ANNIVERSARY SERMON 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 BRAINERD EYANG-ELICAL SOCIETY 
 
 OF 
 
 LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, 
 
 July 28th, 1867. 
 
 BY 
 
 RE V. T. H. ROBINSON, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, HARRISBURG, PA. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 
 
 EASTON, PA. 
 1867. 
 
ANNIVERSARY SERMON 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 BRAINERD EVANGELICAL* SOCIETY 
 
 OF 
 
 LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, 
 
 july 28th, 1867. 
 
 BY 
 
 BEY. T. H. ROBINSON, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, HARRISBURG, PA. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 
 
 EASTON, PA. 
 1867. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Lafayette College, Easton, Penn’a, 
 September 21 st, 1867. 
 
 Rev. T. H. Robinson, 
 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 In accordance with a resolution of the Brainerd Evangelical Society of Lafayette 
 College, we would most respectfully request for publication the manuscript of your 
 sermon delivered before the Society at the late commencement. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 m George E. Jones, 
 
 W. Q. Scott, 
 
 H. D. Tate, 
 
 Committee . 
 
 35 
 
 ooU ✓ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/anniversarysermoOOrobi 
 
ANNIVERSARY SERMON. 
 
 I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God 
 abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. — 1 John ii. 14. 
 
 Brethren of the Brainerd Evangelical Society : — Called by your 
 courtesy to the duty now before me, I find myself on a spot sacred 
 by its memories and its connection with names that are dear to the 
 American Church. Nor can I forget that these sacred memories 
 were most touchingly revived and deepened, when, at your last 
 anniversary, by the peculiar providence of God, that gifted and 
 sainted servant of Christ, Thomas Brainerd, appeared before you, 
 and with a trembling frame and an enfeebled voice, performed here 
 the last public service of a life eminent for its usefulness and 
 honored with an unwonted share of the truest success.* It will be 
 no slight advantage to yourselves, if you may link your daily 
 thoughts, and sanctify your daily studies, and shape your coming 
 lives with reminiscences of three men so rare in piety and true 
 consecration to Christ, as David, John, and Thomas Brainerd; and 
 I shall be more than satisfied, if by my words I may incite any 
 
 * It is a singular and affecting providence, that the last sermon of Dr. Brainerd 
 should have been preached on the very ground hallowed by the missionary labors of 
 his illustrious kinsman, and before a society of the college students bearing the 
 name of Brainerd, and organized with the view of promoting a missionary spirit 
 in the college. If the devoted congregation of the “Old Pine Street Church” must 
 have been denied the privilege of hearing Dr. Brainerd’s last words from the pulpit, 
 they could not desire a more fitting time and place for them to have been spoken ; 
 and not only to them but to all the many friends of this honored and beloved ser- 
 vant of Christ, the Brainerd Society of Lafayette College will be an object 
 even of greater interest than heretofore. 
 
 It seems highly appropriate to connect with the anniversary exercises of this 
 year, some permanent record of Dr. Brainerd’s life and character. Such a notice 
 will be found appended to this discourse. 
 
6 
 
 of you to emulate the apostolic zeal of the first, the patient, faith- 
 ful toil of the second, and the glowing, consecrated speech of the 
 third of these noble men. 
 
 In that passage from the writings of the Apostle John, which 
 stands as the text of my discourse, he is addressing the young men 
 of the church. He applies to them what is especially adapted to 
 their age. The consciousness of strength is natural to youth. The 
 restless pulse of youthful blood, the tireless energy of young 
 sinews, the stir of fresh thoughts, and the spirit of hopefulness so 
 natural to youth, all conspire to beget and to maintain this con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Youth is formed for conflict. We go to its ranks to find bold 
 champions for every field of strife, physical or spiritual. Christian 
 old age grows calm and settled as the result of its repeated victo- 
 ries over evil, its longer intimacy with the sources of spiritual 
 power and its higher developments of Christian life. In childhood 
 the germs of evil in our fallen nature slumber undeveloped. It is 
 the age of unconscious innocence, and childlike faith. The elements 
 of inward conflict are quiet, and the strife of outward evil does not 
 disturb. Youth is the period of awakening. The two-fold law of 
 man’s nature appears. Desires, and passions claim the mastery 
 over the higher rule of the spirit. The earlier simple and child- 
 like faith is called in question. The hitherto unconscious and con- 
 cealed discord between the lower and the higher elements of a 
 man’s being is revealed, and with it comes the knowledge of out- 
 ward friends and foes, the claims of God and the demands of the 
 world, the warfare between light and darkness, truth and error. 
 In all this conflict, internal and external, the Christian youth must 
 engage, and through conflict reach the calm and assured peace of 
 Christian age, the second childhood of the Christian soul. Called 
 in the freshness of its power to such a conflict, it must not shun 
 the strife. Nor is it disposed to do so. The new sense of power 
 awakens self-confidence, a conscious ability to meet all dangers, to 
 overcome all difficulties and triumph over all enemies in one’s own 
 strength. In every age opening manhood has been invested with 
 charms that called forth admiration and love. The undefined hopes 
 and promises of the future that lies before youth, the dawning 
 strength of intellect, the bound and flow of the passions, the 
 exchange of parental authority and guidance for a new and free 
 activity, bounded only by his own choice, the sense of freedom and 
 
7 
 
 personal power, of something to be achieved by and for one’s self, 
 these all touch the pride of the youthful breast. The possibilities 
 of noble or of ignoble work are little noted. The peril of losing by 
 ruinous self-indulgence or by selfish ambition, what might be gained 
 by happy self-sacrifice for right and truth, and human good, is 
 unheeded. The danger of developing into faculties of evil the 
 powers that should be trained to beneficent action, is overlooked. 
 
