The visiting preacher stepped into the pulpit at Lee Chapel of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a pastor from Louisiana, had been chosen to give the commencement address. Many distinguished gentlemen were in the room for the occasion. Upon seeing the preacher, Commodore Matthew Maury, a decorated naval commander, leaned over and remarked to the judge sitting in the audience beside him, “He is the ugliest man I ever saw.” Commodore Maury had heard Palmer’s name, but he had never before met him. The preacher’s homely physical features surprised him.

Soon, the congregation sat transfixed by the powerful words of the speaker as they flowed eloquently onward from the pages of Scripture directly to their hearts. Ten minutes into the address, the commodore leaned over again and said, “He is getting better looking.” At the close of the sermon, Commodore Maury declared, “He is the handsomest man I ever saw, sir!”

The day, the occasion, the speaker, and the room itself had all been forgotten, and the truths of the Biblical message shone with beauty and clarity. B. M. Palmer was only an instrument in the hands of a good and gracious God.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on January 25, 1818. He was the son of a pastor, the grandson of a pastor, and the great-grandson of a pastor. After his conversion to Christ, the young man resolved firmly that he too would devote his life to the Gospel ministry.

Palmer attended Theological Seminary at Columbia (S.C.) and sat under the venerable seminary president, George Howe. Palmer married Mary McConnell, the stepdaughter of Dr. George Howe. At first, the seminary president resisted the friendship, hoping for a more secure financial situation for his stepdaughter than marriage to a simple minister. But the evident love of the young couple and the firm convictions of the young preacher compelled him to change his mind. Dr. Howe performed the ceremony himself and gave the young couple a carriage to start out their life and ministry together.

Palmer’s first pastoral charge was in Savannah, Georgia. Mary Palmer was homesick for her mother for a time, but soon forgot her sorrows in the joyful duties as a wife and homemaker for her husband. She blossomed as a pastor’s wife and became a trusted friend to all who knew her.

The Lord blessed the couple with an infant boy. Pastor Palmer recounted in vivid detail the moments that he paced his study floor in prayer to God for his wife and baby. The tension was broken by a “cry which, when once heard, is never forgotten; the low, flat wail of a babe just entering a world to which it is a stranger.”

Benjamin and Mary Palmer took great delight in their firstborn son. Palmer called his boy a “miniature of myself,” and wrote of the solemn duty of being a father to “a soul which will at last strip off the encumbrance of clay, and sweep with exploring wing the vast eternity where God makes His dwelling place.”

The loving father prayed over the crib many times that his son would take up the prophet’s mantle as many generations of Palmer men had done in years past.

The young child learned to talk and to babble his first delightful words, “Mama” and “Dada.” Pastor Palmer remembered how his son would squeal with delight when he tossed the young boy up in the air, with no doubt in the world that the strong arms of his father would catch him again.

A slow, debilitating sickness became evident before the boy’s second birthday. The little one’s limbs, so chubby and strong, faded into little sticks. His plump and rosy cheeks became sunken and hollow. Only the child’s golden curls waved freely above a forehead burning with fever. For a time, the father and mother prayed earnestly that God would spare their son to take up the mantle of the Gospel ministry.

Pastor Palmer never forgot the intense brightness of his son’s eager eyes as they looked helplessly from a failing body. Alas, the efforts of the doctors and the prayers of the parents were to no avail in sparing his life. Eventually, the son, so full of promise, breathed his last while held in his mother’s lap.

The grieving parents took comfort in the words of the Master to the Hebrew mothers in Galilee: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). The parents were brought to bow before the mysteries of Providence and to learn to trust the goodness of God “in our bitter disappointments.”

The Lord gave Pastor Palmer a long and fruitful ministry. He pastored two years in Savannah, and then twelve years in Columbia, South Carolina. The Lord then led him to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was to spend the remainder of his days, pastoring the same church in New Orleans for more than forty years.

B. M. Palmer never forgot the lessons in sorrow that he had learned when he laid his firstborn son in the grave. The Lord later gave the Palmers five daughters, but no more sons. The daughters proved to be bright blessings to the Palmer home. They were Godly, cheerful, obedient, and loving girls who eased the cares of their parents.

But alas, the work of sorrow was not yet complete. One by one, the girls in the bloom and blossom of their teenage years, began falling prey to the ravaging effects of tuberculosis, then called “the consumption.” The disease caused a distressing cough that would be followed by a period of health, then a decline in health, and finally a slow, agonizing death.

When the Palmers lost their first daughter, it was their sorrowful duty to return to the family cemetery where they had laid their infant boy nineteen years earlier. The father took the spade and opened the grave in order to lay his second child, a beautiful maiden, to sleep with her brother’s dust. Imagine the emotions of the grieving parents when the spade removed the dirt to reveal the bones and skull of their firstborn son. To their astonishment, a lock of golden hair still clung to the skull. Palmer took the wispy hair and handed it to his grieving wife, who recognized it as the curl that once adorned her dear boy’s temple. She took the wisp of hair as a special token of the resurrection.

One by one, four of their five daughters eventually were laid in the grave. Through these painful experiences, Pastor Palmer wrote a book that has been a lasting comfort to many grieving parents—The Broken Home; Or, Lessons in Sorrow. In this touching book of personal testimonies, Pastor Palmer shows the goodness of God. He graciously allows the reader to hear the dying testimonies of his children, as each one expressed her hope in Christ while passing through the valley of the shadow of death.

Palmer lived to see not only the death of his mother and father but also the deaths of five of his six children. He also witnessed the destruction of New Orleans during the War between the States. Palmer was a dear friend to the Confederate soldiers; he often served as a chaplain during that painful conflict. He saw Louisiana overrun by the Union armies and the eventual dissolution of the Confederacy. But he took all these losses with Christian grace and the assurance of the eternal goodness of God.

Finally, in his old age, Palmer suffered the most trying sorrow of all—the death of his dear wife Mary, who had been his friend and companion in all his trials. He laid his beloved to rest with their children, awaiting the dawn of a day that knows no night.

Pastor B. M. Palmer lived his final days in the home of his one surviving daughter. There he was surrounded by the pleasant laughter and smiles of his grandchildren. Palmer preached the Gospel to the very last. At his eightieth birthday, it was estimated that approximately 10,000 people came to see him! They expressed their gratitude to him for his long, faithful ministry in New Orleans.

One morning in 1902, Dr. Palmer was hit by a streetcar in New Orleans. His death was a sad end that testified of the new century—an elderly gentleman killed by the impatient rush of a new era.

With his death, the Palmer family circle was regathered forever in a world where the Lamb is the Light thereof and where the tears are wiped from every eye. Truly, God’s goodness and mercy, in the midst of many sorrows, had followed and upheld the Palmers all the days of their lives, and they were united to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Sources and Further Reference:

Johnson, Thomas Cary. The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987.

Palmer, B. M. The Broken Home; Or, Lessons in Sorrow. Harrisonbur