Renunciations of infidelity.
By Moses Hull
Last fall when I debated with S. P. Leland I would have thought it impossible that so rank an infidel could have been converted; but several letters received from him this summer, show that he is a changed man. The book he used for reference more than any other was the "Infidel's Text Book," By Robert Cooper. This book I afterward read, and found it to be the strongest attack on the Bible that I ever read. Robert Cooper has now renounced his book and embraced the Bible, and become the pastor of a Christian church. But of all the infidels in the world, Joseph Barker was considered the chief. This point has for years been universally conceded. Judge of my surprise as I took up the August number of the "Bible Examiner" and learned that he, too, had forsaken the sinking ship. I only hope that it is true. The following is from the Examiner. "A BRAND OUT OF THE FIRE:" or, Joseph Barker.—It seems incredible that this man, after the career he ran in this country of the blackest infidelity, and atheism, should have been reclaimed, and now he "clothed and in his right mind." A more hopeless case of apostasy we never knew: we mourned his fall, and grieved at his ridicule of Christ and Christianity. The first and only interview we ever had with him was in the Convention at Hartford, Conn., ten years since, where we withstood him, and his deistical associates. We had read his "Christianity Triumphant" some years before, and were not prepared to find him so furiously opposed to the religion of Jesus. His case we concluded then, and ever since have regarded as a case of hopeless apostasy. After that Convention he labored for some two or three years to spread atheism in Philadelphia, Pa., and elsewhere. He had found at the Convention in Hartford, the "God of nature"—which he and his fellow-deists worshiped—could not be defended any better than the "God of the Bible," whom they affected to believe was a most "outrageous" being; and he immediately went over to atheism: necessity compelled him to do so. That race he ran for a time; we know not how long, as we had not heard from him for several years. But, behold, the information comes to us from England this "brand" has been "plucked out of the fire." If such indeed is the fact, we have reason to adore and bless our gracious God for His abundant mercy. The only information we have on his return to a "right mind" is the following, which we take from The Methodist of this city. "Mr. Joseph Barker, who has been noted for the number of times he has changed his religious opinions, and has been for many years past an avowed infidel, recently addressed a numerous assembly in Mirfield, England, on the death of Mr. Samuel Medley, saddler, Mirfield. He described the life of Samuel Medley, and characterized him as a good man—a man of prayer; and stated that he had visited him shortly before his death. His text was: 'Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.' After discoursing on this text in reference to Mr. Medley's death, he made reference to his own religious creed. He remarked that he had been very changeable, and compared himself to one who had wandered from the warm South, into the freezy regions of the North Pole, and into the dismal darkness beyond, where he had been lost to all, and to himself. He thanked God for his deliverance from such a perilous position, and he now avowed himself a Christian. With reference to his expulsion from the New Connection Methodist Society, formerly having preached at the New Connection Chapel, Mirfield, he said it was a very just sentence passed upon him." "We rejoice in Mr. Barker's return to the acknowledgment of Christ. If his return is genuine, does he not owe it to himself and to Christianity, to visit America again, and proclaim his repentance as wide as he proclaimed his infidelity and atheism while here? especially in Hartford and Philadelphia? and thus to some extent undo the great evil inflicted on those communities. May God direct his course."