 The Apostle, directed by a higher inspiration, and knowing that 
 self-confidence, unsustained by strength from a higher source, would 
 soon fail in the conflicts of life, and be put to shame, directed the 
 Christian young men of his time to another ground of confidence, 
 and another source of strength than the consciousness of their own 
 powers. Ye are strong. Ye have overcome. Ye have already 
 conquered the wicked one. But not with your own weak powers, 
 not in reliance upon your own strength. It is because the word 
 of God abideth in you, the written Word and the Living Word. 
 That Divine seed is the germ of all victories. East rooted in your 
 hearts by an abiding trust, in its vitalizing power lie the strength 
 and life of your spirits. Through faith in the [Redeemer, the 
 Living Word within you, and through fellowship with him you 
 appropriate his strength. He lives, He strives, and conquers in 
 you ; ye live, and strive, and conquer as the instruments of Him, 
 who is ever going forth, conquering and to conquer. 
 
 The proposition which I bring before you for argument and illus- 
 tration is this : The personal force by which we can most effectually 
 lay hold of and bless our age, is moral power, the power of a life 
 and a character, the power of good and great purposes, nourished 
 on the indwelling word of God, and manifested in unselfish, Christ- 
 like love. 
 
 In all ages men have been dazzled and enchanted by power. It 
 has been one of their chief ambitions to gain and to wield it. 
 Power will intoxicate the best hearts. Ho man is wise enough nor 
 good enough to be trusted with an unlimited amount of it. 
 
 Feebleness has no beauty. It extorts no admiration. There is 
 something grand in the might of the sea as it sweeps from pole to 
 pole ; in the march of the hurricane ; in the shock of armies, and 
 in the will of the generals who direct them. But there is some- 
 thing grander in the intellectual power that builds up systems of 
 human knowledge, and something yet surpassing in that moral and 
 spiritual power that resists evil, that overcomes temptations, that 
 
8 
 
 contends with mighty invisible wickednesses, abides incorruptible 
 amid all allurements, and maintains its fealty to truth and goodness 
 and God against all antagonism. 
 
 All power is of God. “ Wisdom and might are His." “ The 
 strength of the hills is His also.” .Upon us, his reasoning creatures, 
 He bestows power only for beneficent ends. To bring forth the 
 hiding of power God has put within us, in personal development 
 and general blessing, is the end of human life as a whole. And 
 varied as are the forms of nature, so varied are His gifts of power 
 to men. To one He has given the genius of invention, to another 
 the spirit of discovery, to another the skill of the artist or the 
 sculptor, to another the enthusiasm of the poet, or the enchant- 
 ment of the singer; to yet another the gift of the orator, or the wis- 
 dom of a statesman ; but beyond all these, and beyond all the other 
 forms of power by which mankind have been dazzled in different 
 ages, physical courage and prowess, the power derived from ances- 
 tral blood and rank, the power of wealth and position, the power of 
 learning and intellect, — beyond all these, greater and holier than 
 they all, is the power of spiritual character, of high moral aims, of 
 a life consecrated to truth, in harmony with God, and thus avail- 
 ing itself of the “ might of God’s power.” 
 
 The heart of man must be the home and seat of this power. The 
 individual heart must yield itself to the control of spiritual truth, 
 must be purified by it and nourished upon it, must come into sym- 
 pathy with the God of truth, and throb in every pulse with the 
 pure emotions that fill the bosom of God. 
 
 There is a certain grandeur and nobility about the heroes of a 
 barbaric age, who proved their power by physical combats. The 
 spirit of our latest civilization feels a degree of reverence for the 
 mighty hunters and warriors immortalized by Homer. We yield 
 an involuntary deference to those who inherit the dignities and 
 rank of a long line of buried sires. It is well nigh vain to argue 
 against the love and the pursuit of riches, the hungering more and 
 more after the largest attainments of it; vain to tell men how it 
 engenders selfishness, how it eats manliness out of the spirit, how 
 it poisons society and corrupts the nerves and sinews of state ; vain 
 to remind, them that it can purchase nothing that is spiritual and 
 invisible, can give no peace, no sweet content, no purity, no favor 
 of the Divine; for do they not see how it purchases everything sen- 
 sual and visible, how it opens the channels to power and office, how 
 
9 
 
 men bow before its presence, and what gratifications of will and 
 pride*and high-mindedness, of display and luxury and every passion, 
 it affords ? There is a glory and a power too about a merely intel- 
 lectual life, that may easily make its possession an idolatry. The 
 men who sway the world’s thinking and give shape to the world’s 
 opinions ; the men who teach in its schools of philosophy, who mould 
 the statesmanship and diplomacy of the nations, whose decisions 
 guide the courts of law, whose adventurous spirit continually 
 increases the domains of knowledge, these are men of power. Their 
 force is permanent and far-reaching. Their monuments are stately 
 and enduring. There is power, vast power in intellect, power 
 that lives and rules, never itself seeing death. The generations of 
 men have been ruled by the men who were mightier and subtler in 
 thought than they. 
 
 But all these forms of power may be utterly corrupted and per- 
 verted by that which shall make them engineries of evil and powers 
 of cursing. The taint of personal selfishness and personal ambition 
 may deprave them. Personal ambition is always shorn of the 
 highest kind of power. Selfishness cannot ally itself with God and 
 truth and love. It must be invaded and broken up. It cannot by 
 any possibility league itself with any lasting and beneficent personal 
 influence. It is the first requisite of Christian discipleship, that 
 self shall be slain. It is the end and reward of Christian, of spi- 
 ritual power, to rule. Self must die in us, if we are to bless men 
 and serve God, and sit ourselves on the thrones of the future. The 
 knee must bend no more to it. The hands must toil no more for it. 
 The heart must no longer be taken up with its own sorrows and 
 rejoicings. The condition is imperative. It is not simply a demand 
 of the gospel and of Christ, who knows best what our nature needs 
 for its development, but a demand of reason. That man who toils 
 for his family is greater and more powerful than he who toils and 
 hoards for self. It always enlarges and strengthens a man to go 
 beyond himself. And nothing so destroys selfishness as does the 
 kindling the new regenerate life, God’s life, in the human soul. 
 The great preacher of the Scottish Church has told us in eloquent 
 words of the expulsive power of a new affection. When this new 
 affection for God and man is born within, it confers a vital and 
 enduring power, that must by the very force of its nature imitate 
 the life of God in acts of beneficence and unselfish love. Moral 
 power is inconsistent with self-indulgence, nor does it stand in any 
 
