ; and 
 the satire of Montaigne, who supposes a gosling to reason : 
 " All the parts of the universe regard me ; the earth serves 
 me for walking ; the sun to give me light ; the stars to 
 inspire me with their influence ; . . . there is nothing this 
 vault so favorably regards as me ; I am the darling of 
 nature," deals fairly with such pretension. Yet it is true, 
 and surely no Darwinian should dispute it, that in the 
 hierarchy of terrestrial being man stands at the summit, 
 and hence, in the providence of nature, all below him 
 must be for him. 
 
 These are the cardinal stages of gradation. Probably 
 few feel that it ends here ; indeed his vision must be 
 strangely defective who does not see the tokens of its 
 continuance. It well may be that it does not contem- 
 plate a transition to another and higher form of terrestrial 
 being ; but the perfection of the highest that now is, the 
 progressive realization of the idea of a divine humanity, — 
 perfection of the social organism, the achievement of that 
 kingdom of man which is the kingdom of God. 
 
 Compared with the amplitude of our resources these 
 illustrations seem meagre. However, the method of in-
 
 348 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 telligent action is shown through them; and the easily 
 gathered volume of the like illustrations could only show 
 it more fully, not more clearly. To show this method, 
 too, is of great practical importance. The causal argu- 
 ment, though never so fair, would fail to persuade mul- 
 titudes of minds could some Cuvier or Agassiz declare: 
 Useless to appeal to Nature ; in her processes is no selec- 
 tion, no combination, no gradation ; so far as can be seen 
 she works without method and to no end. Dr. Martineau, 
 indeed, would not be discomfited ; he could still require 
 us to accept the causal argument on its logical validity, 
 maintaining, like Descartes, that the methods of God are 
 too deep, and his purposes too vast, for human compre- 
 hension. But these features, met so widely in organic 
 nature, he can but regard as ratifying the judgment he 
 has reached independently of them. A weakness of the 
 old Paleyan doctrine was its want of metaphysic ; it is 
 the peculiar strength of Dr. Martineau's that for his meta- 
 physic he finds objective verification. The argument from 
 the causal intuition may be good, and the marks of Intelli- 
 gence may be plain ; but both together and in harmony 
 are better than either. 
 
 But though the central principle of Dr. Martineau's 
 doctrine is safe without Design, he thinks enough of 
 Design, not only to illustrate it, but to defend it against 
 latter-day objections. These objections are various, but 
 they may be grouped under two considerations, drawn 
 respectively from the aspect in which they present the 
 Divine Nature, and certain troublesome features of the 
 outward universe. 
 
 I. TJic aspect of the Divine nature, (i) It is charged 
 that the Design argument is — again that word of terror — 
 anthropomorphic. It assumes the action of God after the 
 methods of our own : it makes God man ; and against 
 this what fervid protestations ! There is an element of
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 349 
 
 truth in this : I can form no judgment of anything save 
 from myself; and the conception of any nature must 
 be outlined from my own. Try any other conception 
 of the Ultimate Principle than that of mind, and see 
 if we escape this necessity. " There are," says Dr. Mar- 
 tineau, " but three forms under which it is possible to 
 think of the ultimate or immanent principle of the 
 Universe, — Mind, Life, Matter: given the first, it is 
 intellectually thought out: the second, it blindly grows: 
 the third, it mechanically shuffles into equilibrium." ^ 
 The question presses, How much more liable am I to a 
 vitiating twist from my own nature in dealing with one 
 of these conceptions than with another? It is because I 
 am a thinking being that I am led to think of the 
 Ultimate Principle as thinking; but so it is because I am 
 a living being that I think of it as living; and only be- 
 cause I am a material being that I can think of it as 
 material. " Man is equally your point of departure, 
 whether you discern in the cosmos an intellectual, a phys- 
 iological or a mechanical system : and the only question 
 is whether you construe it by his highest characteristics, 
 or by the middle attributes which he shares with other 
 organisms; or by the lowest, that are absent from no 
 physical things." ^ He might have added that if, because 
 its conception is formed from ourselves, the basal princi- 
 ple of theology must be given up, science for the same 
 reason should be judged untenable ; and a Huxley, de- 
 crying Design on this ground, is eaten up by his own 
 logic. Theological conceptions, like all others, should be 
 judged by their inherent strength, and not be discredited 
 in advance by the fact that it is a human mind that forms 
 them. 
 
 (2) But again, it is held that this mode of action, essen- 
 tial though it be to the human mind, when affirmed of 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 316. 2 ji,jj^
 
 350 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 God, contradicts his attributes. He is the universal 
 source, we say; he is infinite; he is eternal; he is 
 absolute. But as universal source, there can be no power 
 beyond him ; as infinite, all is embraced in him ; as 
 eternal, the conditions of time do not apply to him ; as 
 absolute, he is out of all relation. Designing, on the 
 other hand, implies selecting and contriving, which is 
 transitive action and implies a datum objective to the 
 selector or contriver. But a "datum objective to God" 
 implies that all is not embraced in him, and therefore that 
 he is not infinite ; as a designer, he enters into relations, 
 so he cannot be absolute. Design seems to imply a dual- 
 ism, — God and a datum which is the theatre of his 
 activity; while these attributes call for one Essence to 
 which, since in itself all, nothing can be objective ; and 
 what seems its datum can be only its phenomenon. 
 
 Whether we are dealing here with the supreme problem 
 of philosophy or with a metaphysical conundrum, there 
 may be difference of opinion. On both sides, however, 
 the dilemma has been taken seriously. On one side 
 pantheism is felt to annihilate teleology ; on the other 
 teleology is saved by making reservations from pantheism. 
 A profound and learned writer remarks in a recent book: 
 " Christian theology, and Jewish also, have been as pan- 
 theistic as reverent reason and devout common sense 
 would permit them to be." ^ This we may accept as true, 
 and still be confronted by the question. What limits to 
 pantheism do reverent reason and devout common sense 
 prescribe? For answer to this question, we may quote 
 a few compressed sentences from Dr. Martineau : " There 
 are two ways of taking these wonder-working words : the 
 Infinite, the Absolute, the All-acting, may be construed 
 monistically, as embracing and absorbing the finite, the 
 relative, the passive; or dualistically, as antithetic to them 
 
 1 Thomas B. Hill, Postulates of Theology and Ethics, p. 6i.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 35 I 
 
 and implying them as their opposing foci. It is in the 
 latter form alone . . . that they are given to our thought: 
 the infinite Avhich we cognize as the background of a finite 
 is all except the thing: the absolute is the sphere of the 
 relation we contemplate, so far forth as exempt front it : 
 and the universal causality is apprehended by us only as 
 that which is other than our own, and planted out in the 
 non-ego, without displacing our personal activity. In all 
 these cases, our thought holds on to a definite locus 
 whence its survey is taken oi all else: it sails in its little 
 skiff and looks forth on the illimitable sea and the great 
 circles of the sky, and finds two things alone with one 
 another, the universe and itself: the metaphysicians who, 
 in their impatience of distinction, insist on taking the sea on 
 board the boat, swamp not only it but the thought it holds, 
 and leave an infinitude which, as it can look into no eye 
 and whisper into no ear, they contradict in the very act of 
 affirming. Now, when kept true to their antithetic mean- 
 ing, these terms no longer lend themselves to the easy 
 magic of negation. If we have causality as well as God, 
 there is room for saying, this sin is ours, that rebuke is his. 
 If for him, as Omniscient subject, there are objects of knowl- 
 edge that have been, are, and will be, they must be present 
 to his mind in their distinctions, their connexions, their con- 
 sequences : and that which in us is memory and foresight, 
 and apprehension of rational relations, must have some 
 intellectual equivalent in him. If, besides himself, there 
 exist, in a sphere left free, living persons for his Love, 
 there are innumerable definite and variable lines of selec- 
 tive movement on which that love may go forth ; nor 
 need we scruple to think of it as carrying shadows as 
 well as lights, and as hid in eclipse from our unfaith- 
 fulness, though ready to warm us again when we emerge. 
 An infinite of which these attributes must be denied 
 would only be inferior to a finite being of whom they
 
 352 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 might be affirmed ; and where the boundary between the 
 human and the Divine so gradually fades, an intellectual, 
 moral, and affectional fulness of conception will secure 
 more truth than the most spacious metaphysical void, 
 where names alone can float without a meaning or a 
 home." ^ This weighty judgment let him answer who 
 is able. 
 
 (3) But objection takes another form. It is urged that 
 Design not merely abridges the infinitude of God, but 
 otherwise carries a denial of his perfection. Designing 
 implies discriminating and contriving; the laborious pro- 
 cesses of intelligence, not spontaneity of action. Spinoza 
 held that working for an end was confession of need ; 
 Mill contended that the use of means implied a want of 
 power: the engineer, whether constructing a railway or 
 a universe, confesses the difficulties of his task by the 
 expedients he employs. How much worthier of God is 
 the thought of the world as unpremeditated and simply 
 unfolding from him. 
 
 This has a specious sound ; but reverent reason and 
 devout common sense have reply: As the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our 
 ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts ; and this truth 
 must rule our conception of the Divine activity. It can- 
 not imply, however, that his ways are not ways, in some 
 sense congruous with our sense, nor that his thoughts 
 are not thoughts. Though infinitely beyond ours, ours 
 may be a means by which we may analogically con- 
 ceive them. Grant our conception inadequate, yet not 
 for that reason need we think it untrue. But change 
 the point of view, and bestow a closer look upon this 
 Being who thinks not, wills not, but ever acts from his 
 own centre, not freely but as he must, — is such a being 
 so far exalted above one who designs and executes? Is 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 320-321.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 353 
 
 the being of whom this universe is the only possible uni- 
 verse more august than a being to whom it is only one of 
 infinite possibilities? Is the absolutely perfect being one 
 who can do no other than he does? Strange inversion of 
 the natural order of estimate, this placing of the non-intel- 
 ligent above the intelligent, the necessitated above the 
 free, — adding to the glory of God by discrowning him! 
 If this inversion of natural estimate be necessary in order 
 that we may not be anthropomorphic, let us be content 
 with anthropomorphism. 
 
 The objection that Design is irreconcilable with ac- 
 knowledged attributes of God is thus variously answered. 
 It is not pretended that all is plain ; we have before us a 
 transcendent problem, in dealing with which only he who 
 thinks little shall be sensible of no difficulties. But this 
 seems clear, that the conception of a God of whom Design 
 is predicable leads into difficulties far less grave than any 
 competing one. There is one structure of the argument 
 from Design in which the implied Designer is not so easy 
 to receive, that built upon the conception of a God outside 
 of and apart from the universe. The doctrine itself we 
 should probably find it easier to surrender than to em- 
 brace its Deistical implication. But while this objection 
 may be valid as against the teachings of the earlier Paley- 
 anSj. it has no relevancy in a consideration of Dr. MartT- 
 neau. Edward Caird speaks of Dr. Martineau as in accord 
 with Jacobi when he affirms that " a God immanent in the 'v^ 
 world is no God at all," ^ which is a complete inversion of 
 Dr. Martineau's clearest teaching. "Why not inside?" he 
 asks. " What hinders a ubiquitous indwelling power from 
 consciously taking such lines of direction, such modes and 
 proportions of activity, as may realize a system of pre- 
 conceived ends?"^ He quotes from Aristotle: "Plant 
 
 1 The Evolution of Reli^on, vol. ii. p. 8. I find that Professor Caird with- 
 drew this statement in the second edition of his work. 
 
 2 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 328. 
 
 23
 
 354 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the ship-builder's skill within the timber itself, and you 
 have the mode in which Nature produces." " Theism " he 
 declares to be " in no way committed to the doctrine of a 
 God external to the world," but " at liberty to regard all 
 the cosmical forces as varieties of method assumed by his 
 conscious causality, and the whole of Nature as the evolu- 
 tion of his thought." ^ His presence is the consecration 
 of the universe ; and as reverently as Wordsworth might 
 he tell of One 
 
 " Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." 
 
 Of this view there is something yet to be said. Enough 
 for the present to show that the Deistical conception of an 
 " absentee God " is wholly foreign to his thought. 
 
 2. Troublesome features of the oiitwaj'd universe. These 
 Dr. Martineau considers in elaborate detail. Alphonso, 
 King of Castile, wished he had been present at the Crea- 
 tion that he might hav^e given good advice ; critics of 
 Design seem often in a like attitude of mind. If there 
 was a Creator, to their minds he bungled badly. Select 
 specimens of Nature, they say, may suggest Intelligence ; 
 but phenomena in a wide survey bear in upon us the 
 reverse conclusion. 
 
 Even the more general features of the earth invite their 
 criticism. They are displeased with the polar regions ; of 
 what use those icy realms? They are dissatisfied with the 
 equator; to what end its blasting heats? They are criti- 
 cal of deserts and mountain systems; why Mohave and 
 Sahara? why Alps and Himalaya? In what aspect of 
 these phenomena is Intelligence manifest? To take the 
 critic's attitude and give specific answers might often be 
 difficult. Both polar and equatorial regions are unsuit- 
 able for human habitation, and deserts and mountains 
 are barriers to the intercourse of men. Still in the 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 3 28.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 355 
 
 vast economy of the earth they may have their place. 
 Could we warm the poles, cool the equator, grade the 
 mountains, and make the desert blossom, should we surely 
 work improvement? Had we been present at the Crea- 
 tion with these suggestions, should we certainly have 
 given good advice? Is it not possible that the Creator 
 might have successfully maintained that a world upon his 
 plan were preferable ; that in a law-ruled system, such as 
 he had in view, poles and tropics and mountain and 
 desert were quite indispensable? The critics, too, of 
 the solar system, who want a full moon all the time, 
 and find the nights of Saturn much too long, and space 
 too sparsely populated with stars, and the sun wastefully 
 casting his heat where are no worlds to warm, and ether 
 undulating where are no eyes to see, might perhaps be 
 met with the like consideration. Could they, present 
 at the Creation, have seen the scope of the Creator's 
 purpose, perhaps they would have felt no need to revise 
 his plan. 
 
 But pass to organic nature. Are there no facts en- 
 countered here irreconcilable with our thesis? The Intel- 
 ligence we maintain will do nothing without purpose ; how 
 account, then, for rudimentary organs which have clearly 
 no use in the animal economy? The opponents of De- 
 sign have made much of these, too much by far. We 
 grant the dictionary a work of intelligence ; how explain 
 the silent letters in such multitudes of words? You say 
 there was a time when they were not silent, that it was only 
 as language changed and developed that they became so. 
 The silent letter, then, is charged with the history of the 
 word, showing its origin in some foreign or some ancient 
 tongue. Rudimentary organs may well be as these silent 
 letters, witnesses of an earlier stage in the unfolding life of 
 the organism. Spelling reformers would have us drop all 
 silent letters ; and critics of Design would hold the Intelli-
 
 356 JAMES martinEau 
 
 gence of nature to an analogous procedure ; cancel, that 
 is, an organ when it ceases to be of use to the organism. 
 But thus one of the records of its history would be de- 
 stroyed, and how in this procedure the clearer intelli- 
 gence would be manifest it is difficult to see. When Dr. 
 Martineau tells us that " Nature, far from being utilitarian 
 only, is ideal too; and in setting up each single life takes 
 but one step of a long history, and pursues an old type 
 into new and modified exemplifications," ^ he describes a 
 method of action seemingly not dissonant with, but clearly 
 accordant with. Intelligence. On the supposition of Intel- 
 ligence, wherefore should it be otherwise ? 
 
 But we are told not only of useless organs, but of very 
 imperfect ones. The bee in the use of its one weapon may 
 kill itself: its sting is so constructed that in endeavoring to 
 withdraw it from a body into which he has thrust it he may 
 tear it from his own. Some one suggests that a war vessel 
 whose guns could not be fired without the shattering of its 
 hull would hardly win our admiration for the intelligence 
 of its construction ; and the case of the bee may be 
 analogous. However, all things for their use ; and Dr, 
 Martineau shows very plainly that however the bee may 
 lose its sting in the more solid flesh of men and animals, it 
 does not follow that it does so in plunging it into the bodies 
 of other bees with which its chief warfares are conducted. 
 No one disparages his fist because it cannot serve the pur- 
 poses of a sledge-hammer, nor his head because for a cer- 
 tain peculiar use a he-goat's were the better ; and the war 
 vessel that should shatter its prow in an effort to ride down 
 Gibraltar would witness, not the non-intelligence of its 
 builder, but of its commander. Though it fail in manifold 
 misapplications, it is enough to show the intelligent con- 
 struction of an organ that it serves its intended uses. 
 
 Further than this we have no space to illustrate. Two 
 
 ^ Study of Religion, vol. i. p. 335.
 
 GOD AND COSMOS 357 
 
 Other considerations, often pressed by critics of Design, 
 (i) excessive birth-rate, so marked in all lower organisms 
 and rarely absent from the higher, involving (2) a corre- 
 sponding death-rate with the cutting off of such multitudes 
 of all species ere the fulfilment of their promise, have been 
 pressed with much earnestness by thinkers unfriendly to 
 teleology. These Dr. Martineau reviews cogently and 
 triumphantly ; but we must be content to refer the reader 
 to his illuminating page.^ 
 
 No teleologist pretends that organic nature opposes no 
 difficulty to his theory, that turn where he may all is lumi- 
 nous with purpose. On the contrary, he is like one stand- 
 ing under a clouded sky, to whom only a rift here and 
 there makes manifest a light beyond. The marks of intel- 
 ligence that he finds give full assurance that Intelligence is 
 there ; and where he cannot see a meaning he is assured 
 that it is because its scope is too vast or the hieroglyph too 
 intricate. Of the much light he seeks there is but little he 
 can gain ; but a little is how much when a little of God ! 
 So he turns from his assurance that the world of his philos- 
 ophy and the world of his experience are in harmony. 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. i. pp. 346-357.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 
 
 Thus far Dr. Martineau studies the theistic problem in the 
 light of the intellectual categories only. His question is 
 the race-old question as to the origin of things. He seizes 
 upon the idea of cause, and in this finds his clue to the 
 great argument. Cause is only possible through the exer- 
 cise of force; force is only interpretable in terms of will; 
 will is the executive function of intelligence. Thus by a 
 purely metaphysical argument he shows that the system of 
 things has no rational explanation that does not imply a 
 Divine Intelligence. Having done this, however, he casts 
 his glance abroad, and the Intelligence his philosophy de- 
 mands is manifest in the structure of the world. 
 
 Thus he establishes the first part of his great thesis, " a 
 Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe." This conclu- 
 sion, however, we might reach were we well developed 
 Calibans only, beings of a high order of intelligence but 
 without moral sensibility. There is, however, in man a 
 moral sensibility, which makes him something widely dif- 
 ferent from a well-developed Caliban ; and this sensibility 
 Dr. Martineau accords an independent hearing in the settle- 
 ment of the theistic problem. Through this he reaches a 
 justification of the second part of his thesis, " a Divine 
 Mind and Will holding Moral relations with ma^ikindy 
 That is to say, he finds not only a Supreme Mind in the 
 universe, but a Supreme Righteousness. His method of 
 procedure in the second stadium of his argument is the
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 359 
 
 same as in the first : as in the earHer investigation he first 
 sought the significance of the causal idea, and then its rati- 
 fication in the universe, so in the later he unfolds the tes- 
 timony of the moral consciousness, and then asks if the 
 constitution of nature and the experience of man are ac- 
 cordant with it. This order of study we will make our 
 own. 
 
 I. TJie Moral Intuition 
 
 In the presentation of his ethical doctrines Dr. Mar- 
 tineau compares two criteria of judgment. They are 
 Prudence and Conscience. Prudence, as he shows, is our 
 regulative principle in deciding upon the utilities of con- 
 duct; Conscience, our light and guide in settling between 
 conflicting motives. The former appoints for our welfare ; 
 the latter for our character. Prudence decides : This 
 course were wiser, more useful, more expedient, than that. 
 It is the monitor of merchant, teacher, statesman, of min- 
 ister, moralist, and philanthropist, in the choice of means 
 for the realization of desired ends. Conscience decides: 
 This course were higher, worthier, nobler than that. It is 
 a goad to the duty our indolence might shirk, our stay 
 when a seductive evil hovers near us. The contrast be- 
 tween them may be more clearly seen through illustration. 
 Shall I buy a piece of land? This question I answer 
 rightly enough by reference to my circumstances, my 
 tastes, my future aims. Shall I pay my debts, right a 
 wrong, speak the truth, be just, charitable, humane? Here 
 I am called to another judgment. I clearly see that hon- 
 esty is higher than dishonesty, that righting the wrong 
 is nobler than leaving it unrighted, that truthfulness is 
 worthier than untruthfulness, and charity than unchari- 
 tableness, and humanity than cruelty. Seeing this higher, 
 too, I recognize myself as bound to it. Within me is a 
 voice that says, " Thus do, thus do." This voice has not
 
 360 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the tone of Prudence. Though I could see that the lower 
 deed would enhance my welfare, and involve no forfeit of 
 esteem, still were there that solemn admonition. It is not 
 the Categorical Imperative, as commonly stated : " Act as 
 if the maxim of thy will were to become, by thy adopting 
 it, a universal law of nature ; " it is more solemn, more 
 imperative than this. It bears in upon me the sense of an 
 Eternal Rectitude, my allegiance to which I am summoned 
 then and there to witness. 
 
 Moreover, in the consequences that follow upon disobe- 
 dience of this admonition there is pertinent suggestion. 
 In purchasing the land it is possible that I may act un- 
 wisely, but at worst my error brings me only regret, my 
 self-accusation is only that I was improvident or a fool; 
 and through the misadventure my Prudence may gain a 
 sharper eye. When, however, in the presence of a higher 
 part I have chosen a lower, the feeling is far other. Then 
 it is shame, guilt, remorse, a feeling appropriate to con- 
 scious offence against a majesty that has rightful command 
 of me. Further, the terms in which I judge myself when, 
 self-sophistication put by, I review my conduct with judi- 
 cial mind, are accordant only with this order of feehng. 
 Do I see that mine has been an act of treachery, that I 
 have been unfaithful to a trust, abused a confidence, be- 
 trayed a friend? I cannot say that I was mistaken; I can 
 dut say I was base. However forgiveness may be prof- 
 fered me, and however sympathy may bring palliatives to 
 my smart, the sense of ignominy persistently and defiantly 
 abides. Even time, which heals so many wounds, is not 
 gentle with us here, but stamps a record where we would 
 invoke oblivion. The improvidences of youth we look back 
 upon complacently enough; the memories of even graver 
 blunders and mistakes may bring a smile upon our lips, 
 and in the circle of our friends we may lightly tell the tale 
 of them. But if there lie in memory a shameful deed ; if
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 36 1 
 
 at any time we have been dishonest, false, selfish, vile, 
 cruel, tyrannical ; in proportion as our nature is unper- 
 verted, it comes back to us with a sense of degradation. 
 In all such cases it is not my judgment I disparage, but my- 
 self I condemn. Our feeling and our language alike imply 
 the distinction which Dr. Martineau is wont to make so 
 impressive, that in the " issues " of conduct we are wise or 
 foohsh; in its "springs" we do righteously or sin. Again, 
 the reaction of our conduct upon ourselves ratifies the 
 solemn distinction. In the triumphs of our Prudence we 
 win success and good reputation, in its defeats we experi- 
 ence discomfiture and chagrin ; but in the one case there 
 is no exaltation, in the other no humiliation of our nature ; 
 and how often through the tuition of our blunders we learn 
 the way to our nobler successes. In our obedience and 
 disobedience, however, it is wholly otherwise. While we 
 obey, choosing in every alternative the higher, albeit the 
 harder part, new strength accrues to us ; our way is one of 
 dignity and composure ; however we may be frowned upon 
 without, there is approval within ; and we gain a nobler 
 poise from the very cross we bear. But, on the other 
 hand, is there anything that so overturns and demoralizes 
 and destroys as disobedience? Not only does it entail a 
 sense of shame and guilt, which in earlier stages may be 
 remedial, but the tension of the upward wing is relaxed ; 
 the resisting power of the will is enfeebled ; ideals are 
 dimmed. Human experience is illustrated in the fortunes 
 of the soul of Plato's speculation, which, victorious in its 
 struggles with the lower passions and desires, was rewarded 
 with strains of music low and soft and ravishing, floating 
 down from the spheres, its preincarnate abode ; and grow- 
 ing ever distincter and more ravishing as the soul went on 
 from victory to victory, until, its earthly conquests ended, 
 it reascended to its spheral home. Suffering itself, how- 
 ever, to be defeated, the spheral music was denied it, the
 
 362 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 memory of its home became less distinct, and it sunk down 
 into lower and lower incarnations, lost to its beauty and its 
 joy. This varied experience, too, we should take care to 
 remember, is in the largest sense human. Were it peculiar 
 to a race or nation, were it the flower of culture or the 
 blossom of civilization, our view of it would be entirely 
 different. It may be narrower or broader in its range as 
 life has fewer or more relations ; but as the loftiest natures 
 are never above it, so the lowliest, provided they are dis- 
 tinctly human, are never below it. In the natural order of 
 things this sense of nobler and baser, with its implied 
 moral allegiance, develops as man develops, penetrates his 
 being more profoundly, and takes hold upon him more 
 enthralllngly the higher he rises. Accordingly, our chief 
 moral revulsion is not experienced when we contemplate 
 the barbarisms of mining camps or the brawls of city 
 alleys, but that corruptio optimi pessima presented us in a 
 drunken Webster, a treacherous Bacon, a licentious Goethe ; 
 the height from which they have plunged witnessing the 
 clearer light that they have disowned. 
 
 Whence comes this inward voice? There pertains to 
 the nature of man no profounder truth ; and a just account 
 of it must be of weighty significance both to morals and to 
 faith. The answers to our question are various and plausi- 
 ble. It may be useful for us to examine them one by one, 
 casting out such as are found untenable. By thus reduc- 
 ing the number of hypotheses, we may at length come to 
 one which, all competitors discredited and itself not in- 
 congruous with the facts of experience, may claim our 
 acceptance. This is the method of Dr. Martineau in 
 his wonderful chapter on God in Humanity} which we 
 shall somewhat irregularly follow; also in his exposition 
 of the same theme in the great Study of Religion?' 
 
 1 Seat of Authority in Religion, chap. ii. 
 
 2 Vol. ii. pp. 1-39.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 363 
 
 I. While, to discriminate its function, we have placed 
 Conscience in contrast with Prudence, we are brought 
 now to remember that there are those who hold that these 
 twain are one, and that that one is Prudence. Conscience, 
 that is, they explain as a reflection of Prudence. Man 
 ever acts, as they maintain, with reference to ends ; which 
 must always be in some form his pleasure, happiness, wel- 
 fare. This fact they hold no more patent in the quest 
 of money or fame than in the discharge of duty or the 
 pursuit of character or holiness. The inward monition 
 which we have described, they explain as a reaching after 
 a nobler pleasure, or, what comes to the same thing, a 
 desire for exemption from a bitterer pain. This is Ben- 
 tham's doctrine. " Nature," he tells us, " has placed 
 mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, 
 pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what 
 we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. 
 On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the 
 other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their 
 throne." ^ John Stuart Mill also tells us that " happiness is 
 the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the 
 test by which to judge all human conduct;" also that 
 " those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either 
 because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because 
 the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both 
 reasons united." ^ This Hedonism might almost persuade, 
 and very likely has persuaded many, by the vigor of its 
 proclamation. Considering its high sources, however, it 
 
 1 Quoted by Dr. Martineau, Seat of Authority, p. 58. 
 
 2 Ibid. Over against this doctrine there is temptation to place the dictum 
 of John Henry Newman : " All virtue and goodness tend to make men 
 powerful in this world; but they who aim at the power have not the virtue. 
 Again, virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest 
 pleasure ; but they who cultivate it for the pleasure's sake are selfish, not 
 religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because they can never have the 
 virtue."
 
