Mrs. Hawthorne: Letter to her Father.
Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, viva voce, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of—in plain English—infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.”
Henry Bright: Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
Stated by herself.
I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; i. e., that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith.
Harriet Martineau: Letter to Charlotte Brontë, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.
Florence Nightingale’s testimony to Martineau’s religious feeling.