JOSEPH BARKER.
In any work, purporting to be a true record of Freethinkers, the name of Joseph Barker cannot be omitted. We find in him, from the commencement of his public life till the present time, an ardent desire for, and a determination to achieve, freedom of thought and ex-pression on all subjects appertaining to theology, politics, and sociology. Possessing a vigorous intellect, a constitution naturally strong, great oratorical ability, and an unrivalled command oi the Saxon language, he has made himself a power among each party with whom the transitory state of his mind has brought him in contact. It is seldom we find men with equal boldness, when once connected with Wesleyan Methodism, rising superior in thought to its narrow, selfish, dogmatic, unnatural, and humiliating views, and claiming for human nature a more dignified and exalted position; gradually advancing to Unitarianism; ultimately to land safely on the shore of Materialism. Joseph Barker has passed, amid persecution and privation, through these different phases of theology, to arrive at "Infidelity," to be, he states, a better, wiser, and happier man. In his autobiography, we read that he was born in Bramley, an old country town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1806, the day of his birth being forgotten. His parents, and his ancestors, so far as is known of them, were of humble means. His grandfather was addicted to drinking freely of those beverages which meet with so much opposition from Mr. Barker himself. His aunt also was unfortunate, having married a man who was a minister, a drunkard, and a cock-fighter. His parents appear to have been uneducated and pious; belonging to the old school of Methodists, those who look on this life merely as a state of trial and probation; always looking forward to enjoy their mansion in the skies—the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens, thinking nothing
.... Worth a thought beneath,
But how they may escape the death
That never, never dies.
Although living in this world, they were not of it. It was to them, all vanity and vexation of spirit. They attended their chapel, their love feasts, their class-meetings, their prayer meetings, and their revival meetings, where they would lament over the wickedness and depravity of human nature, where they would "speak their experience," tell of their temptations, pray for the conversion of the world, and sing their hymns, such as the following, which was a favorite with Mr. Barker's family:—
"Refining fire, go through my heart,
Illuminate my soul;
Scatter my life through every part,
And sanctify the whole."
Such being the character of Mr. Barker's parents, it is no wonder that he was "brought up" under the same influence, with the same false notions of life, of humanity, and of the world; and we cannot prize too highly the man who had the industry to investigate, the ability to discern, and the courage to expose the falsity of such doctrines and the disastrous effects of such teaching.
In the extracts we shall give from Mr. Barker's works will be found that simplicity of style and force of argument peculiar to himself. The first extract we take shows the falsity of the orthodox doctrine of the total depravity of human nature:—
"On looking back on the earlier periods of my life, I first see proofs that the orthodox doctrine of original sin, or of natural total depravity, is a falsehood. I was not born totally depraved. I never recollect the time, since I began to think and feel at all, when I had not good thoughts, and good feelings. I never recollect the time since I began to think and feel at all, when I had not many good thoughts, and strong inclinations to goodness. So far was my heart from being utterly depraved or hardened, that I sympathised, even in my childhood, with the humblest of God's creatures, and was filled to overflowing with sorrow at the sight of distress. I recollect one Sunday, while I was searching about for something in one of the windows upstairs, I found a butterfly that had been starved to death, as I supposed. When I laid hold of it, it crumbled to pieces. My feelings were such at the thought of the poor butterfly's sufferings, that I wept. And for all that day I could scarcely open my lips to say a word to any one without bursting into tears.... And I recollect well what a struggle I had when I first told a lie. A school in the neighborhood had a feast, ours had not, so I played the truant, after a serious struggle, to have an opportunity of seeing the scholars walk. I had a miserable afternoon; for I felt that I was doing wrong, and I was afraid lest my mother should find me out. My sister found me out and told my mother, but my mother was loth to believe her till she had asked me myself. When I went home my mother asked me if I had been to school, and I said yes, and my mother, as she had never found me out in a lie before, believed me. But I was sadly distressed afterwards when I thought of what I had done. That lie caused me days of remorse, and my sufferings were all the severer in consequence of my mother having so readily believed what I said."
The unhappy and unnatural effects of theology on the minds of earnest, truth-seeking men—the total prostration of manly dignity, the perversion of the mental faculties, and the debasement of human nature, is truly stated by Mr. Barker in the following extract:—