 364 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 is simply astonishing that it should be put forth so unquali- 
 fiedly. Grant that considerations of pleasure and pain 
 have much to do with our conduct; it is psychologically 
 absurd to say that they rule us in the instinctive period of 
 life, ere a distinction of ends has dawned upon us. During 
 this period we simply act from inner incentives, with no 
 perception whatever of the consequences to which they 
 urge us. Doubtless the infant finds pleasure in its activi- 
 ties, as the kitten in its frolic and the colt in its gambol ; 
 but this is simply because to act from an interior impulse 
 gives pleasure, and not at all because pleasure is the aim 
 of its action. Thus, in the beginning of life our sovereign 
 is within, and he admits no rival and takes no counsel. 
 When we come to the self-conscious stage, does he ab- 
 dicate his throne? Because a perception of ends is now 
 possible to us, do the " springs " of conduct cease from 
 their initiatives? Not so to the observant mind of Dr. 
 Martineau ; rather, they treat the wisdom that has now 
 come as a servant to execute their behests. " Pleasure is, 
 in fact," says he, " the fruit, and not the germ, of the 
 several types of natural activity: it is simply the satis- 
 faction of reaching their various ends, and, but for their 
 existence first, could never itself arise afterwards." ^ Else- 
 where, meeting the same issue, he writes : " Neither in 
 human consciousness, nor in the phenomena of animal life, 
 is there the slightest ground for assigning priority to the 
 self-seeking desires, and treating all extra-regarding affec- 
 tions as derivative from them. Instead of admitting that 
 pleasure sets up all our springs of action, I affirm that the 
 springs of action set up all our pleasures."^ But when, 
 beyond the instinctive period, we begin to forecast and 
 select our way, then considerations of pleasure and pain 
 have an extensive sway with us. So far, however, as ruled 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 5cS. 
 
 2 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 12-13.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 365 
 
 by them, we simply act from Prudence, such as we might 
 manifest were we simply wise, all sense of moral dis- 
 tinction being denied us. Here Dr. Martineau holds to 
 be the limit beyond which the " governance " declared by 
 Bentham to be universal " can never be carried ; " and 
 he declares that unless character is "without any higher 
 region where self-regards can breathe no more, the 
 sceptre of pleasure meets here the frontier of its sway, and 
 carries no prerogative into the proper territory of duty."^ 
 For this reason this branch of the utilitarian argument he 
 dismisses as utterly untenable. Consciousness pronounces 
 against it with an emphasis that cannot be discarded. The 
 voice that speaks through it is sovereign, not ministerial, 
 in its tone ; it comes from the Sinai within the breast, 
 not with admonition. This were inexpedient and that 
 were wise, but with solemn command, Thou shalt not 
 and Thou shalt. There is, however, another application 
 of utilitarian doctrine, which demands a word. It is that 
 associated with the name of Paiey. It has an eye to 
 consequences, but those consequences are heaven and 
 hell. Without the emphasis of these, so Paley argues, 
 pledging to holiness its reward and to sin its penalty, this 
 inward voice would speak with no authority. Though the 
 doctrine is Paleyan, it is also very modern, and is pro- 
 claimed from many a pulpit. Arguing from the analogy 
 of human government, it is maintained that the Righteous- 
 ness of the universe is without authority unless there is 
 provided for disobedience a penal retribution. What 
 significance would attach to law without a prison, or to 
 the moral law without hell? This Dr. Martineau finds a 
 thoroughgoing misapprehension of authority, " dispensing 
 with its essence, and insisting on its appendages." " Are 
 we, then," he asks, "to say, that if there were no pains of 
 hell, and joys of heaven, there would be no duty binding 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 59.
 
 366 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 upon men? and that, while the call and the compunctions 
 of conscience remain, duty can cease to be? " His conten- 
 tion rather is that " it is the external sufferings, wherever 
 placed in time, which it rests with us, in simple prudence 
 or imprudence, to meet or to decline ; and it is the internal 
 appeal for preference, and remorse for rejection, which it 
 may be in our power, but is never in our right, to tamper 
 with by likings of our own. Whatever impressiveness there 
 is in the prospective retribution belongs to it, not as a 
 sentient expectation, but as a moral award. Strip it of its 
 ethical significance, and reduce it to a naked affection of 
 the sensitive nature; turn it from an emblem of justice 
 to an arbitrary, though calculable, physical experience, — 
 and all its solemnity is gone." ^ 
 
 Thus the utilitarian explanation of moral authority fails. 
 Utilitarianism speaks in terms of pleasure and pain, of 
 wisdom and foolishness, of advantage and disadvantage; 
 this voice speaks in terms of right and wrong: it uses 
 the great words " ought," " duty," " obligation ; " and, strive 
 as we may, we cannot deduce the latter from the former. 
 Though the problem has been attempted by some of the 
 best intellects of the world, no safe passage has ever yet 
 been opened from the prudential to the ought. Even 
 Mill, whose splendid essay on Utilitarianism is the most 
 persuasive exposition of this doctrine, repudiated it ut- 
 terly in his memorable outburst: "I will call no being 
 good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet 
 to my fellow-creatures; and, if such a being can sentence 
 me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." ^ Cer- 
 tainly it is wise to do right, and he plays the fool who 
 does wrong; but this is because the constitution of things 
 is such that our better destiny is involved with our 
 obedience, 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, pp. 60-61. 
 
 2 Examination of Hamilton, vol. ii. p. 131.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 367 
 
 2. But grant that in utility wc cannot find the source 
 of this authority, may we not find it in ourselves? 
 
 " Our little lives are held in equipoise 
 By opposite attractions and desires, 
 The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 
 And the far nobler instinct that aspires." 
 
 That is, there is within us a higher and a lower ; and may 
 it not be that through the higher as rightful lawgiver to 
 the lower the moral rule is given? This consideration 
 is often and variously met; and in one sense we hold it 
 true, and Dr. Martineau so holds it. It is within us and 
 at our supreme height that this voice is heard, and it is 
 within us that we heed it or otherwise. " But," argues 
 Dr. Martineau, " though the authority of the higher incen- 
 tive is self-known, it cannot be self-created ; for, while it 
 is in me, it is above me. Its tones thrill through my 
 chamber where I sit alone : but it was not my voice that 
 uttered them : they came to me, but not from me. . . . 
 I resist the claims of the right ; I wrestle with them ; I am 
 beaten by them : or, I surrender to them ; I follow them ; 
 I triumph with them : and how, then, can you say that 
 they are but the shadow of myself? The authority which 
 I set up I am able also to take down ; yet, do what I 
 may, I cannot discharge my compunctions, and shut the 
 door on them as on troublesome creditors who have 
 nothing to show against me, and depend upon my will 
 for any claim they have. No act of repeal on my part 
 avails to release me from the obligations which turn up 
 within my consciousness ; nor, by any edict of clemency 
 to my own moral bankruptcy, can I say to myself, ' I for- 
 give thee all that debt.' " ^ There is, however, a difficulty 
 that lurks in this conception of higher and lower which 
 exacts a word. Though the conception is true enough 
 as denoting the contrast between the lower passions and 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 63.
 
 368 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 the higher reason, it will not bear a moment's investiga- 
 tion when it conveys the suggestion of source and recip- 
 ient of the moral rule. What is it within me that can 
 receive such a rule? Only the person that I am, whose 
 functions are my reason and my wnll : this may, indeed, 
 receive such rule and then apply it to the control of my 
 passions and the regulation of my desires. But above 
 this, what is there within me by which this august rule 
 can be declared? No fact can be plainer than that the 
 recipient agency is here the highest within me. For this 
 supreme gift, then, I am driven to look beyond and above 
 me. 
 
 3. This view of the source of moral authority might 
 be easily tested in other fields ; the tests, however, would 
 only still further discredit it, and we may as well dismiss 
 it here. But there is a third explanation that has been 
 pressed with great earnestness. We are not insulated 
 beings ; our life is in society ; each is one of many, a part 
 of all. May it not be, then, that this sense of obligation 
 comes out of society : the whole dominating the individ- 
 ual, humanity in lordship over man? To poetic tempera- 
 ments this view has often great weight ; and to scientific 
 minds, also, that can hazard a speculation where they 
 cannot build an induction. It is variously reflected in 
 all ethics of Positivist tendency, and is fundamental in 
 that strange Religion of Humanity in which Comte would 
 substitute for the worship of God a worship of man. 
 
 It is true that our moral sentiments, in the main, do 
 not appear save in social relations. This, however, may 
 mean no more than that, like other things, they must 
 have their conditions; that mother love, for instance, 
 could not be without motherhood, nor human sympathy 
 save in contact with a human need that invokes it. That 
 these conditions are the source of moral authority by no 
 means follows. But come directly to the question : What
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 369 
 
 do we mean when we say this sense of obUgation comes 
 from society? Do we indeed mean that the whole domi- 
 nates the individual? How, then, is the "whole" to be 
 conceived by us? Is it an " aggregate of separate persons, 
 taken one by one, without any consciousness of moral dis- 
 tinctions, and combined simply for the greater strength 
 of associated will?" Then, as Dr. Martineau maintains, 
 the dominance of the " whole over the part" is the " rela- 
 tion of force to weakness, which has nothing whatever to 
 do with the relation of right to wrong." " Magnitude of 
 scale carries no moral quality." " Such as the natures 
 are, separately taken, such will be their collective sum." ^ 
 A million rats might bring us to serious extremities ; but 
 their numbers would not promote them in our esteem, 
 only increase our disgust. With Swift, conceive our 
 fellow-men as yahoos, and their aggregate, however vast, 
 could not break the force of the Brobdingnagian judgment 
 which pronounced them the " most pernicious race of 
 odious little vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl 
 upon the face of the earth ; " and any superior nature, 
 however coerced by their numbers, could stand to them 
 in no relation in which they could be to it a source of 
 moral authority. The dark view of the great satirist may 
 not be ours, and human nature may be noble in our eyes ; 
 still the argument holds, that in its mass, simply as mass, 
 however large, it sustains no relation to me whence it can 
 speak to me in that oracular tone. Its vast constraint 
 may impose on me a imtst, but how can it impose an 
 ought? It speaks to me of its interests and its welfare; 
 but morally it speaks to no purpose unless to a Duty that 
 is already wnthin me. Shall I sacrifice for society, — toil, 
 suffer, die? Yes, indeed ; but my doing so is only enforced 
 and perfunctory, it has absolutely no moral quality, unless 
 the command to do so is met and ratified by an antece- 
 
 * Seat of Authority, p. 67. 
 34
 
 370 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 dent obligation in my breast. Through law or institution 
 or custom does it say ought to me? Then it simply 
 speaks out of a common sentiment to the like sentiment 
 in me. In any sense implying moral authority as original 
 in itself, it cannot speak to me that august word. Con- 
 gruous with this truth and illustrative of it, is our feeling 
 in contemplating some great ordeal where chief priests 
 and rabbis are all on one side, and one buffeted yet truth- 
 sustained son of man on the other. Transport ourselves 
 into the Diet of Worms, and to whom shall we look for 
 the purer moral light? Not to the emperor and the vast 
 concourse of princes and nobles and church dignitaries, 
 but to the one defiant hero there. 
 
 There is, however, another way of treating the relation 
 with society, — one that takes account, not of mass, but of 
 duration; and which affirms, in effect, that the spon- 
 taneous response to her rules which society cannot at 
 once command she can secure through the drill of genera- 
 tions. I, who sum up in myself some thousands of years 
 of hereditary dealing with her, have her utilities organ- 
 ized as moral prepossessions within me. Thou shalt not 
 lie ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not kill ; be just ; be 
 temperate ; be humane ; — the moral response I make to 
 these commands I am bidden to account for by the many 
 centuries of her tuition. To this Dr. Martineau replies 
 that " the highest capital of human wishes, paid up 
 through all the ages, . . . can make nothing just that was 
 not just before. At best, it can only enforce obligations 
 already there, — obligations which it cannot cancel, and 
 did not create."^ This is a brief and summary dealing 
 with a doctrine of which the vogue is wide. Its clearness, 
 however, makes exposition superfluous, and from its in- 
 herent strength it needs to be buttressed by no argument. 
 While admitting, therefore, that through the tuition of 
 
 1 Seat of Authority, p. 67.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 371 
 
 generations man may acquire a more steady obedience, 
 we must deny that in that tuition originated the righteous- 
 ness he obeys. It well may be that through the evo- 
 lutionary process the right becomes clearer and more 
 dominating; but this is almost the same as saying that by 
 it that process is directed, which implies that in its source 
 it is extra-evolutionary. 
 
 But grant that Conscience is something other than a 
 " Right by Social Vote," and that it does not come from 
 society as an hereditary reflection of its prudence, may we 
 not yet regard it as a certain standard of feeling that de- 
 scends from those of loftier nature to those below them? 
 A saint in a neighborhood may redeem its life; a nation 
 is something other for a Pericles or a Washington ; Soc- 
 rates and Marcus Aurelius are suns in whose fostering 
 warmth we thrive : by such there is created a moral at- 
 mosphere, from breathing which we more truly live. Con- 
 science, may we not then say, is the result of consciences? 
 By others' strength we are strong; by others' ideals we 
 form our own. The standard of courage, — how often is it 
 but the chieftain's example, short of which it is ignominy 
 to fall ! Consecration, — why not settle with it at once as 
 the devotion of Paul and Savonarola glorified? To the 
 vast majority, if not to all, the significance to moral stand- 
 ards of commanding example is measureless. Why not 
 say, then, that the canons of moral judgment are the 
 happy hits of a few exalted natures, whence they have de- 
 scended as a grace to those below them? This view has 
 to many minds a persuasive look ; and with it before him 
 Dr. Martineau remarks that if we take society to mean the 
 " common council of responsible men, then it is most true 
 that the moral authority which we acknowledge is brought 
 to an intense focus in our minds by the reflected lights of 
 theirs ; and we should but dimly own it, did they not own 
 it too." " But," he asks, " how is it that they thus work
 
 372 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 upon us, and mould us to a new docility? Is it that they 
 are principals in command, and we subordinates in ser- 
 vice, that, accepting their will as sovereign, we are content 
 to do their bidding? No: their function in this matter is, 
 not to fill the post of authority, but to join us on the steps 
 of submission below it; to confess their fellow-feeling with 
 us, and accept their partnership under the same law. 
 Instead of being our masters, they are but bondsmen, with 
 us, of a higher righteousness, which opens its oracles and 
 seeks its organs in us all."^ 
 
 Thus all these hypotheses, critically examined, fail to 
 render a satisfactory account of this haunting sense of 
 obligation. It is not born of the consideration of pleas- 
 ure and pain, whether present or prospective ; it does 
 not come out of ourselves ; it does not come from society, 
 either through the weight of its present authority, or its 
 organized and hereditary discipline ; and while our nobler 
 fellow-men, through their submission to it, may help our 
 own, it is as they help in the attainment of any virtue or 
 any grace in which they surpass us. At whatever height 
 they may stand above us, it speaks to them as to us, 
 and they bow to it as we bow. These hypotheses we 
 may now dismiss as not entitled to further hearing. 
 
 4. There is another hypothesis, which suppose we try. 
 Suppose we assume that the authority which seems so 
 real is so in very fact ; that the voice which speaks as from 
 above is indeed that of one who is rightful lawgiver to us ; 
 why, then we seem to give this authority a perfectly nat- 
 ural explanation, albeit the one that all the others have 
 been put forward to supplant. It is such account as the 
 needle, if endowed with consciousness, might give of the 
 attraction that holds it : unseen, yet felt, and through 
 the feeling, its objective validity certified. Obligation 
 means a due; ought signifies relation; authority implies 
 
 ^ Seat 0/ Authorify,-^^.6']-(&.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 373 
 
 not merely one who is sensible of its imperative, but also 
 one who issues its decree. In other words, the moral 
 consciousness implies a dualism, a sense of right within 
 responding to a Righteousness without, of which our 
 hypothesis renders an intelligible account. But suppose 
 for a moment this hypothesis not to be true; that the 
 inward sense responds to no outward reality ; that this is 
 an atheistic world in which man stands supreme. Then 
 there is one term of a dual relation without the other one : 
 a voice where no voice speaks ; a sense of duty where there 
 is no due ; an allegiance inwardly required, but no sover- 
 eign to whom to render it ; in a word, all the peculiar sen- 
 timents appropriate to one standing in the presence of a 
 God, and yet no God. The inevitable result of this, so far 
 as accepted, must be a sense of the utter untrustworthiness 
 of our deeper faculties. They then demand an obedience 
 where there is none to obey ; and report to us as from 
 beyond the stars a voice which is but the muttering of 
 opinion around us or the whispering of fancy within us. 
 If there be anything that more than anything else makes 
 necessary the belief in God, it is the moral sense within 
 us ; and if there be any delusion that surpasses every 
 other, it is that of which this sense makes us the victim 
 if God be no reality. Let that supposition stand, and 
 man may still be the "glory," but he is also the "jest and 
 riddle of the world." 
 
 A distrust of our deeper faculties, however, can never 
 be of long continuance. However they may be bewil- 
 dered for a time, we cannot sophisticate ourselves into a 
 permanent doubt of them. The universe that enters into 
 us through them is the only one that we can receive, and 
 before this trust in them the atheistic hypothesis vanishes. 
 The dual relation is not between Conscience and a blank, 
 but between Conscience and a reality. The duty within me 
 implies One who demands of me his due. The righteous'
 
 374 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ness that thrills me is the inward oracle of a Righteousness 
 that presses upon me. The ought I feel is of sovereign 
 command. The voice of Conscience is the voice of God. 
 This, in other statement, is the mind of Dr. Martineau. 
 As through Perception we are shown " another than our- 
 selves," so, he reasons, through Conscience there is re- 
 vealed to us a " higher than ourselves ; " and to the report 
 of either he attaches a like validity. He is not surer of a 
 world around him than of a Righteousness above him. 
 Our confidence in either rests ultimately, indeed, upon 
 faith in our faculties ; but this granted, he holds the infer- 
 ence in the one case as in the other to be necessary 
 and resistless. To the impressions borne in upon us, 
 whether through Perception or Conscience, there must 
 be an objective counterpart: the sense of Duty, like the 
 sense of touch or sight, implies a " dual relation ; " it " can- 
 not belong to a soul iji vacuo, but must be for ever a dis- 
 consolate and wandering illusion, till it rests with Him to 
 whom the allegiance is due." ^ 
 
 Thus through the Moral Sense or Conscience we reach 
 the conception of a Divine Righteousness. We pause in 
 our course for a moment to ask what righteousness the 
 righteousness of God implies. We must dare to be an- 
 thropomorphic yet again, and say that what it implies in 
 God must be divined from what it is found to imply in 
 man. In any system of religious thought a parallelism 
 between Divine and human righteousness must appear. 
 Thus under Jewish legalism, man's righteousness was in 
 the keeping of the Law, its tithes and its offerings, its 
 new moons and Sabbath days ; God's righteousness, on 
 the other hand, was seen in the appointment of this 
 Law, in his smile upon obedience, his frown upon dis- 
 obedience. In the systems of Christian doctrine, too, 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 27
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 3/5 
 
 associated with the names of St. Augustine and Calvin, 
 we meet the Hke parallehsm again. The righteousness of 
 man consisted in the acceptance of certain conditions of 
 salvation ; that of God in providing these conditions and 
 in reprobation of such as did not embrace them. These 
 systems, however, were founded on a supposed revelation, 
 in surrender to which the moral sense was given little 
 hearing ; rather, attempts on its part to interpret the moral 
 universe by its own light were treated as superfluous and 
 questionable enterprise. Whenever the moral sense makes 
 this attempt, however, something other than a parallel- 
 ism is reached ; there is divined a relation as of wavelet 
 and Deep, of ray and Sun. The righteousness of man, 
 the conduct, that is, which the moral sense in its noblest 
 exercise requires, becomes the analogical base from which 
 we rise to our conception of the righteousness of God. 
 The integrity which I demand, the justice for which I 
 plead, the benevolence which I know should rule my 
 life, I must find in him or I am hopelessly bewildered. 
 Nay, in the last account, I see that they must be of him, 
 his light shed abroad in me. To our limited vision, 
 though justice and judgment are the habitation of his 
 throne, clouds and darkness must be round about him. 
 Many of his appointments I cannot understand. But 
 when, turning within my moral consciousness, I find that 
 while faithful to that I could not inflict a needless hurt 
 upon any creature, then I am simply sure that his right- 
 eousness must be one with his goodness, and that the 
 darker phases of existence, rightly understood, do not 
 contradict his benevolence. 
 
 II. TJie Moral Aspects of the Universe 
 
 A grave problem, however, is yet before us. The faith 
 so confidently affirmed above must now be brought to
 
 3/6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 proof in the broad field of experience. We found our 
 deduction from the causal intuition ratified by Nature; do 
 we find like ratification for our deduction from the moral 
 intuition? Nature reflects an Intelligence; does it also 
 reflect a Righteousness? Is the Being whose voice I 
 recognize in Conscience identical with the Being to whom 
 I refer the structure and order of the world ? Shall I say 
 the God of Nature is one and the God of Conscience 
 another? To state this as a thesis and then attempt to 
 defend it would lead into bewilderments of thought that 
 would be ludicrous if they were not so grave. But to 
 adopt the opposite thesis, and maintain that they are only 
 different aspects of one ; that the All-Wise is the All- 
 Righteous and the All-Righteous the All-Wise, involves 
 difficulties more familiar, but hardly less grave. 
 
 For when we affirm that the Author of Nature is right- 
 eous, we meet the solemn challenge that comes from the 
 experience of evil, from which no sentient nature is 
 granted immunity. How can the All-Righteous decree or 
 suff*er evil? How can we reconcile this manifold pain 
 with a Divine Perfection? We recall the terrible indict- 
 ment of John Stuart Mill : " Nature impales men, breaks 
 them as if on a wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild 
 beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones 
 like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, 
 freezes them with cold, poisons them with the quick or 
 slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other 
 hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of 
 a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," ^ and what answer 
 can we make? Though in the case of man we may con- 
 struct a defence of this, taking account of his needful pun- 
 ishment and discipline and education, how of the lower 
 animals which deserve no punishment, and can profit by 
 no discipline, and which Nature yet makes the prey of 
 
 1 Three Essays on Religion, p. 29.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 377 
 
 Other animals, afflicts with disease, crushes, freezes, burns, 
 drowns, starves? Did we wish to maintain the sover- 
 eignty of an evil deity, what a bill of particulars would 
 be possible ! Pleasant pictures of Nature we often in- 
 dulge: her sunshine, her breezes, her grass, her flowers; 
 the bird's carol, the lamb's frolic, the colt's gambol, the 
 sweet domesticities of the nest and the lair. But there are 
 also the pestilence, the blizzard, the inundation, the earth- 
 quake, the tiger's claws, the vulture's beak, the snake's 
 venom. The difficulties of this problem are manifold and 
 grave. " With the critic," says Dr. Martineau, " who 
 arraigns the creative skill and thinks the solar system or 
 the human eye a bungling piece of work, it is easy to 
 be simply amused without disturbance: but whoever asks 
 us about the problem of evil, and especially of sin, touches 
 a chord of secret sorrow, and subdues us to a grave anx- 
 iety." He adds the concession which the strength of his 
 theistic feeling makes the more significant, that " in various 
 ways the phenomena of life are disappointing to our ideal 
 of a moral administration of its affairs."^ It is undeni- 
 able, too, that the studies of recent years, especially on 
 evolutionary lines, have deepened the gravity of this theme. 
 The struggle for life, which is only another name for the 
 struggle for food, and which is a basal truth in Darwinian 
 doctrine, presents to us organic nature as a scene of cease- 
 less and pitiless foray. On the ethical side the darkness 
 may be somewhat lightened by the struggle for the life of 
 others, of which Henry Drummond discourses so elo- 
 quently,^ showing an altruism against the otherwise unre- 
 lieved egoism of nature. There all the same is the struggle, 
 not less insistent or attended with less suffering because 
 altruistic. The truth casts a look of cruelty upon Nature 
 which even her summer exuberance and beauty cannot 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 53-54. 
 ^ The Ascent of i\fan, chap. ii.
 
 378 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 hide, and prepares not a few to embrace the solemn judg- 
 ment of Professor Huxley, that " cosmic nature is no 
 school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of 
 ethical nature ; " ^ and that the " ethical progress of society 
 depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, . . . but in 
 combating it."^ 
 
 However, though the difficulties of this problem are 
 very great, it may not be absolutely necessary that we 
 surrender our faith before them ; at any rate, it is fair to 
 investigate them before we do so. The sufferings of the 
 lower animals our human sensibilities may exaggerate ; 
 and seeing them in their true proportions will so far 
 lighten our problem. There may be pain that is quite 
 indispensable to the welfare of sentient natures, and which, 
 therefore, we must write down, not as bane, but as bless- 
 ing. There may be pain incident upon a system of things 
 which in its largeness our reason pronounces good, and 
 which, therefore, for that system's sake we would have 
 the world endure. It might be instructive sometimes, 
 when disparaging the world because of its evil, to select 
 some special evil, in thought banish it from the world, 
 working as we do so all the myriad transformations its 
 banishment should imply, and then calmly contemplate 
 the result. Possibly it might look surpassingly fair to 
 us; but the probabilities the rather are that the world thus 
 made over we would not accept in exchange for the world 
 we know ; that the system of things that makes provision 
 for that evil would be fairer to our eyes than the system 
 of things that would not suffer it. We recall the dream of 
 Theodorus as the imagination of Leibnitz has constructed 
 it. The oracle has made known to Sextus Tarquinius that, 
 following his heady will, for the wrongs he shall do he 
 shall be driven forth in poverty and exile. Theodorus, a 
 
 1 Romanes Lecture, Collected Essays, vol. ix. p. 75. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 83.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 379 
 
 priest of the temple, asks of Jupiter that he explain to him 
 the hard fate of Sextus : why a different will, which should 
 conduct him through other paths to a different issue, has 
 not been given him. In a vision he is taken in hand by- 
 Minerva, who shows him the plan of several possible 
 worlds. In one is Sextus rich and happy and honored, 
 yet, as he surveys it, it does not suit him. He is shown 
 another in which is Sextus great and powerful, yet he turns 
 from it dissatisfied. Finally he is shown one that fills him 
 with delight; and is then told that it is the plan of the 
 very world in which he lives, which cannot be without its 
 Sextus. 
 
