Congregational
MY FAITH LOOKS UP TO THEE
Ray Palmer, a Congregational minister, was born in Little Compton, Rhode Island in 1808. At 13 he became a clerk in a dry goods store in Boston where he joined the Park Street Congregational Church. That church’s pastor, Dr. S.E. Dwight, discerned his promise and took a deep interest in him – helping him get into Phillips Academy, Andover and later Yale College.
GRACIOUS SPIRIT, DWELL WITH ME
Thomas Toke Lynch, an English Congregational minister, was born in Essex, England in 1818. He was pastor of a small church at Highgate until illness forced his retirement for three years (1856-1859). He resumed pastoral relations in 1860 with his former parishioners – who completed a new place of worship (Mornington Church) on Hampstead Road, London in 1862.
COME, YE SINNERS, POOR AND NEEDY
Joseph Hart, a Congregational minister in England, was born in 1712 to pious parents. He was well educated and was for many years a teacher of the classics. As a young man he renounced religion but, at the age of 40, began reading the Bible and found the peace he sought.
WHILE LIFE PROLONGS ITS PRECIOUS LIGHT
Timothy Dwight, a distinguished Congregational minister and educator, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1752. His mother was a daughter of Jonathan Edwards. He entered Yale College at the age of 13 and, graduating four years later, became a tutor; which position he resigned in 1777 to become chaplain in the Revolutionary army.
I LOVE TO STEAL AWHILE AWAY
Phoebe Hinsdale Brown was born in 1783 in Canaan, New York. Being left an orphan when only two years of age, her early life was one of want, hardship, and drudgery. At the age of nine she went to live with a relative who kept a county jail. “These were years of intense and cruel suffering,” wrote her son. “The tale of her early life is a narrative of such deprivations, toil, and cruel treatment as it breaks my heart to read.”