---
title: 'A Hebrew of Hebrews: Benjamin Morgan Palmer'
type: video
hasMedia: true
requiresPurchase: false
authors:
- 'Jonathan Master'
date: 2026-07-21
collection: 'Dead Presbyterians Society'
subcollection: 'Season 3'
topics:
- 'Conversion of Jews'
- 'Messianic, New Testament Prophecy, and Old Testament Prophecy'
- 'Missions (General)'
- 'Autobiography and Biography'
scriptures:
- 'Matthew 6'
- 'Romans 9'
- 'Romans 11'
- '2 Corinthians 11'
- 'Philippians 3'
url: https://confessional.org/dead-presbyterians-society/season-3/a-hebrew-of-hebrews-benjamin-morgan-palmer
---

# A Hebrew of Hebrews: Benjamin Morgan Palmer

In this episode we explore the life and ministry of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a leading 19th-century Southern Presbyterian.Grounded in Reformed theology and the promises of Romans 11, Palmer combined unwavering commitment to Christ with sincere compassion for the Jewish people. Through his writings, pastoral care in times of epidemic, and public solidarity with suffering Jews, he modeled faithful gospel witness joined with genuine love.A compelling example of conviction and charity held together in Christian service.

[Watch](https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1211661804)

## Transcript

Let me read to you the words of the Apostle Paul, who was called by God to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Listen to what he says about the Jewish people, I am speaking the truth in Christ. I'm not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.

Amen. In 1880, Charles Spurgeon wrote these words, A Christian is the last person who ought ever to speak disrespectfully or unkindly of the Jews. These words reflect a deep current within historic Reformed Christianity.

For generations, many theologians such as Charles Hodge, and Jonathan Edwards, and Samuel Rutherford, and Wilhelmus O'Brockle, and others who were reading Romans 11 believed that the Jewish people were not cast off forever, but still bound up in the unfolding purposes of God. These were a people for whom the church was taught not only to witness, but also to pray. That conviction was woven into the devotional life of the church itself, shaping how Christians understood the advance of Christ's kingdom, the spread of the gospel to the nations, the calling of the Jews, and the hope that God's redemptive work would one day be displayed in its fullness.

We see this reflected in the larger catechism, the Westminster larger catechism, question 191. The question is this, what do we pray for in the second petition? This is about the Lord's prayer. In the second petition, which is thy kingdom come, acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, we pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, listen to this, the Jews called, and the fullness of the Gentiles brought in.

It was within this theological framework that Benjamin Morgan Palmer stood, not merely with his pen and with his pulpit, but with his life. When violent persecution swept through Jewish communities in Russia in 1881 and 1882, Palmer declared this, when a Hebrew suffers, I suffer with him. And then when yellow fever raged through new Orleans, he made no distinction between Christians and Jews in his ministry of mercy.

This is the story of a man, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, who had very firm convictions. He was extraordinarily clear about the fact that salvation was through Jesus Christ alone, but his compassion refused to draw boundaries where the scriptures did not. Now we need to think a little bit about Benjamin Morgan Palmer.

We've introduced him already in this podcast, but he lived for more than 40 years and served for more than 40 years in new Orleans. And he lived out these convictions in public view. He formed genuine friendships with local rabbis.

He spoke at Jewish funerals and he was remembered at his own death by Jewish leaders in return. He occupies a rare place in American Presbyterian history. He was a man of unwavering theological conviction, but he was a man who built bridges of trust and respect across the lines of Jewish and Christian communities.

Now to understand how Palmer became such a figure, how he arrived at these convictions, we need to begin at the beginning. So we've looked at him before, but let's just do a brief review of his life. He was born on January 25th, 1818 in Charleston, South Carolina.

His father and his uncle and his brother were all Presbyterian ministers. He entered Amherst College at the age of 14, but he was expelled in his second year. And he graduated with honors then from the University of Georgia in 1838, and then graduated from Columbia Theological Seminary in 1841.

That same year, he accepted a call to serve as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia. And he also was married in that same year. He and his wife went on to have six children, but they outlived five of them.

