when I had not a conscience of the Sabbath-day. In the latter part of 179 there sprung up in my mind, rather unaccountably, a desire for a public education. I wanted to be prepared for the Christian ministry. In November I began to be a school-teacher. An aged friend advised me to study for college. Dr. Perkins had several students, and he encouraged me. My mother consented. This was a joyful era to me. I loved Latin better than play or food. By a wonderful providence I found Latin and Greek books in the family of Mr. John Whitman, which I enjoyed free of expense. I prayed that God would carry me through and make me a faithful minister of Jesus Christ.

"In October, 1800, I went to live in Yale College. On this change of life and association, I was afraid of company and temptation, and therefore I set myself upon the strictest life of prayer, watchfulness, and self-observation. I became secluded, unsocial, and somewhat over-scrupulous. I was so resolved on escaping conformity to the follies of the world, that I endangered the proper cheerfulness of the Christian life, and vexed myself with the apparent levity which poured itself all around me. I resolved to walk with God every hour of every day, and on the Sabbath to shut myself out entirely, and not speak a word to any body if I could help it. I have always been disturbed at the follies of mankind, and have exposed my feelings to the opposite sins of severity and censoriousness: so difficult it is to walk uprightly! While I was in college I wrote largely, and almost every day, of my thoughts, duties, and trials; but I have committed those notes to the fire. I had a scrupulous and anxious mind, which was continually struggling for purity and freedom. I meant to be on the golden mean. I quote one sentence from Monday, September 7th, 1801: Be more earnest and solemn, at every period, in preparing for the Sacramental communion. The Christian life is a straight and narrow yet pleasant path. On the one hand, we must be careful that we do not settle down into a cold and lifeless state, and be ashamed of the cause which we profess to defend and make our own; and on the other we must avoid a false zeal and a proud temper of mind, in manifesting our attachment to the cause of religion not be hypocritical nor enthusiastical; not light and airy nor sad and gloomy; steady, sober, cheerful, able to command ourselves from lusts and sinful appetites, from flights of joy and from fits of melancholy, overcoming every evil disposition and movement within us, and living to the glory of our Master.' I had taken the impression of one's going to college as throwing himself into imminent perils and temptations, and therefore had resolved to seclude myself as much as possible from every exposure. I intended to avoid every idle word and every trifling thing. I had felt the power of Baxter's chapter of a heavenly life, and I was striving to live without sin, in temper, word, and

deed. The more strict my observation, the more evident the workings of evil passions and temptations. I had no thought of working up a righteousness for my justification, but I meant to be in the presence of God all the day long. I sometimes misjudged of things, and brought upon myself sore trials; but I have to say that I was happy in the college course. I loved and revered Dr. Dwight. I enjoyed the great revival of religion, 1802, in which so many of the students became ministers. I found great advantages every way from my four years in college. My great and continual fear of company and temptation dampened the joys of Christian life, and made my whole course somewhat dejected. 'How reasonable it is that I should live a serious, sober, steady life; and yet how light I am! Lord, teach me my duty, and enable me to do it. Make me feel my sins in a due manner, and make me hate sin with perfect hatred. Let me see it in such a light as thou seest it, and may it appear to me the worst thing in all the universe.' I was much impressed, in my college course, with the uncertainty of life, every year and every day, although my health was entirely good. How little I foresaw what God had laid out for me! I loved life; I wanted to enjoy prosperity, to be settled in the world, to have a competency, to live a life of usefulness and happiness."

He received the honorary title of D.D. from Williams College in 1854. On the 16th of January, 1855, he preached his Fiftieth Anniversary Sermon and resigned the active duties of his charge, still retaining the pastoral relation. Well do we remember the day and scene, an occasion seldom surpassed in interest and solemnity. That half-century sermon conveys to you more of the simple, real character of the man, than can be found of any other man in the same compass, within the limits of my knowledge. Since that time Dr. Brace has been living at Pittsfield with his children, in the enjoyment of good health, often engaged in preaching in the region, cheerful and alive to all that is good. In his new residence he gained the respect and love of the people to a wonderful degree, and which he cordially reciprocated. He spent most of his time for the last six years in studying the Scrip tures, meditation and prayer. His love for the Word of God exceeded that of any man I ever knew. He daily read it in different languages, in five of which he was nearly perfect. He has sometimes read the Bible through in seventy days, and that not su perficially, but with the most earnest attention. He began the study of Hebrew at forty-five, and for the last thirty-five years has had a familiarity with that language seldom equaled. During his last sickness, when the mind was clouded on other subjects, the Scriptures lay in his soul like a well of pure, deep waters, every few moments gushing up with unrivaled beauty. He would even

then mention a verse in English, and then put it into Greek, and next into Hebrew, with entire accuracy. Mention the first Hebrew word in a verse, and he would instantly give you the whole verse. In prayer he brought in the Scriptures so appropriately and beautifully, that it seemed like weaving a cloth of gold, without the coldness of the brilliant metal; and I have often been astonished to hear him take such passages as the Hebrew names in the Chronicles of Judah, and use them in prayer most naturally and instructively. You seemed to feel that the very thorn-bushes were loaded with fruit, and wondered that you had never seen the fruit before. He received the Word of God with all the confidence of a child, and bowed before it with a deep, holy reverence. Where others see rocks shooting up and the waters of doubt surging and boiling around them, he sailed in waters which were lifted up by piety above every such rock.