 Of these three considerations the latter shall engage us 
 first. In some form or other we have our Sextus, and we 
 are not pleased with him ; yet our ideal world must contain 
 him ; for it cannot be ideal without the conditions that 
 imply him. Of the Divine Perfection we demand a world 
 without evil : Sextus it should not suffer. To Omnipo- 
 tence, we say, this should be possible ; infinite resource 
 should be equal to conditions that imply no pain. Suppose 
 we grant it. Still we may urge that to Omnipotence this 
 and at the same time that which is incompatible with it is 
 not possible. We must not ask contradictories, even of 
 God. The fact that he does not at the same time provide 
 for his creatures mutually exclusive conditions does not 
 discredit his goodness. We may see this better by illus- 
 tration. The one aspect of the universe that we are most 
 wont to celebrate is its order ; but with this is implicated 
 a very large portion of the evils of which we seek explana- 
 tion. Without these evils how, then, that order? Take 
 in hand a familiar case: Of the fluidity of water we never 
 hear complaint ; without this how should it serve its multi- 
 farious uses? Of the service of the sun's heat in occasion- 
 ing chemical changes, whence the world's bloom and 
 fruitage, we surely think well ; and of gravitation which
 
 380 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 holds the mountain in its place and the heavens at their 
 poise we need the poet properly to tell. Yet you com- 
 plain of malaria : because of your chill and your fever, 
 God, you conceive, must be feeble or unkind. But in 
 the production of this poison these several laws are joint 
 agents. Because water is fluid, gravitation conducts it 
 ever from the hilltops to the valleys, and holds it there ; 
 and the sun's rays falling upon it work the chemical 
 change whence malaria comes. If water were not fluid, 
 if gravitation would not conduct it to the valleys or 
 would suffer it to flow to the hilltops, if the sun's rays 
 would work no chemical change, why, then there would 
 be no malaria; and these laws must be suspended in 
 their operation, that living creatures may enjoy this happy 
 exemption. And this supposed case may illustrate 
 universal nature. The flood, the drouth, the hail, the 
 frost, the lightning, the avalanche, the tornado, are all 
 incident upon laws we would not ask to have annulled, 
 without which, indeed, this system of things could not be. 
 But you plead that if only they were so regulated that 
 there should be no flood where there is anything to drown, 
 or drouth where men have sown or where cattle graze, or 
 frost where there is anything to suffer chill, if the lightning 
 could be forbidden to smite anything but the unfeeling 
 rocks, and the tempest be held back till the commerce is 
 safely harbored, and the avalanche be diverted from its 
 course in consideration of the thoughtless bear that is 
 climbing before it, what incalculable loss and suffering 
 would be spared. Be it so ; but thus, in place of the 
 order you celebrate, you would introduce a reign of mir- 
 acle. Suffering might thus indeed be spared, but the con- 
 stancy of nature would be gone. Let it be presumed that 
 we might have the constancy or might have the miracle ; 
 yet, since they arc mutually exclusive, we cannot stipu- 
 late for both. Possibly you may think the reign of mir-
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 381 
 
 acle would be better; but were it left to the suffrage of 
 mankind the vote would undoubtedly be for the order. 
 In this multifarious evil is our Sextus, to whom a law- 
 governed and orderly world must give place. 
 
 The alternative presented us in thought, then, is a world 
 whose more general features we approve, with Sextus, or 
 a world without Sextus whose more general features we do 
 not approve. It is not, however, in this large way that 
 most men wrestle with the problem : it is not with evil 
 but with evils that they struggle, the special pains they 
 experience or see. Here, however, on a smaller field it 
 is still an alternative of better condition with Sextus or 
 poorer without him. We have mentioned pains that seem 
 clearly necessary to welfare, and these come now before 
 us. They are such as are experienced from hunger, thirst, 
 heat, cold, fatigue. They have a monitory office, and 
 the greater evil would surely be, not in experiencing them, 
 but in not being able to experience them. Consider for a 
 moment hunger and thirst. They express the demand of 
 the organism for food and drink, without which it would 
 perish ; and the longer they are denied the more insistent 
 is this demand. Of this the critics of the moral legislation 
 of the universe have complained, but what would they 
 have? In a matter so exigent as this, would they leave 
 the animal or even man to the rule of wisdom or sagacity 
 to select nourishment and determine the times for taking 
 it, uninstructed by any sense of want? Dr. Martineau 
 well asks, " If each creature had to study its own case, 
 and, like an outside physician, prescribe its diet and its 
 meals . . . how long would it be before it slipped into 
 some fatal forgetfulness, like a patient kept alive by art, 
 and blundering among his medicines?"^ The sufferings 
 of heat and cold, too, are in like manner monitory. Each 
 tells the creature that its conditions are not suited to itself 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 76.
 
 382 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 and urges that it change them. Imagine a creature to 
 which tropic heats and polar frosts were indifferent and so 
 left to choose its latitudes without sensible realization of 
 any contrast between them ! The sufferings of fatigue, 
 also, rightly claim a word in their behalf. Were the animal 
 only a machine, it might run on and on, until at length, 
 entirely spent, it could run no longer. Being, however, 
 not a machine, but an organism, there comes at last the 
 realization that its force is getting spent, which is also an 
 admonition that it pause till its vigor be renewed. In like 
 manner, too, we must treat the pain that attends physical 
 injury or disease. It tells of something wrong with the or- 
 ganism, and asks relief. A particle of dust impinges upon 
 the eye, and how keen is the suffering ! The suffering 
 is Nature's way of telling of the presence in the eye of that 
 which would soon destroy it. However we may dislike 
 our pain, surely our human wisdom would elect that where 
 our injury is, there an ache may be. From what multi- 
 tudinous forms of peril do we snatch ourselves at the 
 beneficent prompting of our pain ! A work on physiology 
 recounts an instance of a man who, his lower limbs being 
 partially paralyzed, was ordered to hold them in tepid 
 water. Feeling no sense of warmth, he plunged them 
 into boiling water. He never had the use of feet there- 
 after. The pain that normally attends a scald was not 
 present to save him. 
 
 Here, again, we give our vote for a world with Sextus. 
 There are other forms of evil, however, with which it is 
 not so easy to deal. Dr. Martineau instances the pains 
 of decline ; and these, after careful dealing with them, he 
 seems to turn from with mind not wholly satisfied. In 
 them there is no discipline for any future, no provision for 
 the welfare of the organism. They are attendant upon a 
 slow and irremediable degeneracy, a declining sun which 
 yields at last only twilight, which soon fades into night.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 383 
 
 In man this decline is more marked than in other animals, 
 as it is also more prolonged ; but no animal is exempt 
 from it. Age dims the eyes of the lion, takes its supple- 
 ness from the limbs of the tiger, its strength from the 
 eagle's wing. With its approach the wolf and the panther 
 become incapable of the hunt, and at length, unless re- 
 prieved by the merciful ferocity of other animals, they lie 
 down in some lonely spot and whine and starve. We 
 mark its encroachment upon our domestic animals, and, 
 from sympathy for their sufferings, first, perhaps, admin- 
 istering some gentle anaesthetic, discharge them from 
 further service. 
 
 It is useless to attempt to minimize this evil, or to ex- 
 plain its purpose. It can hardly be said to have a pur- 
 pose ; rather it foreshadows the fulfilment of purpose, so 
 far as the organism is concerned. We may see, however, 
 what the absence of it would mean, what, by asking re- 
 prieve from it, we by implication ask in place of it; and 
 this may have for us a profitable suggestion. To all 
 higher organisms the hill of life slopes gradually up ; from 
 the summit, would we have no sloping down on the other 
 side? The full maturity of powers once gained, and 
 further continuance implying the first stages of decline, 
 would we have the organism vanish? Would we have it 
 written in the constitution of animal or man. On the day 
 when thou reachest the fulness of thy powers, thou shalt 
 surely die? Whoever will follow out this alternative in 
 practical application will be quite as sensible of the happi- 
 ness and usefulness it would curtail as of the misery it 
 would shorten. The horse should drop under his rider; 
 the deer should be snatched from her fawn, the lioness 
 from her whelps, the robin from her nestlings, that the 
 downhill of life might not be trodden. The father and 
 mother should be taken from their children when resource 
 was fullest and need was greatest, the scholar forbidden to
 
 384 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 gather up the results of his labors, the statesman to apply 
 his experience, the philanthropist to bestow his blessing. 
 Who can fail to see the paralyzing shadow such a change 
 would hang over self-conscious existence? The period of 
 maturity would be the dreaded period ; the disciplines 
 that hasten the unfolding of human powers would be 
 renounced for the indolence that defers it. The growing 
 strength of youth, which we watch with such pleasure now, 
 would be to us as the prophecies of the hectic flush and 
 the hastening pulse. But the question may be pressed, 
 Why not the prolongation of years and at the same time 
 exemption from decrepitude and decay? Why not till 
 threescore and ten a continually expended, yet unwasted 
 strength, and then a departure provided through some 
 happy euthanasia? Again asking contradictions: for age, 
 the vision and the enterprise of youth; for the runner, 
 panting near the goal, the unspent vigor of the start. 
 " With what face," asks Dr. Martineau, " can any creature 
 ask that, living being so pleasant, unliving should be so 
 no less? That it feels the cold on going out does but 
 prove how warm its house has been. You cannot have 
 opposites giving you the same experience: if it be sweet 
 to behold the light, sweet it cannot be to lose it : if to 
 thirst be a distress, to drink will be relief. The uneasi- 
 ness of death is the necessary correlative to the happiness 
 ofHfe."! 
 
 Another form of evil by which many minds are troubled 
 is met in the law of prey. Large classes of animals 
 subsist on other animals; man hunts for his larder; — 
 alas, for his sport as well ! Nor can we say that under 
 this law there is always a sacrifice of the lower to the 
 higher. The bird eats the worm, it is true ; but the croco- 
 dile carries off the calf, and the tiger devours the man. 
 The spectacle of one creature taking the life of another is 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. S3.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 385 
 
 abhorrent to our sensibilities; and, from the frequency of 
 this, " we are tempted," says Dr. Martineau, " to say tliat 
 the sweet face of nature is hypocritical, and that the calm 
 loveliness of the woods and ravines does but hide innumer- 
 able torture-halls and battle-fields." He adds : " From 
 such impressions I own that I cannot always entirely 
 free myself." ^ 
 
 However, our human sentiments may here, as so often 
 in other relations, mislead us. All that begins in time 
 must end in time ; the born must die ; and with death 
 itself we are ceasing to quarrel. Death of itself is benefi- 
 cent ; and of the many modes of death, that by violence is 
 among the easiest. Among the lower animals it is prob- 
 able that the victim scarce suffers at all. The testimony 
 of men who have been nigh to the victim's experience, 
 that of the explorer Livingstone, for instance, once in the 
 jaws of a lion, makes this judgment all but certain. As 
 creatures of this world, the animals must leave it, and by 
 the law of prey Nature makes provision for their easiest 
 exit. " Sharp and quick extinction may shock the ob- 
 server by its startling contrasts : but, to the sufferer, the 
 surprise is an economy of pain. To imaginative creatures 
 it might be otherwise : they might torture themselves with 
 life-long dread of the last struggle : and such ideal dif- 
 fusion of possible calamity it is, that makes the human 
 measure of pain so different from the merely sentient. 
 But where there is no anticipation, and the unsuspecting 
 victim strolls at ease, or keeps merrily on the wing, up to 
 the moment of its fate, the sensibility is spared to the 
 uttermost. I believe that, in our shrinking from this law, 
 we illegitimately import into our conception of the case 
 elements, which are indeed inseparable from any analo- 
 gous human experience, but which have no entrance into 
 the history of the lower terrestrial races." ^ 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 88. * Ibid. p. 89. 
 
 25
 
 386 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 If we look at this mode of death from a practical and 
 utilitarian point of view, its wisdom is certainly approved. 
 But for it the world would be scarce habitable by the 
 higher races. The animal left to decay where it died, the 
 atmosphere would become tainted, the streams polluted, to 
 such extent that only the lower forms of Hfe would be 
 possible. In some Southern States the buzzard is pro- 
 tected by law because of the health it preserves by 
 devouring the carrion that would be pestilential. All 
 animals and birds of prey perform the like office by 
 making carrion to a large extent impossible. " Nature, in 
 her predatory tribes," says Dr. Martineau, " has appointed 
 a sanitary commission, and in her carrion-feeders a burial- 
 board, far more effective than those which watch over our 
 villages and cities ; " and he adds a suggestion which 
 gentle sensibilities may recoil from, that " one of the great 
 difficulties in our crowded civilization is due to the fact, 
 that there is nobody to eat us." ^ 
 
 Thus far we have contemplated mainly the lower ani- 
 mals. We now turn to man. As an animal, he suffers as 
 other animals suffer ; as other than animal he has sufferings 
 peculiarly his own. As related to the sensitive organism 
 merely, his sufferings from like misfortune may not be 
 greater than those of the more highly developed animals 
 about him. Hunger and thirst and fatigue we may 
 fancy very similar experience to him and to the horse; 
 a wounded soldier may not suffer intenser pain than a 
 wounded deer; and the murrain that destroys the cattle, 
 though less prolonged, may be for its period as hard to 
 bear as the consumption that afflicts man. But in addition 
 to the sufferings of his sensitive organism he experiences 
 a suffering through the action of his higher faculties of 
 which language cannot adequately tell. A being who can 
 carry the thought of contingency must have the dread of 
 
 * Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 90.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 387 
 
 vicissitude; in that he is able to forecast, it is impossible 
 that he should not apprehend. The horse takes the food 
 of to-day without concern for to-morrow ; to man is the 
 shivering dread of old age and penury. The dog is satis- 
 fied with the health that is; man is concerned for the 
 illness that may be. The bird which the fowler has missed 
 flies to another tree-top, and pours out its song; man, 
 from experience of danger, may live in an enervating 
 dread of perils that he does not see. The wounded deer 
 takes suffering as it comes ; the wounded soldier contem- 
 plates the family for whom he can no longer toil, looks 
 forward to to-morrow as the dread continuance of the 
 suffering of to-day, or to a prolongation of life in weakness 
 and decrepitude. Nor is forecast the only mental gift by 
 which man suffers ; memory is enjoyed by him on the like 
 hard tenure. With ills that have been, the animal is 
 wholly done ; man perpetuates in himself the pains of 
 neglect and failure, of injuries received and wrongs com- 
 mitted. These are grave considerations ; and Dr. Marti- 
 neau is clearly right when he tells us that " all sorrow is 
 certainly loss that refuses to go away into the past : all 
 anxiety, privation that will not wait for the future : and 
 we should be spared both, did we forget everything and 
 anticipate nothing."^ But again, what would we have? 
 To be without Sextus would we away with the fair con- 
 ditions that make him necessary, give up our memory to 
 be spared our regrets, our vision to escape our dreads? 
 Lives there a man who would abdicate his higher fac- 
 ulties and go down to the beast, that like the beast he 
 might enjoy the comfort of to-day without a sigh and 
 without anxiety? take the ill he must, provided only 
 it be unattended by dark retrospects and gloomy appre- 
 hensions? " Would you quit your many-chambered mind, 
 and shut yourself up in a single cell, and draw down its 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 92.
 
 388 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 blinds, that you may suspect no storms and see no lightning, 
 and know nothing till you are struck?" No: reason still 
 holding her throne, you could not do thus. The dog has 
 probably no evil memories and no anxious apprehensions, 
 but can you fix the terms on which you would exchange 
 your manhood for his doghood? Besides, as Dr. Marti- 
 neau takes pains to point out: "This is less than half the 
 tale : the ideal suffering which is added to our nature 
 is balanced and over-balanced by an ideal happiness of 
 which it alone is made susceptible. The capacity of 
 thought takes up into it all the elements of our experi- 
 ence, and gives them a boundless spiritual extension : and 
 if, in this enlargement, there is any change of their pro- 
 portions, it is that the ideal forms rather soften the shad- 
 ows and glorify the lights : so that the inner life is sweeter 
 than the outer, and supplies the truest balm for the wounds 
 of the actual." ^ Though memory writes some pages we 
 could wish unwritten, yet how ample a volume is her 
 happier record ; and though the future holds our dreads, 
 yet what brave achievements, what realized ideals, what 
 radiant hopes are there ! In the one direction we look 
 back to the morning, in the other " lieth our Italy." 
 
 But man is a moral being, and has experience of suffer- 
 ing known only through his moral sensibility. We recall 
 from Dr. Martineau's analysis of the "springs of conduct," 
 the primary passions^ which he shows to be simply an 
 equipment with which to meet a manifold affront and in- 
 jury and peril, also a compassiojiate affection which sends 
 us to mitigate the sufferings around us. We are given, 
 that is, a constitution which presupposes a dealing with 
 suffering; which we are commissioned, not passively to 
 accept, but to combat and meliorate as we can. The eyes 
 do not more clearly imply the light and the lungs the 
 
 1 Study of Relif^on, vol. ii, pp. 92-93. 
 
 2 Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. pp. 130 seq.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 389 
 
 air than does the moral constitution an evil with which it 
 is to wrestle. Without the evil it would scarce have a 
 raison d'etre. In the wrestle, too, not only are our chief 
 moral duties performed, but our higher crowns are won. 
 The school in which our patience is disciplined must be 
 that of self-denial and suffering; our heroism must be 
 gained on a battlefield ; our nobler sympathy, through a 
 dealing with need and pain. The evil " holds a place 
 therefore among the data of the moral life, and is essential 
 to this highest term in the ideal of humanity." Dr. Mar- 
 tineau quotes from Rothe the impressive saying: " In this 
 world all Good, even the fairest and noblest, — as Love, — 
 rests upon a ' dark ground,' which it has to consume with 
 pain and convert into pure spirit." 
 
 In one aspect this wears an ungentle look, but what then? 
 Our sufferings as moral beings, personal and sympathetic, 
 are very great ; but who would put off his moral constitu- 
 tion to escape them : part with sympathy that he may be 
 sensible of no sorrow, part with courage that he may meet 
 no peril, part with endurance that he may bear no cross? 
 The higher faculties are none of them without their cost; 
 to have them is necessarily to experience whatever trial and 
 heart-ache they imply. But who will say that in bestowing 
 gifts so great, though involving suffering so considerable, 
 the Creator of our being either blundered or was unkind ? 
 
 From evil incident to a moral nature we pass to moral 
 evil. Of the consequences of this, the sufferings it entails, 
 no extended exhibition need be made. Great, indeed, is 
 the complaint of such suffering, the blight which follows 
 vice, the woes of treachery, malice, cruelty, tyranny; 
 and from none is the complaint more dolorous than from 
 those most critical of the moral legislation of the universe. 
 But what would they have as the consequence of these 
 orders of conduct? Admitting them to be wrong, as of 
 course they do, would they have happiness follow them?
 
 390 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Would they have Peter deny his Master and shed no 
 tears afterwards? Judas betray him and spend his thirty 
 pieces with untroubled conscience? Would they have 
 devious paths lead to the same issue as straight ones, — 
 the way of obedience the way of peace, the way of disobe- 
 dience the way of peace no less : philanthropist and ex- 
 tortioner, saint and profligate, holy woman and harlot, 
 travel by opposite roads to a like felicity : under a com- 
 mon heaven a common smile for all? Under such a rule 
 as this, — woe, only woe to the world ! However hard the 
 penalty may look in a particular case, the most persuasive 
 argument the optimist can offer for his faith is drawn from 
 the suffering which inevitably follows wrong. If the law 
 of the Lord is perfect, evil must follow infraction of it. 
 Out of the light must be into the darkness ; out of the 
 warmth must be into the cold. The sufferings for sin of 
 which the complaints are so fervid, bear unmistakable tes- 
 timony that the core of things is true. " All is well," says 
 an American preacher, " for if there is anything that is not 
 well, it is well that it is not well." It is well that falsity 
 and hate are not well ; that malice and envy and cruelty 
 are not well. What hope for the world or what trust in 
 God if they were well ? 
 
 But granting it not inconsistent with the benevolence of 
 God that penalty should be linked with transgression, there 
 ■iis yet the further question : " How does it consist with the 
 holiness of God to admit so much unholiness in human 
 life?"^ This is Dr. Martineau's question, and in dealing 
 with it he remarks first on the contrast between the attitude 
 here taken, and that which is common when the course of 
 nature is under consideration. The moral censors of nature 
 are wont to dwell upon her apparent fatalism : her storm 
 and flood and pestilence know no relenting. Here the 
 complaint rather is the excessive scope of contingency. 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. lOO.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 391 
 
 Why was not man so made that he could only choose to 
 be good? The necessity of nature, — how dark a fact! 
 The freedom of man, — how bodeful its consequences ! 
 
 In both cases most true ; but as we found reason for the 
 steadfastness of nature, there may be justification of the 
 freedom of man. Provisionally there is this to observe, 
 that could man choose only the good, he were incapable of 
 moral choice at all. His truthfulness and kindliness were 
 as unmoral as the sunshine and the blossoms. In the ne- 
 cessity of nature, as we have seen, there is provision for her 
 stability ; in the freedom of man is provision for his mo- 
 rality ; and to this Dr. Martineau feels that the very right- 
 eousness of God must lead him. "A universe," says he, 
 "which no sin could invade, neither could any character 
 inhabit : and, in insisting that every access be shut against 
 moral evil, we ask the holiness of God to cancel its own 
 conditions, and take away the alternatives which reveal and 
 reproduce it. It is because He is Holy and cannot be con- 
 tent with an unmoral world where all the perfection is given 
 and none is earned, that he refuses to render guilt impos- 
 sible and inward harmony mechanical : were he only be- 
 nevolent, it would suffice to fill his creation with the joy of 
 sentient existence; but, being righteous too, he would 
 have in his presence beings nearer to himself, determining 
 themselves by free preference to the life which he ap- 
 proves : and preference there cannot be, unless the double 
 path is open. To set up therefore an absolute barrier 
 against the admission of wrong, is to arrest the system of 
 things at the mere natural order, and detain life at the stage 
 of a human menagerie, instead of letting it culminate in a 
 moral society." ^ 
 
 This is a pregnant passage, but its meaning cannot be 
 obscure. The lady perhaps affirmed too much when she 
 said, " Take away my total depravity and you take away 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 101-102.
 
 392 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 everything." She could, however, most justly have said : 
 Take away my capacity for sin, and my capacity for holi- 
 ness were gone. In thus saving me you would discrown 
 me ; in thus releasing me from the liability of hell you 
 would make heaven impossible. It does not enter into 
 the conception of man how God could call into being a 
 moral nature that should not be free. But with the free- 
 dom there must be freedom to sin; the consequences we 
 deplore, it must be possible to incur. A freedom to 
 choose only one thing is determinism wrongly spelled. 
 But again and finally, what would you? Become a thing 
 to avoid the liabilities of a person? To escape conse- 
 quences which in the exercise of freedom you need not 
 elect, give up the august prerogative of a child of God? 
 In the face of this alternative most of us would surely 
 decide to endure Sextus for a yet longer period. 
 
 Thus it may be shown that a multifarious evil may not 
 be incompatible with an infinite Goodness. It may be 
 implicated with a legislation which, with all the smarts 
 it brings, we would not change. Given a law-ruled world 
 tenanted by sensitive organisms, and the conditions of 
 suffering are provided. Given a nature endowed with 
 the high prerogative of moral freedom, and sin must be 
 possible. The suffering and the sin are linked with these 
 conditions, and if we would not change these conditions, 
 it hardly becomes us as rational beings to impeach the 
 Universal Throne because of the consequences that re- 
 sult from them. Indeed, the only consistent complainer 
 is the pessimist, who, since he conceives all sentient ex- 
 istence evil, would cancel it entirely. But the pessimist, 
 however acute his reasoning and however sincere his 
 proclamation, the suffering multitude do not take seri- 
 ously. They conceive him a melancholy jester. Human 
 nature repudiates his creed ; and the deed that should 
 witness its consistent acceptance is held to be the supreme
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 393 
 
 proof that reason is dethroned. And where is pessimism 
 found? Not in the cottages of the poor: the laborer, 
 returning weary at night to his scarce comfortable home 
 and scanty meal, will rarely hold even a passing dalliance 
 with this creed of despair ; not in the chamber of the 
 suffering : here, where pain racks the body, how often the 
 soul makes its own the promise, " When thou passest 
 through the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the 
 rivers, they shall not overflow thee ; " you may not look 
 for it in the wife whose husband has dishonored her, nor in 
 the mother whose son has brought anguish to her heart. 
 It is beyond peradventure true that where, according to 
 earth's common judgment, a faith in the Divine Goodness 
 is most needed, there it is most surely found. Strange 
 fact ! This dark doctrine is met scarce anywhere but in 
 books, a product of the minds of the Schopenhauers and 
 the Hartmanns, men of lettered ease, who, amid surround- 
 ings of comfort, evolve a theory of a universe without rela- 
 tion with a personal God, and then wail out its threnody. 
 
 But ceasing to contemplate the evil of the world, let us 
 turn briefly to the good, which, in considering the Divine 
 Perfection, is held to count for something. To the happi- 
 ness of the lower creatures, to the happiness and higher 
 welfare of man, is the administration of the world favora- 
 ble? To these ends rather than to their opposites is it 
 really ordered? Consider for a moment the lower ani- 
 mals. Their range is narrow: physical happiness with 
 a brief enjoyment of their young [if not too low for this], 
 and the company of their kind [if they are gregarious] ; 
 and is not this range, barring vicissitude which we have 
 noticed, secured to them? As for physical happiness, — 
 the normal exercise of every function brings that. It is 
 impossible to observe the cattle grazing on the hillsides, 
 or the birds skimming through the air, or the fishes dart-
 
 394 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ing through the water, and not feel that they are happy. 
 Their happiness, too, from the hmitation of their nature, 
 is unalloyed by anxiety. The deer that escaped the 
 hunter yesterday browses in unconcern to-day, and the 
 bird, forgetting experience of hunger, feeds as on crumbs 
 dropped from the eternal tables. For most part in the 
 life of the creature there is happiness till the time of its 
 taking off has come, and then how soon all is over ! Even 
 the sufferings of that taking off it is probable that our 
 human sympathies greatly exaggerate. Dr. Martineau 
 asks what harm were done if nature prescribed some 
 anaesthetic to her victims. A modern writer, teaching 
 that God is ever kind to the victim of the inevitable, main- 
 tains that he has provided a " universal anaesthetic," that 
 in the clutch of death there is no pain. 
 
 As regards the gregarious life of animals, it is possible 
 to exaggerate the tranquillity ; and probably Dr. Martineau 
 does so when he tells us that "the herbivorous families 
 have no victims, and but for their enemies would live at 
 peace with all." If they carry on no foreign wars, it is 
 certain that they have their internal strifes which are often 
 quite as serious. Yet their enjoyment of one another's 
 society is very real, and in a state of nature it is seldom 
 denied them. The enjoyment of their young, too, is given 
 to all creatures capable of it. However ferocious the 
 nature, in the lair of the tigress and the nest of the eagle 
 there is peace. 
 