And perhaps you'll remember our earlier episode on Benjamin Morgan Palmer's reflections on the death of his children. These are poignant stories from which we can all derive great benefit. Now from 1843 to 1854, he served as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

In 1847, Palmer, along with others, founded the Southern Presbyterian Review. And from 1854 to 1856, he served as professor of ecclesiastical history and polity at Columbia Theological Seminary. And then from 1856 onward, he served as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Now, New Orleans, as perhaps you'll know, in the mid-19th experienced many outbreaks of yellow fever. He was very familiar, as was anyone ministering in New Orleans at that time, very familiar with ministering in times of crisis and in times of great health difficulties. And Benjamin Morgan Palmer showed himself faithful in the midst of those.

One of the things that he was best known for, particularly in that city, was the way in which he continued to labor, even in the midst of these epidemics. He was also known throughout that time as a leading voice in the Southern Presbyterian Church. He served as the first moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States.

This was after the Northern and Southern churches split apart. Author of many books and published sermons. And he died on May 28th, 1902, following a streetcar accident in New Orleans.

And he was buried there as well. He has a biography that was written about him by Thomas C. Johnson, published in 1906, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer. Now, let's talk briefly about Benjamin Morgan Palmer's position on the Jewish people.

His understanding of the Jewish people and his concern for the Jewish people was not simply sentimental. It was a deeply intellectual, historical, and theological concern. It was worked out over decades of writing and reflection.

And we can see this in many of his writings. His essays reveal a man who is convinced that one cannot properly understand Christianity and one cannot properly understand Western civilization without reckoning seriously with the Jewish people and their history. Palmer's most direct engagement with the Jewish people came in his 1847 essay entitled The Intellectual and Moral Character of the Jews.

It was written for the Southern Presbyterian Review. And it was ostensibly a review of a book that had been published, A Narrative of a Mission Inquiry to the Jews by Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray McShane, which chronicled Scottish missionary efforts among Jewish communities in Europe and even in the Middle East. Palmer, in this review, notes some of the book's limitations, particularly its thin treatment of Jewish history.

But then he uses the occasion of this review to do something much more ambitious. He said that this volume provided a text for a broader meditation on a people who, above all others, have remained before the eye of history since the days of Abraham. Here's a quote.

We propose to enter upon an examination of the fixed character of the Jew, both intellectual and moral, and to penetrate, if we may, the causes which have stereotyped it in its present mold. And what he then does is he tries to come up with a sober attempt at accounting for Jewish endurance in the world. And Palmer's biographer later summarized the traits he identified in The Jewish People.

And here's how his biographer puts it. Their almost superhuman tenacity, remarkable ability to recover after dispossession, comparative freedom from gross vices, and an intense intellectual activity all marks, Palmer believed, this is Thomas Johnson's biography, of a people preserved by divine providence. So that was Palmer's conclusion, that these are people who have been preserved by divine providence.

But Palmer explains why he undertakes this study, particularly in this review. It wasn't curiosity, but it was conscience. Here's what he says.

This analysis of the character of the Jews has been made with the practical design of interesting the reader and of inspiring a deep and prayerful regard for them. So in other words, he was trying to get his readers not to dismiss the Jewish people, but rather to care for them, to be concerned for them, and to pray for them. He argued that Christians owe Jewish people a great debt, not only because, quote, to them were first committed the oracles of God, but because centuries of neglect had created what he called a large ariage of Christian love.

More than that, the church's own future was bound up with theirs. Here's what he writes. The church cannot be fully extended until these outcasts shall be embraced within the fold.

Take whatever view we may please of the manner and time of this in gathering. All Israel shall be saved. Again, that's a quote from Romans 11.

And with them, the fullness of the Gentiles. And so Palmer, reading this in his Bible, looked ahead with hope. Here's what he writes.

Perhaps the future history of the church will reveal many a son of Abraham with Abraham's faith doing the work of Paul. And the conversion of the Jews will probably be the grand fact argument by which the truth of Christianity in its latter days will be attested. So he saw the conversion of the Jewish people, the conversion of many Jewish people, being not only a fulfillment of prophecy, but one of the great designs of God's redemptive work.

And that same conviction shaped Palmer's later essay, Import of Hebrew History. That was published in 1856. He wrote that, again, for the Southern Presbyterian Review.

And he was responding there to another book, a book entitled Post-Biblical History of the Jews, which had been published in 1855, the year before. And once again, he moves beyond the book review into a sweeping meditation, and in this case, on the unity of redemptive history. Christianity, he argues, cannot be understood apart from Judaism.

