It is not to be inferred, however, that the ‘radical’ tendencies, while predominant, have everywhere prevailed among Unitarians.  The ‘conservative’ side continued in the third quarter of the nineteenth century to yield important signs of its existence and fruitfulness, and its vitality is far from exhausted still.  The miraculous element has even here been reduced to a minimum, but it has left a tinge on the picture of Jesus which fills the imagination and kindles the reverent affection of many.  Among the more gifted representatives of this school we may name the Americans Dr. H.W.  Furness (1802-96) and Dr. J. Freeman Clarke (1810-88), and the English John Hamilton Thom (1808-94).  Thom’s sermons are ranked among the highest for spirituality and penetration; they certainly had profound effect in stimulating the wise and generous philanthropy of William Rathbone and Sir Henry Tate.  A celebrated representative of this side of Unitarianism is Dr. James Drummond, still living, the author of several works of European repute among New Testament scholars, one being a defence of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel.  He succeeded Martineau as Principal of Manchester College.  His volume. Studies of Christian Doctrine, is the most important statement of the Unitarian view published in recent years.

As time went on, it fell to Martineau and other leading Unitarians to take up a defensive attitude against the extreme forces of negation.  In particular, he came to be recognized as a champion of theism against materialist evolution.  Four volumes of ‘Essays’ contain some of his acutest writings on the subject.  An address presented to him on his eighty-third birthday celebrated his eminence in this and other ways; it bore the signatures of six hundred and fifty of the most brilliant of his contemporaries, at their head being Tennyson and Browning.

All this strenuous progress, however, was for Martineau dogged by a shadow of peculiar disappointment.  In youth he was as ardent a ‘Unitarian’ as any; but, about the time of the Dissenters’ Chapels Act (1844), he and Tayler and some others felt increasing dissatisfaction with the tendency of the more active Unitarians to degenerate into a sect.  As we have seen, the same divergence of feeling arose in America, and Channing always strove to keep Unitarianism there from succumbing to denominationalism.  The ardour of those especially who had newly espoused the Unitarian view and found it precious to themselves may be easily understood, and they might be forgiven some impatience with the apparent apathy of those who had no great desire to multiply proselytes.  Some of these eager spirits strove to rescue the body from what they evidently regarded as a paralysing indefiniteness.  From time to time it was argued that Unitarianism must be ‘defined’ authoritatively; then, and then only, might a triumphant progress be secured.  Mixed with such notions was apparently