 Look next to man. To his happiness and welfare is 
 the order of the world favorable? True, he has intenser 
 and more varied suffering than the animal; but this 
 follows upon provision for intenser and more varied joy. 
 Unlike the animal he dreads, but unlike the animal he 
 hopes. The greater difficulties and the greater perils are 
 his portion ; but likewise the consciousness of victory, 
 which they can never know. For his keener suffer-
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 395 
 
 ing, too, there are compensatory privileges : beauty, art, 
 song, delight in nature, sympathy of friends. How many, 
 smitten with infirmity from which the beast could only 
 suffer, have found a solace in some wisely directed activity 
 of intellect. I have known a man whose somewhat unique 
 story is beautifully illustrative. His life was active, but 
 his interests ran wide of his calling into the nobler litera- 
 ture. Early he became blind ; but he had stored his 
 mind with the richer poetry which was his resource when 
 other resource was denied him. To the help he found in 
 this he once bore unconscious testimony. He must have 
 his eyes operated upon ; and after the operation he was 
 lying in great pain. " It looked very dark to me," said 
 he, " but I struck into Browning' s Saul, and it was all 
 right!' Other infirmity came upon him ; he became 
 helpless. Yet with his great companions he lived in light. 
 He must sit apart; but at will he could have the solace of 
 Shelley's music, or Browning's song, or Emerson's starry 
 wisdom. As the years deepened, he set about the prep- 
 aration of a book, good in itself to have, but simply 
 precious as a memento of the heroism out of which it 
 came. Meeting him, too, was like going out into a June 
 morning. The bruised turned to him for comfort, the 
 doubting for renewal of their faith. Of course all have not 
 the measure of his resource ; but neither have many the 
 measure of his misfortune. In any aspect his story is that 
 of a man, and so tells of human possibilities ; and probably 
 there are few who, according to their need, might not find 
 a like support if they would in like manner appropriate 
 the means which the grace of God has made accessible. 
 Concede what we must to the ills that flesh is heir to ; still 
 human experience sufficiently testifies that the legislation 
 of the world is friendly to human happiness. 
 
 But man's higher welfare, — does nature also favor this? 
 Man is a moral being; does nature favor morality? Of
 
 396 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 two men with conditions otherwise equal, suppose one 
 industrious and the other lazy; on which will nature 
 smile? Or one temperate and the other drunken; which 
 will she approve? Or one clean and the other licentious; 
 which will be on the best terms with her? Few would 
 deny that so far as man is industrious, temperate, and 
 chaste, he has nature on his side. 
 
 Mr. Froude tells us that "the tower of Siloam fell, not 
 for any sins of the eighteen who were crushed by it, but 
 through bad mortar probably." Nature has such prefer- 
 ence for the honest structure that she pulls down what- 
 ever we dishonestly build upon her. All sham and 
 pretence she brings to judgment at last. Lay your bridge 
 on honest piers if you would have nature hold it up ; 
 build your ship of honest timber if you would have her 
 float it to the haven. The lesson of integrity, — by smile 
 and frown she enforces that. The books and homilies on 
 this subject are only weaker repetitions of her lesson. 
 
 The discipline, too, through which the nobler man- 
 hood is attained, — it is undeniable that she provides this 
 through much of the very evil of which we complain. We 
 want the hero's heart, but are aggrieved at the battle that 
 proves it ; we want patience, but are critical of the suffer- 
 ing that evokes it; we want sympathy, but not the kind 
 of world in which it is possible. Strange we do not cftener 
 see that our complaints of nature are based on the fact 
 that she refuses to favor the indolence we like but dis- 
 approve, rather than the high service we shrink from but 
 revere. For its cogent and eloquent presentation of this 
 truth we will appropriate the following passage from Dr. 
 Martineau : " For many men, the school of action fairly 
 serves to purify and invigorate their will, though they ride 
 through life on the crest of the world's wave and never 
 sink into the hollows. But, though some can do without 
 it, and others do nothing with it, yet it is true that, for the
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 397 
 
 greatest and best, you must seek among those who have 
 abounded in hardships and been passed through the fire. 
 Ease and prosperity may supply a sufficient school for the 
 respectable commoners in character: but without suff"er- 
 ing is no man ennobled. Every highest form of excellence, 
 personal, relative, spiritual, rises from this dark ground, 
 and emerges into its freedom by the conquests of some 
 severe necessity. In what Elysium could you find the 
 sweet patience and silent self-control of which every nurse 
 can testify? or the fortitude in right, which the rack can- 
 not crush or the dungeon wear out? or the courage of the 
 prophet, to fling his divine word before the wrath of 
 princes and the mocking of the people? I know it is said, 
 that these would be superfluous virtues there, their worth 
 being wholly relative to the evils which they minimize. 
 But is this true? Is the soul which has never been sub- 
 dued to patience, braced to fortitude, fired with heroic 
 enthusiasm, as harmonious, as strong, as large and free, as 
 that which has been schooled in martyrdom? No, the 
 least part of these conquests is in their immediate mastery 
 of the besetting ill : they add a cubit to the moral stature : 
 they clear the vision : they refine the thought : they ani- 
 mate the will : so that there is not a duty, however simple, 
 that does not win from them a fresh grace, or a mood, 
 however common, to which they do not give a richer 
 tone." ^ Indeed, without the trials of which we tell so 
 plaintively, noble character were at best only a nascent 
 possibility. Nature is a stern schoolmaster, but what 
 other can educate so well? 
 
 But grant that nature educates ; the being whom she 
 thus favors does she otherwise favor? Are the wise, the 
 brave, the just, the gentle, especially cared for in her legis- 
 lation? Certainly, for just and unjust alike are heat and 
 cold and storm and pestilence ; and what do we read in 
 
 ^ Study of Religioji, vol. ii. pp. 94-95.
 
 398 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 history if not of the rebuffs of the wise, the exile of the 
 patriot, the stake of the martyr? 
 
 Growth in excellence is not escape from vicissitude; 
 nor is there pledge to any excellence that in the inevitable 
 conflicts it shall conquer without struggle. It is often said 
 that the rule of the world is to superior force, a proposi- 
 tion which Dr. Martineau declares to be true of all possible 
 worlds, like the statement, the warmer you are the less 
 cold you will be. " By the weakest," says he, " we mean 
 that which goes to the wall : by the strongest, that which 
 prevails." On the same page he adds : " Alter the world 
 as you will, . . . still that which prevails will be the 
 strongest, and all things will go by might." ^ Might, how- 
 ever, is various in kind, and we hardly know what this 
 judgment means until kinds of might are scrutinized. We 
 cannot say the superior force is always physical, for then, 
 in the encounter with man, the bear or the buffalo would 
 always be invincible. Nor can we say it is physical in 
 co-operation with mental, for then to a preponderance of 
 these there should always be victory ; whereas with the 
 odds, as we reckon, in their favor, how often and igno- 
 minious has been their failure. For there is another force 
 called moral force, which springs from the conscious ser- 
 vice of right or truth, and this, especially when supported 
 by religious faith, may make weakness invincible. " Prov- 
 idence is on the side of the heaviest battalions," said 
 Napoleon ; yet even he did not neglect to appeal to his 
 soldiers with whatever sentiment should enkindle them. 
 There were as brave men in the armies of Charles I. as in 
 those of Cromwell, and the weight of material advantage 
 was on their side; but they lacked the deeper inspiration 
 that made the Ironsides invincible. That Spain with the 
 best army in Europe would crush the Netherland revolt 
 must have seemed probable enough to those who could 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. iii.
 
 GOD AND CONSCIENCE 399 
 
 not reckon on the faith, inspiring what devotion and dar- 
 ing, of William of Orange and his followers. When an 
 American woman in Italy plunged between two duellists 
 who were stabbing at each other, and awed them into 
 desistance, where was the superior force? When at 
 Worms a solitary monk flung defiance to a Church and 
 an Empire, where was it? 
 
 It is not pretended that the true or the right, become an 
 enthralling sentiment, meets no reverses. Often, indeed, 
 it seems defeated, as in the case of the Huguenots or the 
 Waldenses. But wait. The battle of French Protestantism 
 was not fought out when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, 
 nor when the last refugee fled before the brutalities of the 
 Dragonade. Which at this day does the world approve, — 
 Bossuet, applauding the most cruel trampling upon Prot- 
 estant liberties, or Martineau, throwing himself into the 
 breach in defence of Catholic rights? Dr. Martineau's 
 own judgment should be given place here : " Can anyone 
 name a good cause which, — not locally, but in the world 
 at large, — has perished and had no resurrection? Inter- 
 vals of suspended animation there may be : but the final 
 mortality of the * better part ' I must utterly disbelieve. 
 When we say of the baffled reformer, ' he was born before 
 his time' we confess our assurance that his time must 
 come, and betray the fact that, for us at least, it has 
 already come." ^ 
 
 Further illustration of this theme may not be needful. 
 That there are yet grave considerations we know ; that our 
 reasoning can yield more than a tentative satisfaction we 
 have no confidence to suppose ; to deal adequately with 
 the problem, we are probably some millenniums too soon. 
 
 Our light is not yet clear ; but if unequal to the needs 
 of sight, it may satisfy the needs of faith. Dr. Martineau's 
 laborious contention is that the order of the world does 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 122.
 
 400 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 not in its moral features contradict the oracle in the breast ; 
 so much assured, we may hold in confidence the convic- 
 tion that the God who imposes a righteous law upon us 
 does all things in righteousness, though perhaps only to 
 those who 
 
 " watch, like God, the rolling hours 
 With larger, other eyes than ours," 
 
 can the truth ever be clearly manifest.
 
 . CHAPTER IV 
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 
 
 But however satisfactory the conclusions we have reached, 
 there is a problem yet before us the consideration of which 
 will ratify them or nullify them according to the issue of 
 our study of it. We deal now with the more general 
 conception of the Divine Nature. There are three forms 
 which this has taken, and yet takes : — 
 
 I. The first, met now only in the lower ranges of intel- 
 ligence, was once the ascendant doctrine through one of 
 the fairest sections of the world. It affirmed a God wholly 
 transcending the universe, which he had created at a defi- 
 nite time and given over to the governance of second 
 causes. This God was infinite, eternal, omnipotent, all- 
 wise, but " absentee." He so appointed the cosmic 
 mechanism that it might run on without friction, but he 
 himself dwelt afar. His Providence was here; the light 
 of nature made it plain. It was, however, a grace given 
 once for all, not one that was immediately and personally 
 exercised. 
 
 This, of course, was Deism, — the doctrine that in the 
 England and France of the eighteenth century held the 
 high places of thought. With this Dr. Martineau's teach- 
 ing, though the system as a whole no one would repudiate 
 more earnestly than he, is not wholly dissonant. He also 
 teaches the Divine Transcendency ; while the Infinite Cause 
 and the Infinite Righteousness he so eloquently proclaims 
 were earnestly taught by the deists likewise. Their cause, 
 however, had accomplished the grand efi'ect, the cosmos 
 we look out upon, and ever since had rested from causal 
 
 26
 
 402 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 labors ; which is the inversion of Dr. Martineau's teaching. 
 Their Righteousness was a legacy of a departed Deity, not 
 an ever-flowing and insistent oracle : a difference that places 
 him and them at opposite poles of thought. 
 
 2. Over against the conception of Divine Transcendency 
 is that of Divine Immanence, which, pushed to its extreme, 
 is Pantheism. As the former, deistically interpreted, makes 
 God wholly extra-mundane, so the latter, pantheistically 
 conceived, makes him wholly intra-mundane. The God of 
 Pantheism is an enchanting Presence within the universe, 
 extending throughout its extent, Life of its life, Soul of its 
 soul. He is the only reality; matter and mind are but 
 phenomena of him. This is one form of the doctrine, and 
 there is another. The word Pantheism, while naming the 
 conception of all things in God, also names a conception 
 that maintains that all things are God. While, according 
 to the one, God is the soiil of things, according to the 
 other, he is the sum of things. Professor Howison in- 
 geniously marks the distinction by varying the emphatic 
 syllable of the word, — Pan-'Ccv^xsm. and Yzxi-theism, using 
 the former to designate the thesis that all is God, and the 
 latter, the reverse contention that God is all. Pantheism 
 of the former type, however, seems atheism with less ob- 
 jectionable name. While, too, this type of Pantheism is 
 strictly atheistic, the other is as strictly aeosmic. The 
 former loses God in the universe; the latter loses the 
 universe in God. 
 
 Before stating the third conception of the Divine Nature, 
 it may be well to inquire how, in strength and weakness, 
 Pantheism may compare with Deism. The Pantheism we 
 shall hold before us will be the spiritual type. 
 
 It is clear that Pantheism may yield a sense of the Di- 
 vine Presence that Deism from its very nature could not 
 give. Deism was not the creed of feeble intellects ; and 
 that it yielded intellectual satisfactions is plain enough.
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 403 
 
 Its failure, however, to minister to the deeper needs of the 
 spirit was most signal. From its contact the altar fires 
 died down to the flickering, and a chill crept upon the 
 souls of men. Devotion asks a God, not listening from 
 the skies, but present at its altar ; and is well pleased to 
 think of him as inbreathing the prayer it offers. The char- 
 acteristic longing of devotion, not to be reconciled to, but 
 to commune with and be swallowed up in God, is met, as 
 Deism could not meet it, by that conception of Divine 
 Immanence on which Pantheism builds. Our more rever- 
 ent meditations, in proportion as they are rapturous and 
 exalted, though we may not be pantheists, are likely to be 
 pantheistic. Theodore Parker was not a pantheist; yet, 
 speaking out of the fervors of his heart, how often did he 
 pantheize ! ^ Many hold that Emerson was not a pantheist, 
 yet what comforting quotations the pantheist may gather 
 from his page ! The great mystics are continually putting 
 forth sayings which, interpreted from the intellect and 
 not the spirit, should tell us of one Essence or Substance 
 by which this glowing universe and we ourselves are per- 
 vaded, the Reality and Unity of all. Thus Eckhart says : 
 "The words I am none can truly speak but God alone. 
 He has the substance of all creatures in Himself." " He is 
 a Being that has all Being in himself" " All things are in 
 God, and all things are God." To like tenor we may quote 
 from William Law : " Everything that is in being, is either 
 God, or nature, or creature ; and everything that is not God 
 is only a manifestation of God." Let us hear also Emer- 
 son: " From within or from behind, a light shines through 
 us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but 
 the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein 
 all wisdom and all good abide." " Ineffable is the union 
 
 1 I find that pantheize is not a dictionary word. It was, however, used by 
 Dr. F. H. Hedge, once my teacher, and from whose lips I caught it. It if 
 also to be found in his writings. See Ways of the Spirit, p. 254.
 
 404 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest 
 person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God : 
 yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal 
 self is new and unsearchable." The same feeling again 
 throbs in the sweet lines of Madame Guyon, — 
 
 " I love the Lord — but with no love of mine, 
 For I have none to give ; 
 I love the Lord — but with a love divine, 
 
 For by thy love I live. 
 I am as nothing, and rejoice to be 
 Emptied and lost, and swallowed up in Thee." 
 
 To like tenor might we illustrate indefinitely. The mystic 
 may be given wide range as to his faith or his philosophy: 
 he may be Protestant or Catholic ; he may be Jew, Mo- 
 hammedan, Brahman ; but he can hardly be Deist. The 
 like contrast of influence, too, we mark in the higher liter- 
 ature. Poetry, for instance, — in what other age or coun- 
 try was it so soulless and mechanical as in the England 
 of deistic ascendency? Good intellect and good taste we 
 find in it, but how rarely the higher joy ! From Pope and 
 Johnson we gather marble and millinery blossoms; from 
 Spenser and Wordsworth the flowers of Hesperides, To 
 the former something is wanting, — a dulness is in the 
 vision, a frost in the air, — the meaning of which the phil- 
 osophic student of letters will not look far to find. To 
 the latter this something is given in rich measure. The 
 subtle appropriations of the spirit we may not clearly 
 understand, but we are sensible of them; and, to a nature 
 so sensitive as the poet's, we can easily see that, whether 
 the universe shall seem a mechanism or a theophany, may 
 make inestimable difference. Goethe voiced not himself 
 alone, but the poet of whatever time whose genius calls 
 him to the loftier themes, when he wrote, — 
 
 " No ! such a God my worship may not win, 
 Who lets the world about his finger spin 
 A thing extern ; my God must dwell within."
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 405 
 
 This various illustration shows that whatever satisfaction 
 dcistical conceptions may furnish the intellect, the mystic 
 and poetic sensibilities they do not favor. The intenser 
 fervor and the loftier meditation and the more rapturous 
 vision are not of their inspiring. 
 
 But on the intellectual side Deism will not bear the 
 closest scrutiny. It teaches that God — a potter, a car- 
 penter — created the universe at a definite time. Grant 
 that since that time God and the universe have been two 
 facts ; prior to that time there must have been an eternity 
 in which God was all. But how out of his all-inclusive 
 unity did he establish a duality? How out of himself, 
 without abridgment of himself, could he furnish that 
 which should be antithetic to himself? Is he indeed 
 infinite? How, then, can the universe be outside of him? 
 Is it contained in him? Then it is manifestation of him: 
 its power his power, its life his life ; with which con- 
 clusion Deism is no more. But other queries: From 
 eternity God was sole Essence; was he, then, self-con- 
 scious? It is commonly held that self-consciousness is 
 only possible in the presence of another than self, admit- 
 ting which, we seem driven to the conclusion that this 
 lonely occupant of eternity, since unable to say of another 
 nature, // is, could not say of himself, I am. But he was 
 conceived as Intelligence and Will. The intelligence, then, 
 must have been self-centred, since there was nothing 
 beyond self on which to direct it ; and for the like reason 
 the will must have been potential, not active. We are 
 given, then, a God throughout an eternity, self-contempla- 
 tive and inert; a conception that may provoke our wonder 
 but hardly kindle our raptures. But come to the creative 
 act. Following a determination of his will, he evolves 
 out of himself a cosmos. To what end? Did he need it 
 for his perfection? Then why for an eternity did he do 
 without it? Was he without need? Why, then, the
 
 406 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Stupendous superfluity? Turning from the creation to the 
 government of the world, the deistic attitude is not less 
 unsatisfactory. The God of Deism being an " absentee " 
 God, the government of the world is devolved upon 
 second causes. These are the great forces of nature, 
 appointed to their several provinces and working to an 
 appointed end, yet entirely insulated from the First Cause. 
 While there is scope here for the conception of occasional 
 Divine visitations in order to adjust some disturbed rela- 
 tions or to inaugurate some new departure, the general 
 impression is that of mechanism, and that only. The 
 second causes take the place of the First Cause ; we deal 
 with his agents, not with God. All goes so well without 
 him that if he were to go to sleep what would it signify? 
 Whatever we may say of its need or its beauty, worship 
 will be without ardor when God is superfluous. To em- 
 brace atheism in place of belief in such a God implies no 
 sad transition. The second causes may no doubt chal- 
 lenge our wonder, but they yield not the satisfactions of an 
 Immanent Will with which we immediately deal. 
 
 But has the deistic view no features that commend it? 
 Yes, it has two, the worth of which appears in the mere 
 statement of them. First, it gives to the supreme object 
 of religious feeling a distinctness of conception, which to 
 the average mind is very satisfying. Indeed, it is easy to 
 see that the doctrine is the natural and prevailing one 
 with those who toil and pray, but do not meditate. 
 Secondly, though suggestive of an " elder Lord Shaftes- 
 bury," the God of Deism is always a person. But from 
 Pantheism, as set over against Deism, are there no deduc- 
 tions to be made? Indeed, there are. While there are 
 individual minds that can find in it all content, to the 
 great majority its conception of God is nebulous and 
 vague. A spirit diffused through the universe is easily 
 blended with, and so lost in, the forces of the universe, and
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 407 
 
 thus personality is lost. On the spiritual side it has short- 
 comings also. While in its warmer presentation Pantheism 
 is capable of the inspirations we have referred to it, there is 
 another presentation of it, which in its general influence 
 is quite otherwise. When the devout soul communes 
 with a mystic Presence, — the life, soul, love of all, — then 
 the wilderness becomes a garden and the poorest flowers 
 are passion-flowers. But when the mystic Presence yields 
 to the philosophical One Substance, contemplation seems 
 rather to take hold upon an Alpine crest, dazzling in the 
 light it may be, yet on whose icy surface only the pale 
 and struggling edelweiss can blossom. At a later stage 
 of our discussion we shall come to other and more signifi- 
 cant deductions. 
 
 3. While one of these conceptions maintains the Tran- 
 scendency and the other the Immanence of the Divine 
 Nature, there is a third that combines the two. God tran- 
 scends the universe, it says, yet is immanent in it ; is 
 immanent in it, yet transcends it; is above all, yet in 
 all ; the soul of the world, yet infinitely more. This is Dr. 
 Martineau's Theism. We say Dr. Martineau's ; for while 
 he maintains the common theistic attitude, which pro- 
 claims a personal God in immediate relation with the 
 universe and with man, the Transcendency which he holds 
 somewhat resolutely is not common to all theists. Its 
 special significance in his thought we shall see. 
 
 Theism as defined above is the successor of Deism ; in 
 what aspect is it the preferable faith? It comes into the 
 field as the foe of Pantheism; what fairer view has it to 
 ofi"er? 
 
 For the far-off God of Deism it gives us a God ever 
 nigh. Deism gave God a heaven to dwell in ; Theism 
 finds the earth consecrated by his Presence. This 
 change brings relief from a difficulty not slight. The 
 conception of a God infinite, yet not present in the uni-
 
 408 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 verse; infinite, yet an "elder Lord Shaftesbury" sitting in 
 state beyond the stars, is inherently untenable. Accord- 
 ingly it is a view that representative deists were ever 
 slipping away from. Thus Thomas Morgan, often ranked 
 with the deists and in certain aspects of his doctrine no 
 doubt belonging with them, held as atheists those who 
 denied God's immediate influence in the world. Toland, 
 too, one of the chief figures among the deists, coined the 
 very word " Pantheism," in order to set forth his own atti- 
 tude of mind as one who believed in a God who was the 
 "Mind and Soul of the universe." Sir Isaac Newton also 
 was a deist; yet he speaks of a God as omnipresent, 
 " non per viriutem solum, sed etiam per substantiam." Such 
 lapses from the cardinal deistic doctrine are not uncom- 
 mon in the deistic writers ; and they illustrate, we may 
 dare to say, not Theism gained, but Deism not firmly 
 held. The embarrassment involved here is escaped when 
 the transition to Theism is accomplished, and heaven and 
 earth alike are made God's dwelling-place and temple. 
 The transition brings a spiritual satisfaction likewise. 
 Dr. Martineau remarks that " if anything, in the Natural 
 Religion of the last century, could lay strong hold of the 
 devout imagination, it was the idea of the Omnipresence 
 of God." ^ The reason for his specifying the last century 
 is plain enough : the prevailing conditions of thought 
 were then such as to make it by contrast especially im- 
 pressive; it was like a gleam of sunshine through arctic 
 night. He also remarks that " were the experiences of 
 early life laid open, during its years of growing fervour and 
 self-discipline, it would probably be found that, both in 
 the orisons of the closet and in the encounter with temp- 
 tation, the attempt to realize this thought played a great 
 part and wielded the chief power," Yet a little further on 
 he says: " Hence it is that, except in an apathetic age, or 
 
 1 Sttidy of Religion, vol. ii. p. i6i.
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 409 
 
 among persons of level temperament, the Deistical con- 
 ception fails to satisfy, and scarcely passes into a religion: 
 once flung into awakening vicissitudes or more impas- 
 sioned natures, it breaks its bounds and seeks a nearer 
 God." ^ He might have added, only that it was the pan- 
 theistic view that he had before his mind, that all the 
 mystic raptures that Pantheism enkindles have their con- 
 dition in Theism. The mystic and poetic utterances we 
 have quoted as of pantheistic inspiration might as easily 
 have flown from an exuberance of theistic joy. Theism 
 enchants the universe : it gives to the hills a Presence that 
 consecrates them, and to the stars that glorifies them. It 
 is the faith of Paul when he tells of one who is above all, 
 and through all, and in you all ; and of David when he 
 sings. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : if I make 
 my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. 
 
 Thus, through its doctrine of Divine Immanence, does 
 Theism surpass Deism in the satisfactions that it yields. 
 But the Transcendency which Dr. Martineau maintains so 
 earnestly — what gain from that? Before answering we 
 should see more definitely what transcendency means. 
 He takes pains to tell us that the terms " transcendent " 
 and " immanent," as applied to the Divine Nature, should 
 not be used, as they often are, as equivalent to external 
 and internal, " as if the contrast in question had reference 
 only to position Jiere or their." ^ While Immanence means 
 the Divine Presence in every part of the universe. Tran- 
 scendency implies " transcending the universe in every 
 way, as infinite, as eternal, as source, as perfection." 
 It tells us that the sum of things, however vast, cannot be 
 commensurate with his infinity; that, grant the universe 
 his theophany, God is not to be measured by his manifes- 
 tation. However we may see him in it, he yet was before 
 it, and could it perish, he would survive it. The signifi- 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 162. ^ 73/^. p. j^i.
 
 410 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 cance of this consideration to the theistic problem we may 
 now discern. Theism, in maintaining the Divine Imma- 
 nence, may be on undeniable ground, but there is a line 
 of danger towards which it is ever pressing. Starting 
 with a theistic assumption of the presence of God in the 
 universe, one may at length identify him with its interior 
 life, and then see him unfolding in its evolution. With 
 this the brink of Pantheism has been dared. While not 
 affirming the logical necessity of this, experience shows 
 its liability where Immanence is held and Transcendency 
 disowned. Where, however, Transcendency is held to, 
 this result is obviously impossible : however the universe 
 may manifest God, it cannot enfold him ; though pervading 
 it with his spirit, he cannot be submerged in it as to his 
 personality ; though the ultimate explanation of all worlds, 
 all worlds do not explain him. 
 
 God in all and above all, source of all and more than all, 
 — such is the larger aspect of Dr. Martineau's Theism. 
 In all as Will, working through the multifarious dynamic 
 of the world, soul of its order and pledge of its constancy; 
 above all, like the star in sweet and immediate influence, 
 not less here because poised afar ; like the sun to whose 
 effluent rays, poured down from the deeps of heaven, we 
 refer the bloom and beauty of the world. In all, — the 
 strength of the hills his strength, the life of the world 
 his life, the glory of the heavens his glory ; yet above 
 all, and out of that infinite reserve a grace which sun and 
 star may not reflect, but which a free and communing 
 spirit may receive ; and to such, an assurance of a Wis- 
 dom that cannot err, a Justice that cannot fail, and a 
 Goodness that cannot be unkind : a smile to gladden, a 
 refuge to which to flee, a breast on which to lean. 
 
 With Pantheism we must now come to closer quarters. 
 Between it and Theism the battle rages. Of the field of 
 contention let us seek a broader survey.
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 4II 
 
 By reason of its Protean aspects, Pantheism is difficult 
 to define save in the broadest terms. The Malebranche 
 type is far indeed from that of Spinoza, and neither will 
 do for the Hegelian. Through all its variables, however, 
 there is this constant : an Essence or Principle which is 
 the source of all things, is present in all things, and unifies 
 all things. In star and flower, in soul and clod, it is iden- 
 tical. Mind and matter are its manifestations : the world 
 of mountain and sea and city and civilization, the universe 
 of planet and sun and star, are simply fleeting aspects of 
 this Principle. They come and go ; this comes not, goes 
 not, but eternally abides. 
 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass." 
 
 It is real ; to them, save in it, there is no reality. It is 
 their ground ; they its phenomena. Coleridge, though 
 with mind intent upon a special aspect of the doctrine, 
 gave it a summary as cogent as it is striking, — 
 
 " God — World = God. 
 The World — God == 0." 
 
