He is often portrayed as a remote, dour figure who had no time for small talk. However even this image does not stand up to close investigation for here was a man who, in designing his Liverpool house, put in two staircases for the simple reason that it would be more fun for the children.

His influence on the modern Christian church was extensive. He did much to pioneer biblical criticism. His sermons were read, enjoyed and much of the material re-used by Bishop Colenso and F.W. Robertson, the greatest of nineteenth century Anglican preachers. A.P. Stanley, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, once pleaded with Stopford Brooke, a follower of Martineau, to stay within the Church of England as it was constantly widening its boundaries. Brooke responded by asking if it would be wide enough to allow James Martineau to be the Archbishop of Canterbury.

James Martineau pioneered women’s education and ran classes for young ladies, among whose members were women who subsequently made a significant impact on society. These included the Winkworth sisters who, amongst other things, translated many of the great German hymns and forever felt indebted to him; and Anna Swanwick who was responsible for the founding of Bedford College, London as well as playing a part in the founding of Somerville College, Oxford and Girton College, Cambridge. She and Martineau were lifelong friends.

As a founder member of the Metaphysical Society which attracted great thinkers of the age including Tennyson, Manning and Huxley, Martineau ensured that the Society was not one of theists refuting atheists, but was one where people of both sides could meet together and discuss the great questions of the day.

After Darwin blew the top off the science and religion debate, Martineau in his dispute with Spencer and Tyndale showed that the theistic position was still tenable, so much so that Owen Chadwick commented that there came a time under Darwin when even orthodox churchmen came to see Martineau as a champion of faith.

Many of the above issues have been commented on elsewhere, but what I would like to do tonight is to dispel the idea that Martineau, although widely known and greatly influential, made little or no impact upon English Unitarianism in the nineteenth century, and was no more than an irritant to the emerging Movement. In the following 25 minutes, I propose to show that such sentiments are far from the truth.

Martineau’s distinctive contribution to Unitarianism has been questioned by Professor R K Webb, who has suggested that the real watershed for nineteenth-century Unitarianism was not associated with the ‘new wine’ of Martineau, but came much later in the century with the re-emergence of anti-supernaturalism and other rival theologies:

Professor Webb wrote:
‘Despite the often bitter warfare, much of the old outlook persisted among the eventual victors. (Martineau and his colleagues). The commitment to pursuing truth and the Priestleyan investment in science and modernity helped to save Unitarians from the traumas that so profoundly affected so many Victorians in the wake of scientific and critical learning. Indeed, if one reads Martineau’s A Study of Religion or the scientific sermons of many of his contemporaries, the degree to which the old argument from design survives in… expanded form is remarkable….It was the frank anti-supernaturalism of the last third of the century and the many competing enthusiasms in doctrine and practice that marked the true qualitative change, not the earlier conflict of Old and New Schools.’

Professor Webb is quite right in his assertion that an important turning point occurred among English Unitarians towards the end of the century. Something of this movement is reflected in Martineau’s opposition to those who wanted Unitarianism to move in the directions of general theism and world religions. Professor Webb is also correct in his assertion that Martineau retained a scientific strand within his religious thought; this can clearly be detected in some of his sermons, and also in his battles against Spencer and Tyndall, where he contended for an intellectually satisfying religion. However it would be inaccurate to follow Professor Webb’s train of thought to the conclusion that essentially Martineau continued the major emphasis of Priestley, and that the only real change of direction for Unitarianism came at the end of the century. In the years following the Liverpool Controversy of 1839, Martineau and his colleagues, Tayler, Thom and Wicksteed, exerted a formative influence, partly through their domination of Manchester College and their control of The Christian Teacher, which radically altered the course of English Unitarianism. They change the direction of Unitarianism by challenging the assumptions of an orthodoxy in Christian thought, by changing the philosophical emphasis away from determinism to free will and personal responsibility, and by ‘spiritualising’ the faith.

As early as 1840, with the publication of Hymns for the Christian Church and Home, drawn from a wide variety of spirituality, Martineau was challenging the concept of an orthodoxy which held that there was only one right way of perceiving the truth, and that a church was constituted only by those who had correctly apprehended that truth. Martineau in writing to Valentine Davis gave an account of the position within Unitarianism prior to his influence.

‘The Unitarians of that day, - in England at all events, - were moulded by leaders, - Priestley from the orthodox Dissenters, Lindsey from the Church of England, - who had simply adopted a new theology, without moving a hair’s breadth from their old assumption, that Christian communion must be based on concurrence of theological doctrine.’

