nient season, the conviction was so powerful, with regard to the present time, that it was the best time, and probably the only time, that I dared not to put it off. Yet my soul shrunk away from it: I could see no safety in throwing myself into the hands of God, and that I could lay no claim to any thing better than damnation.

"But after a considerable time spent in such distresses, one morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at once saw that all my contrivances to procure salvation for myself were utterly in vain: I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. I had thought many times, that the difficulties were very great; but now I saw them in a very different light, that it was for ever impossible for me to do any thing towards delivering myself. I then thought of blaming myself, that I had not done more while I had an opportunity (for it seemed now as if the season of doing was for ever over and gone;) but I instantly saw that let me have done what I would, it would no more have tended to my helping myself than what I had done; that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made to all eternity, and that all my pleas were vain. The tumult that had been before in my mind was now quieted; and I was something eased of that distress, which I felt while struggling against a sight of myself. I had the greatest certainty that my state was for ever miserable for all that I could do; and was almost astonished that I had never been sensible of it before.

"In the time while I remained in this state, my notions respecting my duties, were quite different from what I had entertained in times past. Now I saw there was no necessary connexion between

my prayers and the Divine mercy: that they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon me; and that there was no more goodness in them than there would be in my paddling in the water (which was the comparison I had then in my mind:) and this because they were not performed from any love to God. I saw that I had teaped up my devotions before God, fasting, praying, &c. really thinking I was aiming at the glory of God; whereas I never once truly intended it.

"I continued in this state of mind from Friday morning till the Sabbath evening following, July 12, 1739, when I was walking again in the same solitary place, and attempting to pray, but found no heart to engage in that, or any other duty. Having been thus endeavoring to pray for near half an hour (and by this time the sun was about half an hour high,) as I was walking in a dark thick grove unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view of my soul: I do not mean any external brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, or any thing of that nature; but it was a new inward apprehension, or view that I had of God, such as I never had before. I stood still, and admired. I knew that I had never seen before any thing comparable to it for excellency and beauty; it was widely different from all the conceptions that ever I had of God, or things divine. I had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity, either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost; but it appeared to be divine glory that I then beheld: and my soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable to see such a glorious divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be God over all for ever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the ex

cellency, loveliness, greatness, and other perfec of God; that I was even swallowed up in hi that degree, that, at first, I scarce reflected was such a creature as myself.

"Thus God, I trust, brought me to a hearty position to exalt him and set him upon the th and ultimately to aim at his honor and glo King of the universe.

"I continued in this state until near dark wit any sensible abatement, and then began to t what I had seen, and was sweetly composed al evening following. I felt myself in a new w and every thing about me appeared with a diffe aspect from what it was wont to do.

"At this time the way of salvation opened to with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and ex lency, that I wondered I should ever think of other way of salvation: was amazed that I had dropped my own contrivances, and complied this blessed and excellent way before. If I c have been saved by my own duties, or any o way that I had formerly contrived, my whole would now have refused. I wondered that whole world did not see and comply with this of salvation entirely by the righteousness of Chr

His going to colloge. The state of the college at that time. The re there. Religious zeal. The danger of a zeal not aceording to knowl Brainerd's Case. The painful result. The rector and superiors of

expected from the man of God, that he should be eminently holy. A graceless minister is the most shocking character in the world: and a minister, whose religion is doubtful, whose spirit and conduct demand every allowance which the most liberal Christian charity is disposed to make, will never be extensively useful, or exceedingly happy. Those ministers who have been "Burning and shining lights" in the world, have been men taught of God, who have seen in their hearts, as in a glass, the dreadful depravity of human nature: they have been led through the deep waters, and their souls have been exercised with severe spiritual trials. An attentive observer will easily perceive in the preceding account, which Mr. Brainerd has written, of the painful exercises of his mind, and the manner in which he was led to embrace the Savior, that the Lord was preparing him for great usefulness; and that he was designated, by the Head of the church, to preach the Gospel to the poor; to heal the broken in heart; and to open the prison to them that are bound. That this was to be his delightful employment, he was himself convinced; and in the beginning of September, 1739, when he was a little more than twenty-one years of age, he entered himself as a graduate at Yale College, in New Haven. Previous to this, as his diary just quoted informs us, he had spent sometime with Mr. Fiske, his pastor and friend; and after his deatlı, with his brother; and was thus, in some measure, prepared for the studious employment of a college life. But how different is the situation upon which our young friend now entered, from that which he recently left. Yale College, when it was honored with Brainerd as a student, was certainly not very

eminent for the personal religion of its sons; indeed, constituted as most colleges are, in which personal experimental religion is not the "Sine qua non" of admission, they must sometimes reckon among their members the gay and the fashionable, the thoughtless and the vain: and when there is not religious principle to restrain from vice, the natural propensities of the human heart will, in spite of legal strictness and discipline, sometimes be gratified; and the contagious breath of iniquity sometimes inhaled. At his first going to college, and during his residence there, the righteous soul of Brainerd was grieved; and perhaps the folly he was daily witnessing around him had no small share in depressing his animal spirits, and feeding the melancholy which too often preyed upon his mind. Surrounded as he was by these temptations, however, he caught none of their influence. In this unfavorable situation he was enabled to maintain the life of religion in his own soul, and his holy deportment had a tendency to suppress levity and sin in his fellow-students:-happy the man who thus lives and acts while at a university college, or a dissenting academy; he prevents a thousand stings of conscience, and his future ministry is not clogged, nor his life embittered by the sigh of painful recollection. Let students in general compare their college diary with Brainerd's and be humbled.

"In January, 1739-40, the measles spread much in college, and I having taken the distemper went home to Haddam. But some days before I was taken sick, my soul mourned the absence of the Comforter: it seemed to me all comfort was gone; I cried to God, yet found no relief. But a night or