10 
 
 compromise of good with evil. The keen-eyed world may grasp 
 after its own. It may insist upon the harmlessness of its pleasures, 
 and the righteousness of its ways. It may resent interference with its 
 pursuits, and call the strictness of religious men puritanic and hurt- 
 ful, hut let any teacher of religion go into the world and endorse its 
 rules, put himself at its head and seek to lead it in its own chosen 
 paths and make religion consistent with its pursuits and its princi- 
 ples, and he will be trodden down by scornful feet, and his religion 
 be a derision and a weakness; while he who unreservedly asserts 
 the high claims of God against the world, who stands aloof and 
 apart from it, high and pure, denying self as Jesus did, vindicating 
 by his own life the lofty morality of Christian teaching and the 
 supreme demands of a holy God, will receive the inward homage of 
 the world's conscience. It will bow to the power and authority of 
 such an example. 
 
 If a man would wield moral power he must possess its elements 
 and use its weapons. The law of unselfish living must be enthroned 
 in the heart, and be manifested in the life. There must be per- 
 sonal purity and integrity within, and a fair and spotless character 
 without. The deep foundations of character, and beneficent moral 
 power lie altogether out of sight. They are planted, broad and 
 massive, in the principles and dispositions of the inner man. 
 Thence, slowly, stone by stone, the rising walls go up, each day 
 building something, each act of life adding something of strength 
 and beauty or something of deformity and weakness to the super- 
 structure. All private and personal acts, all that are domestic and 
 social, all that are public and official, all the deeds and spirit of our 
 life join in adding stone to stone. Every false thing, every unclean 
 or dishonest thing, every deed of selfish trickery, every intrigue 
 for mere personal advantage, all arts and policies and unworthy 
 evasions of the truth, that may be deemed allowable by those who 
 plunge into the rivalries and counter-plottings of the world, all 
 these brina; their false and worthless material and build it into the 
 character. He who would build up in himself a citadel of the best 
 and purest personal power, has set himself at a work in which there 
 must be the most careful painstaking and inspection. There must 
 be a keen watchfulness over the inner and the outer man. It is a 
 perpetual self-discipline, the forming, shaping, and moulding of self, 
 this spiritual and immortal self. It is a schooling of ourselves in 
 divine truth, a subduing and destroying the base part of self and 
 
11 
 
 nourishing the divine part, it is bringing our plans, tempers, 
 thoughts, motives, our very souls into the fire of God’s truth, and 
 keeping them there till they are melted, and the dross is con- 
 sumed. “ I have written unto you, young men, because the word 
 of God abideth in you.” 
 
 It is the distinction of moral life that it is capable of “ looking 
 before and after.” It is under a rule. It has an aim. It is 
 directed toward an end. Mere animal life is but an incessant 
 activity, and nothing more. It is governed by no idea. It has no 
 interior drama like human life. It never pauses for reflection. It 
 has neither purpose nor character. Human life alone on earth 
 attains the glory of an aim. 
 
 Our life is moulded largely by that at which we aim. The 
 higher and purer the end set before us, the more will a man gather 
 into himself the resources of strength. It is a characteristic also of 
 all moral aims that they are higher in thought and purpose, and 
 purer in principle, than we ever reach in fact and practice and so 
 are ever drawing us onward and upward. It is the boast of 
 Christianity that it sets before man the only perfect ideal of life, 
 but it is an ideal that cannot be attained by the unaided human 
 powers. Our weakness must be re-inforced by a living Divine 
 agency, a loving and personal Will in converse with our feeble will, 
 healing and helping our infirmities, educating, inspiring and moving 
 us. It is true of this moral power in us, as of every power, that it 
 becomes effective by use. It must manifest itself in action. Only 
 so can it prolong its existence. The physical hero who should 
 cease all bodily discipline and activity would soon find his well-knit 
 frame and sinewy limbs and goodly proportions, withering into very 
 feebleness under his eyes. Activity is the proof and the tenure of 
 power. It is not enough to have right principles, there must be 
 right action. It is not enough to be true at heart, to have re- 
 sources of moral power within, if there be no engagement in noble 
 work. Power will stifle and perish under such regimen. It can- 
 not survive its disuse. There is nothing so restless and assertive 
 as moral influence. It cannot be hid. It is like light hunting its 
 way through every crevice. It is like heat melting the heart of an 
 iceberg. It is like the love of God, unwearied, exhaustless. It 
 must speak and act. It must bless and do good. It must over- 
 come evil and work righteousness. It is its meat and drink, its 
 very life to be active — to do, like the great Redeemer, the Father’s 
 
 * 
 
12 
 
 business. It is like a talent that must be put out at usury, that it 
 may bring in its increase. They who would retain and accumulate 
 personal force and influence, must use it in the attainment of high 
 and noble ends. 
 
