Abstract
Firmly established at the liberal end of the spectrum of English society and able significantly to influence the formation and implementation of advanced opinion, Victorian Unitarians — from wealthy, broad-minded patricians to liberated, self-consciously intellectual workingmen — were prepared to welcome almost any advances the scientists might make.* But to understand the distinctive way in which they accommodated science to religion, one must first understand their inheritance from the man who stands at the beginning of English Unitarianism as a continuous movement — the scientist and theologian Joseph Priestley.
‘Is there anything to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
‘That is the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘Silver Blaze’, in The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 1: 347)
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Notes
John Kenrick, Memoir of the Rev. John Kentish (London, 1854) 46–7. Thomas Carlyle to Richard Monckton Milnes, 19 July 1841, in T. Wemyss Reid, The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, 2 vols (London, 1891) 1: 265–6.
K.M. Lyell, Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., 2 vols (London, 1881), contains many letters touching on Unitarianism, but the long philosophical letter written to Lyell by J.J. Tayler, 23 February 1862, suggests that more on Lyell’s religious interests must exist in unpublished manuscripts (J.H. Thom, Letters Embracing His Life of John James Tayler, B.A., 2 vols [London, 1872] 2: 186–92); S.E. De Morgan, Memoir of Augustus De Morgan (London, 1882) 86–7, 168, 342–3; cf. George Boole, The Claims of Science, Especially As Founded on Its Relations to Human Nature (London, 1851) 8; William Hincks, Illustrations of Unitarian Christianity (London, 1845) 34–5.
Thomas Belsham, Reflections upon the History of the Creation in the Book of Genesis (London, 1821); John Kenrick, An Essay on Primeval History (London, 1846).
Published in the Inquirer, 22 March and 16 August 1845. See the biographical essay by J. Estlin Carpenter prefacing W.B. Carpenter, Nature and Man: Essays Scientific and Philosopical (London, 1888), for a discussion of reviews of Chambers and Darwin; his matured views on Darwin appear in two essays reprinted in Nature and Man, 384–408, 409–63.
The quotation from Wicksteed appears in C.B. Upton, Dr. Martineau’s Philosophy: A Survey, rev. ed. (London, 1905) 181–2; the description of the debate with Huxley is taken from a letter to Charles Wicksteed, 26 August 1870 (ibid., 120); Martineau’s essay on Parker appears in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, 4 vols (London, 1891) 1: 149–89, the essay on Oersted, ibid., 3: 83–116.
J. Estlin Carpenter, James Martineau, Theologian and Teacher: A Study of His Life and Thought (London, 1905) 547; in the possession of James Martineau to Helen Tagart, 15 May 1857 (Dr R.S. Speck Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
John Williams, Memoirs of the Late Rev. Thomas Belsham (London, 1833) 702–5; Inquirer, 22 February 1845, on Kant; ibid., 20 and 27 April, 4 and 11 May, on Strauss; Beard’s answer was Voices of the Church, in Reply to Dr. D.F. Strauss (London, 1845); Tayler to Martineau, 1 August 1858 (Thom, Tayler, 2: 104–5).
Martineau to John Gordon, 20 January 1843 (Unitarian College MS B 1.22, John Rylands University of Manchester Library); Inquirer, 3 February 1844, for a sweeping attack on anti-supernaturalism; Thomas Wood before and after is displayed in Four Lectures on the Evidences and Doctrines of the Christian Religion (London, 1836) and The Mission of Jesus Christ (London, 1840); William Hincks, Anti-Supernaturalism Considered (London, 1841); Joseph Hutton, Jesus Christ Our Teacher and Lord by Divine, Not by Self, Appointment (London, 1841).
Sara Sophia Hennell, Memoir of Charles Christian Hennell (London, 1899) 3–69. The Inquiry went through three editions in Hennell’s lifetime; the first edition was followed the next year by his Christian Theism. The article in Christian Remembrancer, NS, 11 (1846) 355–6, is an admirable, passionate survey of anti-supernaturalism and its evils.
Besides Tayler and Martineau, two other ministers were particularly associated with the change in direction — Charles Wicksteed and J.H. Thom. On Thom, see R.K. Webb, ‘John Hamilton Thom: Intellect and Conscience in Liverpool’, in The View from the Pulpit, ed. P.T. Phillips (London, 1978) 211–43, where there is much information on the domestic mission movement, passed over in the present chapter. Wicksteed remains a more shadowy figure and was certainly less important than his three friends.
The intervention in 1838 is recounted in H.L. Short, ‘Presbyterians under a New Name’, in C.G. Bolam, et al., The English Presbyterians, (London, 1968) 256; Martineau’s ‘Church Life? or Sect-Life?’ appears in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, 2: 381–420.
James Martineau to Mary Carpenter, February 1841 (Manchester College Library); the relevant passage in the article on Parker is in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, 1: 165–8; Crabb Robinson Diary, 5 February 1846 (Dr Williams’s Library); Madge to JM, 14 August 1849 (Manchester College Library); JM to Tagart, 22 April 1857 (Dr R.S. Speck Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley); S.S. Hennell to Harriet Martineau, 13 April 1860 (Birmingham University Library, HM 428).
Webb, ‘Thom’, 217–19, 221–3; Aspland to John Gordon, 5 April 1859, 13 June 1857 (Unitarian College MS B 1.15, John Rylands University of Manchester Library); on George Eliot’s eagerly anticipated visit, frustrated by a substitute preacher apparently of the old school, see her letters to Sara Sophia Hennell, 2 and 30 July 1861 (The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon Haight, 9 vols [New Haven, 1957] 3: 433, 442).
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© 1990 Richard J. Helmstadter and Bernard Lightman
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Webb, R.K. (1990). The Faith of Nineteenth-Century Unitarians: A Curious Incident. In: Helmstadter, R.J., Lightman, B. (eds) Victorian Faith in Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10974-6_5
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