Joseph Parker

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For the English cricketer, see Joseph Parker (cricketer).

Joseph Parker (9 April 1830 - 28 November 1902) was an English Nonconformist divine born in Hexham, his father was a stone mason.

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 MP for Newcastle upon Tyne.

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 church, 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 19 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.

Parker was pre-eminently a preacher, and his published works are chiefly sermons and expositions, chief among them being City Temple Sermons (1869-1870) and The People's Bible, in 25 vols (1885-1895). Other volumes include the autobiagraphical Springdale 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).

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.