Theologian, brother of Harriet Martineau, was born at Norwich, 21st April 1805. He was educated at the grammar-school there and under Dr. Lant Carpenter at Bristol, and had been a Unitarian minister at Dublin and Liverpool, when in 1841 he was appointed professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Manchester New College. He removed to London in 1857, after that institution had been transferred thither, becoming also a pastor in Little Portland Street Chapel. He was principal of the college 1869–85. As one of the profoundest thinkers and most effective writers of his day, he has received degrees from Harvard, Leyden, and Edinburgh; and on his 90th birthday (1895) was presented with an address from a very wide circle of disciples and admirers. His works include “The Rationale of Religious Inquiry” (1836), “Hymns for the Christian Church and Home” (1840), “Endeavours After the Christian Life” (1843–47), “Miscellanies” (1852), “Studies of Christianity” (1858), “Hymns of Praise and Prayer” (1874), “Hours of Thought on Sacred Things” (1876–79), “A Study of Spinoza” (1882), “Types of Ethical Theory” (1885), “A Study of Religion” (1888), “The Seat of Authority in Religion” (1890), and “Essays, Reviews, and Addresses” (1891). He died 11th January 1900. See his “Life and Letters” by Drummond and Upton (1902), and the shorter work by Estlin Carpenter (1905).

Personal

  One of the handsomest men I ever saw. He cannot be more than thirty, or if he is he has kept his dark hair remarkably. He has large, bluish-gray eyes, and is tall and elegant in manner.

  Well does the writer remember, though it is forty-five years ago, how the circular staircase of the somewhat conspicuous pulpit was quietly ascended by a tall man, thin, but of vigorous and muscular frame, with dark hair, pale but not delicate complexion, a countenance full in repose of thought, and in animation of intelligence and enthusiasm, features belonging to no regular type or order of beauty, and yet leaving the impression of a very high kind of beauty, and a voice so sweet, and clear, and strong, without being in the least degree loud, that it covered all the inspiration of music without any of its art or intention. When this young man, with the background of his honour and courage, rose to speak of the inspiration that was not in the letter but in the soul, and (for that time of day) boldly distinguished between the inspiration of Old Testament books and Old Testament heroes, he completed the conquest of his hearers.

  The Rev. James Martineau was not handsome, but what a splendid fellow he was! Benevolently ugly, if ugly at all, with his rough-cut features, wild upstanding black hair, low broad forehead, and swarthy complexion. I loved that man; I studied with him for a year or two, and whatever of good is in me I date to that time, and for it honour him. He taught me to think; I followed his flowing periods, flowery eloquence, and close reasoning with an appreciation, veneration and attention I never have felt for man since; for he fascinated my expanding intellect, because he had not only a great brain, but a great heart. I have lived a useless lifetime since then, but at least I have never forgotten that prince among men.

  TO JAMES MARTINEAU, D.D., LL.D. We desire to express to you on your eighty-third birthday the feelings of reverence and affection which are entertained towards you, not only by your own Communion, but by members of other Christian Churches who are acquainted with your character and writings. 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 Philosophy and Religion; and we congratulate you on having completed recently two great and important works, at an age when most men, if their days are prolonged, find it necessary to rest from their labours. You have taught your generation that, both in politics and religion, there are truths above party, independent of contemporary opinion, and which cannot be overthrown, for their foundations are in the heart of man; you have shown 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 limited 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 mortality; 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 fulfillment 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 controversy, and in which personal interest and ambitions have never been allowed to have 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.

  In his figure Dr. Martineau was tall and spare. Of adipose 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 perfect in its poise. His perceptive organs were large; his hair, always remarkable for its abundance, in later years was bleached almost to whiteness…. His personal habits were always natural and healthful. So far from being self-indulgent, his general conduct was mildly suggestive of asceticism…. He had not 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 was a charming talker, with the vein of humor which seems always to belong to greatness. He would tell a Scotch ghost story in such a way as to make your flesh crawl, and you wanted him to do nothing but tell ghost stories from that moment. And so of whatever subject happened to take his attention at that moment. He was not in the least a dictator in conversation; and whether you met him at the hospitable round tea-table of his own house or at a formal dinner-party, there was, in all the courtly elegance of what people call an old-fashioned manner, the cordiality and sympathy and interest which not only made you feel completely at ease, but made you wish that the evening might never be done. He was an aristocrat through and through. That is to say, though on principle and theoretically democratic, he sympathized in the old-fashioned way of handling the outside of things, and did not care who knew that he did.

