There is a parallel between Newman and Martineau.  Both busied themselves with the problem of authority.  Criticism had been fatal to the apprehension which both had inherited concerning the authority of Scripture.  From that point onward they took divergent courses.  The arguments which touched the infallible and oracular authority of Scripture, for Newman established that of the Church; for Martineau they had destroyed that of the Church four hundred years ago.  Martineau’s sense, even of the authority of Jesus, reverent as it is, is yet no pietistic and mystical view.  The authority of Jesus is that of the truth which he speaks, of the goodness which dwells in him, of God himself and God alone.  A real interest in the sciences and true learning in some of them made Martineau able to write that wonderful chapter in his Seat of Authority, which he entitled ‘God in Nature.’  Newman could see in nature, at most a sacramental suggestion, a symbol of transcendental truth.

The Martineaus came of old Huguenot stock, which in England belonged to the liberal Presbyterianism out of which much of British Unitarianism came.  The righteousness of a persecuted race had left an austere impress upon their domestic and social life.  Intellectually they inherited the advanced liberalism of their day.  Harriet Martineau’s earlier piety had been of the most fervent sort.  She reacted violently against it in later years.  She had little of the politic temper and gentleness of her brother.  She described one of her own later works as the last word of philosophic atheism.  James was, and always remained, of deepest sensitiveness and reverence and of a gentleness which stood in high contrast with his powers of conflict, if necessity arose.  Out of Martineau’s years as preacher in Liverpool and London came two books of rare devotional quality, Endeavours after the Christian Life, 1843 and 1847, and Hours of Thought on Sacred Things, 1873 and 1879.  Almost all his life he was identified with Manchester College, as a student when the college was located at York, as a teacher when it returned to Manchester and again when it was removed to London.  With its removal to Oxford, accomplished in 1889, he had not fully sympathised.  He believed that the university itself must some day do justice to the education of men for the ministry in other churches than the Anglican.  He was eighty years old when he published his Types of Ethical Theory, eighty-two when he gave to the world his Study of Religion, eighty-five when his Seat of Authority saw the light.  The effect of this postponement of publication was not wholly good.  The books represented marvellous learning and ripeness of reflection.  But they belong to a period anterior to the dates they bear upon their title-pages.  Martineau’s education and his early professional experience put him in touch with the advancing sciences.  In the days when most men of progressive spirit were