 As to the particular ways in which this personal moral force of a 
 man shall act upon human interest and in human society, — where 
 a man shall labor, — is really a far less important matter than that 
 he shall first settle the principles by which he will be guided, and 
 the end to which he will consecrate himself. There is no one royal 
 sphere of labor in which the Christian ideal of life can be realized. 
 The world is a great work-shop, and the tasks in it are multiform. 
 As we stand at its threshold, about to enter and take our part, it is 
 often a serious question what part we shall take. Every earnest 
 man seeks some definite work. The duty of work — of every man 
 to his own work — is urgent and universal. It is well to take up 
 this yoke in our youth. God expects every man to do his duty. 
 By a divine law he has immutably joined happiness and activity, 
 and made idleness an intolerable burden to every healthy nature. 
 There is no legitimate room in the world for idlers. Inaction has 
 no rewards. It is no question of choice, but of sheer necessity, that 
 we have our work to do. Life must be filled up with it. What 
 form that work shall outwardly assume, matters not greatly. If 
 the purpose to use all power, and to employ every talent, and every 
 opportunity for moral ends exists, we shall find that there is a 
 sacredness about all honest work. The aim imparts honor. The 
 qualities and spirit of the workman himself are higher and worthier 
 than the calling or profession in which he may spend his days. 
 The field of human activity opens up in every direction. All forms 
 of honest toil are rising in value and worth. There are some pur- 
 suits among men that society has been wont to dignify with the 
 name of “ the Professions/' such as those of the Christian minister, 
 the professional teacher in school and college, the jurist, lawyer, 
 and physician. These, when rightly pursued, demand more of 
 intellectual effort than many other of the occupations of men, and 
 so seem to be the more honorable. But by that vast revolution 
 that is changing the idea of society and clearing the pathway of the 
 worker, dignifying all honest toil, and lifting year by year more of 
 the trades into the professions, men are learning to be ashamed of 
 no work that gives them independence and enables them to be a 
 blessing. It is not the form of work we do, it is not any special act 
 
 % 
 
13 
 
 we perform, but the spirit with which we do it, the skill and 
 excellence we bring to it, and the end for which we do it, that 
 measures the real worth of the deed. There may be less of real 
 nobility in inditing a learned paper on law, or uttering a great 
 oration, than in wielding a hammer or handling a plough. In the 
 highest market a handicraft, worthily pursued, wins more honour 
 and respect than the noblest profession degraded by the incapacity 
 of him who fills it. The field of choice where our powers shall 
 operate is wide and open for our entrance. 
 
 There must be merchants and bankers and engineers. There 
 must be the men of the various crafts and trades. There must be 
 the tillers of the soil and the rapidly increasing class of mechanical 
 men who fill the manufactories of the land. But whatever that 
 may be to which our bent of mind, our faculties, the calls of society, 
 the promises of success, and the providence of God may call us, if 
 it be simply work that must be done, and work that we can do bet- 
 ter than something else, then all that is needed to make us influen- 
 tial and honorable in it, is to bring into it the qualities of a pure 
 heart, a conscientious will, a steady, faithful, fervent energy, and a 
 ruling purpose to honor God and do good. To such an one, no 
 matter how lowly his calling may be, the avenues of usefulness are 
 always flung open, and the weapons of influence are at hand. If 
 heart and will are redeemed from the grasp of selfishness, and ani- 
 mated by that law of love and blessing which is our highest expres- 
 sion for God — “ God is love” — there will be opened gates of oppor- 
 tunity on every hand. Everything seems possible to him who wills 
 it. Enthusiasm and energy in work, when sanctified by a noble 
 end, more frequently carry the day than mere talents and acquire- 
 ments. There are few things more beautiful than the calm and 
 resolute progress and the beneficent power of an earnest spirit. 
 The irresolute fall prostrate and helpless before difficulties. The 
 resolute and earnest make them the stepping-stones of a higher 
 triumph. The hasty garlands of genius fade away. The labors of 
 the faithful and earnest meet a perpetual reward, and find continual 
 channels. Set a stream in motion from some inexhaustible foun- 
 tain among the hills, and mark how the rills dispart themselves as 
 the flowing waters seek the opened and waiting channels of the 
 valley. They go everywhere. They drop into the dry crevices of 
 the rocks; they fill up every depression with their crystal fluid; 
 every old furrow becomes a running brook; they stop on their way 
 
14 
 
 and spread out into little lakes; they work about the roots of the 
 thirsting trees; they go everywhere that sheer necessity does not 
 forbid, carrying everywhere greenness and life, making flowers bud 
 and bloom along their banks, covering the meadows with grasses, 
 reviving the leaves of the drooping trees, filling nature and man 
 with the spirit of gladness. 
 
 It is an image of the restless energy and the beneficent power of 
 a Christ-like soul. We need something to stir our dead affections, 
 something to draw us out of ourselves as a centre and an end. We 
 need a strong and constant working force within us, that shall 
 grapple and hold us in the right course, in spite of our sloth and 
 sin, that will keep us to duty with all the power of necessity, but 
 also with all the grandeur of choice. The mass of misery and evil 
 in the world around us, and the evil of our own hearts will yield 
 to the power of no ordinary spiritual life and strength. If our 
 faith is “the victory that overcometh the world/' and not the 
 beaten foe that flies before it, it must be the “faith which worketh 
 by love.” Even that lower affection of love whose whole sphere of 
 purpose and action is amid earthly things, works long and well and 
 accomplishes great things. There is a love, unborn of the spirit of 
 God, that beautifies and guards many an unchristian home. There 
 is a love that leads the unspiritual, the irreligious, to freely jeopard 
 life and limb for country's sake. There is a love of man, a philan- 
 thropy apart from the church and even apart from the Bible, whose 
 noble sacrifices for humanity must not be despised. But the love 
 that will abide, that will surmount all obstacles, that will reach 
 through life, that will be patient, firm, persistent, humble, must be 
 born of the Spirit of God, and must have Christ’s love as its grand 
 model, and Christ himself as its permanent and supreme object. 
 Let this love endow the spirit of a man, and it matters not how 
 poor in material wealth he may be, how unintellectual his labor, 
 how limited his range, how low the place in which he stands may 
 be in the eyes of the world, he will yet be kin to the highest spirits 
 of Heaven, will share in their power, and like them, will find work 
 for his loving and restless activity. His love will find good to do 
 on every hand. If it can do no more, it will pick up the fallen 
 child, set him on his feet and brush away his tears. If it can do 
 nothing else, it will be feet to the lame, it will give a gentle answer 
 to the ignorant, it will carry Christ's word of invitation to the 
 weary out into the dusty lanes and highways. In the hovels of 
 
15 
 
 / tlie poor it will share its crust with the hungry. In the homes of 
 the needy and in the cell of the prisoner it will speak winning 
 words of kindness. To the degraded and the enslaved it will bring 
 the inspiration of hope. Wherever man sighs and groans it will find 
 an object and a place for its activities, a soul to be cheered by its 
 smile, a bowed one whose burden it may bear. 
 