Thus, according to Martineau, Priestley believed that there was an orthodoxy, even if not the one propounded by the Church of England. Priestley’s production of a catechism for young people, which acted as a standard of belief, would tend to support this view. Martineau and his colleagues gave a new direction to Unitarianism; a direction which had affinities with the thought of Richard Baxter and the early Presbyterians in that they shunned the idea of uniformity in belief. In place of the idea of orthodoxy, Martineau advocated a common devotion to the person of Christ and a shared spiritual communion.

Martineau and his friends also made an important philosophical change in English Unitarianism, moving away from Priestley’s determinism toward an emphasis on free will and personal responsibility. Along with this assertion of human freedom went a new stress on the claims of conscience. Martineau did not claim to be the originator of this movement, and he attributed much of its inspiration to Coleridge and the American Channing. But there seems little doubt that Martineau and his associates were instrumental in popularising such sentiments among English Unitarians.

Another important area where Martineau broke away from the Old School of Priestley was his emphasis on the religion of the spirit over and against the old rational and biblical Unitarianism. This was the most distinctive contribution which Martineau made in changing the direction of English Unitarianism. In a sermon of 1869 he set out his own understanding of the three stages of the development of Unitariansim: the first was the ‘religion of Causation’, the second ‘the religion of Conscience’, and the third ‘the religion of Spirit’. This last stage, for which Martineau was largely responsible, stressed the spiritual relationship between God and humanity.

This emphasis on the spirit of man communing with the Spirit of God is a constant theme running through Martineau’s writings. In a sermon of 1862 he maintained that it was a key function of the Church to highlight this relationship between God and humanity.

‘And it is precisely’, he said, ‘to bring us home from the works and ways of God to communion with himself; to make time and place and lot, and life and death, and all things, no longer able to separate us from him, that the training and worship of the Christian Church exists.’

Martineau was able to disseminate this particular emphasis on the spiritual union of man with God throughout Unitarianism in several ways: through hymn books, his published prayers, and sermons, and in his promotion of gothic church architecture, which he felt was conducive to the religion of the Spirit that he was trying to encourage.

Martineau’s ability as a hymnologist and his inspired editorship of Hymns for the Christian Church and Home(1840) and Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1873) had a profound impact upon Unitarianism. If the essential character of Methodism has been better preserved by Charles Wesley’s hymns than by John Wesley’s sermons, the wide use of Martineau’s hymn books also had an extensive theological and devotional influence on the churches which used them. An entry in Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) pays tribute to the quality of Hymns for the Christian Church and Home and acknowledges the wide impact the book made:

‘In 1840 appeared the book which has made the most striking epoch in the history of Unitarian hymnody… Hymns for the Christian Church and Home. Collected and edited by James Martineau. London, 1840, may be taken as the best expression of the new spirit of devotion which, largely through the influence of Channing, had for some time been making its way in their societies. When the new hymn-book appeared Dr Martineau was a minister at Paradise Street Chapel, Liverpool. It was to some extent only a prophecy of what was to be, for the book was received at first with objection in some quarters; but quickly made its way, and….superseded all earlier collections. It is now the book most widely used among Unitarians in England.’

The article also maintained that Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1873) was the second most used hymn book among English Unitarians.

If it is true, as Bernard Manning has suggested, that through their hymns ‘Dissenters have preserved intact (even better than churches with more elaborate safeguards) the full catholic and evangelical faith’, than it would not be unreasonable to conclude that Martineau profoundly influenced the devotional and spiritual life of Unitarians through the widespread use of his hymn books in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Martineau also influenced Unitarian spirituality through his editorship of Common Prayer for Christian Worship (1862) which became a kind of ‘archetype’ for Unitarian liturgy. The anonymous preface to the work explains that the book was compiled at the request of a group of London ministers under the leadership of Dr Sadler of Hampstead, and that Martineau’s influence was expressed in the ninth and tenth services, and ultimately in the revision of the complete work. The aim in producing the book was ‘to revise the services in use in the Church of England, and to make additions from other services’. The book consisted of ten liturgical services, a collection of Collects for the Christian Year, prayers of thanksgiving, and several special services including those for marriage, confirmation and burial of the dead. It has been suggested that in Martineau, Nonconformity produced a liturgical editor of rare genius for the first time.

