ise accordingly. Their lives recommended their doctrines. They
were bold and faithful in the discharge of what they regarded as duty.
In the midst of slave-holders, and in an age of comparative darkness on
the subject of human rights, Hopkins and the younger Edwards lifted up
their voices for the slave. And twelve years ago, when Abolitionism was
everywhere spoken against, and the whole land was convulsed with mobs to
suppress it, the venerable Emmons, burdened with the weight of ninety
years, made a journey to New York, to attend a meeting of the Anti-
Slavery Society. Let those who condemn the creed of these men see to
it that they do not fall behind them in practical righteousness and
faithfulness to the convictions of duty.

Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the religious system in question,
was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1721. In his fifteenth year he
was placed under the care of a neighboring clergyman, preparatory for
college, which he entered about a year after. In 1740, the celebrated
Whitefield visited New Haven, and awakened there, as elsewhere, serious
inquiry on religious subjects. He was followed the succeeding spring by
Gilbert Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist, a stirring and powerful
preacher. A great change took place in the college. All the phenomena
which President Edwards has described in his account of the Northampton
awakening were reproduced among the students. The excellent David
Brainard, then a member of the college, visited Hopkins in his apartment,
and, by a few plain and earnest words, convinced him that he was a
stranger to vital Christianity. In his autobiographical sketch, he
describes in simple and affecting language the dark and desolate state of
his mind at this period, and the particular exercise which finally
afforded him some degree of relief, and which he afterwards appears to
have regarded as his conversion from spiritual death to life. When he
first heard Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the best of
men, he made up his mind to study theology with him; but just before the
commencement at which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards
preached at New Haven. Struck by the power of the great theologian, he
at once resolved to make him his spiritual father. In the winter
following, he left his father's house on horseback, on a journey of
eighty miles to Northampton. Arriving at the house of President Edwards,
he was disappointed by heari