 Christian men, men of restless energy in their professions, the 
 sworn followers of Him who wearied himself in ways of goodness, 
 Christian young men who will rise and be successful in the sphere 
 of secular life to which they are turning, stand in the Church of 
 Christ and are unable to see any sphere where they may speak or 
 act for Him who has given them the hope of heaven and salvation. 
 But life is full of opportunities and demands to the earnest spirit. 
 Beyond the outward which ever appeals for help, there is a relief 
 for man which goes deeper and lies in the power of every man to 
 bring. There are kind warnings to be uttered to the heedless. 
 There is strength to be brought to them that are weak and hardly 
 beset. They who stand wavering between virtue and vice need to 
 be drawn to a holy and loyal choice of goodness. They who are 
 timid and yielding before the allurements of evil and the cry of 
 their own passions, need to be reinforced by the counsel and sym- 
 pathy of one that is stronger than they. There are the reckless, 
 whom we may grasp with a strong hand, and the desperate, across 
 whose paths we may fling ourselves in our urgency for their salva- 
 tion. Delicately, thoughtfully, prayerfully, may every Christian 
 young man, having won his own victory by that faith which over- 
 eometh the world, take the place to which God calls him — that of 
 his brother’s keeper. There are those by your very side, over 
 whose words and deeds and company you may watch with all the 
 solicitude of a brother’s care. You may let your heart go out to 
 them. You may make their spiritual interests your special guard- 
 ianship. You may set yourself in a hundred ways to compass 
 their good. Your love may follow them, surround them in their 
 business, dissuade them from error and vice, beguile them to noble 
 and worthy pleasures, draw them by the power of a personal 
 friendship into the paths of sobriety, purity and virtue, and gird 
 them around with bands of loving restraint, like the arms of invisi- 
 ble angels. 
 
 But this moral force of love will not be satisfied with merely 
 doing what is thrown in its way. It will create opportunities and 
 
16 
 
 open channels for itself. It will seek spheres of labor. It will ask 
 the great Master for employment. It will search out those who 
 need its ministries, hunting up the tempted, going out into lanes of 
 want and poverty, to the children of vice and destitution, and deem- 
 ing it no unworthy work for the highest talent to bring such into 
 the ways of virtue, and no ignoble use of the highest knowledge to 
 cast a ray of light into the most benighted mind. I know not 
 what Christ-like love will not do to bring man to Christ and Christ 
 to man. It will count it no humility to speak words of tenderness 
 to the lowliest, to carry cleanliness to homes of filth, to light fires 
 of content on the hearthstone of poverty, to lift up the fallen, with 
 its great pity. It will stand hand to hand, and shoulder to shoul- 
 der, with all who are serving the same Master, bend with them at 
 the same altar, rise and go forth with them to the march and the 
 conflict. It will count nothing that it can do for the glory of God 
 or the good of man to be unworthy of its endeavors. Love is tire- 
 less, indefatigable, deep, genial, mighty, safe. Wherever man 
 sighs and groans there it finds its object, and room for its activi- 
 ties. It outlives all things else, reaches through life, works down 
 out of the sight of men, caring chiefly to commend itself to God. 
 
 Let such a spirit fill the breast of young men, and they will be 
 men of power. They will be clothed with it as with a garment. 
 Their presence will be felfiin the Church. It will be acknowledged 
 in the community. The tempted will call to them. The ignorant 
 and feeble will flee to them. Wickedness itself will recognize and 
 honor them. Their influence will be real, efficient, fruitful, tireless, 
 constant, an image of that power that wings the angels in their 
 flights, and of that higher, uncreated love, that goes forth from age 
 to age, from the bosom of God in benefactions upon the unthankful 
 and the evil. Their very presence inspires right and rebukes 
 wrong. Their spirit quickens all languid and aimless souls. Men 
 depend upon them for every good work, and count on them in every 
 conflict with evil. They are pillars of hope for the harassed to flee 
 to, depositaries of help for the heavy laden. Society builds upon 
 them. The Church builds upon them. Their age confesses them 
 as the vital forces of their time. 
 
 It may be thought I am speaking of great men, the confessed 
 leaders in the moral world, or £hat I unduly magnify Christian 
 power. It is not so. It has not been great talents and powers of 
 intellect that have been bringing harmony into our disordered 
 
IT 
 
 world. It has been the power of the feeble. It has been that 
 leaven of the gospel which has been working well-nigh unobserved, 
 and altogether unhonored, in the humble, tranquil, obscure, but 
 active virtues of the faithful, who, diffused through society have 
 struggled by their prayers, and examples, and lowly labors, to stem 
 the general depravity, and by the sweet light of their godliness to 
 allure, here and there, souls to virtue and to Christ. 
 
