st. The point at issue is where the
ultimate appeal should lie in matters of religion. With the keen eye for
the weaknesses of his fellow-worshippers which always characterized him,
Martineau said, 'The Unitarian takes with him [to the study of the
Bible] the persuasion that nothing can be scriptural which is not
rational and universal.' This fixed opinion, which he ranks along with
the foregone conclusions of other types of theologian, was just that
which we have observed in the general course of liberals from Locke
onwards. Though in a note Martineau concedes that his words may somewhat
strongly accentuate the common opinion, he represents Unitarians as
virtually saying, 'If we could find the doctrines of the Trinity and the
Atonement, and everlasting torments in the Scriptures, we should believe
them; we reject them, not because we deem them unreasonable, but because
we perceive them to be unscriptural. For my own part, I confess myself
unable to adopt this language'--not, he says, but that he does think
them actually 'unscriptural.' 'But I am prepared to maintain, that if
they were in the Bible, they would still be incredible.... Reason is the
ultimate appeal, the supreme tribunal, to which the test of even
Scripture must be brought.' It abates nothing from the force of these
declarations that then, and for some time afterwards, Martineau himself
accepted the miracles. The 'old school' perceived the sharp edge of such
a weapon, and its wielder was during many years regarded as a
'dangerous' innovator.

The other young writer to whom reference has been made was _Ralph Waldo
Emerson_ (1803-82), son and grandson of ministers of the liberal
Congregational type in New England and himself for a short time minister
of the Second Church, Boston. Preferring the freedom of the lecturing
platform, Emerson had already withdrawn from the ministry, but in 1838
he gave an 'Address to the Senior Class' in the Divinity School,
Harvard, which proved a second landmark in the history of American
Unitarianism. Nineteen years before, Channing had decisively pointed out
that Unitarianism and orthodoxy are two distinct theologies. In the
Divinity School Address, Emerson maintained that the idea of
'supernaturalism' is rendered obsolete by a recognition of the reality
of things. Bringing a gift of pungent prose to the service of a poetic
imagination, Emerson startled the decorously dignified authorities of
the New England pulpit; he 'saved