s, 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 with