 The work I set before you, Brethren of the Brainerd' Society, 
 may look neither great nor winning to the eye of sense, and yet it 
 is the way by which you are to move and bless your time, by 
 which you will take the deepest and strongest hold upon it. I 
 set before you nothing that will fire the passions of the sensual, or 
 the ambition of the worldly, but, Oh ! I do bring the Christly ideal 
 of life — a life, not of poetic self-culture, that seeks only a selfish and 
 sensuous enjoyment; nor a life of worldly aims, wild, tumultuous, 
 restless, like the sea; but a life born and nurtured of the Spirit of 
 Christ; based primarily on love to Him; a life in God, in commu- 
 nion with the Highest; a life so near that great Presence of holi- 
 ness and help, that it is ever humble, pure, and self-denying, yet 
 strong, cheerful, and heroic. When Christ by his own quickening 
 Spirit enters and dwells within us, kindling our love in his silent but 
 efficacious way, stirring up our hopes, and inspiring a true ambition, 
 our mortal power of doing and of suffering is increased tenfold. 
 As it is the loftiest ideal of human life to be like Him “ who went 
 about continually doing good," so the mightiest working force in 
 the human soul is that love to Christ, and to man for Christ’s sake, 
 whose beginnings are planted in us by our regeneration. Better, 
 stronger than any mere dream of inflexible law, is this great con- 
 straint laid on the free and loving heart. I would that the quick, 
 warm, passionate sympathies of your youth glowed with the central 
 fires of such a hidden life. I would that the hopefulness of your spirits, 
 the zest, and energy, the adventurous heroism of your courage, and 
 all the might of your impulses might be sanctified and guided by 
 this Christian ideal of life. It may appear like a day-dream to set 
 before you such an end and aim — a life consecrated to Christ, 
 devoid of self-seeking, emulous only of well-doing; but here is the 
 path of our truest ambition. Everything beneath this is ignoble 
 and unworthy of us. What we do effectively and well on the earth, 
 what we do that shall conspire with the doings of heaven in spirit 
 and effect, what we do that shall outlive ourselves in permanent 
 2 
 
18 
 
 blessing, must be done from motives that lift us out of the narrow- 
 ness of all low and selfish aiming, into a new life that in its degree 
 fairly represents the life of our Great Master. We shall walk in 
 paths of the highest and most permanent success, we shall be men 
 of power, acknowledged of God, and confessed of men, when the love 
 that is ever ready to help and reinforce our weakness has been 
 welcomed from above and made the abiding guest of our souls. 
 
 I have been asking you, Brethren of the Society, to cast away 
 from your thoughts of the life before you all calculations of personal 
 interest. It may seem wholly incongruous now to speak of the 
 rewards of such a life, as if you needed any incentive. But I shall 
 make no appeal to selfishness. The highest life is free from it, and 
 by its very freedom is rewarded. Duty is a noble word. The 
 demands of conscience are imperative and just. The word of God 
 speaks with the highest authority to a loyal nature. There is a 
 nobleness in right-doing and an inherent meanness in wrong-doing. 
 It is a noble thing to set duty and right before us as the law and 
 the motive of life. All honor to those who are moved by a high 
 sense of duty, who obey conscience, who keep God's commandments, 
 who hate evil, love goodness, avoid fraud, injustice, anger, and all 
 evil passions, who do good, suffer wrong patiently, and practise all 
 seemly and excellent virtues, because it is right to do so. It is a 
 lofty life, that out of the sense of duty to God and to man, the love 
 of truth and the desire for personal integrity, seeks always to do 
 the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way. Some of 
 the noblest forms of moral life are moulded by this conscientious 
 regard to duty. 
 
 But I show you “a more excellent way.” The loftiest motive 
 and the highest reward for doing anything in any sphere of life, is 
 the joy and the love of doing it. Aside from all the recompense of 
 the future, whose certainty is beyond all cavil, there is a present 
 pleasure in all well-doing. The health, the harmony, and the 
 reward of the soul are inseparably connected with the exercise of 
 its own virtues. It is the very substance and reality of enjoyment, 
 when the heart is so attuned to goodness, that the virtues are at 
 home in it. The very beaming that plays on the human counte- 
 nance when doing a deed of kindness, tells of the lighting up of 
 pleasures and unfathomed joys in the heart. How winsome the 
 genial glow in the eye of charity ! What soft sunbeams in the face 
 of the forgiving and large-hearted! We are instinctively sure that 
 
19 
 
 they dwell amid the very elements of cheerfulness, and that their 
 inmost spirits are in the happiest mood. They who let “ mercy tri- 
 umph over judgment,” who in their generousness forgive great 
 wrongs, who ever return good for evil, in the joy and triumph of 
 such moments have an ample reward. There is not a single virtue 
 of the unselfish life, that in its very exercise does not bless him 
 who possesses it. What calmness there is in impartial justice! 
 What serenity there is in truthfulness ! What a felt and native 
 dignity there is in personal honor ! What security and peace there 
 is in the humble and gentle spirit! What cheerfulness in good- 
 ness ! What transparency and beauty in the very face of one in 
 whose soul purity reigns ! As when the eye is regaled by some 
 scene of marvellous loveliness in nature, or the ear is enchanted by 
 some melody of ravishing sound, the soul at once in the very sight 
 and hearing feels the joy, so is it, in a virtuous and consecrated 
 life. The exercise of its goodness gives a perpetual reward. 
 
