JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 9 \ 



ideal of life, acted up to it consistently, is worthy of the deepest 

 respect, whatever opinion may be entertained as to the real value 

 of the tenets which he so zealously propagated and defended. 



But I am sure that I speak not only for myself, but for all this 

 assemblage, when I say that our purpose to-day is to do honor, not to 

 Priestley, the Unitarian divine, but to Priestley, the fearless defender 

 of rational freedom in thought and in action ; to Priestley, the philo- 

 sophic thinker; to that Priestley who held a foremost place among 

 " the swift runners who hand over the lamp of life," 1 and transmit 

 from one generation to another the fire kindled, in the childhood of 

 the world, at the Promethean altar of Science. 



The main incidents of Priestley's life are so well known that I need 

 dwell upon them at no great length. 



Born in 1733, at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and brought up among 

 Calviuists of the straitest orthodoxy, the boy's striking natural ability 

 led to his being devoted to the profession of a minister of religion ; 

 and, in 1752, he was sent to the Dissenting academy at Daventry an 

 institution which authority left undisturbed, though its existence con- 

 travened the law. The teachers under whose instruction and influ- 

 ence the young man came, at Daventry, carried out to the letter the 

 injunction to " try all things ; hold fast that which is good," and 

 encouraged the discussion of every imaginable proposition with com- 

 plete freedom, the leading professors taking opposite sides ; a disci- 

 pline which, admirable as it may be from a purely scientific point of 

 view, would seem to be. calculated to make acute rather than sound 

 divines. Priestley tells us, in his" Autobiography," that he generally 

 found himself on the unorthodox side : and as he grew older, and his 

 faculties attained their maturity, this native tendency toward hetero- 

 doxy grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. He 

 passed from Calvinism to Arianism ; and finally, in middle life, landed 

 in that very broad form of Unitarianism by which his craving after a 

 credible and consistent theory of things was satisfied. 



On leaving Daventry, Priestley became minister of a congregation, 

 first at Needham Market and secondly at ISTantwich; but whether on 

 account of his heterodox opinions, or of the stuttering which impeded 

 his expression of them in the pulpit, little success attended his efforts 

 in this capacity. In 1761 a career much more suited to his abilities 

 became open to him. He was appointed " tutor in the languages " in 

 the Dissenting academy at Warrington, in which capacity, besides 

 giving three courses of lectures, he taught Latin, Greek, French, and 

 Italian, and read lectures on the Theory of Language and Universal 

 Grammar, on Oratory, Philosophical Criticism, and the Civil Law. 

 And it is interesting to observe that, as a teacher, he encouraged and 

 cherished, in those whom he instructed, the freedom which he had 



1 " Quasi cursores vitai', lampada tradunt." Lucretius, "Be Rerum J\ T at." ii., 78. 



