nitarianism 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.

It is interesting to find that Martineau himself confessed that the
freshening touch upon his own inner life came in a closer contact with
evangelical piety. His mind was to the end of his many years readily
responsive to congenial impulses, let them come whence they would, and
no small part of his service to Unitarianism consists in t