Daniel Turner was an English teacher and Baptist minister, now known as a hymn-writer.
He was born at Blackwater Farm, near St Albans, on 1 March 1710. He kept a boarding-school at Hemel Hempstead. His pupils there included William Kenrick and Hugh Smith. At the same time he made a reputation as an occasional preacher in Baptist chapels. In 1741 he was chosen pastor of the Baptist church in Reading, Berkshire. He moved in 1748 to Abingdon, and held the pastorate there until his death on 5 September 1798. He was buried in the Baptist cemetery at Abingdon.
Turner received the honorary degree of MA from the Baptist College, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was a friend and correspondent of Robert Robinson, John Rippon, Isaac Watts, and others.
Works
One of Turner's best known hymns is Jesus, full of all compassion, which appeared in the Bristol Baptist Collection, 1769. Another, Beyond the glittering starry skies, was published by his brother-in-law James Fanch, Baptist minister of Romsey, in The Gospel Magazine, June 1776. Turner expanded it by 21 stanzas, and included it in his Poems (1794). Besides pamphlets and sermons, he published An Introduction to Psalmody, 1737
An Abstract of English Grammar and Rhetoric, London, 1739
Divine Songs, Hymns, and other Poems, Reading, 1747
A Compendium of Social Religion, 1758; 2nd edit. Bristol, 1778.
Letters Religious and Moral, London, 1766; 2nd edit., Henley, 1793
Short Meditations on Select Portions of Scripture, Abingdon, 1771; 3rd edit. 1803.
Devotional Poetry vindicated against Dr. Johnson, Oxford, 1785
Essays on Important Subjects, Oxford, 1787
Poems Devotional and Moral, privately printed, 1794
Common Sense, or the Plain Man's Answer to the Question, Whether Christianity be a Religion worthy of our choice?, 1797
He appears to have helped Anne Steele to prepare her poems for the press.
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