touching reply. Speaking of the profound impression made by their address upon the audience, he goes on to say: "If this was the feeling of an audience personally unconcerned, how much more deeply moved must I have been, to whom your words of tender greeting and benediction were addressed. I thank you for them with all the fervor of a heart which age has not yet chilled, and with the surprise of one who has earned no such distinguished recognition at your hands.

"True it is that from youth the history of your venerable Church has attracted me with all the interest of romance, and served as a favorite example of reverent freedom and heroic conscience, upheld and blended in the love of God. But in thus directing my admiring gaze to the far East of Europe, little did I dream that my look thitherward would ever be returned, and that you would find out and meet the quiet eye that wondered at your past and watched your present life.

"It is without anxiety, therefore, that I quit the stress of life and turn to the few possibilities that await my finishing hand. That they are small and final brings me no sadness. The merest remnants of the 'Great Taskmaster's' service are sacred, like the rest, and may still be wrought out in love and prayer."

To the group of Hungarian students he wrote: "Towards. all other doctrines of the schools I have honestly tried to maintain the expositor's attitude of impartial suspense, till a position has been gained for final, critical judgment. But one thing I have deemed it imperative to assume and hold exempt from doubt, viz., — that Truth is to be found, and that the instinctive prayer of the human soul for vision is not itself the only gleam in an Eternal darkness. Intellect itself would be an illusion, unless the faculty to seek were the pledge and measure of the faculty to learn, and in the catechism of the Reason no

question stood without an answer. . . . The faith which, as prior to all reasoning, no reasoning can impair, is the condition of all intellectual enthusiasm. . .

"What can I add but an old man's blessing? My sympathy is with you all; your callings are without exception worthy and noble; though of deepest interest to me, from personal experience, is the mission of those who bear the message of Christ to men. His faith, his love, his selfsacrifice, his life eternal, are to me the sanctifying crown of all philosophy, the secret of union with God for the individual soul, and the hope of redemption from the sins and sorrows of mankind. My race is nearly run; the fire given me to bear flickers between dark and light; but if, ere its last spark drops into the stream, it should have sufficed to kindle any torch of yours, and send it aglow through its appointed stage, the prayer of my heart will be fulfilled, though my name should but touch the water with that momentary trace to be seen no more."

Thus answering applause with benediction, he laid down his academic toils.

CHAPTER VII

LATER PUBLICATIONS; A REMARKABLE TESTIMONIAL

We have noticed, as our narrative has brought us to them, his various books: the Rationale of Religious Inquiry, his hymn-books, the Endeavors after the Christian Life, the three collections of essays brought out by American publishers, the two volumes of Hours of Thought on Sacred Things, the Study of Spinoza. These in their appearance belong to the period of his activity, — all noble and useful, yet none except the Spinoza representing long-sustained and elaborate work. They were fruits wanting nothing of ripeness, but dropped from the tree in advance of the harvest. With these alone he had been known abroad as the noblest of preachers, the most studious of hymnologists, the most incisive of critics; but, save within the favored circle of his immediate acquaintance, he had not been known for the vast range of his scholarship and his great powers of thought. The harvest through which these were to be made known, was for the period of his retirement. It began with the publication of the Types of Ethical Theory, which was in 1885, and very nearly synchronous with his sundering of his college relations.

The work was brought out by the Clarendon Press in two heavy volumes, and at once drew attention as a great contribution to ethical thought. Considered not as a system but with reference to its scholarship and range, the century has hardly produced another ethical treatise that is its equivalent. As a preparation for dealing with the

great ethical problems, there is probably no better work in the English tongue than this, and its publication placed him in the front rank of moral philosophers.

It is the work of many years; in the main it had been proved in the college lecture-room, and that year after year, its judgments tested, its learning enriched, its statements chastened. While its logic is the severest, yet on every page it glows with ethical enthusiasm. Then its scope! Of course it presents Dr. Martineau's own ethical doctrine; but this in relation with many other doctrines, and all in one vast organism of thought. His primary classification shows ethical systems to take their origin from the study of the universe or from the study of man. He first deals with those drawn from the study of the universe. These he distinguishes as Physical or Metaphysical, according as they build upon the outward and phenomenal aspect of the universe or the metaphysical and real. Of the former, or Physical type of doctrine, he finds a consistent representative in Auguste Comte, and devotes to him a searching and copious page. The latter, or Metaphysical type, he finds divided into two branches, according as man is conceived as a pre-existent entity, or as a modal presentation of the Eternal Essence and Only Reality. The first of these he distinguishes as Transcendental, the second as Immanential. The Transcendental type of doctrine, Plato by his genius has for all time stamped as his own; and to his teaching Dr. Martineau devotes an exhaustive exposition. The Immanential, of course, takes us to Spinoza. Spinoza's roots, however, are in the movement of thought he brought to a conclusion, and so the better to exhibit him the great Cartesians are severally reviewed. This section is not easy reading, but he who masters it has made his own, not only the ethical outcome of the doctrine, but the cardinal features of the Cartesian philosophy.

To these types of doctrine, the Physical and the Metaphysical, the first volume is devoted. Its aim is to show that, making the point of departure some aspect of the universe, no satisfactory ethic can be won.

With the second volume he changes his point of departure; instead of an aspect of the universe he begins with the study of man; and here we are introduced to a system of intuitive doctrine which is Mr. Martineau's own. Of the wealth of thought and the sustained eloquence of this section of his work it were vain to attempt to tell. It is not merely a thinker's conclusion; it is a prophet's burden. Completing his exposition, he passes critically upon modern systems of Hedonistic and Utilitarian doctrine, especially as set forth by Bentham and Mill and Spencer; and these great thinkers were perhaps never brought to a more searching arraignment. These, too, take their departure from man; but instead of recognizing in the “springs of action" a guiding principle, as Conscience, they put all these "springs" under the rule of one dominant end, which is Pleasure or Utility. His doctrine is strictly Psychological, theirs he distinguishes as Hetero-psychological; and in his struggle with them he fights the good fight for the Sovereign whose voice he hears within him. But the Hedonistic and Utilitarian are not the only forms of Hetero-psychological doctrine; there is the Dianoetic doctrine of Cudworth and Clarke and Price, and the Esthetic doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson; and to these he devotes the last quarter of the volume. Such is the scope of this great work. In this vast tract of discussion there is hardly an important phase of ethical theory, whether of the ancient schools or the modern ones, if we may except the Hegelian, which is not exhibited either directly or by implication. To know this work is to know ethical philosophy, as it can be learned probably from no other single treatise.