 In God alone, that is, all reality ; in the world apart from 
 God only appearance, which, he withdrawn, would vanish. 
 Of course in a monism such as this our ordinary dis- 
 tinctions are lost. Creator and creation are one. Cause 
 and effect, save in the relations of phenomena, are one. 
 God and nature are one. God and man are one. The 
 consciousness that asserts an Ego antithetic to God blos- 
 soms of him. His nature is an infinite Deep, and I a 
 bubble of its wave. Further yet illustration may be 
 pressed. Do I pray? Not exactly; the One yearns 
 towards itself through me. Do I love? For convenience 
 of speech we may be allowed to say so ; but speaking 
 with philosophical severity, the One the rather loves it- 
 self in me. One Principle, one ReaHty, — all details of
 
 412 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 conduct should draw their meaning from this One ; a 
 conclusion nowhere better stated than in Emerson's 
 BraJmia, — 
 
 " They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings." 
 
 This to many wears a bewildering look, but that to cer- 
 tain temperaments it yields a mystic satisfaction there is 
 evidence enough. In Hunt's' volume on Pantheism are 
 some lines of great impressiveness, drawn from a Persian 
 poet, which may be quoted in evidence, — 
 
 " I looked above and in all spaces saw but One ; 
 I looked below and in all billows saw but One ; 
 
 I looked into its heart, it was a sea of worlds; 
 
 A space of dreams all full, and in the dreams but One. 
 
 Earth, air and fire and water in Thy fear dissolve ; 
 Ere they ascend to Thee, they trembling blend in One. 
 
 All life in heaven and earth, all pulsing hearts should throb 
 In prayer, lest they impede the One. 
 
 Nought but a sparkle of Thy glory is the sun ; 
 And yet Thy light and mine both centre in the One. 
 
 Though at Thy feet the circling heaven is only dust, 
 Yet is it one, and one my being is with Thine. 
 
 The heavens shall dust become, and dust be heaven again, 
 Yet shall the One remain and one my life with Thine." 
 
 However, the mystics are not a numerous clan, and in 
 their intellectual temperament they are somewhat excep- 
 tional. Hence it is that a region that to their view may 
 be radiant with the flowers of Paradise may wear to other 
 eyes a Sahara look. To most minds the significance of 
 the One must be read off from its predicates. The All 
 in All — does it live, docs it think, does it will, does it
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 413 
 
 love? Is the One It or He? Is the universe the result 
 of free activity of the One? May we refer its order to 
 intelligence of the One, working on lines of preference? 
 Do its laws in any sense express volitions of the One? 
 Within this All in All is the thought of other entity per- 
 missible? Am I really I? or am I a phantom with a 
 delusive sense of personal identity and foolishly dreaming 
 of immortality? Between me and the One are there 
 personal relations? Has the language of affection, obli- 
 gation, dependence, surrender, as interpreted with refer- 
 ence to the One, a natural and unforced meaning? These 
 are vital questions ; and though the hierophant of modern 
 Pantheism bans them with the dictum ojnnis detcrminatio 
 est negatio, the insatiable mind will yet press them ; and 
 on their answer depends our faith, our ethics, and our 
 civilization. Fortunately for us some of these questions 
 can be answered by implication as we proceed. 
 
 It may be well to indicate the measure of concession we 
 will make to the claims of Pantheism. We are not panthe- 
 ists, we will say; where, then, shall we fix a limit to the 
 Divine inclusiveness? We will go out into the universe to 
 make reply. Allow his presence here ; that he dwells in 
 the planets and bends the curve of their parabolas, that of 
 him the sunlight glows, that we trace him in the complex 
 order of a fructifying and unfolding world ; still may not 
 the universe be in some sense a dwelling which he inhabits, 
 or a datum on which he acts? Surely, you say, somewhat 
 here is other than he ; if nothing else, at any rate the 
 matter of which the sensible universe is composed. Well, 
 what is matter? We have all smiled at Dr. Johnson's 
 refutation of Berkeley's doctrine that matter has no sub- 
 stantive existence : stamping his foot upon a rock, the 
 great Doctor exclaimed, " / refute him thus." Yet it is 
 undeniably true that his attitude of mind is a persistent 
 one : even in these better instructed days, the non-reality
 
 414 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 of matter, if the wisdom of philosophy, is the foohshness 
 of common sense. Impatient of speculation, you will go 
 to science, you say, which if it conduct through less ethe- 
 real realms, will at least give definite answers to your ques- 
 tions. Go then to science; take this question to some 
 physicist and learn that the answer is wholly beyond him. 
 While, however, he cannot tell you what matter is, he 
 may tell you some strange things about it. A block of 
 granite has a very substantial look ; listen while he tells 
 you that, solid as it seems, its ultimate atoms are not in 
 contact, but stand off from one another as really as the 
 planets of the solar system do. Listen further while he 
 tells you that these atoms are not at rest, but, like motes 
 in a sunbeam, are in perpetual dance. Beyond these state- 
 ments he will give no hint as to the ultimate nature of these 
 atoms, but only elaborate upon their behavior; show, in 
 other words, under given conditions, what force they mani- 
 fest. If now, suspecting that the ultimate nature of force 
 may throw light upon your question, you ask him what 
 this is, in his capacity as physicist he is dumb. You must 
 appeal your question from physics to metaphysics if you 
 will get even the hint of an answer. Now Dr. Martineau, 
 as we have seen, resolving all forces into modes of Force, 
 and drawing the ultimate nature of this from the human 
 consciousness, declares it to be Will. Force must be in- 
 terpretable in terms of will, or it can have no meaning to 
 man. But Force is not more clearly manifest in the move- 
 ment of a planet than of an atom of hydrogen ; and the 
 query will obtrude itself whether this atom is anything but 
 force, a monad of force ; in other words, if what we call 
 matter is other than a mental correlate by means of which 
 the conception of Force is made possible. Grant that this 
 is not a demonstrable conclusion, yet undoubtedly it is the 
 prevailing conviction of those on whose judgment we most 
 rely. The inference is clear : Regarding Force as the ex-
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 415 
 
 pression of Will, and Will as a function of Mind, the seem- 
 ingly material universe is really crystallized Intelligence. 
 This is Dr. Martineau's conclusion : " The whole external 
 universe, then (external, I mean, to self-conscious beings), 
 we unreservedly surrender to the Indwelling Will, of which 
 it is the organized expression." ^ 
 
 The outward universe we thus surrender to the panthe- 
 ist. W^ith him we hold it to be not real in itself, but to 
 have its reality in God. But how of human personality? 
 Shall we concede this also? Shall we submerge man in 
 God? This brings us to the battle-line of Theism and Pan- 
 theism. However the theist may conceive God and man 
 related, he never loses the latter in the former. He is 
 ever ready to say, God is in me, but he cannot bring him- 
 self to say. His Being comprehends me. As a consistent 
 theist I may well maintain that God loves me, but I cannot 
 allow that he loves himself in what by courtesy is called 
 me. Grant all the infinite disparity between me and God, 
 still I must insist that we are two and not one. I am not a 
 wavelet of his deep, nor a ray of his sun. He is not con- 
 scious in my consciousness, nor is my meditation his solilo- 
 quy, nor my prayer his rhapsody. I am I, as he is he ; 
 real as he is real, person as he is person. Self-conscious- 
 ness is a dyke against which the pantheistic flood beats 
 only to be broken. While man holds fast to this, a few 
 may find Pantheism an interesting speculation, but it will 
 never be a vital faith to many. 
 
 Here, though all along we have reflected him, we come 
 more distinctly on the trail of Dr. Martineau's thought. It 
 is remembered how he reaches his doctrine of causation : 
 through experience of cause within himself he gains dis- 
 cernment of a cause beyond himself. But cause within 
 himself is will ; will causality, therefore, is all the causality 
 he knows. Two wills he thus finds in the universe, his own 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 166.
 
 41 6 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 and another. The other holds the universe in sway, its 
 exercise Hmited only at the confines of human personality. 
 But why this limitation? Why not surrender this tri- 
 fling demesne, and so have one will, one cause in the uni- 
 verse? The answer is, (i) The human consciousness, as 
 above illustrated, puts forth unceasing protest against the 
 surrender. Save as we do violence to this, the surrender 
 cannot be. Consciousness permits me ever to say I am I, 
 but never, though speaking into the ear of God, / am 
 Thou. (2) In merging the human personality the Divine 
 is sacrificed ; for the former is the basis of our belief in the 
 latter. If the former is an illusion, the latter is wholly un- 
 tenable. Instead of a personal God we may then perhaps 
 affirm an impersonal Somewhat, a thought, as it were, 
 where no thinker is, a spring of power to which there is no 
 conscious direction of its flow; and this impersonality is 
 held before us as the more philosophical and the sublimer 
 conception of a God. This indeed is the conclusion, if not 
 the postulate, of all Pantheisms ; and we are bound to re- 
 member also that it is the vogue of thought with many not 
 reckoned in the schools of pantheists. Thus Herbert 
 Spencer, turned preacher for the nonce, and fervidly re- 
 proving the " impieties of the pious," speaks of a choice 
 between " personality and something higher." ^ This some- 
 thing hieher, to be sure, he tells us is inconceivable ; but 
 this is not reason for disbelieving its existence, " rather the 
 reverse." In faith he comes little short of the standard of 
 him who said, " Credo quia impossibile est!' The answer, 
 reflecting Dr. Martineau and reason alike, is that the teach- 
 ing implies an inherent contradiction. Higher than per- 
 sonality is lower; beyond it is regression from its height, 
 From the equator we may travel northward, gaining ever 
 higher and higher latitudes ; but if ever the pole is reached, 
 pressing on from thence will be descending to lower lati- 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 109.
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 417 
 
 tudes, not gaining higher. So when we study gradations 
 of being, we may pass through every zone from inorganic 
 to conscious and intelligent, and thence climb through all 
 ranges of intelligence, till at thought's impassable height 
 we can only name the infinite. But the infinite is an 
 infinite what? Unconsciousness? Impersonality? The 
 terms suggest, not thought's upward flight, but her down- 
 ward plunge. An intelligence and personality beyond my 
 conception my theistic attitude implies. When I speak of 
 an infinite God, this is involved in my meaning. But a 
 non-intelligence that is higher than intelligence, an imper- 
 sonality that transcends personality, discards an attribute 
 ideally supreme with stipulation that a nature without it 
 shall vault up to heights transcending the ideal. Such is 
 our conclusion when we contemplate in itself this imper- 
 sonal First Principle. When we contemplate it in relation 
 with man, we are even more impressed with its failure to 
 answer to our conception of what should be highest. The 
 personal God of Theism, however the conception of him 
 may suggest difficulties, may at any rate take cognizance 
 of our needs and be a very present help in time of trouble; 
 this impersonal Somewhat, however it may unify a cosmos, 
 can decree no justice, is capable of no love, can extend no 
 help, can hear no prayer. (3) The consequence to man 
 of a full acceptance of this doctrine would be a surrender 
 of freedom and moral accountability; the deprivation, 
 too, of any proper object of reverence and praise. Is it 
 objected that we should judge a doctrine by its inherent 
 strength and not by its consequences? The answer is that 
 the inherent strength of a doctrine is often determined by 
 its consequences, by the consideration whether it is true to 
 the nature of man and the great needs of life; and there is 
 no juster ground for the repudiation of a doctrine than the 
 fact that from its contact the religious instincts are clouded 
 or the moral consciousness bewildered. Some may chal- 
 
 27
 
 41 8 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 lenge this judgment as applied to Pantheism by reference 
 to the saintly pantheists whom previous pages have noticed. 
 Grant all that may be claimed for them, it is yet simply 
 true that in a wide survey Pantheism has rarely justified it- 
 self as in the best sense friendly either to piety or to 
 morals. 
 
 The question, Why withhold the demesne of human per- 
 sonality from the rule of the Divine Will? may in reverse 
 form be asked respecting the Divine Will itself: Why does 
 it arrest itself at the demesne of human personality? In an- 
 swer, the questioner may be shown that did the Higher Will 
 usurp the province now held by the human, knowledge of 
 itself would be impossible. In that unity there could be 
 no apprehension. Self and other than self must stand 
 over against each other, that either may be known. Make 
 real the identity of which Pantheism tells, and the result 
 would be a blank to human consciousness. This consider- 
 ation is developed by Dr. Martineau in a passage which 
 we will quote in full : " The very same principle which 
 establishes a Unity of all external causality makes it anti- 
 thetic to the internal, and establishes a Duality between 
 our own and that which is other than ours : so that, were 
 not our personal power known to us as one, the cosmical 
 power would not be guaranteed to us as the other. Here, 
 therefore, at the boundary of the proper Ego, the absorb- 
 ing claim of the supreme will arrests itself, and recognizes 
 a ground on which it does not mean to step. Did it still 
 press on and annex this field also, it would simply abolish 
 the very base of its own recognizable existence, and, in 
 making itself all in all, would vanish totally from view. 
 It is precisely by not being unitary that causation is acces- 
 sible to thought at all ; and if our own will does not ex- 
 ercise it, we are excluded from even the search for it 
 elsewhere. By self we mean the will internal : by * God,' 
 we mean the will external : by cause we mean either : and
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 419 
 
 as the two former come into our knowledge as terms of 
 a relation under the category of the latter, it is impossible 
 for either extreme to lapse into the other. It would be a 
 parricidal doctrine of causality that should thus lay violent 
 hands on the conditions of its own existence." ^ Indeed 
 it would seem such; and when we shift the argument 
 about and reason from the necessary self-assertion of the 
 nature, the conclusion is even more emphatic. The unity 
 we maintain we confute in that we maintain it. The saint 
 at the gate of Paradise who, in answer to the challenge 
 from within, had been chastened to the reply, " It is Thou, 
 dear Lord," illustrated by his self-abnegation the selfhood 
 he verbally disowned. Do I say, I am a pantheist? Then, 
 ipso facto, I deny Pantheism ; for in the very assertion of 
 the Ego I imply all else as objective to me. Here, quot- 
 ing Dr. Martineau again, " we touch the ultimate and irre- 
 movable ground of all certainty ; whence alone we look 
 forth and discover either the irav or the 6e6<i'. and to 
 negative this position on behalf of what it shows us would 
 be like the fanaticism of a fire-worshipper who should put 
 out his eyes to glorify the light." ^ 
 
 But is there not implied here an abridgment of the 
 Divine infinitude? If man exercises a causal preroga- 
 tive, then there seems to be a realm from which the 
 Divine Agency is excluded. This consideration has drawn 
 a good deal of attention, and it has been urged alike by 
 pantheists, from their jealousy for the Divine Immanence, 
 and by necessarians, who would discredit human freedom. 
 If there is with man a causal initiative, the Divine Will 
 does not rule within its domain; and though it may bend 
 the curves of history, the details of the record must be left 
 to man's free origination. The theistic doctrine sets a 
 limit to the Divine Power, in the face of which who can 
 longer maintain that it is infinite? 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 166-167. ^ Ihid. p. 167.
 
 420 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 Theists have recognized this difficulty, and have wrestled 
 with it often with deep longing for clearer light. But 
 before we seek the significance of the theist's reservation 
 from the Divine Power, let us see if the pantheist really 
 maintains its infinity. This impersonal First Principle — 
 is the exercise of all power allowed it? On the contrary, 
 power of choice, "preferential power" as Dr. Martineau 
 would say, pantheism always denies. Its God can do 
 no other than he does ; all in the fields of space and time 
 is an evolution of him, and follows from a necessity of his 
 nature. This preferential power the theist maintains ; and 
 draws light from the preference of God in dealing with this 
 phase of the theistic problem. Here once more we will 
 turn to Dr. Martineau's page : " Is there any reconcilia- 
 tion of these contradictory aspects of personality? There 
 is none, if you assume that infinite Will can never abstain 
 from appropriating all its causality, or divest itself of a 
 portion, in order to fit up another and resembling nature. 
 But surely one who assumes this has already committed 
 the fault which he charges, and discovered something 
 to which his ' rigorous infinitude ' is incompetent ! If 
 we drop this assumption, then our allowance of independ- 
 ence is itself the result of our dependence : it is conceded 
 to us by the author of our being, and, though entrusted for 
 awhile with a certain free play of causality, is referable in 
 the ultimate resort to the Supreme cause : it is included 
 in what he Jias caiised, though excepted from what he is 
 causing. It takes therefore nothing from his infinitude, 
 but what he himself renounces ; and what is thus relin- 
 quished is potentially retained. The self-abnegation of 
 infinity is but a form of self-assertion, and the only form 
 in which it can reveal itself. Whether by setting up other 
 minds with a range of command over alternatives, or by 
 instituting a universe under law without alternative, the In- 
 finite Cause foregoes something of his absolute freedom; in
 
 HIS CRITICISM OF PANTHEISM 42 1 
 
 the one case admitting partners of his hberty ; in the other, 
 establishing for himself a sphere of necessity : and in the 
 latter case, the more comprehensive the sphere, the vaster 
 is the renunciation : and if it extends to the All, so as to 
 leave no margin of transcendency, the limitation reaches its 
 maximum, no possibility but one being anywhere left open. 
 If therefore there be any force in this objection, the 
 Pantheist who brings it is himself exposed to it in a 
 superlative degree. What greater contradiction can there 
 be than to say, in one and the same breath, that a being 
 is infinite and omnipotent, yet cannot put forth preferen- 
 tial power? And if we are jealous of his infinitude, which 
 shall we be more afraid to grant, — that he lends to a 
 derivative being a little preferential power; or that he 
 is forever incapable of exercising it himself? " ^ 
 
 But the Causal Will immanent in the universe, — is he 
 not man's cause too ? We were not always here, — was 
 not our origin from him? Is he not implicated with our 
 lives, — our heart-throbs and our soul-throbs, is he aloof 
 from them? He is our cause indeed. A pervasive pres- 
 ence within us, too, it is our joy to think him ; and with 
 just discrimination to draw 
 
 " the mystic line, 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 Which is human, which divine," 
 
 we may confess most difficult. But while we claim him as 
 cause we cannot deny that we are causes ; and that while 
 " there is one Will in nature there are two that meet in man." 
 
 The suggestion that lurks here seems at first rather 
 startling: my will meeting his will; my impotence hold- 
 ing a province against his omnipotence ! Rather should 
 we say, his will granting autonomy to mine ; for some 
 wise purpose appointing to me a principality within his 
 universal kingdom. 
 
 What that purpose is should be seen in the different 
 
 ^ Shidy of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 182-183.
 
 422 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 nature, and so the entirely other relation with the Divine 
 which that autonomy makes possible. Did the Divine 
 Will occupy the field of our will, we should conform to it 
 as winds and seas and stars now do, but we could not 
 proffer it our surrender. We should involuntarily yield to 
 it, but we should not voluntarily obey it. Resignation, as- 
 piration, free affection, the crowning graces of the human, 
 by that ever determining Divine Will would be made 
 impossible. We should be another species of automata, 
 exercising no causality, and so knowing none. The recog- 
 nition of the Divine Will would be made impossible by its 
 constancy and pervasiveness. The feeling is irresistibly 
 borne in upon us that in calling man into existence God 
 intended that there should be one being in the universe 
 that might render him a free obedience ; and that to this 
 end he placed him over against himself outside the scope 
 of his immanent volition. Is it objected that in this view 
 God favors the lower ranges of being with his immediate 
 guidance, but takes his Holy Presence from the higher? 
 gives to planets no choice but to obey him, and leaves 
 man to the possibility of sin? That possibility is essential 
 to man's distinguishing glory. Because the Higher Will 
 does not rule through our struggle a victor's crown may 
 be won by us. Besides, as Dr. Martineau urges, this ab- 
 sence is in only one aspect, and to the end that, in another, 
 he may bestow his Presence. Absent is he as a con- 
 straint, but present as a personal sympathy and affection. 
 While through his Immanence he deals with all else, 
 from the sphere of his Transcendence he bends to man. 
 It is our aspirations that go upward, our prayers that we 
 pray ; it is we ourselves that are tempted and strive for the 
 higher joy. Yet in all our aspiring and wrestling we are 
 not apart from him. Withdrawn from us as a law, he 
 meets us as a friend to reinforce our courage, to comfort 
 our griefs, and to woo us upward.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 I. Freedom 
 
 There are many arguments against Free Will; for it 
 there is one. With Calvin and Edwards we may main- 
 tain its incompatibility with Divine Decrees ; with Hart- 
 ley and Priestley we may surrender it before the Law of 
 Association ; with Comte and the positivists we may find 
 no place for it in the sequences of phenomenal causation; 
 with Spinoza and the pantheists we may conceive man 
 but a mode of a universal Substance, and what he mis- 
 calls his freedom to be ruled by its necessity. All these 
 doctrines may be so presented as to make the affirmation 
 of Free Will look quite foolish. On the other hand the 
 apostle of freedom has one argument which he deems 
 conclusive, and which three words can state : Conscious- 
 7iess declares it. Here in consciousness, where we gain 
 a first-hand acquaintance with the will, and receive its 
 testimony respecting itself, its freedom is unmistakably 
 avouched to us. " If bound," it says, " I know nothing 
 of the gyves." That we exercise a preferential part, 
 determine upon this as against that, in the presence of 
 alternatives choose, rather than are constrained to, one of 
 them, accepting the testimony of consciousness, we can 
 but say we know. Accordingly, while the advocate of 
 Free Will contents himself with maintaining the necessary 
 trustworthiness of consciousness, and with showing how the 
 experiences of life may be harmonized with its oracle, the
 
 424 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 determinist puts forth the arguments of his school, and 
 then undertakes to discredit consciousness. Discrediting 
 consciousness, however, is serious business; for, being our 
 witness to many things besides freedom, on the principle, 
 falsus in wio, falsiis in omnibus, doubting its testimony 
 as to freedom involves us in a paralyzing scepticism. 
 Further, it is perfectly plain that the doctrine of Neces- 
 sity, however cogently argued, cannot, since it is out of 
 accord with consciousness, carry the full force of a prac- 
 tical conviction. In the toil, study, play of life, in its 
 right doing and its wrong doing, we have the certitude 
 that we act, not as we must, but as we will ; and by no 
 inference from any theory of the universe can the sig- 
 nificance of this certitude be destroyed. 
 
 The controversy being thus one of theory versus con- 
 sciousness, there pertains to it this further aspect: The 
 oracles of consciousness are to be asserted rather than 
 argued ; the theories by which we will confute them are 
 to be argued rather than asserted. The former are self- 
 evident until discredited ; the latter, in that they are 
 arrayed against consciousness, are discredited until proven 
 to the overthrow of consciousness. Were I, giving ac- 
 count of myself, to say / ant well, and another to contra- 
 dict me. No, you are not well, I might think him trifling 
 with me ; or, if a physician, I might suspect him to see in 
 my eyes, or in my breathing, or in the expression of my 
 countenance, some incipient ill. Beyond the general 
 assertion, however, that I feel well, I obviously could not 
 go; and it would be for him to show the latent disease 
 my feelings up to date have not allowed me to suspect. 
 Were one calling himself a prophet to appear, proclaiming 
 a universal bad health, and teaching that the general feel- 
 ing of good health is an illusion, very likely he would 
 win converts; indeed, the Invalidinarians might speedily 
 become a numerous sect among us. Probably, however,
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 425 
 
 there would be doubting ones who would query how the 
 conditions and feeling peculiar to good health can coexist 
 with an ever-present and all-pervading invalidism ; and 
 who would be so unreasonable as not to call the doctor 
 till their consciousness of health had been shown to be 
 delusive? So where the universal consciousness of free- 
 dom is challenged, the burden of proof, or rather of dis- 
 proof, is on the determinist side. It is in full recognition 
 of this feature of the discussion that Dr. Martineau bears 
 his part in it. The consciousness that affirms freedom he 
 holds should be trusted until its veracity has been success- 
 fully impugned ; which he has no suspicion that it ever 
 has been, and clearly doubts if it ever can be. Accord- 
 ingly, in his wonderful discussion of this problem he 
 assumes Free Will, and devotes his great thought and 
 learning to shattering antagonistic doctrines. If any one 
 thinks he has an unanswered argument against Free Will, 
 if he will turn to this discussion ^ he may probably find 
 himself mistaken. Not that Dr. Martineau's attitude is 
 wholly defensive : he has made many a sally into the en- 
 emy's camp with no end of destruction of the machinery of 
 argumentative war ; but his general method is to expose 
 the weakness of necessarian doctrines rather than to but- 
 tress the alternative one. He holds that until the latter 
 is discredited, it must stand ; that no mere plausibility 
 of theory can be allowed to prevail against a clearly 
 authenticated fact of consciousness. 
 
 But the question is asked, What signifies the endless 
 controversy over this insoluble problem? So far as we 
 can see, like wisdom is found on either side; and whether 
 with freedom or necessity, virtue and depravity seem to 
 prosper. If we were to judge its significance thus, by the 
 personal and average worth of those who take sides upon 
 it, we might indeed be tempted to call truce to the strife; 
 
 ^ Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 1S4 seq.
 
 426 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 though still it would be gravely doubted whether charac- 
 ter could indefinitely prosper on a doctrine that gives the 
 lie to the clearest dictum of the interior nature. The 
 bearings of the discussion, however, run wide of the ques- 
 tion of personal character: the outlook upon the universe, 
 the mental construction which it yields to libertarian and 
 necessarian, is entirely different. Grant to each the like 
 certificate of good morals, we must yet discriminate be- 
 tween the worlds they live in. While to the latter freedom 
 is a conclusion he cannot draw out of his postulates, to 
 the former it is a datum which his postulates imply. 
 While the one subordinates the inner life to a rule of 
 necessity which he finds abroad, the other carries abroad 
 a freedom found at home and interprets the world in its 
 light. Of the preceding pages, there are few indeed 
 that would not need to be rewritten to make them the 
 consistent utterance of a necessarian. Let alone his 
 Ethics, of which freedom is a constitutive principle, he 
 must be a superficial reader who does not see that 
 Dr. Martineau's firm conviction of freedom signifies 
 greatly even in the domain of Critical Theology. It is 
 not too much to say, indeed it is clearly obvious, that 
 prior to his conversion from the determinism which he 
 early held, he could not have written the Scat of Authority 
 in Religion, could all the learned data have been given 
 him. To the apostle of freedom the Bible cannot yield 
 the same meaning as to the apostle of necessity, and 
 Christ must be a different teacher. The great themes of 
 Christian doctrine, in any thorough treatment of them, 
 will surely reflect the thinker's attitude on this vexed 
 problem. When we set aside the testimony of conscious- 
 ness, man becomes another being, and his record has 
 another meaning. In wrestling with this problem, there- 
 fore, the theologian is settling with a consideration, and 
 that a very important one, by which his judgments must
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 427 
 
 be influenced. So when we come to the vast considera- 
 tions of the Philosophy of ReHgion, the significance of our 
 attitude on this problem can hardly be exaggerated. Few 
 are the pages of Dr. Martineau's great Study of Religion 
 that would not need to be transformed to make them 
 even tolerable in the eyes of a necessarian ; and with the 
 complete triumph of necessarian doctrine, his type of The- 
 ism, which is that of Paul and of Jesus, should disappear. 
 In relation to the supreme question of philosophy note 
 its bearing. In his study of Causation we have seen that, 
 like Schopenhauer, Dr. Martineau comes to the concep- 
 tion of Will as the ultimate source of the universe. His 
 Will, however, is not, like Schopenhauer's, a blind and 
 restless impulse, but the executive function of an Intelli- 
 gence. In other words, it is not only Will, but free Will. 
 But it is only through will in man that we arrive at the 
 conception of Will beyond him; and if we must conclude 
 that man's will, though coalescing with an intelligent 
 principle, is necessitated and not free, how shall we escape 
 the same conclusion respecting the Divine Will? If intel- 
 ligence carries freedom in heaven, then on earth ; if it is 
 under necessity on earth, then, for aught we can reason 
 to the contrary, so also in heaven. God wills not as he 
 will, but as he must; and rules by appointments he 
 cannot help but make. The logic of necessity, therefore, 
 by this path leads to Fatalism; and Dr. Martineau, in 
 vindicating freedom, fights a battle for the supreme doc- 
 trine of religious faith. On this point Dr. Martineau 
 should himself be heard. Speaking of a phase of the 
 necessarian argument, he says: "If it holds of mind as 
 well as matter, and is co-extensive with causality itself, it 
 applies no less to God than to us ; and all that has begun 
 to be in his eternal life, the thoughts and acts that have 
 written themselves out in the history of the universe, have 
 been without alternative, the sole possibility of things.
 