  Whatever favourable conception I had previously formed of the personality of the man was fully satisfied by the reality that met me in Dr. Martineau—this alike as to the public and as to the private impression which he made. Nothing could well surpass the mingled dignity and urbanity with which, on that public occasion, he had borne himself as teacher to the audience that hung docile and eager on his lips. And now in the private interview that I was enjoying, the same gracious and winning qualities were manifest…. Dr. Martineau had every appearance of being in the enjoyment of a serene old age, in the full exercise of all his mental powers. He was evidently surrounded in his home, as he was surrounded in public, by a meet and beautiful reverence, well won by a prolonged pure life of strenuous and fruitful activity directed toward high ends. I shall have to confess that I did not at the moment of my interview with him know so fully as I afterward came to know, how well qualified he was, as master of style himself, to pronounce an authoritative opinion on a point of style.

  And now the evening shadows were plainly lengthening. The erect figure was slightly stooped and shrunk; the mass of dark hair had become silvered, and, though still wonderfully abundant, was thinner than in former days; the step was less elastic, and the movements slower, although up to quite recent years he had been able to climb his favourite mountains. The expression had lost something of its ancient strength, but perhaps, in compensation, the innate sweetness and gentleness of his character were more clearly discernible. The memory began gradually to fail, and he would sometimes repeat the same thoughts in conversation after a short interval. But he still spent the mornings sitting upright at his desk, reading or writing, clad in a long dressing-gown, and scorning during the early hours the luxury of an easy-chair, which he reserved for any casual visitor. Visitors, however, were not always admitted; for sometimes now he fell asleep in his study, and, if suddenly wakened, felt a little confused. But when he was able to see a friend for a short time, he received him with all the old warmth of affection, and conversed freely on congenial topics. The grey heads of much younger men brought home to him the consciousness of his own great age. He would refer with some amusement to the superannuation of his own son Russell, who was compelled to retire on his pension from the British Museum at the age of sixty-five.

General

  Though we are inclined to controvert some of Mr. Martineau’s positions, in the spirit of frank discussion which pervades his book, we must acknowledge the uncommon pleasure we have taken in its perusal, and the admiration we feel for the independence, manliness, and wisdom, with which it is written…. The last lecture discusses the “Influence of Christianity on Morality and Civilization.” This topic is more in accordance with the genius of the author, if we may venture to express the opinion, than those which had been previously considered. He treats it with the hand of a master and in the course of his argument, presents some specimens of eloquent prose composition which it would be difficult to match in any theological writings of the present day…. No one can peruse his book without feeling that he is brought into fraternal communion with a sincere and earnest mind. Every page bears the marks of an honest love of truth, a hearty attachment to her for the sake of her own exceeding beauty and intrinsic worth. He writes like a man who cherishes an unquenchable faith in the exalted destiny of humanity, and who cannot fear that it will ever be injured by the boldest exercise of its divine powers.

  We read Mr. Martineau’s “Rationale of Religious Inquiry” soon after it came out, about ten years ago, but were not much interested in it. Afterwards, hearing it spoken of as one of the most remarkable works of the age, we supposed that we must have done it great injustice, and therefore took it up again, but with the same result as before. It did not fulfil the expectations to which the title naturally gave rise. It is not sufficiently comprehensive and complete for a philosophical treatise, and is altogether too loose in its style, arrangement, and definitions. It seemed to us the hasty work of a very able man, and, while the actual performance left us disappointed, it left us also with high expectations of what the author might still do. The public evidently do not agree with us, for a third edition has been called for in England; and there is perhaps no living Unitarian preacher, except Dr. Dewey, whose works are uniformly received with so much favor as Mr. Martineau’s…. He who can write in this manner [“Endeavour after the Christian Life”], must be a master of our English style, and have at the same time a brilliant, elevated, far-reaching, and vigorous mind. The style, however, though more natural than that of the volume which precedes it, is not well sustained, and is often hard and forced, nor is the thought always consistent with itself. But such flashes of light, such gleams and intervals of clear and holy faith, such moments even as are here revealed of religious elevation and repose, are enough to stamp the volume as an uncommon one, and to mark it out for high uses among men.

