Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/293

 JAMES B. WALKER. James Barr Walker is a native of Philadelphia. He was bom on the twenty- ninth day of July, 1805. His father was a machinist. James B. came to the West when a young man. He began life as a printer ; read law, then spent four years in study at Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, and after several years of success- ful mercantile business, entered the Christian ministry, in which he now labors. He was pastor of the Congregational Church in Mansfield, Richland county, Ohio, for many years, and lately preached to a congregation in Sandusky City. He is now a lecturer in the Theological Seminaries of Oberlin, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Walker has published but little poetry, but a volume of poems from his pen is to be issued in England the present year. He is better known as the author of philosophical works, treating of nature and revealed religion, than as a poet. " The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," a little book originally published in Cincinnati,* but which has passed through many editions in England, and has been translated into nearly all the languages of the continent of Europe in which the Christian religion is taught, may be recorded as one of the most successful of American publications. Another work by Mr. Walker, " God Revealed in Creation and in Christ," first published in London, in 1857, and republished in Boston, has been widely circulated. In addition to other literary labors, Mr. Walker has conducted in the West four news- papers — one political, one temperance, and two religious. The volume which he is now preparing for the press will contain two poems of considerable length, widely differing in subject and treatment — one " On the Immortality of the Soul," — the other, "Ten Scenes in the Life of a Lady of Fashion." THE INWARD LIFE. There is a joy, all joys above An inward life of peace and love The contrite only feel ; It is the power that makes us whole A saving unction in the soul — It is the spirit's seal. There is a ray of holy light — A radiance from the ever-bright And ever-perfect One ; It is the day-spring in the heart, That lives and glows in every part — It is the spirit's sun. There is an energy supplied By faith in Christ the crucified, Through all the being rife. It is the power of saving grace, That holds the soul in its embrace — It is the spirit's life. Cincinnati, 1841. 12mo, pp. 239. Dedicated to William EUery Channing. ( 277 )
 * Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation — a Book for the Times ; hy an American citizen. Published for the author.