THE LADIES' REPOSITORY. NOVEMBER, 1860. REV. JOHN BARKER, D. D., LATE PRESIDENT OF ALLEGHANY COLLEGE THE BY REV. C. KINGSLEY, D. D. HE painter who throws upon canvas that strange index of the soul, the human face and form, and gives apparent life to the passions and emotions which look out through the eye and speak through the lip, may well say he paints for immortality. The sculptor, whose genius enables him to convert the rude marble into forms of beauty, purity, wisdom, and dignity, lives in his own creations long after his body has mingled with the dust. But the educator works upon the soul itself. His canvas is a deathless spirit. His block of marble is already stamped with immortality. It is his business to mold into forms of living beauty, purity, wisdom, and dignity a conscious, intelligent, immortal soul. There is no more useful position, there is no higher calling, there is no more responsible post assigned to mortals than that of the Christian teacher. Such a man, though unseen and too often unthought of, lives on from generation to generation, and from age to age, in the noble aspirations he has kindled, in the enterprise and intelligence he has fostered, and in the high and holy aims with which his labors have inspired humanity. Dr. John Barker was preeminently a Christian educator. He felt, and all acquainted with him felt, that this was his sphere of duty. His education, tastes, talents, and inclinations combined to fit him peculiarly for this department of labor. It is to his character as an educator of youth that the attention of the reader is more particularly invited in this article. But we are not about to say that even in his character as an educator any more than in his character as a man, he was a model or was perfect. Extravagant laudation is the bane of biographical VOL. XX.-41 sketches. There never was but one model man. There never was but one model teacher. It is the fault of surviving admirers to overstate the good qualities and conceal the defects of their subject. This is no advantage to the dead, but a positive injury to the living. Instead of an insight into the character of the real man, we are too frequently entertained with the ideal of the writer. The truth of history is thus sacrificed to the demands of a morbid admiration. Even among those whom God employed as the instruments and dispensers of his revelation to mankind, we find, notwithstanding their high and unspeakably-responsible position, the errors and failings incident to fallen humanity; and we find their recorded defects in the same history which commemorates their faith and their triumphs. Had it been otherwise with the record, the very fact would have cast a suspicion upon its truthfulness by presenting human nature not as it is in fact, but as it was imagined to exist in the heroes of the story. John Barker was born in Foggathrope, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, March 17, 1813. His parents emigrated to this country three years after, and settled in the state of New-York. From a child he was a lover of books, and ardently and enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. Although possessing an unusual flow of animal spirits, he sacrificed the usual sports and recreations of childhood and youth to gratify his intense thirst for knowledge. His physical development undoubtedly suffered from this cause. A better physical education in connection with mental and moral culture is a want of the age. The three harmonized is necessary to the perfection of our nature. The subject is just beginning to attract that attention it should have received centuries gone by. He was thoroughly prepared for college before he arrived at the age usually required as one of the conditions of admission, and was obliged to wait till he was fourteen to be admitted into Geneva College, New York. He entered this institution in 1827, and graduated in 1831, having in a very thorough manner completed every part of the college course. So highly were his attainments estimated by Geneva College that he was afterward offered a professorship in the institution. After graduating he taught a private school in Geneva, New York, for four years. During this time he embraced religion and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. His conversion was clear and powerful, and he ever afterward evinced a strong assurance of faith. About a year after his conversion he received license as a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church. About this time he was elected to the Professorship of Mathematics in Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, where he remained five years. In 1840 he was elected Vice-President and Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in Alleghany College. In 1845 he accepted the Professorship of Ancient Languages in the Transylvania University in Kentucky. Two years later he was elected President of Alleghany College, which post he filled with eminent success till the close of his life, on February 26, 1860. Dr. Barker was a warm-hearted friend, kind, generous, and sympathizing. His constitution, we think, was impaired by too close application to study while young; yet he always manifested unusual buoyancy of spirit, particularly in the company of his friends. Here he delighted to throw off the restraints which, right or wrong, the world has thought proper to impose on men in his position, especially in their official intercourse with men. He was so frec, so easy, so natural in conversation as to relieve the most timid at once from all embarrassment. A constant reader from a child, with a memory that retained every thing, his fund of information, of incident, of anecdote, was truly astonishing. It was seldom, indeed, that any subject could be mooted upon which he was not well posted. His hearty enjoyment of refined society, his fine flow of social feeling, combined with remarkable conversational powers and ready wit, rendered his presence a charming acquisition to the social circle. His feelings on these occasions often rose to a degree of hilarity and mirthfulness, and such was his keen sense of the ludicrous, that when he chose to convulse an audience with laughter, to surrender at discretion was the best thing to be done. If he erred on these occasions it was in sometimes giving too loose rein to the playful caperings of a bounding heart, which refused to grow old with the lapse of years. Yet in all this there remained a profound rever ence for God, and a deep sense of religious obligation. He delighted greatly in all the means of grace, and was always at his post as a Chris- | tian soldier, unless physically incapacitated. The Scriptures were familiar to him as household words. He often sat under the preaching of those every way his inferiors, but never as the cold critic. A stranger would have pointed to him as one of the most humble and devout hearers, ever eager to learn of Him who is meek and lowly. He was generous to a fault, always ready to divide