I look upon Dr. Brace as one of the best specimens (we have but few such left) of a Puritan minister, and the pastor of a Puritan people for fifty-six years. He began his ministry when a little more than twenty-three years old. He never knew, never desired but one thing-to be a good minister of Jesus Christ. To him his people committed the church, their schools; and the church and the schools were what he made them. He knew every soul of his flock for five generations, and the greater portion from their infancy. He was their counselor in trouble, their friend and pastor in sickness. He often wrote their wills. He was their model in the education of their families. He was ever with them, a pillar that never moved, however hard they might lean against it. This Puritan minister was a learned man, never superficial in any thing he undertook to study. His sermons were very unlike some which we hear of in these days, and which contain almost every thing except the plain message of mercy to sinners. He studied theology but a short time before he began to preach; but he studied it most faithfully, almost sixty years afterwards! His day was before theological seminaries. In these institutions we expected to raise up able and expert warriors-a sort of spiritual cadet system of training. Our design in them was to give to our churches abler pastors. I do not feel sure that this has been the result. It seems to me that the object which God had in their origin, was to prepare men to go out to the heathen world and make new translations of the Bible. This has been the result, and this is one of the greatest benefits of our Theological seminaries. The Bible has been translated into fourteen heathen languages by students trained at Andover; and one hundred and thirty-four foreign missionaries, and three hundred home missionaries, have gone out from this single seminary.

His sermons were plain, unadorned, simple, scriptural, and doctrinal. He seldom used a figure or an illustration in his sermons,

though in conversation he would often use figures of almost matchless strength and beauty. The fountain of his thoughts gushed up, not in jets and sparkles and rainbows, but in pure waters of the river of life. It was to me an unaccountable fact, that when his pen was in his hand, his mind worked in a drier atmosphere than when speaking without writing. Hence in the multitudes of his little school-house meetings, he often poured out his richest thoughts and his most beautiful conceptions. His sermons were distinguished for being brief, condensed, practical, and unexceptional. But when you think of his devotional exercises, his prayers, so original, so scriptural, so comprehensive, you are thinking of one of his rare gifts. We seldom, if ever, heard his equal in prayer. We have heard others pray as earnestly, as tenderly, and as fluently; but we never saw the man who was his equal in lifting an audience up to the very throne of God, and holding them there till they felt the dews of heaven falling fast and cool upon them. His prayers seemed like the tread of the heavy battalion moving on to assured victory. No small part of his instruction which his people received, was through his devotional exercises. Occupying a small, beautiful field of labor, he found it in the rough when he came, and left it a garden when he withdrew from it. The pastor of a small flock is their model. They think like him; they pray like him. They grow up, reverencing his character from their very infancy. On the wide prairie there may be many enlarged prospects, and many brilliant flowers; but if you want a garden, you must fence off a small corner. This Puritan pastor had a long ministry. Over five generations has he poured his love and his prayers. The impress of one great, balanced, good mind upon these successive generations, is worth that of a dozen who come and go, and touch the springs of moral character slightly. It has always seemed to me that the work which Paul did during the three years which he spent at Ephesus, was among the most valuable of his life. And I am strongly impressed, and the more so the longer I live, that the short ministries, and the frequent changes of our day, is one of the greatest calamities that could befall our churches. The man who has made a deep impression upon five generations-an impression which will go down to future generations, and like the echoes among the mountains, be repeated over and over again, till lost to the ear-has done a great work. And a beautiful provision of the Great Head of the Church it is, that men are unlike in their gifts and talents. Had Solomon been a warrior like David, the nation might have become mere marauders. Had Peter had no boldness, we had not known the power of courage. Had not John possessed his own loveliness, we had not the silver light of his character. One man is a Boanerges, and his thunder echoes far and wide; another is an humble, untiring pastor, who is content to lead his

flock to pastures that are green, and to waters that are still. Dr. Brace was the latter. He was remarkable for method and order. I doubt whether a day has passed for many years, concerning which he could not tell the weather, the temperature, and every event that came within his reach. His brief diary would tell the name of every man who ever preached in his pulpit or spoke in his meetings; the subject and the text on which he preached, and often the impression which was made.

Those who have known him well, know that he was one of the most conscientious of men.

He made conscience of every thing great and small. He would often ask if he had any duty, if he had done his duty, as to this or that. This conscientiousness embraced his dealings, the Sabbath, his studies, his dress, and even his sleep. His Sabbath began on Saturday night, at sunset. And who ever saw him do a thing or say a thing unsuited to the Sabbath after that hour? Even in his last sickness, when partially delirious, he was told that a friend called to see him he at once expressed a surprise that the friend "did not remember it was Saturday night, and after dark !" On stormy Sabbaths, when none came to his church, at the hours of worship, he called his family together, and went through the regular services just as if the whole congregation were present.

His character was one of great simplicity. In his dealings with men, he never seemed to know or feel that there was a possibility of his being defrauded! Once when he had a letter, pretending that a box had come for him at Boston, and by which he was duped out of several dollars, he seemed to look at it with the same astonishment that a child would to see the string of his top turn. into a snake. A man who at four-score could go into a company . of children and gain their confidence and love, must have a childlike character. For years his Bible-class was a model, a sort of theological seminary, from which few graduated without being hopefully pious; and none without great personal benefit and a good understanding of the Scriptures. And after all his own children had gone out from home into the world, or had passed away to the dead, it was affecting to see him and his companion. sitting down at the close of every Sabbath, and repeating in course, the Assembly's Catechism, just as they did when children; and then each repeating a hymn, just as they had taught their children!

His estimate of the office of the ministry was higher than that of any man I ever knew. No man ever need love to preach more than he; and I am sure none ever enjoyed the preaching of others more. Whenever he heard a sermon, he felt that it was a message from God. He would then talk about it, pray about it, write about it, and perhaps several times during the week, allude to it. He felt that there is no office in the wide world to be compared