 428 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 He could neither have withheld creation, nor created any- 
 thing else. If in its immensity his nature is exempt from 
 external constraint, it is because it swallows up and 
 embraces all necessity within itself: he does not prefer, 
 he does not choose, he does not divide and judge; he 
 thinks what must be thought, he does what must be done, 
 and perceives neither better nor worse that might be. Pes- 
 simism and optimism are alike a vain jangle: the world 
 had to be what it is, and stands in no degrees of compari- 
 son : there is no margin of the possible beyond the actual: 
 they are identical. I never like to press the consequences 
 of a doctrine from which I dissent, knowing well the happy 
 ingenuity with which its dangerous tendencies are evaded 
 by men's better affections : but, without some regard to 
 them, it cannot be estimated as a logical whole: and if 
 here a conclusion is legitimately drawn from the necessa- 
 rian premises which he does not desire to admit, it is but 
 a fair invitation to him to carry a fresh scrutiny to his first 
 principles. He usually resents the imputation o'i fatalism: 
 and with some reason, so long as the question is detained 
 on the field of human life: for the fatalist imatrines it to 
 make no difference whether he bestirs himself or not : 
 the necessarian, that it is just this that does make the 
 difference, only that with the end the means also are no 
 less ordained, and that God will not act for him but 
 throiigJi him. But when the doctrine is carried into the 
 Divine nature, does it leave anything there that is dis- 
 tinguishable from Fate? How can we call that a Mind, 
 from which the alternatives, the problems, the compari- 
 sons, of thought are absent? and how, that a character 
 which has no choice, and cannot help being and doing 
 precisely what it is and does? Goodness cannot exist 
 except under possibility of evil, or love except under 
 conditions of preference, or perfection except as the 
 superlative and crown of a better and a worse : and from
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 429 
 
 an infinitude embracing nothing but necessities such 
 predicates must be withheld." ^ 
 
 There is another theme in the consideration of which 
 our attitude on the problem of the will has great signifi- 
 cance. We recall the fine saying of Novalis : " Philoso- 
 phy can bake no bread ; but she can procure for us God, 
 Freedom, and Immortality." It may not have occurred 
 to all that the middle conception here is a key to the 
 other two. We have seen how freedom is related to the 
 theistic doctrine, but how to immortality? Undoubtedly 
 there is a type of determinism with which the belief in 
 immortality is not untenable, as, for instance, that of 
 Edwards and the earlier Calvinists, who held the will 
 of the natural man to be enslaved by sin, though the func- 
 tion of a nature constitutionally immortal. When we 
 affirm, however, a constitutional necessity, we embrace 
 a philosophy with which belief in immortality does not 
 easily coalesce. For an immortal nature, as it is easy to 
 see, must be an entity, not an appearance merely ; that is 
 to say, a self-subsistent nature. A necessitated nature, 
 on the contrary, must be a dependent one : it has its 
 reality in another nature of which it is a manifestation. 
 Try the issue with reference to modern Naturalism, which, 
 whether on its more strictly Positive or on its Evolution- 
 ary side, has shown freedom little favor. Is man but a 
 flower of nature? The comfortless but unanswerable 
 answer is. No fiower is immortal. Does he come in any 
 sense through the determination of Nature's law, her latest 
 and fairest phenomenon? We can only repeat the last 
 conclusion and say, There is no immortal phenomenon. 
 What comes by law, by law may go; that which is in- 
 tegrated may be resolved. Unless there be that in man 
 which is not the product of nature and which law does 
 not rule, it is useless to talk of immortality. Or try the 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 232-233.
 
 430 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 issue with reference to Pantheism. Though the forms of 
 this are Protean, there is one cardinal conception from 
 which it cannot depart : all reality is in God, and the 
 universe and man are submerged in him. Of course the 
 freedom which would be an invincible dyke against this 
 submergence is not here ; for there is no proper personal- 
 ity, only a mode of the One Essence. 
 
 Thus, one defending the doctrine of freedom may well 
 have in view a basal principle which must rule his criticism 
 of theology, his judgments of history, his construction of 
 ethical theory, his religious philosophy, his view of human 
 destiny; and all depends on whether the simple dictum 
 within us shall be received or no. Though there are 
 many incidental arguments in favor of freedom, and 
 though the consequences to which we argue on determin- 
 ist lines in their ugly aspects remonstrate against deter- 
 minism, we come for ultimate settlement to consciousness 
 at last. 
 
 II. Immortality 
 
 Dr. Martineau settles with the problem of freedom be- 
 fore he approaches that of immortality. He carries, how- 
 ever, the result of that settlement over to the consideration 
 of the latter problem: it is a free nature of which he 
 maintains the immortality. With his usual thoroughness, 
 however, he reviews the salient doctrines by which in 
 these latter days immortality is often held to be dis- 
 credited: in a discussion of the " physiological aspects" 
 of death he shows the utter irrelevancy of the objections 
 of modern Naturalism ; and in a like discussion of the 
 •' metaphysical aspect" of death he shows against Schleier- 
 machcr and his school how groundless is the pantheistic 
 doctrine of absorption. He then turns upon the inner 
 nature itself, and asks if the vaticinations of the intellect
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 43 1 
 
 and conscience favor belief in immortality; and here we 
 will take up his argument. 
 
 I. The Intellect. In these days when Natural His- 
 tory is so assertive an interest, the lower animal, long 
 neglected, is often brought forward to challenge man's 
 claim to the exclusive possession of the faculties com- 
 monly regarded as peculiarly human. Man reasons ; but 
 the horse is detected in conduct so suggestive of reason 
 that it seems almost an intellectual perversity not to allow 
 it to him; — incipient reason, indeed, but reason. The 
 fleeing criminal is hardly more fertile in devices to escape 
 the constable than the fox or deer to outwit the hunter; 
 shrewd observers have little doubt of the cogitations of 
 the elephant ; as an example of maternal affection, see the 
 hen gathering her chickens under her wings; while one 
 contemplating the special friend and companion of man, 
 his steadfastness and fidelity, may often be willing to make 
 his own the saying of Dio Lewis : " The best part of man 
 is the dog that is in him." Thus, in observing the feat- 
 ures in which the conduct of brute natures resembles our 
 own, very interesting parallelisms may be made out, quite 
 satisfying to those who, from apparent similarity of nature, 
 are disposed to give both a like place in their philosophy; 
 and so implicate both in the same destiny. 
 
 These parallelisms we will pause neither to discredit 
 nor to explain. Let them be admitted to whatever extent 
 there may be warrant for admitting them ; still it may be 
 maintained that between brute and man there is a differ- 
 ence that is fundamental and not to be ignored. This 
 difference, following Dr. Martineau, we may dare to state 
 thus : While what we call the inward life of the animal is 
 for the outward life, with man the relation is the reverse : 
 the outward life is for the inward. With the former the 
 physical life is the all-predominant consideration; with the 
 latter the psychical and moral. To the animal are the pro-
 
 432 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 pensions through which it seeks food and propagates its 
 kind, the passions that resist injury and flee from danger, 
 the brief period of maternal affection, all for the individ- 
 ual's safety and the support and the perpetuation of the 
 race. When we turn, too, to the more curious instincts, 
 shown in the civic habits of the ant and the bee, the 
 architecture of the bird and the beaver, the web-weaving 
 of the caterpillar and the spider, we find it the same, the 
 wisdom of the universe working through them and direct- 
 ing them to the conditions of their existence; just as it 
 works through the plant, directing its root to shoot down- 
 ward and its stock to shoot upward, and its leaves to 
 spread out into the air. So always whatever light is given 
 to the animal it is for the guidance of its purely animal 
 existence. To adopt with man, however, the like order of 
 preference we feel to be a departure from the rule ap- 
 pointed to him, and thus unnatural and dishonoring. 
 While we may adopt as our working maxim, mens sana in 
 corpore sano, we forgive and even applaud the disregard of 
 it which fidelity to the higher claims of the higher nature 
 may ask of us. The true relation of the physical is that 
 of subordination to the spiritual ; it is designed to be the 
 instrument of its progress, the servant of its work. Robert 
 Browning states our thesis well: — 
 
 'S3 
 
 " To man propose this test — 
 Thy body at its best, 
 How far can it project thy soul on its lone way ? " 
 
 The recognition of this relation is implied in our character- 
 istic judgments. While we look very tolerantly on the 
 rigors through which the higher faculties are honored, the 
 enfceblement of the intellect in any degree through phys- 
 ical excess is revolting in our eyes. The truth is more 
 clearly seen in extreme illustrations. We might not be 
 willing to commend the austerities of St. Jerome; but
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 433 
 
 they are beautiful to contemplate beside the gluttonies of 
 Charles V. ; and every healthy nature would say, Better 
 locusts and wild honey with John the Baptist than to 
 participate in the orgies of the " hog Vitellius ; " and at all 
 degrees between, it is plain where the emphasis of our 
 truer appreciation lies. On the other hand the scholar 
 whose severe application has brought dimness to his eyes; 
 the philosopher the vigils of whose thought are traced in a 
 stooping form and a sallow countenance, we gently dis- 
 approve and deeply admire. Bodily strength and grace 
 we need not esteem lightly ; bringing the physical to its 
 fairer and more robust development may be honoring the 
 Creator of it; and the Greeks, in that they sought it, were 
 wiser than the Christian anchorites in that they despised 
 it ; yet to gain a sage we would gladly sacrifice an athlete. 
 
 This difference, so markedly shown in the contrast 
 between the animal, subject to no change save in the 
 way of animal improvement and deterioration, and man, 
 advanced through all the measureless ranges of psychical 
 progress, is implicated in yet another contrast of great 
 significance. The outfit of the animal seems an ideal pro- 
 vision for the purely terrestrial sphere appointed to it; 
 that of man, if the terrestrial sphere be all that is 
 appointed for him, seems clearly a vast over-provision. 
 The scope of the animal's life, the range, that is, of its 
 possible interest, is the immediate and present. Its space 
 is here; — around it bends the circle of the horizon, but it 
 is incurious as to what lies beyond ; under it is the earth, 
 but it looks down in no inquiry; over it hang the heavens, 
 but it looks up in no wonder. Its time is now; — behind 
 it is a past that invites to no retrospect; before it is a 
 future that beckons with no vision. In this we see an 
 ideal fitness. Allowing that to the animals this is the only 
 world, it is enough that they fit into it as it comes. 
 
 When we come to man, however, if we still grant this 
 
 28
 
 434 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 life to be all, this ideal has apparently no recognition. 
 We deal here indeed with incommensurable terms; and 
 Dr. Martineau asks, " How can we compare capacity of 
 reason with decades of years?" Yet a proportion he 
 recognizes, and all recognize, between the endowment of 
 a nature and its persistency and range of achievement. 
 You do not give to the pleasure boat the outfit of a ship 
 to the Indies, nor to an ephemeron that lives but a day the 
 equipment of a being of threescore and ten. Yet if the 
 terrestrial period be all there is for man, something like 
 this disproportion, only far more marked, is forced upon 
 us. Few there are who, the fact of immortality being 
 granted, would see any incongruity between the powers of 
 man and the career thus appointed him. If this life, then, 
 be all, we have before us the bewildering thought of a 
 being equipped for eternity and doomed to perish in 
 threescore and ten. 
 
 The outfit of man as a purely terrestrial being — what 
 should it be? What more could he stipulate than that he 
 be treated as other animals are treated? which, of course, 
 would mean that he be provided with other faculties than 
 theirs as his special and human needs were to be other. 
 The full range of this claim few might venture to specify 
 off-hand ; but it would seem to imply, beyond the range 
 of other animals, the ability to draw food from the earth ; 
 to provide clothing for his protection, and arms for his 
 defence, and medicine for his ills, and surgery for his 
 hurts; to find out fire and iron and the manifold uses of 
 the forge; to pile wood and stone into dwellings; to 
 expand the footpath into the highway ; to grade the hill, 
 and clear the forest, and drain the swamp; to find out 
 what servants he may have in wind and heat and water; to 
 construct an alphabet and organize a language ; to found 
 a home, and build up a social and civic structure. All 
 this taken together is very much indeed; but allow it all
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 435 
 
 embraced in our stipulation, and add to it whatever else a 
 human being with only a terrestrial outlook may require, 
 and what approximation will it make to the sum total of 
 endowment that man possesses? Take from him all not 
 embraced in this provision, and would he be the being 
 that he is? The obvious answer is that the scope of his 
 powers is immeasurably beyond all this ; that man's ca- 
 pacities cut down to these proportions, the features that 
 are his distinguishing glory, were gone. Here is con- 
 templated only the near and the practical, while the hu- 
 man range embraces the far and ideal. 
 
 Dr. Martineau remarks in his characteristic way that 
 while other creatures live in Time, Time lives in man 
 alone ; and the same also he finds true as respects Space. 
 His thought is not recondite; it is a truth all recognize 
 that to man alone is a past with its glories and its shames, 
 a future with its dreads and its hopes, a field of vision 
 stretching around him in ever-widening horizon. To one, 
 however, at all conversant with the Critical Philosophy, 
 the truth is capable of being borne home more profoundly 
 and impressively. However we may define Space and 
 Time, it is simply true that what we may dare to call their 
 laws are laws of the human mind. On the perception of 
 these laws the mazy structure of our mathematics is 
 reared ; and our celestial calculations are made by a 
 science wholly a priori in its origin. We draw it from 
 within ourselves and apply it to the computations of the 
 moons of Jupiter and the measurement of the orbit of 
 Saturn, with no doubt whatever that if accuracy rules our 
 processes truth will be the issue of them. That is to say, 
 two infinities meet in man, and he runs backward and for- 
 ward on the one, and out on all radii of the other, drawing 
 ever out of himself a knowledge of their laws. This is an 
 impressive truth, — man not naturalized, but freeborn into 
 these infinities. And what shall we say to the further
 
 436 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 truth that at will he leaps out of both, and roams free in 
 a supersensible and metaphysic world? 
 
 This endowment of a purely terrestrial nature, destined 
 for the brief period of threescore and ten, seems an im- 
 measurable over-endowment. If our scope is thus indeed 
 restricted, the question as to this over-endowment is a 
 most bewildering one. Grant that we need yesterday for 
 its experience and to-morrow for its foresight ; yet, with 
 relations thus restricted to our own period, what need 
 have we of these immeasurable reaches beyond it? What 
 need of the record of Pharaonic dynasties, or of the story 
 told by the monuments of Thebes and Karnak? For the 
 practical guidance of to-day are we helped in any measure 
 by what we have learned of the Aryan migrations or the 
 wars of the Pelasgi? Is our political economy furthered 
 by what we may know of the trade of Tyre, or our states- 
 manship instructed by our knowledge of the decrees of 
 Sennacherib? What need of research into geological 
 antiquities? Or, changing the direction of our glance, 
 what need of millennial forecasts? — Of what advantage is 
 it to know when the pole star will stand in our zenith, or 
 when the sun will reach the Constellation of Hercules? 
 With relations in space so restricted, what need of an ever- 
 expanding horizon? What need of the stellar infinitude 
 and the astronomer's free life in it? Further, while en- 
 gaged in practical estimates we may ask what need of 
 the Analytical Geometry and the Differential Calculus? 
 What need of knowledge of the ultimate elements of mat- 
 ter, or of the chemistry of light, or of the revelations of 
 the microscope and spectroscope, the correlation of forces, 
 the derivative origin of species, the specific gravity of 
 Jupiter, the periodicities of Uranus? What need to add 
 to all these the domain which philosophy opens to our 
 contemplation? What need of the mystic realm of Bee- 
 thoven's music, and Goethe's drama, and Dante's poetry?
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 43/ 
 
 Of endowment equal to the achievement of these things, 
 and the impulse to achieve them, for a being thus re- 
 stricted, what need ? Why in the case of man this incalcu- 
 lable departure from the manifest ideal met in all the lower 
 kingdoms of animal existence? Making our estimate on 
 the strictly utilitarian basis, stipulating for man, according 
 to his nature, such equipment only as other terrestrial 
 natures have, there is no need. The provision for his 
 brief earthly life far surpasses the earthly requirement. 
 Even though we make our own the saying of Coleridge, 
 " We construct our earthly charts from celestial observa- 
 tions," still our contention is unshaken. Still may it be 
 successfully shown that for the purely earthly guidance 
 the nearer luminaries are sufficient for our needs. In the 
 days of Athens' glory Plato's thought was of small con- 
 sequence in the Agora, and the archons had little use for 
 Aeschylos. The vast structure of the Roman Empire 
 shows nothing more plainly than how the common needs 
 may be supplied, power established and preserved, civiliza- 
 tion built up and extended, without the higher intellectual 
 endowments. Its characteristic great man was the soldier, 
 not the sage ; the lawgiver, not the philosopher ; the 
 architect, not the scientist ; the engineer, not the poet. 
 Indeed, considering the period of its duration and the ex- 
 tent of its sway, its conquests in the higher realms of 
 intellect were singularly slight. It produced not a poet, 
 not a philosopher, of the first class; and were the volume 
 of its literary creation suddenly to be blotted from exist- 
 ence, with here and there a regret for Seneca, a grief for 
 Cicero, a sigh for Horace, a tear for Virgil, and a lament 
 for Tacitus, the world would go on with no sense of 
 irreparable loss. Good work here surely, but none of 
 those vast achievements which date epochs in our intel- 
 lectual advance. Of Rome it was peculiarly true that her 
 kingdom was of this world ; and if it were whispered to us
 
 438 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that henceforth we must get on without the higher ener- 
 gies of intellect we might take comfort from the example 
 of her success. Yet the common judgment is right in 
 seeing the more representative man in him of wider and 
 higher intellectual relations: in Aristotle, not Alexander; 
 in Plato, not Pericles ; in Dante, not Cosimo de' Medici; in 
 Goethe, not Frederick ; in Montesquieu, not Louis XIV.; 
 in Milton, not Cromwell; in Newton, not William III.; 
 in Wordsworth, not Wellington ; in Emerson, not Grant. 
 There is the philosopher, Kant, and there beside him is 
 his servant, Lampe. Into the vast speculations of the 
 former the latter may not enter ; yet in the philosopher 
 the valet may see his own possibilities, not transcended, 
 but illustrated. The philosopher with all his greatness has 
 only the common human faculties ; and so exhibits in 
 himself what, though undeveloped, is yet nascent in us 
 all. 
 
 Now the perplexity we encounter here draws all its 
 significance from the supposition that to man as to all 
 other terrestrial natures there is a terrestrial life only. 
 Reverse, then, the supposition ; allow that the here is but 
 a prelude to a there, that " we have vaster relations than 
 our immediate surroundings," and the perplexity vanishes. 
 The disproportion we have contemplated between outfit 
 and scope of existence yields to a sense of the fairest 
 proportion. This transient tenant of the world, that 
 finds his range too narrow, is really a destined citizen of 
 the universe, awaiting his fuller " enfranchisement." In 
 the " excursions " he makes, he feels " the outskirts 
 of a problem that is to engage larger meditations and 
 maturer powers ; " and the " Science that transcends the 
 demands of one life " he is permitted to feel to be the 
 " propylaeum of another." ^ 
 
 This contrast of outfit, with only the light of Natural 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 351.
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 439 
 
 History in which to study it, enfolds perplexities which 
 only deepen as we meditate upon them. Of him who 
 allows no light but that of Natural History we have a 
 right to ask its explanation. Why is the ideal of nature 
 as shown in the endowment of the lower animals so 
 markedly departed from in the case of man? As their 
 endowment is measured off to them according to terres- 
 trial needs, why not his also, if only a terrestrial nature 
 has been given him? Nor is this question here raised 
 for the first time, nor was Dr. Martineau the first to raise 
 it. Early in the century Lord Erskine wrote : "When I 
 reflect that God has given to inferior animals no instincts 
 nor faculties that are not immediately subservient to the 
 ends and purposes of their beings, I cannot but conclude 
 that the reason and faculties of man were bestowed upon 
 the same principle, and are connected with his superior 
 nature." From this conclusion he draws the same infer- 
 ence as Dr. Martineau. " When I find him," he goes on, 
 " endowed with powers to carry, as it were, the line and 
 rule to the most distant worlds, I consider it as conclu- 
 sive evidence of a future and more exalted distinction, 
 because I cannot think that the Creator of the universe 
 would depart from all the analogies of the lower creation 
 in the formation of the highest creature by gifting him 
 with a capacity not only utterly useless but destructive of 
 his contentment and happiness, if his existence were to 
 terminate in the grave." Where this inference is repudi- 
 ated it is difficult to see what possible explanation can be 
 given of this break in the analogy, in passing from the 
 lower orders of existence to the higher. The inference 
 granted, however, the analogy is obviously unbroken. 
 Man has his larger endowment as a provision for the 
 ampler range yet before him. 
 
 The consideration of the scope of man's powers counts 
 for much with Dr. Martineau. There is another consider-
 
 440 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ation, however, which, as conveyed in his impressive 
 language, probably counts with his readers for not less : 
 it is of man's power as a creator. In the possession of 
 this he feels man to be " above the measure of his present 
 lot." •' The reflective mind of man, it has been said, alone 
 is the mirror of nature; but more than this, it is a retain- 
 ing mirror, whereon the images, once left, remain, and 
 shine in the dark; and, most of all, it is a redisposing, a 
 beautifying, a quickening mirror, that drops the matter 
 and keeps the meaning of things, freshens their colours, 
 deepens their expression, and so shifts their scenery 
 as to shape a drama from a chronicle. Well may the 
 poet be called by the half-sacred name of Vates ; for the 
 ideal transformation of the actual is as divine a miracle 
 as the turning of dust into dew-drops; and the moulding 
 of language into an instrument for this end, that its 
 rhythm and its fire may sweep through the ages, still 
 waking up wrath and love and pity wherever it alights, 
 is a marvel surpassed only by our blindness to it." ^ If 
 valued for nothing else, this language might well be treas- 
 ured as a wonderful account of an unaccountable wonder. 
 There are two orders of creation that endure. One is 
 illustrated in the coral reef, in the bridge, the aqueduct, 
 the highway, the structure of a language, society, or gov- 
 ernment ; in a church, a university, in all of which many 
 co-operate, and a succeeding generation may carry for- 
 ward what a previous one begins. " Such monuments 
 record the power of the social spirit, and measure for us 
 the greatness of nations," The other order is altogether 
 personal, the embodied conception of one mind, its very 
 genius excluding all participation. We meet it in the 
 transcendent achievements of art and song and letters: 
 in the dome of St. Peter's, in the Campanile at Florence, 
 in the wonderful delineations of Raphael, Angelico, Da 
 
 1 Study of Religion y vol. ii. pp. 352-353.
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 44 1 
 
 Vinci, in the sonatas of Beethoven and the Messiah of 
 Handel, in the Iliad, the Agamemnon, the Divina Corn- 
 media, Job, Faust, Hamlet, Saul. These are publica- 
 tions of the solitary soul. To add to them is to outrage 
 them ; to mend them is to destroy them. Their reality 
 is in the unity of the one mind that brought them forth. 
 From age to age they experiment upon individual souls, 
 leaving upon them the priceless impress of wisdom, 
 holiness, beauty. They are stars in our intellectual 
 firmament; and no orb in all the galaxy above us more 
 truly witnesses a creative mind than they. 
 
 It is such creations that Dr. Martineau is contemplating 
 in the passage above quoted. Whither may they lead 
 our contemplation? I cast my eyes upon my book- 
 shelves where my chief treasures are, not costly and yet 
 priceless. There is Plato, and beside him Goethe, and 
 beside him Pascal, and Dante is close by, and Kant 
 and Hume and Berkeley just a little further away. There, 
 too, are Shakespeare and Milton and Browning and 
 Emerson ; and before me is an open volume wherein I 
 read, " Lo, I am with you alway." These words seem 
 spoken to me ; and from all these great ones I turn with 
 the sense of personal interview. Their page when most 
 impersonal is as a letter they have written me. This 
 sense of personal relation with the great artist or the 
 great poet or the great teacher is certainly the common 
 one. But the two terms of the relation, — what and 
 where are they? The second is indubitably here; "is 
 the first of them nothing and nowhere? and is the homage 
 it wrings from me paid to a blank? or to a dead book 
 only, — to blotted paper, or coloured canvass, or an 
 orchestral score? Heart-worship, like God, is not of 
 the dead, but of the living; and that, in the thought- 
 glance with which we look up to a Homer, a Dante, a 
 Shakespeare, there should be no reciprocity possible, —
 
 442 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that in reverencing the prophets, we do but decorate 
 their tombs, — that the touch which wakes such fires 
 within us should be that of a quenched torch, would 
 expel their chief meaning from the noblest relations 
 subsisting among human minds. A great creative per- 
 sonality may be lonely and neglected in his day; and 
 only when the reflection which he leaves of himself travels 
 down the ages, does he select and gather together his 
 natural associates and lovers : and shall he never hear 
 the chorus of that great company, or know of that life 
 which began for him when life had ended? "^ 
 
 Through another and related aspect we come to another 
 and related consideration. In our philosophizing it is 
 not our wont to think of an effect as more enduring than 
 its cause, when the real and ultimate cause has been 
 found. Phenomena pass, but not their originating spring. 
 You hold audience with Emerson? Oh no, there is no 
 Emerson. There was an Emerson once, a phantom, that 
 is, to which we gave the name, which flitted here and 
 there across our path, and left this imperisJiable record. 
 His visions, his heart-beats, he built into this enduring 
 memorial and — vanished! The creation abides; the 
 creator is no more ! Here are his phenomena ; he — 
 where ? The stream flows on — its fountain long since 
 gone! The light abides; the snn extinguished! The 
 suggestion seems almost to carry its own refutation. 
 Not only does it bewilder our sense of what is inherently 
 fitting, but it inverts one of the primary conceptions on 
 which our philosophy is founded. " Can a word that is 
 immortal come from a speaker that is ephemeral?" 
 
