could write to a friend : I love to think
of your little girl, and her joy in the bursting buds ; give her a kiss from me."
Never weary of well-doing and well-thinking, his ninety-fifth year was entered before he was gathered to his fathers. Mr. Carpenter's words are a noble statement of Martineau's central theological position r-
" Nature is usually, for Martineau, the realm in which God has pledged Himself to those fixed ways which we sum up under the term Law. In the mechaoism of the human frame he acts, as he acts in the scene around, along pre-ordained lines of invariable constancy. Not such are his dealings with human souls. There is a scene where Living Mind can speak with living minds, in tones of encouragement or of rebuke, of kindling suggestion or supporting love. At times, indeed, this is confined to the moral life, where in the inmost room of conscience, God seeks you all the while.' At others, however, it is extended over a wider range. It vouchsafes visions of new truth ; it opens before us glimpses of diviner beauty ; it calls reverence higher and higher along the upward way ; and feeds the heart that is athirst for the Eternal. Describe it as a doctrine of the Spirit, and you may throw it into theologic form by saying that the indwelling God, who in Christ was the Word, is in us the Comforter. In this realm of mystery, God is for ever free ; and inasmuch as it transcends the customary Order of his acts, it may be called strictly supernatural. Possible in all men, however dim and intermittent, was this higher life. Constant was it in Jesus, whose spirit, through no better medium than the institutions of the Church and even the word upon the printed page, can yet reach ours, and bear it into the presence of the Father. In his whole conception, therefore, of religion, James Martineau soared beyond the range of Law, and earnestly repelled the charge of antisupernaturalism."
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