 In every sphere of toil, the toiler well knows the distinction 
 between a love of the work and a love of the recompense that fol-* 
 lows it, between the strength of a present joy and the hope of the 
 most assured future good. To one, his toil may be a perpetual task 
 and drudgery, its very achievement stamped with no seals of vic- 
 tory; another may find in the very work itself an abiding reward 
 and triumph. To him who works for hire, it would be deemed a 
 strange proposal, if on inquiring for the reward of his services, he 
 were to be told, it was simply more work, larger tasks, that the 
 better he did his allotted task, the more would his master put into 
 his hands to do. Yet this would be the exact reward for him who 
 worked because he loved the work itself. It would be his highest 
 reward, and the one he would most covet. All sublime sacrifices 
 of man for man, of self for country, of things visible for things 
 spiritual, stand out clear of all sordid calculations of reward. The 
 patriotism that faces death for preferment or for a monument, is 
 spoiled by an ineradicable taint of self. The man who plays the 
 hero for pay, has none of the heroic in him. The martyr who 
 goes to the stake for the acclamations of the church or for the dubious 
 honors of saintship, strikes his name from the roll of true confes- 
 sors. All truest and noblest things are done, not at outward 
 demand, but at the inward summons of the heart. There are no 
 such rewards for love, as the lavish outflowing of its own "wealth. 
 There is no recompense for the affection that twines a child’s heart 
 
20 
 
 about its mother’s neck, but to let it love on, and no pay for the 
 love of a mother that outwatches the patient stars over her child’s 
 pain or her child’s sin, but to love and watch on. That heroic 
 humanity that stands with crisping hands and blistered face, at the 
 helm of a burning ship till all the passengers are safe, then sinks 
 into the flames, cannot be rewarded by the acclamations of the 
 saved. It has its recompense in its own nobleness ! Greatest deeds 
 are never done with an eye to the consideration. Our purest hap- 
 piness is not that which we work for, but that which we work from. 
 The friendship that is bought in the market is not worth half the 
 price w T e pay for it. The love that is sold in the shambles is a base 
 counterfeit of the true. We cannot do good for effect, nor love 
 piety for its rewards. It must be loved for itself. Virtue is its 
 own immortalizer. It must be the Christ within us who lifts us 
 out of our narrowness and sin into the peace and victory of a 
 divine life. God would have his servants feel that in the life to 
 which he calls them, there is a charm, a fascination and a glory to 
 • every willing mind, a present heaven. “ A righteous man is satis- 
 fied from himself,” said the wise man of old; and the Great Teacher 
 has reiterated the lesson in the records of his own experience. “It 
 is my meat and my drink to do my Father’s business.” 
 
 It is reward enough for all who toil for God, to find more to do 
 for his glory. W^hen we cease to calculate what shall be the pay 
 of obedience, when we cease to think of, or care for our own happi- 
 ness as the end of life, when we pass beyond the region of mere 
 duty and of stern conscience as our guide to it, and drawn by the 
 manifestation of excellence and of mercy, of sacrifice and of love, 
 God has given us in the reconciling and suffering Saviour, we give 
 up our hearts in frank and generous devotion, obeying, because we 
 love to obey, serving from the necessity of a sweet constraint, lov- 
 ing God because we cannot help it, and would not if we could, then 
 do we reach something of a true, victorious, Christian life. When 
 the heart goes into our service, uncalculating and ungrudging, when 
 we love and do good, and bless and lend, hoping for nothing again, 
 finding an inspiration of deep joy in the very deed, we rise to the 
 Christly standard of living. 
 
 We get our best rewards in kind — in the growth and fulness and 
 beauty of our own virtues and graces. Love, for its reward, has 
 the channels of its benefactions deepened. Purity becomes purer 
 and more heavenly. Faith gains a clearer, broader vision. Hope 
 
21 
 
 expands into assurance. Courage grows invincible. Gentleness 
 puts on the might of heroism. Charity becomes Christlike in its 
 breadth. 
 
 We talk of the crowns of paradise. They are not made of silver 
 and gold. We speak of the harps of heaven. They are not such 
 as answer to the touch of the fingers. The virtues of the ransomed 
 spirit will constitute its crown and glory. It is a moral splendor 
 that lights up the sky of the eternal world. It is the play of per- 
 fected virtues that makes the music of the heavenly spheres. It is 
 felt pleasure in goodness that constitutes the happiness of the 
 immortals. The essence of Heaven’s blessedness is no sitting on 
 golden thrones of authority or wearing coronets of rank, but it is 
 in being good, in giving love, in ceaseless benefactions. And so 
 too, for our life on earth, we reach its highest attainments when 
 casting out of our thoughts all low, mercenary bargaining for 
 .reward, all the sordidness of hire and wages, and calling to mind 
 God’s unconditional gift of heaven, and what is richer and costlier 
 than heaven, the free gift of his own beloved Son, to all who will 
 accept Him ; we also seek to imitate this broad charity and love of 
 God to us, by loving our fellow-men for their own sake, by practis- 
 ing all virtues because we love all virtues, by doing good out of the 
 constraint of our own goodness, by loving and serving God, not for 
 the sake of winning heaven nor of escaping hell, but because his 
 love and service are a rich and present reward. If our “faith is 
 the victory that overcomes the world,” and not the beaten foe that 
 flies before it; if we are to exert a controlling influence upon human 
 interests, and human destinies, we must acquire the power of loving 
 and using truth, the power to make right and justice and goodness 
 look sacred in the eyes of men, the power to make them rule over 
 the hearts of men, the power to glow and shed on all around us 
 that love which first bows loyally to the claims of God, and then 
 unselfishly cares for the claims of all his creatures. It is a power 
 which touches nothing material. It is not dependent on the grasp 
 of the intellect. It has no visible sceptre. It wields no visible 
 weapons. It dwells in the breast. It brings all the thoughts of 
 the intellect, all the purposes of the will, all the powers of the heart, 
 all the silver and gold of God’s bestowment, all advantages of posi- 
 tion, and baptizing them in Christ’s name, sends them forth into 
 all the channels where want and woe and sin are waiting for a 
 healing ministry. 
 
