Martineau, JAMES, theologian, brother of the preceding, was born at Norwich, 21st April 1805. He was educated at the grammar-school of his native city, and under Dr Lant Carpenter at Bristol, and had already been a Unitarian minister at Dublin and Liverpool, when in 1841 he was appointed professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Manchester New College. He removed to London when that institution was transferred thither in 1857, becoming also one of the pastors in Little Portland Street Chapel. He became principal of the college in 1868, and held the office till his retirement in 1885. Martineau was recognised for fifty years as one of the profoundest thinkers and most effective writers of his day. Earnest and lofty in his aims, and catholic in his sympathies, he unites strong grasp of thought and power of subtle analysis to a rare mastery of English style. Indeed in the power of elucidating the most abstract thought he has seldom been surpassed. He received the LL.D. from Harvard in 1872, Doctor in Theology from Leyden in 1875, and D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884. He was a founder of the National Review (1855-64), and was a frequent contributor to its pages. He died 10th January 1900. See Life by A. W. Jackson (1900).
His principal works are The Rationale of Religious Inquiry (1836); Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840); Endeavours after the Christian Life (2 vols. 1843-47); Miscellanies (1852); Studies of Christianity (1858); Essays, Philosophical and Theological (2 vols. 1868); Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1874); Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (2 vols. 1876-80); A Study of Spinoza (1882); Types of Ethical Theory (2 vols. 1885); A Study of Religion: its Sources and Contents (2 vols. 1888); The Scat of Authority in Religion (1890); and Studies, Reviews, and Addresses (1891).