Here's a quote. Only because there is one God can there be but one religion. And Judaism, by asserting the first, opened the way for the advent of the in the gospel of Christ.

And so Hebrew history for Palmer was a living witness. The Hebrew Commonwealth stood at the center of providence, shaping both Christian history and Western political order. Palmer, drawing on the work of others, argued that Israel's civil structure, with its distributed authority and representative institutions, offered a model of ordered liberty far superior to the despotisms of the ancient world.

So that's the connection with Western civilization and Western history that Benjamin Morgan Palmer draws out. And at the same time, he believed that a study of Hebrew history carried apologetic weight. Judaism, he suggested, bore silent testimony to Christianity itself.

Here's what he writes. Judaism bore positive, though silent, witness for the gospel, which fulfills its types and symbols. In fact, quoting Philip Schaff, Palmer described post-biblical Judaism as an incontrovertible witness for Christianity.

Now, his final major statement on this theme came late in life with The Ancient Hebrew Polity, published in 1898. And here he sharpens an argument that he'd been making for some time, that ancient Israel was not only a religious witness, but its civil government has had a lasting influence on the world. The Hebrew Commonwealth, Palmer argued, quote, enshrined the fundamental principles of political and civil liberty centuries before modern nations would rediscover them.

It was, he noted, the only ancient society governed by a written constitution, a system in which kings, priests, and people stood alike under the supremacy of law, Lex Scripta. There was no absolute power in Israel. Humanly speaking, authority was distributed, consent mattered, and law reigned supreme.

These principles, Palmer asserted, were providentially placed before the nations as a protest against both idolatry in religion and despotism in government. And so he concludes this essay with a note of what can only be described as reverent wonder. Here's what he writes.

Shall we not adore the wisdom of him who, at the period when human history was crystallizing into shape, drew before the nations this grand outline of what a free state ought to be? Now you take these three writings together and they reveal a consistent intellectual vision. Palmer saw the Jewish people not as a theological problem to be solved, but as a people preserved by God, central to redemptive history, and inseparable from the church's own hope. And he drew this, as I've already mentioned, from texts like Romans 11, 25 to 33.

And let me just read some of this to our listeners. Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

And in this way, all Israel will be saved. And then the apostle Paul goes on to write, as regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, they may also now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all. And as you will know, then the apostle Paul goes on to express, oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

His scholarship, his intellectual labors, his study of the Bible more specifically, shaped a public witness that was formative in many people's understanding of Christianity, particularly in New Orleans. And we see this played out in his own life within the Jewish community of New Orleans. His convictions did not remain on the page.

They were lived out publicly, often under pressure, and most clearly during times of crisis. I already mentioned the many occasions where there were health crises in the city of New Orleans. And we particularly see Palmer's attitude towards the Jewish community during these outbreaks of yellow fever.

During those epidemics, Palmer ministered broadly, and he ministered without distinction. He cared for Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews alike, moving freely among the sick and the dying. His biographer later summarized Palmer's posture toward the Jewish community with a striking phrase.

To the large Hebrew population, he would be as an Hebrew if perchance he might win some to Christ. Johnson then records the testimony of a Jewish rabbi who reflected on Palmer's influence in New Orleans. It was thus that Palmer got the heart as well as the ear of New Orleans.

Man could not resist one who gave himself to such a ministry as this. Now, it wasn't just local epidemics. In 1882, there was a violent persecution that erupted in Russia against the Jewish people, and there was a meeting held in New Orleans to organize relief for the Jewish people in Russia who were suffering from this persecution.

And Palmer took the time to address the gathering himself, and he appealed at this time both to the ideals of America and to his own convictions. And near the close of the speech, he spoke words that became emblematic of his public stance. Here's what he said, Whenever persecution bursts upon the Jew, there would I be at his side, an Hebrew of the Hebrews, to suffer and to do.

If we cannot stay the hand of persecution abroad, let us welcome them to our homes and our bosoms here, and roll up such a sentiment in favor of civil and religious freedom on this continent that it shall never be darkened with a stain which rests upon old. And the audience, as you can imagine, responded to this with a prolonged applause. He didn't only have these kinds of symbolic meetings with the Jewish leaders in New Orleans.

