evenings, made cheerful by sparkling fires within and cold clear skies and ice-crusted plains and frozen streams for his sled and skates, were full of enjoyment. And then he was loved by those whom he could respect, and cheered by that future for which he was being prepared. Religion he was taught to regard as a necessity and luxury, as well as a duty. He was daily brought into contemplation of the Infinite, and made to regard himself as ever on the brink of an endless being. With a deep sense of obligation, a keen, sensitive conscience, and a tender heart, the great truths of religion appeared in his eye as sublime, awful, practical realities, compared with which earth was nothing. Thus he was made brave before men for the right, while he lay in the dust before God.

Such was Haddam training one hundred years ago. Some may lift their hands in horror at this picture; but it was a process which made moral heroes. It exhibited a society in which wealth existed without idleness or profligacy; social elevation without arrogance; labor without degradation; and a piety which, by its energy and martyrendurance, could shake the world.

We are not to suppose that the boyhood of John Brainerd under these influences was gloomy or joyless far from it. Its activity was bliss; its growth was a spring of life; its achievements were victories. Each day garnered some benefit; and rising life, marked by successive accumulations, left a smile

on the conscience and bright and reasonable hopes for the future.

We might have desired that this Puritan training had left childhood a little larger indulgence, had looked with interest at present enjoyment as well as at future good,—had smiled a little more lovingly on the innocent gambols, the ringing laughter, the irrepressible mirth of boyhood; and had frowned less severely on imperfections clinging to human nature itself. We might think that, by insisting too much on obligation and too little on privilege, too much on the law and too little on the gospel, too much on the severity and too little on the goodness of the Deity, the conscience may have been stimulated at the expense of the affections, and men fitted for another world at an unnecessary sacrifice of their amiability and happiness in the present life.

But in leaving this Puritan training, the world "has gone farther and fared worse." To repress the iniquity of the age and land, to save our young men for themselves, their country, and their God, I believe we shall gain most, not by humoring childhood's caprices and sneering at strict households, strict governments, and strict Sabbaths, but by going back to many of the modes which gave to the world such men as John Hampden, William Bradford, Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, and David and John Brainerd.

The son of a tolerably wealthy father, nurtured

and trained by a pious mother, the early playmate, schoolmate, and companion of his sensitive, talented, and conscientious brother David, John's childhood was spent under the best influences for the conservation of his morals and the development of his mind and heart. Probably he and his younger brothers and sisters remained at the paternal homestead, with the elder brother Hezekiah, whose marriage, in 1731, with the daughter of the clergyman of the parish, Rev. Mr. Fisk, as before stated, would be likely to furnish a good home for the orphans.

I have thought this rather detailed account of the family of the missionary Brainerds might be instructive, as illustrating the influences to which they were subjected in early life, and the homecircles in which they embalmed their early affections, and, above all, the general prosperity and blessedness of families trained conscientiously in the fear and love of God, In this case, at least, the benediction descended to children, and children's children, even to the fourth and fifth generation. "Godliness is profitable-to the life that now is."

CHAPTER III.

JOHN BRAINERD IN YALE COLLEGE-HIS BROTHER'S EXPULSION-ITS INJUSTICE-EFFECT ON JOHN-ITS INFLUENCE IN FOUNDING PRINCETON COLLEGE-LETTERS, ETC.

NEHEMIAH graduated at Yale College in 1732, and settled in the ministry in 1740.

As the three younger brothers, David, John, and Israel, all successively entered Yale College, it is probable that they were influenced by the example of the older brother, and all, moreover, aided by him in their classical studies.

The early convictions and struggles of David Brainerd, which he has related so minutely, were doubtless shared to some extent by his brother, brought up under similar influences and only two years his junior. He entered the Freshman class in Yale College in 1742, and graduated in 1746, when he was twenty-six years of age. No record is preserved of his college life and standing. The confidence reposed in him by the wisest men of New England immediately after his graduation is evidence that his moral deportment was correct, and his scholarship at least respectable.

As he entered college the year his beloved brother fell into difficulties, and was, as is now be

lieved, treated with great and unnecessary severity and finally expelled, the heart of John must have been most sorely tried.

Assuming that our readers are to some extent familiar with the Life of David Brainerd, by Edwards, it is not necessary to go into details of the fault and punishment of the eminent missionary. The story briefly told is this. Brainerd was sincerely attached to the revival party of the times, and wrought up to high excitement in favor of a religion of the heart rather than a religion of orthodoxy and cold forms. Not to the neglect of his studies or the corruption of his morals, but against the arbitrary laws of his teachers,* he had attended upon the preaching of men like the sainted Gilbert Tennent. This had, probably, excited prejudice against him. On a certain occasion, when Tutor Whittlesey had led in prayer, and had retired from the chapel with the crowd, leaving Brainerd with only two or three friends in the hall, a Freshman overheard Brainerd say: "He has no more grace than that chair." A hard judgment, truly, but excusable if the prayer of Whittlesey was as brief, pointless, and heartless as some which we have heard in colleges and schools from clerical professors. Brainerd was imprudent in saying this, and, probably, uncharitable in thinking it; but, as it was spoken in private chat among his friends, it

*Edwards's Life of Brainerd, pp. 65, 117, 255.