Teachingsiof Experience. By Joseph Barker. (Beveridge.)—Mr. Barker began life as
a minister in the Methodist Now connection, found himself galled by the system, relinquished his place, became minister of a congregation of seceders, got into difficulties with them by inclining to the views of a certain Mr. George Bird, who taught that worship must be confined to real Christians, while sermons may be preached to mixed audiences ; then passed through various stages of belief, doubt, and unbelief, till ho found himself lauded in Secularism. Aftor the descent finished began the ascent ; for Mr. Barker got back to Christianity, from the stand-point of which he writes. In this getting-back a number of things helped him, and his account of their action is interesting. Spiritualism seems to have done something for him. Then he went through a course of Epictotus, Theodore Parker, Manning, &c. Then came Hooker, Baxter, Jeremy Taylor, and the like. Then, among others, Berke, Penn, and Wesley; Carlyle, Paley, and Grotius ; curious combinations, some of them. "Rdnan," he says, "tried me very much. 'Ecce Homo' delighted me exceedingly. I read it a dozen times. I studied it, and it did me a great deal of good. It both strengthened my faith in Christ, and increased my love to Him. Still later, I read 'Eon Deus' with much pleasure and profit." Mr. Barker's tastes are general, not to say indis-
criminate, and he does not impress us with the belief that he has much soundness of judgment, but his record of "experience " has a truthful look, and as an illustration of what must often happen when men read much and have but small power of mental digestion, it has considerable value. It would be unfair not to recognize the liberality and breadth of much of the writer's thought on theological subjects, qualities which are the more remarkable when we consider what he has gone through ; and not to praise the moderation of his language, which fails him only on the subject of smoking tobacco, a practice in which be sees "folly, filthiness, and wickedness."
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