 Yet another consideration puts in a persuasive plea. 
 Though mind as we know it is related with a physical 
 organism, and therefore, when that organism perishes, 
 ceases from that mode of activity with which we are 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 353-354-
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 443 
 
 acquainted, who can say that with the decay of the or- 
 ganism its possibilities have been surely reaHzed? Very 
 especially in the case of great men is the significance of 
 this question borne in upon us. The great things they 
 achieve — are they more than hints of greater achieve- 
 ments that were possible, were opportunity given them? 
 The intellect that brought forth the Divina Commedia — 
 who can feel that its capacities were exhausted with this 
 consummate production? What lament of great minds 
 is more common than that they have not time to make 
 real the ideals which mental faculty alone, and apart 
 from physical decay, should make so possible to them? 
 But for this limitation, what conquests in science might 
 Agassiz have made ! What songs might Tennyson have 
 sung ! With this consideration in mind Dr. Martineau 
 remarks that the fact that one sees " what he must relin- 
 quish, and resigns it with regret, shows that he could 
 conquer it, if he had a chance ; and it is precisely at the 
 end of life, that, from the vantage-ground of a lofty ele- 
 vation and a large survey, he most intently turns to the 
 horizon and best discerns the outline of the promised 
 land on which his eyes are about to close." This he 
 follows with the impressive statement : " I do not know 
 that there is anything in nature (unless indeed it be the 
 reputed blotting-out of suns in the stellar heavens) which 
 can be compared in wastefulness with the extinction of 
 great minds : their gathered resources, their matured 
 skill, their luminous insight, their unfailing tact, are not 
 like instincts that can be handed down ; they are abso- 
 lutely personal and inalienable; grand conditions of future 
 power, unavailable for the race, and perfect for the ulterior 
 growth of the individual. If that growth is not to be, the 
 most brilliant genius bursts and vanishes as a firework in 
 the night. A mind of balanced and finished faculties is 
 a production at once of infinite delicacy and of most
 
 444 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 enduring constitution; lodged in a fast perishing organ- 
 ism, it is like a perfect set of astronomical instruments, 
 misplaced in an observatory shaken by earthquakes or 
 caving in with decay." ^ 
 
 Here again we need to remember that great and small, 
 as applied to minds, have reference to range of develop- 
 ment, not difference of constitution. Were the great 
 fundamentally other than the small, endowed, that is, 
 with capacities of which in the less favored there are no 
 germs, then immortality might be conceived, as some 
 have conceived it, as the exclusive privilege of the great. 
 But it is not so : the great are only the most representa- 
 tive ; in them we see in fairer proportions what is true 
 of all. However modestly I may estimate myself, I yet 
 may say that there was not a faculty in the august intel- 
 lect of Plato that is not also in mine. The fact that he 
 can speak to me and I can understand him, that I can 
 explore his depths and scale his heights, shows that 
 however in power he may surpass me he is not funda- 
 mentally unlike me. It is not likely that I shall ever 
 write a Lycidas ; but I cannot doubt that I am at least 
 a " mute, inglorious Milton." The claim, then, that we 
 put forward for the great is true for all. We argue not 
 the immortality of sages, but of the soul. 
 
 So much do we find in the prophecies of the intellect. 
 
 2. TJie Conscience. After God, conscience is the most 
 solemn word. It is the oracle of the moral law within ; 
 in listening to it we hear a judgment from the Universal 
 Throne. Its decisions are ever respecting the motives 
 of conduct. This is worthier, that less worthy; and 
 with the decision an obligation is laid upon us. With 
 the ever possible obedience, we are in harmony with the 
 Power that asks it ; with the ever possible disobedience, 
 we are at variance with that Power. Now the issue. With 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 356.
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 445 
 
 the freedom to obey or not to obey, we are put upon a 
 trial that depends upon ourselves. " The alternatives of 
 a trust have a sequel in the alternatives of a reckoning. 
 So that wherever Conscience is, there we stand only 
 in the forecourt of existence ; and a Moral world cannot 
 be final, unless it be everlasting." ^ This pregnant sen- 
 tence may be pondered long. 
 
 But, admitting that alternative consequences must ever 
 follow these alternatives of conduct, it is yet often doubted 
 whether it is necessary to look to another world for them. 
 Here and now, it is argued, men may reap as they sow; 
 blessing for their blessing, evil for their sin. In illustra- 
 tion of this, appeal is often made to the peace of the un- 
 sullied conscience, and to the twinges of guilt and shame 
 that attend unfaithfulness. In the presence of these, it is 
 maintained that there is no need to ask a future in which 
 a harvest appropriate to the sowing shall be gathered. 
 
 This view is not Dr. Martineau's ; and by way of con- 
 troverting it he calls attention to the workings of con- 
 science in two very significant aspects: — 
 
 Ideal justice, — what does that stipulate? In a specific 
 case, — what blessing should follow upon this virtue, what 
 bane should be the issue of that transgression, it would be 
 impossible for man to give more than a proximate judg- 
 ment. We applaud the brave and the self-denying; we 
 condemn the drunkard and the liar. But the deeper con- 
 siderations, — motive, temptation, organized predilection, 
 without reference to which just praise or blame cannot be 
 awarded, can be duly estimated only by the mind of God. 
 But while we may be unable in the specific case to make 
 the absolutely just award, we all recognize a principle by 
 which just awards are made, and which requires that the 
 " greater excellence should have the ampler recognition, 
 and the deeper guilt should have the most to bear."^ In 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 361. ^ yj/^ p ^g^.
 
 446 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 our earthly relations this principle rules our judgments. 
 In our courts the lighter sentence is for the first offence, 
 and penalties become severer as transgressions are re- 
 peated. On the other hand we smile upon the toiler after 
 higher excellence in his earlier successes, applaud his yet 
 nobler achievement ; but withhold from him his crown till 
 some distinguished triumph has been won. This rule may 
 not be always consistently followed, yet it is our rule; 
 and we are sure that neither in heaven nor among men 
 can there be justice apart from it. 
 
 Now this rule, however recognized in outward judgment, 
 in inward experience is practically inverted. The young 
 man, encountering temptation, may be conscious of moral 
 elation in his earlier victories ; but as he goes on, 
 
 "'Still treading each temptation down, 
 And battling for a brighter crown," 
 
 as by repetition of victories he rises, and his vision of duty 
 becomes larger and his insight into its meaning clearer 
 and deeper, his triumphs cease to elate him ; the height 
 that is won is forgotten in contemplation of the height 
 that is above him. While to others he may seem so far 
 from earth, he is only conscious that heaven is so distant; 
 and so, though few may deserve better, few are less con- 
 scious of desert than he. Hence it is that at the moral 
 summits of humanity we hear a Channing complaining of 
 the hardness of his heart, a Wesley bewailing his unbelief, 
 a Luther lamenting his want of steadfastness, and Paul 
 crying, " Oh wretched man that I am ! " Looking in the 
 other direction, we find it correspondingly the same. In 
 the punishments of conscience there is ever the sharper 
 pang for the earlier sin ; and suffering is ever less as 
 transgression is repeated. So he may suffer least whose 
 guilt is greatest; and the sinning soul may indurate itself 
 beyond the scorchings of retribution.
 
 FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 447 
 
 For these reasons it seems impossible to admit that 
 " our Moral nature runs through its own cycle, and fulfils 
 its own idea, in our experience here. It announces a 
 righteous rule which again and again it brings to mind 
 and will not suffer to be forgotten, but of which it does 
 not secure the execution. It is a prophecy, carrying its 
 own credentials in an incipient foretaste of the end, but 
 holding its realization in reserve; and if Death gives final 
 discharge alike to the sinner and the saint, we are war- 
 ranted in saying that Conscience has told more lies than it 
 has ever called to their account." ^ 
 
 Thus he finds the Intellect and Conscience, both plead- 
 ing for immortality, the one for the exercise of its powers, 
 the other for the realization of its justice, and he admits 
 their plea. The fact that these may not be here, is to him 
 sufficient warrant that there must be a there. 
 
 Here we leave him. The faith which Positivism must 
 disown, and Pantheism cannot encourage, and Evolution 
 can barely allow, supported by Dr. Martineau's philoso- 
 phy, may be strong and buoyant. A dogma he does not 
 offer us ; the warrant of a science he does not claim. 
 Through his intense believing, however, and his lofty 
 thinking, he bears in upon us a certitude that is clear and 
 strong and sufficing. It must be a stubborn scepticism 
 that, emerging from the deeps of this great Stiidy^ cannot 
 say with the Emperor Marcus, " What springs from earth 
 dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to 
 their native seat." 
 
 1 Study of Religion, vol. ii. p. 365.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Ezra, 239. 
 
 Aberdeen, University of, 119. 
 
 Academy, The, 141. 
 
 Acosmism and atheism, 402. 
 
 Act of Uniformity, The, 42. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 126. 
 
 Address to James Martineau, eighty-third 
 
 birthday, 11S-120; reply to, 120-122. 
 Admetos, iS. 
 Aeschylos, 125, 437. 
 Affection, Compassionate, 3S8. 
 Agamemnon, — Aeschylos, 441. 
 Agassiz, Louis, 128, 224, 245, 34S, 443. 
 Agnosticism, Club to combat, 97-99 ; 
 
 Kant's and Hume's, compared, 2S0- 
 
 2S5. 
 Akenside, Mark, 139. 
 Alderson, Dr., 9, 10, 
 Alexander, 43S. 
 Alger, William, R., 78 n., 88; letter to, 
 
 from Dr. Martineau, 98 n., 229 n. 
 "All we know is phenomena," 294, 
 
 304- 
 Alphonso of Castile, 354. 
 Altruism in Nature, 377. 
 Amsterdam, University of, 119. 
 Ancient Egypt H7ider the Pharaohs, J. 
 
 Kenrick. 24. 
 Andover Theological School, 119, 162. 
 Andrews, St., University of, 118. 
 Angelico, Fra, 440. 
 Angelo, Michael, 138. 
 Animal, The. outfit of an ideal provision 
 
 for a terrestrial sphere, 433. 
 Annas, 242. 
 
 Anomalies vs. Customs of Heaven, 172. 
 Anthedon, 341. 
 Anthropomorphism, 348. 
 Antonines, The, 251, 
 
 Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, 371, 447. 
 Apocalypse, The, 239 ; authorship of, 
 
 240-241. 
 Apollinaris, 237, 246. 
 Apollo, 18. 
 
 Apostles, The, 39, 178, 231, 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 155-156. 
 Argyll, Duke of, 98 n. 
 Arianism, 21, 163-164, 165, 196. 
 Aristides, 16. 
 Aristotle, 27, 76, 80, 93, 123, 128, 320, 
 
 353-354. 438- 
 Armstrong, Rev. James, 38. 
 Armstrong, Rev. R. A., 92. 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 119. 
 Arnold, Thomas, 14, 79. 
 Aryans, 436. 
 
 Assembly's Catechism, 36. 
 " Asses of Parnassus," 127. 
 Association, Law of, 423. 
 Athanasius, St., 66. 
 Atheism and acosmism, 402. 
 Athenagoras, 251. 
 
 Atkinson, Henry George, 84-85, 86. 
 Atonement, The, 71, 173-174. 
 Augustine, St., 214, 375. 
 Austin, 10. 
 Authority in Religion, 54; Catholic view 
 
 of, 221; Protestant view of, 221-222; 
 
 philosophic view of, 222-225 ; internal 
 
 and external, 225-226. 
 Automatism vs. Intelligence, 338. 
 Axiom of Causality, 99, 314 n. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 76, 127, 139, 245, 362. 
 Bain, Alexander, 93, 98 n., 124, 306. 
 Balfour, Arthur J., 122. 
 Bank of England, 134. 
 Baptist, John the, 135. 
 
 29
 
 450 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 8 n., 9. 
 
 Barnes, Thomas, 21. 
 
 Battle of the Churches, The, 82. 
 
 Baur, Ferdinand Christian, 229, 236. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 36, 37, 45, 208. 
 
 Beatitudes, Mount of, 140. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 142, 150. 
 
 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 436, 441. 
 
 Belfast, 166. 
 
 Belfast Address, The, John Tyndall, 
 
 335' 
 Belsham, Thomas, 162. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 51, no, 124, 363. 
 
 Bentley, Richard, 79. 
 
 Bergerac, 2. 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 32S, 413, 441. 
 
 "Besetting God," The, 150. 
 
 Bethany, 242. 
 
 Bible, The, 168, 178, 260. 
 
 " Bible and the Child," The, 179. 
 
 " Bible, The : What it is and What it is 
 not," 169. 
 
 Birth-rate, Excessive, 357. 
 
 Blandrata, Giorgio, 214. 
 
 Boeckh, August, 26. 
 
 " Bona Fides of our intuitive witnesses," 
 2S9. 
 
 Bossuet, Bishop, 130. 
 
 Boswell, James, 79. 
 
 Bounty, Royal, 45, 46, 47, 48. 
 
 Bowen, Francis, 300. 
 
 Bradley, G. G., 119. 
 
 Bretschn eider, Karl GottUeb, 228. 
 
 Bridgewaier Treatises, The, 335, 337. 
 
 Bristol, Bishop of, 98. 
 
 British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
 tion, The, 209, 210, 211. 
 
 British Museum, The, 36 n. 
 
 Brobdingnag, 369. 
 
 Brooks, Phillips, 120. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 7. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas. 10. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 98 n., 119, 141, 432, 
 441. 
 
 Bunsen, Baron, 241. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 239. 
 
 Butler, Joseph, 92, 125. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 141. 
 
 c. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 2S3. 
 
 Caesarea Philippi, Declaration at, 271- 
 274. 
 
 Caiaphas, 242. 
 
 Caird, Prof. Edward, 288, 353. 
 
 Cairn Gorm Mountains, 136. 
 
 Calculus, The, 43, 436. 
 
 Caliban, 358. 
 
 Calvary, 234. 
 
 Calvin, John, 375, 423. 
 
 Calvinism, 190. 
 
 Calvinists, 429. 
 
 Campanile, at Florence, 440. 
 
 Canon, Genuineness of, 117. 
 
 Canute, 10. 
 
 Capel, Thomas J., 54. 
 
 Cappe, Catliarine, 29-30. 
 
 Cappe, Newcome, 29 n. 
 
 Carlstadt, A. R. Bodenstein, 227. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 83, 124, 141. 
 
 Carpenter, J. Estlin, 15, 92, 264 n. 
 
 Carpenter, Lant, 13-19, 35, 78. 
 
 Carpenter, Mary, 15. 
 
 Carpenter, W. B., 15, 98, 99, 125, 308, 
 31S n. 
 
 Cartesians, 108. 
 
 Categorical Imperative, The, 141, 360. 
 
 Categories, The, Kant's inferences from 
 them criticised, 288. 
 
 Catholic, The, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49. 
 
 Catholic Church, The, 52, 225. 
 
 Catholic Emancipation, 17. 
 
 Catiline, 179. 
 
 Causal Idea, The, 300. 
 
 Causation, Two theories of, 300-301 ; 
 phenomenal theory of, 301 seq. ; dy- 
 namical theory of, 311 seq. ; Hume's 
 view of. 2S1, 301-303 ; Comte's, 303- 
 304 ; Mill's, 304-305 ; Kant's, 310- 
 311 ; Martineau's, 311 seq. ; reduced 
 to uniform succession, 306; empirical 
 and metaphysical doctrines of, com- 
 pared, 313. 
 
 Cayman Islands, 344. 
 
 Cerebral Psychology, Bain, 95. 
 
 Channing, W. E., 82, 142, 147, 150, 165, 
 166, 446. 
 
 Chapman, Mrs. Maria W., 10, 11. 
 
 Charles I., 398. 
 
 Charles II., 44, 210. 
 
 Charles V., 433. 
 
 Chillincovorth, William, 6, 36. 
 Christ Church, Liverpool, 5S. 
 "Christ's Treatment of Guilt," 156 n., 
 
 "Christ the Divine Word," 150. 
 Christian Examiner, The, 78.
 
 INDEX 
 
 451 
 
 Christian Instincts and Modern Doubt, 
 A. H. Craufurd, 216 n. 
 
 "Christian Peace," 150. 
 
 Christian Reformer, The, 51, 78, 202, 
 213 n. 
 
 Christian Teacher, The, 57. 
 
 " Christian View of Moral Evil," 174, 
 
 '* Christianity without Priest and with- 
 out Ritual," 176. 
 
 Church and State, 79. 
 
 Church of England, 20; Sacerdotalism 
 in, 17S. 
 
 Church of England, 82. 
 
 Church vs Sect, 212. 
 
 Cicero, 104, 143, 437. 
 
 Civil War in America, 89. 
 
 Clarendon Press, 107. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, 109. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 242. 
 
 Clementine Recognitions, 23S. 
 
 Clifford, Prof. W. K., 98, 99. 
 
 Cobbe, Frances Power, 94, 160, 161, 
 
 343"- 
 Coleridge, S. T., 124, 411, 437. 
 Collins, Anthony, no. 
 Columbia Theological School, 162. 
 Columbus, Christopher, 10. 
 Combination in Nature, 343 seq, 
 Commodus, 15. 
 Common Prayer, igS. 
 Comte, Auguste, 84, 88, loS, 113, 124, 
 
 125, 224, 303-304, 308, 309, 36S, 
 
 423- 
 
 Congregationalism, 38. 
 
 Conscience, its function, 359-362 ; not a 
 reflection of Prudence, 363 ; its oracle 
 not from the higher nature in man, 
 367-36S ; not a reflection of social 
 sentiment, 36S-372 ; the voice of God, 
 372-374 ; a forecast of immortality, 
 
 444 s^'^- 
 Contemforary Rci'ieu', 237 n. 
 
 Corinthians, Epistles to, 230. 
 
 Correlation of growth, 343. 
 
 Cosin, Bishop, 10. 
 
 Cotman, John S., 10. 
 
 Craufurd, A. H., 216 n. 
 
 Creed of Christendom, The, W. R. Greg, 
 
 82, i8o, 1S4. 
 Crome, John, 10. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 39S, 43S. 
 Crosby and Nichols, 88. 
 Cudworth, Ralph, 109. 
 Cuvier, Georges, 343, 348. 
 
 Daily News, London, 5 n,, 7, 82 n. 
 
 Dante Alighieri, 144, 436, 438, 441. 
 
 Darbishire, F,, 104. 
 
 Darbishire, S. D., 104. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 125, 126, 224, 343. 
 
 Darwinism in Morals, F. P. Cobbe, 
 
 3431. 
 David, Son of, 74, 247, 265. 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, 320. 
 De Wette, Wilhelm M. L., 228. 
 Death, the transition of, 192. 
 Declaration of Independence, The, 239. 
 Deism, cardinal features of, 401-402 ; 
 
 maintained Divine Transcendency, 
 
 401 ; its God always a person, 406 ; 
 
 criticised, 405-406. 
 Democritus, 85. 
 Demosthenes, 27, 129. 
 Deontology, Bentham, 51. 
 Derby, 18, 19. 
 Derbyshire, 9 n. 
 
 " Derivative origin of phenomena," 312. 
 Descartes, Rene, 123, 336, 33S, 348. 
 Design, objections to the argimient 
 
 from, 331, 335-354- 
 Development of organs, two theories of, 
 
 342. 
 
 Dewey, Rev. Orville, 150. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 94. 
 
 Diderot, Denis, in. 
 
 Dieppe, 2. 
 
 " Discipline of Darkness," The, 150. 
 
 Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Re- 
 ligion, Theodore Parker, 186. 
 
 Divina Commedia, Dante, 441, 443. 
 
 Domitian, 376. 
 
 Dragonade, The, i, 2, 399. 
 
 Drummond, Henry, 377. 
 
 Drummond, James, 22. 
 
 Dublin, Mr. Martineau's call and settle- 
 ment there, 35-37 ; his life there, 44 ; 
 moral issue tliat severed him from his 
 congregation, 44-49 ; losses from his 
 congregation, 163. 
 
 Dublin University, 43 ; honors Dr. Mar- 
 tineau, 100. 
 
 E. 
 
 Early Messianic Ideas, 95. 
 Ebionites, The. 252. 
 
 Ecclesiastical organization, basis of, 207 
 seq.
 
 452 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Eckhart, Johannes, 150, 403. 
 
 Edict of Nantes, i ; Revocation of, i, 2, 
 
 399- 
 Edinburgh University, honors Dr. Mar- 
 
 tineau, 100 ; 119. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 9, 110,423. 
 
 Efficient and Effect, 301. 
 
 Egypt oj Herodotus, John Kenrick, 24. 
 
 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried, 33. 
 
 Elegant ice Latince, Edward V'alpy, 12. 
 
 Elegy, Thomas Gray, 145. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 52, 83, 126, 128, 134, 
 160,171, 403,438,442. 
 
 Endeavors after the Christian Life, 
 7-8 ; first series published, 78 ; second 
 series, 79)95, 107, 143, 145, 148-149, 
 150, 172. 
 
 Epicurean Morality, 179. 
 
 Epicureans, The, 328. 
 
 Epistles, The, 167, 228; genuine, 230. 
 
 Erpingham, Sir Thomas, 10. 
 
 Erskine, Lord, 439. 
 
 Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, 51 ; 
 their publication, 118; 180, 183, 184, 
 187, 197, 202, 203-204, 206, 212, 213- 
 214, 217, 21S, 219, 314 n., 322, 328, 
 
 329, 33°- 333- 
 Essays, Theological ajid Philosophical, 
 
 95- 
 Essays, Hume's, 280. 
 
 Essex Hall, Convention at, 209, 211. 
 
 Eucharist, The, 51. 
 
 Europe since the Reformation, 82. 
 
 Eusebius, 237 n. 
 
 Everlasting Gospel, The, not the Primi- 
 tive, 180. 
 
 Evidence, J. A. Froude, 99. 
 
 Evolution of Religion, The, Prof. Ed- 
 ward Caird, 353. 
 
 Evolution, Philosophy of, 96, 132. 
 
 Ewald, Heinrich Georg August von, 241. 
 
 Examination of Hamilton, J. S. Mill, 
 366. 
 
 Ezekiel, The Book of, 260 ; the Seer in, 
 268. 
 
 " Faith the deliverance from Fear," 158. 
 
 Fall, Doctrine of, reviewed, 174-175. 
 
 Faraday, Michael, 126. 
 
 Fatalism, Necessity implies it, 427-428. 
 
 Father Taylor, 138. 
 
 Faust, Goethe, 441. 
 
 Filiation, not a gift, 253. 
 
 Final Causes, 336 seq. 
 
 Final Causes, Paul A. R. Janet, 342 n. 
 
 Finite and the Infinite m Human 
 
 Nature, The, 199. 
 First Principles, Herbert Spencer, 95, 
 
 335- 
 Five Points of Christian Faith, 78, 178. 
 
 Florence, Campanile at, 440. 
 
 Force, behind Nature, 318; in Nature, 
 319 , Unity of, 321 ; ultimate nature 
 of, not revealed to the senses, 321-325 ; 
 resolved into Will, 325-326. 
 
 Forces, Correlation of, 319-321. 
 
 Forgiveness, 192. 
 
 Foundations of Belief, Arthur J. Bal- 
 four, 122. 
 
 Fourth Gospel, The, 231 ; compared with 
 the Synoptics, 234 ; date and origin of, 
 236-253. 
 
 France, her losses from the Revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes, i. 
 
 Frederick the Great, 438. 
 
 " Free learning," 20 n. 
 
 Free Will, 423 seq. 
 
 Freedom, involves liability to sin, 391 ; 
 how related to immortality, 429. 
 
 Froude, J. A., 99, 396. 
 
 Fuller, Andrew, 64 n. 
 
 Furness, W. H., 220. 
 
 Future Punishment, 192-195. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, 10, 
 
 Galahad, Sir, 76. 
 
 Galatians, Epistle to the, 230. 
 
 Galilee, 242, 249,275. 
 
 Garfield, James A., 34. 
 
 George I., 44. 
 
 George, Henry, 139. 
 
 Giles, Rev. Henry, 57, 64. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 50, 97. 
 
 Glasgow, University of, 13, 119. 
 
 Glaucus of Anthedon, 341. 
 
 Gnosticism, 251. 
 
 God in History, 187. 
 
 Goethe, 133, 362, 404, 436, 438, 441. 
 
 Gordon, Rev. Alexander, 20 n., 92. 
 
 Gospel according to the Hebrews, 252. 
 
 Gospel of Peter, The, 122. 
 
 Gospels, The, 55, 167, 232, 233 ; agree- 
 ments and disagreements of, 228 ; 
 significance of their headings, 230.
 
 INDEX 
 
 453 
 
 Gradation in Nature, 346-348. 
 Greek Grammar, Matthiae, 26. 
 Grant, U.S., 43S. 
 Greenwood, Grace, 135. 
 Greg, W. R., ibo, 184. 
 Grote, George, 96, 124. 
 Grundy, Rev. John, 50, 51. 
 Guyon, Madame, 404. 
 
 H. 
 
 Haeckel, Ernest, 343. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, 10. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 88, 93, 124, 125, 
 
 132. 
 Hamlet, Shakespeare, 441. 
 Handel, George Frederick, 441. 
 Harnack, Dr. Adolf, 239. 
 Harrison, Frederic, 98, 99. 
 Hartley, David, 110, 181, 423. 
 Hartmann, Eduard von, 393. 
 Harvard University 99, 119. 
 Haworth, F., 104. 
 
 Hedge, F. H,, 120, 133,336, 337, 4o3n- 
 Hedonism, 363. 
 
 Hegel, G.W. F., So, 81, 335, 411. 
 Herod, 179. 
 
 Herschel, Sir John, 330. 
 Hewley, Lady, 210, 211. 
 Hibbert Lectures, Charles B. Upton, 299. 
 Hierarchy, The, 224. 
 Higginson, Rev. Edward, 19. 
 Higginson, Helen, 36. 
 Hildebrand, 224. 
 Hill, Rev. Thomas E., 350. 
 Holmes, O. W., 120. 
 Holy Livin an Holy Dying, Jeremy 
 
 Taylor, 78. 
 Home Prayers, 118. 
 Homer, 76, 139, 441. 
 Honduras, Bay of, 344. 
 Honors to Dr. Martineau, 99-106. 
 Hope Street Church, 81, 145. 
 Hopkins, Mark, 34. 
 Horace, 437. 
 Houghton, Lord, 10. 
 Hours of Thought on Sacred Things, 44, 
 
 95, 107, 143, 145, 150. 
 Howison, Prof. George H., 402. 
 Huguenots, The. 1-2, 5, 399. 
 Humanitarianism. 164, 196. 
 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 25. 
 Hume, David, 123; agnosticism of, 280- 
 
 282 ; his agnosticism compared with I 
 
 Kant's, 284-285 ; 301, 302, 303, 310, 
 
 441. 
 Hungary, Unitarians of, 103-106. 
 Hunt, John, 412. 
 Hutton, Rev. Joseph, 37-39. 
 liutton, R. H., 80, 192-193. 
 Huxley, Tliomas, 98, 99, 280, 290, 328, 
 
 343i 349, 378. 
 Hymns for the Christian Church and 
 
 Home, 74. 
 Hytnns of F raise and Prayer, 95. 
 
 I. 
 
 Iliad, The, 441. 
 
 Immanence, Divine, 402, 407-410, 422. 
 
 Immortality, Freedom essential to, 430; 
 testimony of the intellect to, 431 seq.\ 
 testimony of conscience to, 444 seq. 
 
