the fifth of eleven children. The boy was trained for college
by his father and by his elder sisters, who all received an excellent
education. When ten years old he wrote a semi-humorous tract on the
immateriality of the soul; he was interested in natural history, and at
the age of twelve wrote a remarkable essay on the habits of the "flying
spider." He entered Yale College in 1716, and in the following year
became acquainted with Locke's _Essay_, which influenced him profoundly.
During his college course he kept note books labelled "The Mind,"
"Natural Science" (containing a discussion of the atomic theory, &c.),
"The Scriptures" and "Miscellanies," had a grand plan for a work on
natural and mental philosophy, and drew up for himself rules for its
composition. Even before his graduation in September 1720 as
valedictorian and head of his class, he seems to have had a well
formulated philosophy. The two years after his graduation he spent in
New Haven studying theology. In 1722-1723 he was for eight months stated
supply of a small Presbyterian church in New York city, which invited
him to remain, but he declined the call, spent two months in study at
home, and then in 1724-1726 was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning
for himself the name of a "pillar tutor" by his steadfast loyalty to the
college and its orthodox teaching at the time when Yale's rector
(Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over to the Episcopal Church.

The years 1720 to 1726 are partially recorded in his diary and in the
resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this time. He had
long been an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied as
to his own "conversion" until an experience in his last year in college,
when he lost his feeling that the election of some to salvation and of
others to eternal damnation was "a horrible doctrine," and reckoned it
"exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet." He now took a great and new
joy in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical
interpretation of the Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystic joys is
the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almost ascetic in his
eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no time, to maintain
the strictest temperance in eating and drinking. On the 15th of February
1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his
grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting
pastor, his rule being thirt