On the English side other sweet singers have appeared:  ’Nearer, my God, to Thee,’ by Sarah Flower Adams, is a world-renowned hymn; and if the names of Channing, Emerson, and Parker cannot be equally matched here in their several spheres, there has been no lack of able and scholarly representatives, and one name at least is of universal reputation.  That name, of course, is Martineau.  The effective changes from the old Unitarianism to the modern type are best displayed in the story of his long life and the monumental books which bear his name.  Reference has been made to his early brilliance; its promise was amply fulfilled in the course of a career more than usually prolonged.  The note of original thought sounded in the Rationale (see p. 63[*]) was to be heard again and again in other and more permanent utterances, and not seldom to the perplexity and dismay of many of his Unitarian brethren.  Alike in religious philosophy, in attitude to the Scriptures, and in matters of church organization, he found himself from time to time at variance with most of those close around him.  His philosophical and critical influence was in large measure victorious; in regard to organization the results were less satisfactory to himself.  It will be instructive to observe his progress.

[*:  third paragraph of Modern Unitarianism:  II.  Ideas and Tendencies.]

As regards philosophy, it is necessary to remember the influence of Priestley and Belsham.  These Unitarian leaders, following Hartley’s psychology, stood for a determinism which was complete.  God was the Great Cause of all; not the ‘First Cause’ of the deistic conception, operative only at the beginning of the chain of events and now remote from man and the world, but present and immediate, exhibiting his divine purposes in all the beings created by him.  Christianity, in the view of this school, was the means by which God had been pleased to make known the grand consummation of this life in a perfected life to come; Jesus, the Messiah, was the chosen revealer of the divine will, and his resurrection was the supreme and necessary guarantee that his message was true.  Martineau, like the rest of his generation, was brought up in this necessarianism; but its tendency, as he reviewed and tested it, was to do violence to certain irrepressible factors of the spiritual life.  It is only fair to say, there was even in this Priestleyan school room for a mystical mood; but on the whole it appeared dry and intellectual, lacking the warm and operative forces of a deeper devotion.