 In Meinoriam, Tennyson, 125. 
 
 Inquirer, The, London, 213 n. 
 
 Inspiration, spiritual, not mechanical, 
 169-170; full significance of, not sure 
 to be seen by him who brings it, 180; 
 nature and scope of, 1S5-1S8. 
 
 Intellect in man and the lower animals, 
 431 seq. 
 
 Irenseus, 232, 237 n. 
 
 Isaiah, 5, 220, 260, 331. 
 
 Islam, 214. 
 
 Israelites, The, 259. 
 
 J- 
 
 Jacob, 137. 
 
 Jacobi, Karl Heinrich Friedrich, 353. 
 
 Jamaica, 344. 
 
 Janet, Paul A. R., 342. 
 
 Jena, University of, 119. 
 
 Jeremiah, 220. 
 
 Jerome, St., 432. 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 130. 
 
 Jerusalem, 74 ; Church of, 243 ; 249, 
 274, 275, 276, 277. 
 
 Jesus of Nazara, Dr. Theodor Keim, 
 249. 
 
 Jews, The, 243, 404. 
 
 Job, 441. 
 
 John the Apostle, 239, 240, 243, 245. 
 
 John the Baptist, 13;, 271, 433. 
 
 John the Presbyter, 237 n. 
 
 Johns Hopkins University, 119. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 79, 141, 404; re- 
 futes Berkeley, 413. 
 
 Jones, Jeremiah, 33.
 
 454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jordan, The, 242. 
 
 Joshua, 259. 
 
 Jouffroy, Theodore-Simon, 139. 
 
 Jowett, Prof. Benjamin, 118, 119. 
 
 Judaism, 214. 
 
 Judas, 191. 
 
 Judges, Book of, 260. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, Emanuel, 76, 81, 125, 279; source 
 of prevailing agnosticism, 2S0; tests 
 Hume's doctrine, 282 ; finds an a 
 priori element in all knowledge, 283 ; 
 his agnosticism vs. Hume's, 2S4-2S5 ; 
 his doctrine of causation, 309-311 ; Dr. 
 Martineau sets out with, 285 scq. ; de- 
 parts from, 310-311; 336, 438, 441. 
 
 Keble John, 214. 
 
 Keim, Dr. Theodor, 239. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas ^, 150. 
 
 Kenrick, John, 22 n., 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 
 32, 104. 
 
 Kepler, Johann, 314. 
 
 King, Rev. Thomas Starr, 88. 
 
 Knight, Prof. William, 118. 
 
 Knowles, James, 98. 
 
 Knox, John, 36. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lachmann, Karl, K. F. W., 26. 
 
 Lampe, 438. 
 
 Laplace, Pierre Simon, 113, 312, 330, 
 
 337. 
 
 Lardner, Nathaniel, 163 n. 
 
 Law, the function of, 313. 
 
 Law, William, 403. 
 
 Laws of MarCs Nature and Develop- 
 ment, The, G. H. Atkinson and Har- 
 riet Martineau, 85. 
 
 " Laws of Succession," Comte's substi- 
 tute for Cause, 304. 
 
 LM.y Sermons, Huxley, 335. 
 
 Lazarus, his resurrection narrated only 
 in the Foiirth Gospel, 248. 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 119. 
 
 Leeds, Address at, 211 n. 
 
 Legge, Thomas, 9. 
 
 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 378. 
 
 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 88, 124, 228. 
 
 Letter and Spirit, 82. 
 
 Lewis, Dio, 431. 
 
 Lewis, Mrs. Leyson, daughter of Dr. 
 Martineau, 36. 
 
 Leyden, University at, 100, iig 
 
 Life and Correspo?idence of Thomas 
 Arnold, 79. 
 
 Lightfoot, John, 246. 
 
 Lindsey, Theopliilus, 163 n. 
 
 Little Portland Street Chapel, its earlier 
 type of doctrine, 93 ; calls Dr. Marti- 
 neau and J. J. Tayler to a joint pas- 
 torate, 93-94 ; its outward features, 
 94; 145. 160. 
 
 Liverpool Controversy, The, 57 seq., 
 162, 168, 172, 178. 
 
 LivingChurch through Changing Creeds, 
 The, 211 n., 217. 
 
 Livingstone, David, 385. 
 
 Locke, John, 76, no, 301. 
 
 Lockyer, J. Norman, 125. 
 
 Logic, Mill's, 308. 
 
 Logos, Johannine, 227, 247-248 ; of the 
 Alexandrine type of doctrine, 250-259 ; 
 weds Gnostic philosophy with the 
 human history of Jesus Christ, 251; 
 262. 
 
 London, Bishop of, 27. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W., 8, 144, 367. 
 
 Longfellow, Samuel, 214. 
 
 Louis XIV., I, 438. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 120, 
 
 Lowell Institute, 88. 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 98. 
 
 Luke, Gospel of, 232, 234, 253, 260. 
 
 Lunatic Asylum, York, 30. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 141, 214, 224, 227, 446. 
 
 Lycidas, Milton, 444. 
 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, 94, 126. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 125. 
 
 McNeile, Rev. H., 169 n. 
 
 Malebranche, Nicolas, 411. 
 
 Malibran, Maria Felicia, 334. 
 
 Man, his outfit for more than his terres- 
 trial sphere, 434-439; as a creator, 
 440. 
 
 Manchester New College, history of, 20 ; 
 its several designations, 20 n. ; its car- 
 dinal purpose, 21 ; types of doctrine 
 which it has reflected, 21-22; 23, 25, 
 26, 166. 
 
 Manning, Archbishop, 98. 
 
 Man^s Place in the Cosmos, A. Sethf 
 
 339- 
 Mansel, H. L., 88, 93, 124, 290.
 
 INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Marcion, 237, 243. 
 
 Marcionitcs, knew the Fourth Gospel, 
 
 237; 246. 
 Mark, Gospel of, 234, 247. 
 Martineau, Basil, son of James Martineau, 
 
 52- 
 
 Martineau, David, son of Gaston Marti- 
 neau, 2. 
 
 Martineau, David, son of the above 
 David, 2. 
 
 Martineau, Edith, daughter of James 
 Martineau, 52. 
 
 Martineau, Elie, of Bergerac, 2, 
 
 Martineau, Elizabeth, sister of James 
 Martineau, 3. 
 
 Martineau, Ellen, sister of James Marti- 
 neau, 3, 6. 
 
 Martineau, Gaston, son of Elie Marti- 
 neau, and founder of the English 
 line, 2. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, sister of James Mar- 
 tineau, 3, 5 n., II, 14 n., 82-S7. 
 
 Martineau, Helen, daughter of James 
 Martineau, 36. 
 
 Martineau, Henry, brother of James Mar- 
 tineau, 3. 
 
 Martineau, Herbert, son of James Marti- 
 neau, 52. 
 
 Martineau, Isabella, daughter of James 
 Martineau, 36. 
 
 Martineau, James : ancestry, 1-3 ; birth, 
 3; early home, 4-11 ; at school in 
 Norwich, S-12; in Lant Carpenter's 
 school at Bristol, 13-18; studies civil 
 engineering at Derby, 18; decides to 
 become a minister, 19 ; at college, 19- 
 34; "admitted to preach," 35 ; teaches 
 in school at Bristol, 35; called as 
 co-pastor to the Eustace Street Pres- 
 byterian Church in Dublin, 35 ; mar- 
 riage, 36 ; ordination, 36-42 ; combines 
 preaching with teaching, 43 ; prepares 
 a hymn-book, 43 ; becomes sole pastor 
 of his church, 44; makes an issue 
 with his congregation, on the Regium 
 Bonttm, 44 ; becomes co-pastor of the 
 Paradise Street Chapel in Liverpool, 
 50; begins work as a reviewer, 51 ; 
 becomes sole pastor, 51; publishes the 
 Rationale of Religious Inquiry, 52 ; 
 bears a part in the Liverpool Contro- 
 versy, 57-71; publishes a second hymn- 
 book, 74 ; a writer of hymns, 75 ; be- 
 comes Professor of Mental and Moral 
 
 Philosophy and Political Economy in 
 Manchester New College, 75-/6; un- 
 conscious divergence from English 
 Sensationalism, 77; his apostasy shown 
 him by John Stuart Mill. 77 ; pub- 
 lishes first series of Endeavors after 
 the Christian Life, 78; continues criti- 
 cal labors, 79; publishes second series 
 of Endeavors, 79; goes to Germany 
 for rest and study, 80-S1; his conver- 
 sion from an empirical to a spiritual 
 philosophy, 80-S1 ; essay on Mesmeric 
 Atheism, 82 ; difficulty with his sister 
 Harriet, S2-S7 ; two collections of his 
 essays. Miscellanies and Studies of 
 Christianity, brought out in Boston, 
 88 ; invited to London to become resi- 
 dent professor in Manchester New 
 College, 89 ; resigns his pastoral charge 
 at Liverpool, 89; farewell sermon, 89- 
 91 ; contest over his appointment to 
 the College, 91-92 ; his work in the 
 College, 92-93; takes with J. J. Tay- 
 ler the pulpit charge of Little Portland 
 Street Chapel, 93 ; on the death of 
 Mr. Tayler conducts the pulpit service 
 alone, 94; becomes Principal of Man- 
 chester New College, 94 ; publication 
 of Essays, Theological and Philo- 
 sophical, 95; two series of Hours of 
 Thought on Sacred Thittgs, 95 ; 
 volume on Spinoza, 95 ; publishes 
 a third hymn-book, 95 ; rejoinder to 
 Prof. Tyndall, 95-96 ; candidate for 
 the chair of Logic and Mental Philoso- 
 phy inUniversity College, 96; opposed 
 and defeated by George Grote, 96-97 ; 
 becomes a member of a Metaphysical 
 Club, 97-99 ; Academic honors, 99- 
 100; other testimonials, 100-103; 
 death of his wife, 102; severs his con- 
 nection with Manchester New College, 
 102-106; publishes Types of Ethical 
 Theory, 107; publishes Study of 
 Religion, iii; publishes Seat of Au- 
 thority in Religion, 117; collects and 
 publishes four volumes of Essays, Re- 
 views, and Addresses, 118; publishes 
 Home Prayers, 118; address from the 
 scholars and thinkers of Europe and 
 America on his eighty-third birthday, 
 118-120; his reply, 120-122; critically 
 reviews the Gospel of Peter and Bal- 
 four's Foundations of Belief, 122;
 
 456 
 
 INDEX 
 
 death, 4 ; analysis of his intellect, 
 123-134; personal features, 135-141. 
 Martineau, Mary Ellen, daughter of James 
 
 Martineau, 52. 
 Martineau, Philip Meadows, son of 
 
 David Martineau, 2d, 2. 
 Martineau, Rachel, sister of James Mar- 
 tineau, 3, 6. 
 
 Martineau, Robert, brother of James 
 Martineau, 3. 
 
 Martineau, Russell, son of James Marti- 
 neau, 36. 
 
 Martineau, Thomas, father of James 
 Martineau, 3, 6. 
 
 Martineau, Thomas, brother of James 
 Martineau, 3. 
 
 Martyr, Justin, his use of our Gospels, 
 232-233 ; comparison of one of his 
 citations with corresponding passage 
 in the Fourth Gospel, 23S. 
 
 Matthew, Gospel of, 234, 260. 
 
 Matthiae's Greek Grammar, 26. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 98. 
 
 Mecanique Celeste, Laplace, 322. 
 
 Medici, Cosimo de', 438. 
 
 Melanchthon, Philip, 188. 
 
 " Memoirs of the Apostles," 232. 
 
 Memoirs of Catharine Cappe, by herself, 
 29. 
 
 Memoir of the Late Charles Well- 
 beloved, John Kenrick, 29 n. 
 
 Mesmeric Atheism, 82 seq. 
 
 Messiah, God's and man's, 73-74 ; com- 
 parison of, in Synoptics and in John, 
 247-248 ; conditions that were to meet 
 in him, 252; that Jesus was Messiah 
 a Synoptic teaching, 263 ; indications 
 that Jesus did not claim the Messiah- 
 ship himself, 264-277. 
 
 Messiah, Handel, 441. 
 
 Metaphysical Club, its origin and work, 
 97-98. 
 
 Mill, James, 51, no, i8r. 
 
 Mill, J. S., detects Mr. Martineau's de- 
 fection from the Necessarian philoso- 
 phy, 7T, 88, 93, 123, 124, 125, 128, 
 165, 181, 304-305, 308, 309, 313, 314, 
 316, 320; admits the validity of the 
 argument from Design, 336; dislikes 
 the argument, 352; his happiness the- 
 ory, 3''',3 ; 366, 376- 
 
 Miller, Mrs. Fenwick, 5 n. 
 
 Milton, John, 438, 441, ,144, 
 
 Miracle and Law, 379-381. 
 
 Miscellanies, edited by Thomas Starr 
 King, 88. 
 
 Modern Materialism : its Attitude to- 
 wards Theology, 96. 
 
 Montaigne, Michel de, his ideal of edu- 
 cation, 17 ; 126, 347. 
 
 Montesquieu. Baron de 438. 
 
 Mo7tthly Repository, The, 51. 
 
 Moral Evil, Christian view of, 174-176, 
 3S9 seq. 
 
 Morgan, Thomas, 408. 
 
 Moses, 154, 179, 221. 
 
 Miiller, Max, 24, 119, 126. 
 
 Mystics, The, their tendency towards 
 pantheism, 403-404. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nabis, 376. 
 
 Nahum the prophet, 242. 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, i, 2, 399. 
 
 Nathan der Weise, Lessing, 8. 
 
 National Review, The, 88, 94. 
 
 Natural Religion, J. R. Seeley, criti- 
 cism of, 113 seq. 
 
 Nature, R. W. Emerson, 52. 
 
 Nature and God, 95, 183. 
 
 Necessity, philosophical doctrine of, 
 early held by Dr. Martineau, "]"] ; he 
 was converted from, 80-81 ; illustrated 
 and criticised, 424-430. 
 
 Neo-Platonism, the Alexandrian type 
 of, reflected in the Proem of the Fourth 
 Gospel, 250-251. 
 
 Newman, F. W., 82, 180. 
 
 Newman, J, H., 42, 124, 363 n. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 408, 438. 
 
 Nineteenth Century, 98, 122. 
 
 Nisan, the month of, 249. 
 
 Norwich, early home of the Martineaus, 
 2, 3 ; outward features of, 8-10. 
 
 Novalis, F. von Hardenberg, 76, 429. 
 
 O. 
 
 Octagon Chapel, Norwich, 9 n. 
 
 Old and New, The, 117. 
 
 One, The, 412. 
 
 Opie, Amelia, 9, 10. 
 
 Organs, rudimentary, 355-356 ; imper- 
 fect, 356. 
 
 Ould, Rev. Fielding, 58 seq. 
 
 Outer and Inner Temple, The, 73. 
 
 Oxford University, honors Dr. Marti< 
 neau, 100, 119.
 
 INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Pain, of hunger and thirst, 3S1 : of heat 
 and cold, 381-382,- of decline, 3S2- 
 384 ; of apprehension and memoryi 
 387 seq. 
 
 Paley, Bishop, 92 his illustration of de- 
 sign, 335-336 ; his argument compared 
 with Ur. Martineau's,33S; his doctrine 
 of future rewards and punishments, 
 
 365. 
 Pantheism, compared with Deism, 402- 
 
 405 ; compared with Tlieism, 407- 
 
 410; definition of, 411; concession to, 
 
 413-415; reservation from, 415-419; 
 
 final objection to, 418-421; considered 
 
 with reference to immortality, 430. 
 
 Paradise Street Chapel, 80. 
 
 Pardon, Divine, 192. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 124, 126, 127, 129, 
 179; criticised by Dr. Martineau, 183, 
 186, 187; not a pantheist, 403. 
 
 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 12. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 125, 214, 441. 
 
 Paul, St., 214, 243, 260, 371, 427, 446. 
 
 Paulus, Heinrich E. G., 228. 
 
 Pericles, 371, 438. 
 
 Personal Influence on Present Theology, 
 88. 
 
 Pessimism, repugnant to human nature, 
 
 392-393- 
 Peter, his declaration at Philippi, 271 seq. 
 
 Peter, Gospel of, 122. 
 
 Peterborough, Bishop of, 98. 
 
 Pfleiderer, Otto, 119. 
 
 Pharisees, The, 242. 
 
 Phases of Faith, F. W. Newman, 82 ; 
 
 criticised, 106. 
 
 Philippians, Epistle to the, 230. 
 
 Philo Judaeus, 250, 
 
 Philosophical Christianity in France, 79. 
 
 Pierre, Marie, 2. 
 
 Plato, 76, 80, 93, 108, 123, 125, 126, 128, 
 
 131. 138, 139. i4». »8o. 195. 197, 336, 
 437,438, 441. 
 
 Plutarch, 230. 
 
 Polycarp, 237 n. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 404. 
 
 Positive Philosophy, The, 303. 
 
 Presbyterianism, English, doctrine of 
 Dr. Martineau's early home, 6 ; his 
 doctrine when ordained, 36, 164 ; its 
 spirit compared with that of English 
 Unitarianism, 209-211. 
 
 Prescott, W. H., 125. 
 
 Prey, the law of, 384-386. 
 
 Price, Dr. Richard, 109. 
 
 Priestley, Joseph, 20, no, 162, 163 n., 
 
 423- 
 Proctor, Richard, 126. 
 Prospective Review, 79, 86, 88. 
 Prudence, its function in morals, 359 seq. 
 
 R. 
 
 Ranke, Leopold von, 81. 
 
 Rankin, Elizabeth, 3. 
 
 Raphael, 440. 
 
 Rationale of Religious Inquiry, The, 
 publication of, 52 ; 53; analysis of, 54- 
 57; 107, 166, 167. 
 
 Regium Dontitn, The, 44 seq., 50. 
 
 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 228. 
 
 Relativity of Knowledge, Frederic Har- 
 rison, 99. 
 
 Religion, Revealed and Natural, com- 
 pared, 257-259. 
 
 Religion, Revealed and Apocalyptic, com- 
 pared, 261-262. 
 
 Renan, Ernest, 119, 124, 197, 229. 
 
 " Right by Social Vote," 371. 
 
 Roman Catholic, The, 221, 224. 
 
 Romans, Epistle to the, 230, 267. 
 
 Rothe, Richard, 389. 
 
 Rudimentary Organs, 355. 
 
 St. Andrews, University of, 118, I19. 
 
 St. Peter's, 440. 
 
 Salters Hall, convention at, 209. 
 
 Samson, 259. 
 
 San Greal, The, 76. 
 
 Saul, 259. 
 
 Saul, Robert Browning, 395, 441. 
 
 Savonarola, Girolamo, 371. 
 
 Sayers, Dr. Frank, 8. 
 
 Schaff, Dr. Philip, 120. 
 
 " Scheme of Vicarious Redemption,'* 
 
 The, 173. 
 Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 88, 124, 130, 
 
 239. 430- 
 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 132, 141, 427. 
 
 Schiirer, Emil, 237 n., 239. 
 
 Schurman, Dr. J. G., 184-185 n., 335, 
 
 Science, Nescience, and Faith, 95, 132 n. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 8. 
 
 Seat of Authority in Religion, 95, 117,
 
 458 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ii8, 162, 169, 1S7, 198, 230, 232,233, 
 234, 235, 236, 23S, 239, 242, 243, 244, 
 245> 251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 
 259, 260, 264, 265, 266 n., 271, 272, 
 274, 276, 322, 364, 365, 366, 367, 369, 
 370, 372, 426. 
 
 Seeley, J. R., criticism of, 113 seg. 
 
 Seer in Ezekiel, The, 26S. 
 
 Selection in Nature, 340 seg. 
 
 Seneca, 140, 437. 
 
 Sennaclierib, 436. 
 
 Servetus, Michael, 214. 
 
 Sextus Tarquinius, 378 seg. 
 
 Seth, Andrew, 339. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 109. 
 
 Shakespeare, John, 15. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 15, 132, 441. 
 
 Sin, Dr. Martineau's treatment of, 190- 
 192; punishment for, 192-195. 
 
 Skeats, Herbert S., 45 n. 
 
 Socini, The, 214. 
 
 Socrates, 76, 128; uses the argument 
 from Design, 336; 371. 
 
 Solomon, his ethics Epicurean, 179. 
 
 Son of David, Jesus so designated by his 
 countrymen, 265. 
 
 Son of God, 265 ; when Jesus became 
 such, 252-253; use of the designation, 
 266. 
 
 Son of Man, 265 ; significance of the des- 
 ignation, 267 seg. ; Second Coming 
 of, 276-277. 
 
 Sophocles, 125. 
 
 Sordello, Browning, 336. 
 
 Space, its laws the laws of the human 
 mind, 435. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 124, 125, 128, 134, 
 224, 293 ; Agnosticism of, 296-297 ; 
 416. 
 
 Spencer, W. V., 95. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 404. 
 
 Spinoza, Baruch de, his type of ethical 
 doctrine, loS; 126, 183, 352,411. 
 
 Spiritual Faith^ A, 122 n., 163 n., 166, 
 168, 169. 
 
 Stagirite, The, So. 
 
 Stanley, Dean^ 98. 
 
 Stanley, 334. 
 
 Stirling, Hutcheson, 302. 
 
 Strauss, David F., 124, 229. 
 
 Strauss and Theodore Parker^ 79. 
 
 Studies of Christianity, 70, 78 ; first pub- 
 lished, 88. 
 
 Study of Religion, The, 93 ; analysis of. 
 
 111-117; the Address it called forth, 
 118 ; the dyke it opposed to pantheism, 
 183 ; 187, 258, 286, 287, 288, 2S9, 292, 
 296, 297,298, 312, 313, 315-316,330- 
 33i> 332, 334, 33S, 340, 341, 342. 344> 
 345, 349, 350-352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 
 364, 374, 377, 3S1, 384, 3S8, 390, 391, 
 396-397, 398, 399, 408-409,415, 41S- 
 419, 420-421, 425, 428-429, 438, 440, 
 
 441-442, 443-444, 445, 447- 
 
 Study of Spinoza, 95, 107. 
 
 Swift, Dean, 369. 
 
 Synoptics, The, general features of, 231 
 seq. ; compared with the Fourth Gos- 
 pel, 244 seq. 
 
 TacituSj Histories of, 27 ; 437. 
 Taggart, Rev. Edward, 93. 
 Talmage, Thomas De Witt, 143. 
 Tauler, Johann, 141, 150. 
 Tayler, J. J., Principal of Manchester 
 
 New College, 21.; 91-92, 93, 94, 104, 
 
 130, 241 n. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 150. 
 Taylor, Rev. John, 9. 
 Taylor, Rev. Philip, 35. 
 Taylor, William, 8. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 97, 98 n., 119; quoted, 
 
 400, 443. 
 Theism, 113 ; contrasted with Deism 
 
 and Pantheism, 407 seq. 
 Theodorus, dream of, 378-379. 
 Theologia Gervianica, 78, 150, 214. 
 Theological Review, The, 94. 
 Theophilus, first to quote the Fourth 
 
 Gospel with its author's name, 237, 
 
 246. 
 Thessalonians, Epistle to the, 230. 
 Thom, Rev. J. H., 57, 64, 65, 67, 71, 166, 
 
 169. 
 Thoreau, H. D., 138. 
 "Tides of the Spirit," The, 150, 159. 
 Tintern Abbey, W. Wordsworth, 125. 
 Toland, John, 408. 
 Transcendency, Divine, 401 ; contrasted 
 
 with Divine Immanence, 402-404. 
 Transfiguration, The, 274-275. 
 Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf, 80, 81, 
 
 iSi. 
 Trinitarian Controversy, A Way out 
 
 of 201. 
 Tiibingen, school of. 91, 95, 229. 
 Tupper, Martin, 139.
 
 INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Turner, Henry, 19, 104. 
 Tusculum, Disputations at, 27. 
 Tyndall, John, 124, 321 ; Dr. Marti- 
 
 neau's rejoinder to, 327-328. 
 Types of Ethical Theory, So, 81, 92 ; 
 
 publication of, 102, 107 ; analysis of, 
 
 108-109; III, 131, 154, 174- 
 
 U. 
 Unitarian Chapels in England, their loss 
 
 and their recovery, 211 n. 
 Unitarian Society and Church, Dr. Mar- 
 
 tineau's contrasted attitudes towards, 
 
 213- 
 
 Unitarianism at Manchester New Col- 
 lege, 21-22. 
 
 Unitarianism Confuted, Clergymen of 
 the Church of England, 65-68. 
 
 Unitarianism Defetided, James Mar- 
 tineau and others, 6S-71. 
 
 Unitarianism, English, descended from 
 English Presbyterianism, 37; its his- 
 tory reflected in Dr. Martineau's 
 career; inconsistency of, in tlie Lady 
 Hewley suit, 210-21 1; its seculariza- 
 tion, 220. 
 
 Unitarians, their attitude towards Inspi- 
 ration, 167, towards miracles, 171 ; 
 their ecclesiastical temper, 215. 
 
 Unitarians, Hungarian Consistory of, 
 104. 
 
 Universe, Moral aspects of the, 375 seq. 
 
 Universities, English, closed to such as 
 could not sign the creed of the Estab- 
 lished Church, 20. 
 
 University College, 80 ; becomes the ally 
 of Manchester New College, 89; Dr. 
 Martineau a candidate for the chair of 
 Logic in, 96-97. 
 
 University of Berlin, Dr. Martineau 
 studies there, 80. 
 
 Upton, Prof. C. B., 299. 
 
 Utilitarianism, 363-366. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valentinians knew the Fourth Gospel, 
 
 237- 
 Valentinus did 
 Gospel, 237. 
 
 not know the Fourth 
 
 Vie de Jesus, E. Renan, 95. 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 440. 
 Virgil, 437. 
 Vitellius, 433. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waldenses, The, 399. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 68. 
 
 Warrington Academy, 20. 
 
 Washington, George, 371. 
 
 Way out of theTrinitarian Controversy, 
 A, 201-206. 
 
 Ways of the Spirit, F, H. Hedge, 336 n. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 362. 
 
 Wellbeloved, Charles, Principal of Man- 
 chester New College, 21, 24; account 
 of, 29-34. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 438. 
 
 Wesley, John, 9 n., 214, 446. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 134. 
 
 Wesitninster Review, 88. 
 
 Whewell, William, 124. 
 
 Wheu'ell's Morality, 79. 
 
 Whewell's Systematic Morality, 79. 
 
 Whitefield, George, 144, 145. 
 
 Whitney, W. D., 126. 
 
 Whiton, Rev. James M., 202 n. 
 
 Wicksteed, Charles, 50. 
 
 Wicksteed, Rev. Philip H., 92. 
 
 William of Orange, 399. 
 
 William III., 44, 438. 
 
 Wolfe, Gen., 145. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 354, 404, 438. 
 
 Worthington, J. H., 104. 
 
 Y. 
 
 York, Archbishop of, 98. 
 Youmans, E. L., 125. 
 
 Zacharias, 260. 
 Zebedee, 241. 
 Zeller, Dr. E., 119. 
 Zumpt, Karl Gottlob, 25. 
 Zumpt's Latin Grammar, 24. 
 Zumpts, The, 81.
 
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