PREFACE.
Since the death, of our minister many of his friends
have expressed an earnest desire for the publication of
some of his prayers, copies of which were secured during
the whole period of his ministry at the Music Hall, and the
latter half of that at the Melodeon,—caught in the air as
they fell from the lips of the speaker, and faithfully
daguerreotyped by friendly hands, and now choicely treasured.
From these accumulations of so many years the forty
prayers which are included in this volume have been
selected, the one at the close being the last that Mr Parker
delivered in public.
A greater variety might have been given to the character of this volume by the insertion of other prayers, to the exclusion of some that it now contains; but it is thought that those here given best represent the earnest devotion and the highest aspirations of him who uttered them, presenting, as they do, those themes upon which he most loved to dwell, in sermon or in prayer; and while there is not a very wide range of topics included in the selection, it