  No one, we think, who has faithfully read Mr. Martineau’s “Discourses and Reviews,” with an eye capable of catching the system of thought of whose outline and spirit they are hints and gleams, will hesitate to say that, in all the essentials of a commanding liberal theologian and scholar, he is our foremost man…. It would be commonplace to speak of Mr. Martineau’s eminence as a theological critic. The faculty of philosophical penetration by which he strikes through all subordinate detail or development to the principles that animate and characterize a system or a school, and the concise vigor with which he tests their soundness or disease, give his principal essays permanent value in the higher departments of spiritual science. While a quick and generous sympathy with all healthy religious thought, even when cast in uncongenial forms, makes him one of the most valuable interpreters, as well as appraisers, amid the Babel confusion of our ecclesiastical literature.

  Spencer and Martineau are alike in roominess of mind, as well as in the critical and systematic distribution of their knowledge; yet they are of antagonistic schools, and have several attributes strikingly unlike. Martineau is an ethical and religious philosopher, but with an immense command of the resources, and an unprejudiced attitude towards the processes, of physical science. Spencer is a philosophical scientist, not without a fair acquaintance with the scholastic discipline and a strong sense of that mystery which is so impressive and attractive to the artistic mind. Martineau is a poetic metaphysician, whose spacious intellect, stored with exact information and teeming with reflective activities, is surrounded with vivid wonder, and vibrates with trustful and affectionate aspiration.

  In a literary point of view, the book [“Types of Ethical Theory”] plainly suffers from its origin in the author’s lectures. It suffers yet more, artistically, from the author’s naturally genial and infinitely diffuse flow of learned discourse. His estate is wide, full of winding roads, of pleasant views, of gardens and of thickets. He has certain fine outlooks, certain especially beautiful meadow-lands and mountain summits that he wants you to see. So he takes you to them: but first, by the way, numberless paths open, and must be followed here and there, to show you whither they lead. At last the heights are reached and the views seen; but then you must be taken home again by another road, through more groves and thickets. When you are done you know not exactly why just this route has been followed; and your guide, confident that you have been at all events well instructed, refuses to give you further explanation, save that he has willed it so, and likes that road best himself.

  Dr. Martineau, the champion of intuitive ideas, of the innate moral sense, of the freedom of the will, of everything antagonistic to the reigning views, familiar throughout a long life with all “types of ethical theory,” mustered and judged them all in the book thus entitled: a work unapproached by any contemporary in austere yet seductive beauty of language and sentiment.

  The general impression that we carry away from this book [“Types of Ethical Theory”] is, that his is an ascetic delineation of duty. The theory that virtue is generated by happiness is one at variance with his character. But in spite of the sympathetic Stoicism of many, very many passages to be found in his work, and without openly and avowedly surrendering the belief in the innateness of moral ideas, he yet “after all” seems to recognize legitimate functions for pleasure and pain in ethical problems.

  The strength of the strong man is seen not merely in the load he carries, but also in the manner in which he carries it. A massive erudition may suggest an “ass of Parnassus,” an often useful, but a relatively ignoble animal, which of all things Dr. Martineau was not. For, secondly, while it is given the mere scholar to think as learner, it was given Dr. Martineau to learn as thinker: this power of acquisition was associated with a more characteristic power of reflection. Hence his learning, however rapidly gained, was scarcely less rapidly taken into the mould of his thought. Here we probably meet the supreme proof of a great scholar, in that a rapidly gained knowledge may be at once transformed from pabulum into light. Compare Dr. Martineau, for instance, with Theodore Parker, who as confidently as the youthful Bacon might have taken all knowledge for his province, but who failed in the test here provided. He acquired with a readiness scarcely less wonderful than the miracles he repudiated; but he did not assimilate so readily, and something like intellectual congestion was the consequence. Of this nothing in Dr. Martineau. A new truth gained meant at once new lustre to his torch.

