The following remarks were in a letter to Miss Elliot:—
“January, 1867.
“I wish I could write a résumé of a Sermon which Mr. Martineau preached last Sunday. Just think how many sermons some people would make of this one sentence of his text (speaking of the longing for Rest):—‘If Duty become laborious, do it more fervently. If Love become a source of care and pain, love more nobly and more tenderly. If Doubts disturb and torture, face them with more earnest thought and deeper study!’
“This was not a peroration, but just one phrase of a discourse full of other such things.
“It seems to me that the spontaneous response of our inner souls to such ideas is just the same proof of their truth as the shock we feel in our nerves when a lecturer has delivered a current of electricity proves his lesson to be true.”
“January, 1867.
“While you were enjoying your Cathedral, I was enjoying Little Portland Street Chapel, having bravely tramped through miles of snow on the way, and been rewarded. Mr. Martineau said we were always taunted with only having a negative creed, and were often foolish enough to deny it. But all Reformation is a negation of error and return to the three pure articles of faith—God, Duty, Immortality.... The distinction was admirably drawn between extent of creed and intensity of faith.”
On February 5th, 1871, Mr. Martineau preached:—
“Philosophers might and do say that all Religion is only a projection of Man himself on Nature, lending to Nature his own feelings, brightened by a supreme Love or shadowed by infinite displeasure. Does this disprove Religion? Is there no reliance to be placed on the faculties which connect us with the Infinite? We have two sets of faculties: our Senses, which reveal the outer world; and a deeper series, giving us Poetry, Love, Religion. Should we say that these last are more false than the others? They are true all round. In fact, these are truest. Imagination is true. Affection is true. Do men say that Affection is blind? No! It is the only thing which truly sees. Love alone really perceives. The cynic draws over the world a roof of dark and narrow thoughts and suspicions, and then complains of the close, unhealthy air. Memory again is more than mere Recollection. It has the true artist-power of seizing the points which determine the character and reconstructing the image without details. Suppose there be a God. By what faculties could we know Him save by those which now tell us of Him. And why should they deceive us?”
Alas! the exercise of preaching every Sunday became too great for Dr. Martineau to encounter after 1872, and, by his physician’s orders, those noble sermons came to an end.