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 a desire to keep the imprudent and 'advanced' men from
going 'too far.' In one form or other this opposition has persisted till
the present; but its acrimony has sensibly lessened as, on the one hand,
the 'denominational' workers have more fully accepted the principle of