JOSEPH

See also:

• PARKER, JOHN HENRY (1806-1884)
• JOSEPH PARKER (183o-1902)
• PARKER, MARTIN (c. 1600-c. 1656)
• PARKER, MATTHEW (1504-1575)
• PARKER, SAMUEL (164o-1688)
• PARKER, SIR GILBERT (1862— )
• PARKER, SIR HYDE, BART
• PARKER, THEODORE (1810-186o)

PARKER (183o-1902)  , English Nonconformist divine, was born at Hexham-on-Tyne on the 9th of April 183o, his father being a stonemason . He managed to pick up a fair education, which in after-life he constantly supplemented . In the revolutionary years from 1845 to 1850 young Parker as a local preacher and temperance orator gained a reputation for vigorous utterance . He was influenced by Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and Edward Miall, the Liberationist, and was much associated with Joseph Cowen, afterwards M . P. for Newcastle . In the spring of 1852 he wrote to Dr John Campbell, minister of Whitefield Tabernacle, Moorfields, London, for advice as to entering the Congregational ministry, and after a short probation he became Campbell's assistant . He also attended lectures in logic and philosophy at University College, London . From 1853 to 1858 he was pastor at Banbury . His next charge was at Cavendish Street, Manchester, where he rapidly made himself felt as a power in English Nonconformity . While here he published a volume of lectures entitled Church Questions, and, anonymously, Ecce Deus (1868), a work provoked by Seeley's Ecce Homo . The university of Chicago conferred on him the degree of D.D . In 1869 he returned to London as minister of the Poultry chur h, founded by Thomas Goodwin .

Almost at once he began the

scheme which resulted in the erection of the great City Temple in Holborn Viaduct . It cost £70,000, and was opened on the 19th of May 1874 . From this centre his influence spread far and wide . His stimulating and original sermons, with their notable leaning towards the use of a racy vernacular, made him one of the best known personalities of his time . Dr Parker was twice chairman of the London Congregational Board and twice of the Congregational Union of England and Wales . The death of his second wife in 1899 was a blow from which he never fully recovered, and he died on the 28th of November 1902 . Parker was pre-eminently a preacher, and his published works are chiefly sermons and expositions, chief among them being City Temple Sermons (1869–187o) and The People's Bible, in 25 vols . (1885-1895) . Other volumes include the autobiographical Spring-dale Abbey (1869), The Inner Life of Christ (1881), Apostolic Life (1884), Tyne Chylde: My Life and Teaching (1883; new ed., 1889), A Preacher's Life (1899) . See E . C . Pike, Dr Parker and his Friends (1905) ; Congregational Year-Book (1904) .