Horton Davies lends weight to the view that Martineau changed the course of Liberal Dissent: Davies pointed out that the liturgical watershed for Unitarianism occurred in 1862 with Martineau’s contribution to Common Prayer for Christian Worship . The distinctive influence of Martineau, and the new direction he gave to Unitarian worship, is acknowledged in the Preface of that book:

‘Every age in taking up the chorus of ancient devotion, throws in some quality of tone not heard before: the hymn is the same, but the voice is different. As in literature and art, so in religion, thought and affection need something more than self-repetition: they demand some freshness of movement: they are as running waters, which, however mighty and noble the receptacles they have already filled, still overflow... It is therefore no irreverence towards the past, - rather it is a testimony to its vivifying power, to feel a want beyond its resources of devotional expression; nor is any generation of the Christian Church true to its inheritance, which pretends to live upon it, yet has nothing to add to it. With a view to reach more effectually some chords of modern feeling, certain of the forms now published were entrusted for re-construction to another hand. The result was not a re-arrangement, as was at first contemplated, but the preparation of two new Services, the Ninth and Tenth; which left no doubt in the minds of those who have taken the most active part in this attempt, of the desirability of combining treasures new and old.’

Martineau worked a revolution which changed the direction of Unitarian thought and feeling, away from an excessive rationalism to the ‘religion of the Spirit’, which found expression in many of the lovely prayers he wrote for Common Prayer for Christian Worship:

‘O God, who leadest us through seasons of life to be partakers of thine eternity; the shadows of our evening hasten on. Quicken us betimes: and spare us that sad word, ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.’ Anew we dedicate ourselves to thee. We would ask nothing, reserve nothing, for ourselves, save only leave to go whither thou mayst guide, to live not far from thee, and die into thy nearer light. Content to accept the reproach of truth and the self-denials of pure integrity, we would take upon us the yoke of Christ, whom it behoved to suffer ere he entered into his glory.’

Common Prayer for Christian Worship was the most extensively used liturgical book in nineteenth century Unitarianism, and through its pages Martineau exerted his new emphasis on Liberal Dissent.

This stress on the spirit of religion , and on inward devoutness and spirituality were further disseminated by Martineau in his other important book of prayers, Home Prayers (1891), and his two major collections of sermons, Endeavours after the Christian Life (1843) and Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (1876 and 1879). These sermons were widely read and extensively used both within and outside Unitarianism.

The new religious outlook which Martineau was propagating was also reflected in changing church architecture. Although neo-Gothic architecture was used in England at the end of the eighteenth century and for some of the Commissioners Churches of the 1820s, it was Augustus Welby Pugin and the Oxford Movement which popularised Gothic architecture and the idea that it was distinctively Christian. Pugin in A Parallel between the Architecture of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1836) revealed that his major concern with Gothic architecture arose out of his belief in its Christian symbolism. Similarly the Tractarians saw Gothic buidings as representing the age of faith. Martineau, Thom, Tayler and Wicksteed, like the members of the Oxford Movement, were affected by the Romanticism of the nineteenth century; they too had been influenced by Scott who had found a new world in the old world, and by Wordsworth who had found an equally new world in the beauty of nature. While intellectually they could not follow the direction of the Oxford Movement, it is not surprising to find them desiring the same beauty in their worship and in their architecture. It was Martineau, and his colleagues, who were the first among the dissenters consciously to adopt the Gothic style of church building which they saw as more devotional, and as helping to foster the spirit of worship they were trying to promote. J.J. Tayler had his church in Manchester rebuilt in 1839 and engaged Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament to design a Gothic church which would provide the devotional atmosphere he was seeking. Over the next decade new Gothic churches were erected at Hyde (1848), Mill Hill, Leeds (1848), Hope Street, Liverpool (1849) and at Banbury (1850). These new buildings were invariably opened by one of the four friends. Martineau’s Hope Street Church was steeped in medieval gloom, with stained glass windows, a side pulpit and high altar, stone figures and elaborately carved dark wood pews. The style was in sharp contrast to the light and airy, square or octagonal chapels of Priestley’s rational dissent.

Thus despite Professor Webb’s view, it does appear that Martineau and his friends heralded a new phase in the history of Liberal Dissent; a view which is supported by H.L. Short and Ian Sellers.

Martineau’s was not a total success story. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to re-organise his group of churches on Presbyterian lines. He also failed in his desire to bridge the gap between Unitarianism, the Church of England, and the Free Churches. This failure was in part due to the fact that he ultimately lost key theological battles in Unitarianism over the centrality of Christ, and the adoption of the name Unitarian by congregations and groups of Churches.

Martineau did however present a consistent theology of the Church and a scheme of union for the Churches which was not based on detailed doctrinal agreement. In the present age where many have come to believe that doctrines may only be an approximation of the truth, and where several schemes of unity based on doctrinal agreement have failed, Martineau’s approach to Christian unity deserves further consideration:

‘Religious union is not to be brought about, like a railway pacification, by competitive triumphs, or negotiated compromise, but by some spontaneous relapse of divergent thoughts upon some point of all-absorbing piety.’