Lightfoot, JOSEPH BARBER, D.D.

Lightfoot, JOSEPH BARBER, D.D., Bishop of Durham, was born at Liverpool in 1828, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1851 as a wrangler, senior classic, and Chancellor's medallist. He was elected a Fellow of his college in 1852, and gained the Norris University prize in 1853. Ordained in 1854, he became tutor of Trinity College in 1857, Hulsean professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1861, canon of St Paul's Cathedral in 1871, and Lady Margaret professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1875. He received his doctor's degree in 1864, was Whitehall preacher in 1866, was appointed examining chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1868, honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1872, select preacher at Oxford, 1874-75, and one of the Deputy-clerks of the Closet to Her Majesty, February 1875. In 1879 Dr Lightfoot accepted with great reluctance the bishopric of Durham, in succession to Dr Baring. Although confessedly the most learned New Testament scholar in the church, his powers of administration had not been tested; but in the end his appointment was not only justified so far as the diocese of Durham was concerned, but in the wider interests of the Church of England at large. While pursuing in private his own studies, he made Bishop-Auckland a centre of learning and teaching for his clergy. He likewise devoted himself with untiring energy to the practical work of his see, and speedily gained the affection and confidence of all with whom he came into contact. The work of the Church Temperance Society and the White Cross Army was specially furthered by his exertions. His munificence was unbounded, and one of his last acts was to build a church at Sunderland as a thank-offering for what seemed to be his recovery from a serious illness in 1888. Dr Lightfoot's influence at Cambridge as a great Christian teacher was of incalculable importance, his high personal character as well as his learning having immense weight and influence. A supreme grammarian and painstaking textual critic, he gave the world admirable commentaries on the epistles of Paul to the Galatians (1865), Philippians (1868), Colossians and Philemon (1875), to each of which were appended interesting dissertations. Unhappily he was unable to complete the Pauline Epistles, and his exhaustive work on the Apostolic Fathers remains also a splendid fragment, embracing only the two epistles ascribed to Clement of Rome (1869; Appendix, 1877; new ed. 1890), and Ignatius and Polycarp (1885; 2d ed. 3 vols. 1889). Other works were On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament (1871), an edition of Dean Mansel's treatise on The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries (1875), and four volumes of sermons published posthumously in 1890. He contributed to the Journal of Philology, Dr Smith's Dictionaries of the Bible, of Christian Antiquities, and Christian Biography, and published in successive numbers of the Contemporary Review a crushing and detailed answer to the anonymous writer of Supernatural Religion (collected 1889). Dr Lightfoot, who was never married, died at Bournemouth on December 21, 1889, and was buried at Durham.