CONTENTS. THE PRAYERS IN THIS COLLECTION ARE PAGE On the Death of a Child, or other Relative.... When any one in the Family is sick. On the Recovery of any one from Sickness. For one expecting the Time of Travail. For Direction in any important Concern. For a young Person going out to Business. For any going, or gone a Journey On returning from a Journey in Safety On being preserved in imminent danger. PAGE ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE REV. SAMUEL PALMER. THE Rev. Samuel Palmer was a native of the town of Bedford, being born there in the year 1741. The elements of his education he received at the Free Grammar School in that town, and was brought up under the ministry of Mr. Sanderson, an eminently pious and able dissenting minister there. The thoughtful and serious disposition manifested by his young pupil at a very early age, was the cause of his being much noticed by his tutor, whose affection and care of him were truly paternal.Mr. Palmer was very young when he became a member of the Independent Church at Bedford; and having completed his grammatical education, he removed to the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, at the age of fifteen years. Here he passed through the usual course of study, under the tuition of the truly learned and respectable Dr. Ashworth. Having completed his studies, he came to Hackney in the year 1762, and became assistant to Mr. Hunt, the successor of Mr. Barker, and the Doctors Bates and Henry, whose praise is in all the Churches. As long as Mr. Hunt was able to preach at Hackney, Mr. Palmer undertook the Morning Service at the Weigh House in London, in connexion with Dr. Langford. When Mr. Hunt was no longer able to preach, Mr. Palmer became pastor of the Society at Hackney, where, with little interruption from ill health, he was enabled to exercise his ministry during the protracted period of more than fifty years. Soon after his settlement in 1786, he entered into the conjugal union, the consequence of which was a numerous progeny, most of whom are still living, though none of his sons were éducated for the ministry. As a preacher his manner was grave and dignified, calm and serious; his pronunciation easy and natural; his prayers simple and devotional, interspersed plentifully with apt quotations from Scripture, and partaking of a reasonable and desirable degree of compass and variety. He never seemed to lose the possession of himself or the command of his voice, or to lose sight of his sub ject, or for a moment to forget the great business in which he was engaged. If his delivery wanted any thing, it was what nature seemed constitutionally to have denied him, viz. animation; and yet on certain subjects and certain occasions, it appears that he could feel and make others feel too. A considerable portion of a congregation has been seen in tears under the tenderness and pathos of his representations. His public discourses were not much distinguished by magnificence of style, elegance of diction, eloquent description, commanding appeals to the passions or the conscience; or abstruse profundity of thought; but they were rather characterized by a vein of instructive, serious, scriptural good sense they were the addresses of a wise and pious man seriously conversing with his surrounding flock, and "reasoning with them out of the Scriptures," calculated not so much to strike the careless, as to inform and improve the well-disposed listening hearer. His treatment of sacred subjects was remarkably perspicuous; his ideas were well arranged; and few ministers knew better what thoughts belonged to a subject, or succeeded better in putting them in a proper place. His theological sentiments were much in a line with those of the excellent Doddridge, whose character and memory he highly revered; but the supreme object of his |