the last dollar with the needy. A person or a cause in need carried his heart captive at once, and he poured out free as water what he had for the relief of the needy object, often giving beyond his ability. In 1843 Dr. Barker was united in marriage with Miss Ellen Morrison, a most estimable lady, the daughter of the President of the Board of Trustees of the College. Three children remain as the fruit of this marriage. His first wife died about nine years after their marriage. In 1833 he was again married to a widow lady in Lexington, Kentucky, who still survives him. She came among strangers to encounter prejudices which the world has long since stereotyped in the case of all step-mothers. And never were prejudices more triumphantly overcome. She proved to be that kind of a wife which Solomon says is of the Lord. No mother was ever more true to her own children than she to those of her husband; and, with the spirit of a noble Christian heroine, she has determined to devote herself to the raising and training of those dear ones, now bereft of both parents. Dr. Barker was preeminently free from what may be denominated the besetting sin of too many men in high positions. Envy and jealousy found no place in his heart. He rejoiced in the prosperity of others as though it had been his own. If another succeeded better than himself, instead of envying him he looked upon his success as a part of his own wealth. In this spirit he looked upon the things of others. It has been said as a half apology for what too i often exists among men that "mountains never touch at the top." True, they do not, but the reason is a diminution of their magnitude as they rise up into the regions of perpetual frost. They touch where they are the greatest. Although poor in this world's goods, Dr. Barker inherited the earth. We never knew a man who we believe could more truly apply to himself the precious Scripture, "All are yours." His unselfish heart inherited all things, and seemed to be in sympathy with all things but sin. The mod- | esty of science, the meekness, purity, and hopefulness of the Gospel, combined to constitute for him a wealth compared with which "gold is mathematics. In every one of these departpoor." ments he was eminently successful. In regard to most teachers, although they may be good general scholars, there is some one study or class of studies in which they excel, and for which alone they possess that enthusiasm indispensable to eminent success. But not so with Dr. Barker. All knowledge had charms for him. Even dry statistics were treasured up with avid As a preacher Dr. Barker was all, and more, than can reasonably be expected of one whose life is consecrated to another work. He never fell into the dry and prosy habit too common and almost inevitable to men in his position, and with his amount of other labor. No man who preaches but occasionally, and without that preparation which consists in being wholly de-ity, and could be brought forth at will. While it voted to one work, can do himself full justice as a preacher. His pulpit efforts, however, were always characterized by zeal and freshness. They were rather practical than doctrinal, and his extemporaneous efforts we always thought were the best. His set efforts were often too highly wrought to be most useful to the generality of hearers. But when his theme led him to draw upon the treasures of Christian experience, no man was happier in bringing out the marrow and fatness of the Gospel. Although he never received an appointment to what has been technically called the "regular work," yet few men have been more truly pastors. He watched over the spiritual interests of the students with as much Christian solicitude, we venture to affirm, as any pastor ever felt for his flock, was speedily by the side of the sick and dying, as ready on all occasions to administer spiritual counsel, as competent to point the inquiring soul to "the Lamb of God," to recover any that were out of the way. Nor were his labors of this kind by any means confined to the students, as the hundreds to whom his Christian counsels in time of trouble can testify. as may be said of most teachers respectively, such or such a study is his forte, it could be said of him, every thing in the college course was his forte. He loved every branch ardently, and so far as any one could judge equally well. Latin and Greek inflexions which he had heard for the thousandth time, mathematical and geometrical definitions which he had been driving into the heads of students for thirty years, seemed on each repetition to kindle the same pleasure in his mind as when first apprehended by the young pupil thirsting for knowledge. He was singularly happy in being able to retrace the mental process by which his own knowledge had been acquired, and to put himself precisely in the place of the learner. This is one of the great secrets of success in teaching, and yet it is not every accomplished scholar that can do it. He enjoyed with an ever-recurring freshness the mental stimulus which knowledge imparts. His words of instruction seemed to taste good to himself, and even the dull student, who was at first unable to appreciate their flavor, was, nevertheless, impressed that there was something good in them by the way they were relished by the teacher. There is what, for want of a better word, we will call unction as well in teaching as in all public speaking, by which the truth is felt to flow easily from a heart deeply in sympathy with it at the But, as we have already intimated, teaching same time that it enlists the corresponding symwas evidently the sphere for which Providence pathies of the hearer. This is another indispens designed him. Here he was fully at home, and able element of success in all public instruchere every faculty and acquisition found ample tion. However valuable and instructive knowlplay. The business of education was his life-edge may be in itself, if it be spit out in such a long work. He was never out of school from way as to give the hydrophobia to each sentence the time he first entered as a pupil till he was removed from the Presidency of Alleghany College by death. He was correcting some compositions of students when he fell from his chair and expired without uttering a word. We have heard him remark that he desired to so spend his life as a teacher that the word "faithful" might be written on his tombstone. We wish all epitaphs were as true as would be this word in such a place. In Lima he taught mathemat- | truly-benevolent heart, and an aptitude for illusics; at Transylvania, ancient languages; at Alleghany College, first the natural sciences, then moral science and belles-lettres, and finally The Transylvania University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1848. Washington College, Pennsylvania, conferred the same degree soon after. Or, as it tration which we have never known exceeded, the reader will be at no loss to know why Dr. Barker should have been ardently loved by his |