  One of the most striking things about his contributions to English thought was their style, which contrasted so favourably with the cacophonies of the Neo-Hegelians. Only Mill can vie with him as a stylist among the professed philosophers, and even Mill he surpassed in grace if not in lucidity. It has been plausibly argued that this combination of clearness and elegance in Martineau’s style was due to his Huguenot descent, and he was only rivalled in this regard by Newman, himself derived from the same stock. The style certainly reflected the man in Martineau’s case. The beauty of order, the nobility of tone, the chastened enthusiasm, the austerity of truth with the charm of sincerity, shone out both in the man and his books.

  The victory which the ideas of God, and the Soul, and immortality are now beginning to secure over their enemies is largely due to Martineau’s stern and quiet leadership, under the banners of the intellect and the conscience, of the soldiers of religion. He taught, strictly within the realms of philosophy and criticism, that all science begins and ends in God; and all ethics begin and end in God; and that without the postulate of the soul in man akin to God and going to Him, science and ethics have no secure foundation. No other man has done this needful work so firmly or so clearly as he has done. Even the Church of England, with its cry “Can any good thing come out of the Unitarian Village,” has been goaded into dim confessions of his use. On the whole, I have no doubt that the battle is practically won against the forces of godless science and godless ethics, and that Martineau has been the best builder, among many others, of a religion, bound up with Jesus Christ, rooted in the confession of the Fatherhood of God, which is agreeable to reason, and in full accordance with the ethical progress of man in history.

  The mind of Dr. Martineau was as lithe and strong as his body. As his body delighted in feats of strength, especially as these were connected with the climbing of his favorite hills, so did his mind rejoice in the pleasure of the athlete. He loved to climb the heights of thought. He gloried in the measurement of strength with strength, in the encounter of mind with mind. Here, too, he was fitted by nature and training to mingle with the best. He took his place with the great thinkers of the world, as one who could at least comprehend them and converse with them on an equal plane, even if he had not their power of original constructive thought. To the development of body and mind was added the graces of the spirit. His religious nature was tender and devout. His spiritual life was as humble as his intellectual was exalted. More to him than his theology was his religion.

  But when these deficiencies are noted and allowed for, the student of the philosophy of religion will still feel that in Martineau we have one of the great masters of the subject, one of the men who have made contributions of permanent value to its literature in Great Britain…. If to these excellences we add the extraordinary profusion of delicate analysis of experience, of expressions of original thought and profound personal feeling, given to us in nervous, lucid, and most richly varied English, we can see that Martineau has secured one of the places of highest honour in the literature of our English Theism, and has given us many thoughts of the kind which raise the whole level of man’s religious meditations.

  I owe much to Unitarian thinkers, and feel it a privilege to have been under Unitarian influences, and to serve the group of Churches called by this name; but none the less do I believe that there is a serious weakness in the current Unitarian presentation of religion, which may be detected in Dr. Martineau’s writings whenever he is on the line of Ethical Deism…. Dr. Martineau, seeking for the Seat of Authority, makes no appeal to the history of mankind, or to the past or present experience of our race.

  James Martineau ranks pre-eminently amongst philosophical thinkers of the nineteenth century as the apostle of Christian Theism. This school of ethical and religious thought approximates to the Theism of Theodore Parker, Francis William Newman, and Frances Power Cobbe, but differs from it somewhat in its estimate of the character and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. Dr. Martineau was not the founder of any philosophical system, although Christian Theism doubtless owes more to him than to anyone else. From first to last he was a diligent student and seeker. Singularly open for the reception of new ideas, he sought for them and received them from many antagonistic sources, both ancient and modern. An acute reasoner and critic, he was not readily misled into mistaking superficial suggestions for substantial truth, and the sifting process which he applied to the theories and conclusions of others gave to the world some admirable expositions of philosophical doctrines far removed from his own, and also served to build up, step by step, that conception of a spiritual philosophy on the lines of Theism—organized and consistent, but not amounting to a system—which is associated with his name…. His literary style was dignified, yet markedly simple in structure, and often highly poetical. He had a moderate gift of humor, and sarcasm was a weapon which he used sparingly but with effect. He had the faculty of lucid exposition in a high degree.