In June of 1886, when Rabbi James K. Guttheim of Temple Sinai died, Palmer delivered a closing address at the funeral, the only Protestant to do so. And a contemporary newspaper described the moment as one, quote, in which, as a Christian, he laid a Christian's garland of respect and sympathy upon the bear of the Hebrew teacher. He publicly defended later on in 1900 Jewish relief efforts after the Galveston hurricane, and when they came under criticism, Jewish leaders continued to speak of him with warmth and admiration.

When he died in 1902, Rabbi Max Heller wrote a tribute that captured the paradox that many had observed throughout Palmer's life. He had an unwavering conviction, and this can't be missed. Palmer continued to preach the gospel with great clarity.

He proclaimed with clarity whenever he had the opportunity that the only way to salvation was through Jesus Christ alone. He did not waver on that. He did not muddy the waters on that.

But here is what was written at his funeral. He was a man who represented, in his own denomination, the staunchest orthodoxy, who made no theological concession whatever to the currents of the age, who had unspoken convictions that he never concealed. This is a rabbi writing about Morgan Palmer.

A man decided who was fearless and determined in every moral crusade, knowing not friend nor foe, neither policy nor advantage, in warring against what he considered a wrong. Yet this outspoken man was not only honored but revered and loved by all sects, admired by those who did not share his beliefs, venerated often by those whom he was forced to attack, for his heart was rich with a love that swept away every barrier. He was across all religious barriers, the minister of all of us.

And another rabbi said much the same thing. He described Palmer as a man who never compromised his beliefs and he wrote this, only great men have the capacity of harboring strong convictions and at the same time of allowing others to differ. Only good men will take an opponent by the hand and say, be my friend.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer, as one might expect, spoke plainly. He had firm convictions which never wavered about the gospel, about the need for all men to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. And he acted consistently on these beliefs but yet he earned trust over many barriers.

He was a Christian of unwavering conviction. I want to say this is what all gospel ministers should aspire to, unwavering conviction. There was never an opportunity he had for sharing the gospel that we know of that he did not take advantage of, particularly in public meetings.

He was always clear about where he stood and what the Bible taught. He believed without any qualification, without any equivocation, that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ who is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament and proclaimed in the New. Yet that conviction did not harden him against the Jewish people.

Instead it shaped a posture of seriousness, gratitude, and genuine concern. And Palmer would say that that same kind of posture towards the Jewish people was actually the Pauline posture towards the Jewish people. Absolute clarity about the necessity of trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and yet also a love for the Jewish people.

He also had a deep knowledge of Jewish history and heritage. Because of that he stood with them during moments of great suffering. We mentioned the yellow fever epidemics, the violent persecutions abroad.

He could speak of himself without irony as an Hebrew of the Hebrews when Jews were afflicted. And this opened many doors for him, doors which enabled him to share with people who held to the Jewish faith, rabbis in the Jewish faith, the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not misunderstand where he was coming from.

They knew exactly where he was coming from because he was clear about it, but they did trust his character. Now this is instructive. Palmer did not dilute Christian doctrine in order to build bridges.

Many times that's the path that some will advocate, that what we need to do is water down the distinctions, sand off the rough edges. Palmer did not do this. We need to be emphatic about it, but he also did not use his doctrine as an excuse for indifference or for distance that was unnecessary.

He believed firmly, he spoke plainly, and he acted compassionately, and these were never in conflict for him. And so as we reflect on Benjamin Morgan Palmer's attitude towards the Jewish people, we have to ask ourselves several questions. What does faithful Christian witness look like when it is joined to visible love? Those things are not in conflict with each other.

In fact, they're joined together. Are our convictions recognizable not only by what we say, but by where we stand when others suffer? Do those who disagree with us because of our strongly held biblical convictions nevertheless experience our words as truthful and our presence as sincere? And then very pointedly, we have to ask ourselves this question because the larger catechism points us in this direction, and Palmer himself points us in this direction. Do you pray for the conversion of the Jews as larger catechism 191 commands us to do? Benjamin Morgan Palmer's life shows us that theological clarity and human sympathy are not rivals.

In fact, when held together, they can become one of the church's most compelling witnesses to the Lord Jesus Christ.