aments that they were not correctly recorded; but it appears that he
gradually sank, and died in his eighty-seventh year of age, at Roxbury,
in the year 1690. His last words were, "Welcome joy."

CHAPTER II. DAVID BRAINERD, THE ENTHUSIAST.

The Indian pastor of Natick, who had been trained by Mr. Eliot, died in
1716, and two years later was born one of the men who did all in his
power, through his brief life, to hold up the light of truth to the
unfortunate natives of America, as they were driven further and further
to the west before the advancing tide from Europe.

The fourth son among nine children, who lost both parents at a very early
age, David Brainerd, though born above the reach of want, had many
disadvantages to contend with. Both his parents had, however, been
religious people, the children of ministers who had come out to America
in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, and settling at Haddam in
Connecticut, trained up their families in the stern, earnest, and rigid
rules and doctrines of Calvinism, which certainly, where they are
accepted by an earnest and thoughtful mind, have a great tendency to
stimulate the intellect, and force forward, as it were, the religious
perceptions in early youth. David was, moreover, a delicate child, with
the seeds of (probably) hereditary decline incipient, and at seven or
eight years old he drew apart from play, thinking much of death, and
trying to prepare by prayer and meditation. His parents' death increased
these feelings, and while living at East Haddam, under the charge of his
brothers, and employed in farm work, the boy was continually struggling
with himself in silence, disliking all youthful mirth and amusement,
fasting, watching and praying, and groaning over the state of his soul.
At nineteen, the wish to become a minister came upon him, and he began to
study hard at all spare moments; and in another year, at twenty, he went
to reside with Mr. Fiske, the minister of Haddam, and in him found, for
the first time, a friend to whom he could open his heart, who could
understand the anxieties and longings within him, and who gave him advice
to withdraw himself from the young companions whose gay spirits were
uncongenial to him, and spend more time with the graver and more
religious.

Whether this were good advice we do not know, but a period of terrible
agony had to be struggled through. It seems plain, from comparison of
different lives, that in the forms