22 
 
 I am free and confident in coming to you, my Brethren of the 
 Brainerd Society, with my message; to you, in whom is the 
 strength of youth, in whom is yet the undimmed eye, and the 
 elastic tread, the sinewy vigor of body, the quickness of mind, and 
 the hopefulness of spirit with which God endows and enriches our 
 earlier days, and in His name, to lay upon you the command, 
 rise above worldliness, forsake sinful passion, let go all earthly 
 prizes, forego all selfish aims, strike for spiritual and eternal things, 
 live and work for your kind, for souls, for God. Turn away from 
 no channel, however humble. Let the divine ideal of life draw 
 you on. Let love of the Highest One, and of all good things, and 
 all good beings in Him fill your heart — let it touch your lips as a 
 live coal from off God’s altar ; let it impel you in every round of 
 duty ; let it give an up-lift to every secular pursuit ; let it breathe 
 in all your daily life. Whatever else may be doubtful to you, let 
 it not be doubtful that purity, and love, and unselfishness, and sacri- 
 fice for human good and work done for Christ, will be a present 
 reward, and that from the fulness of present blessing, you can pass 
 hopefully to meet in another world the results of all earthly labor. 
 Our work here, in its highest and most permanent success, is but 
 preparatory to that of eternity. We learn here the lessons and 
 receive the discipline for the great hereafter. The threads of our 
 moral history run on, through the darkness of the grave, out into 
 the world beyond, and nothing will make that future glorious for 
 us, but embracing now the light and love our heavenly Father sheds 
 on us, and giving ourselves up to Christ our Saviour and Master 
 to do unceasingly His work. 
 
IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd was born June 17, 1804, at Leyden, N. Y. When be 
 was about twenty-one years of age he made a profession of religion, and 
 abandoning the study of law, in which he was at that time engaged, 
 he entered the Andover Theological Seminary, and after completing a full 
 course of study was licensed to preach the gospel by the Third Presby- 
 tery of New York, in 1831. 
 
 His first pastoral charge was at Cincinnati, where he was for two years 
 settled over the Fourth Presbyterian Church. He was then for nearly 
 four years editor of the Cincinnati Journal. In the early part of 1837 he 
 was installed pastor of the “Old Pine Street Church ” Philadelphia, where 
 he remained till his death, which occurred August 22d, 1866, at Scranton, 
 Pa., while on a visit to his daughter. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd’s last sermon to his own people was preached July 8, 
 1866. The text was, “ Abide with us, for it is toward evening , and the day is 
 far spent Luke xxiv. 29. The sermon before the Brainerd Evangelical 
 Society, which was the last he ever preached, was delivered during the 
 exercises at the College Commencement, July 22d, 1866. The text was 
 “ Let no man despise thy youth” 1 Tim. iv. 12. 
 
 When Dr. Brainerd was invited to preach at the College, he at first 
 hesitated, not only on account of the feeble state of his health, but as he 
 said, from a reluctance he had always felt to meet the excitement of the 
 large crowds that usually gather upon anniversary occasions. But all the 
 circumstances of the present case appealed so strongly to hi3 feelings, 
 that he finally consented. The neighborhood of the college was one of 
 the missionary stations of his kinsman; the sermon was to be delivered in 
 the Brainerd Church; and the College Society, adopting the name of the 
 sainted missionary, had been instrumental in largely promoting the spirit 
 of missions among the students. It is an interesting fact that a pamphlet 
 published at Easton so early as 1835 (nine years after the college was 
 chartered) and which sets forth the views of its founders, makes the mis- 
 sionary work a prominent ground of appeal, even to the general public, in 
 behalf of the Institution. The caption of the “Ninth Essay” is, “This 
 
24 
 
 plan (of the college) appears profitable, necessary, and adapted to the prepara- 
 tion of Christian ministers, and especially Missionaries.” The writer 
 urges withearnestness this proposition; “that the missionary enterprise 
 is the main business of the Church is a doctrine now distinctly understood. 
 For this is she constituted an Education Society.” It may be added in 
 this connection that Lafayette College has furnished to the Christian 
 ministry a very large proportion of its graduates, and the influence of the 
 Brainerd Society is seen in the number of deyoted men who have conse- 
 crated themselves to the work of Foreign Missions. One of them was a 
 native Hindoo, Ishwari Das, who returned to India and recently received 
 two prizes from the government for essays relating to some reforms 
 proposed by the authorities. Those two missionaries, alike beloved and 
 honored, Messrs. Janvier and Loewenthall, whose cruel deaths are so well 
 remembered by the church, were students at Lafayette. Mr. Loewenthall, 
 who was the son of a Jewish Rabbi in Poland, had for his room-mate 
 while at Lafayette, the Rev. Victor Herschell, one of five sons of a Jewish 
 Rabbi, in Germany, all of whom became ministers of the gospel. It is a 
 further coincidence in the history of these two Israelites, that about the 
 same time the former was murdered in India, the latter also sealed his 
 testimony to the Faith in blood — having perished in the massacre at 
 Jamaica, where he was the pastor of a church gathered largely by his 
 missionary labors. “ The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” 
 
 When Dr. Brainerd arrived in Easton, the day before the anniversary 
 exercises, he took the greatest pleasure in hearing of the work of the 
 Society, and in visiting the places which tradition has connected with 
 the labors of Brainerd. Associated with him in the missionary work 
 of this neighborhood were other beloved men, of whom the Doctor loved to 
 talk. The main station of Count Zinzendorf was but twelve miles distant, 
 and from the College cupola can be seen the little village of Nazareth, 
 where Whitefield laid the foundations of an orphan asylum — afterwards 
 completed by the Moravians for their theological seminary — but still 
 known as the “ Whitefield House.” During the delivery of his sermon the 
 Doctor more than once, upon the inspiration of the moment, left his manu- 
 script to speak of these devoted and useful men, especially of David 
 Brainerd, who, he said, (as illustrating his text), “ was but twenty-eight 
 years of age when he preached at the Forks of the Delaware in Indian 
 wigwams, and whose whole life’s work was done at thirty ! 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say, that the church was crowded by an eager 
 and attentive audience, and that Dr. Brainerd’s sermon was listened to 
 with delight and profit ; but none thought that the occasion would ever 
 after be recalled by them with a yet deeper interest, from its being the last 
 message this honored servant of Christ would deliver from the pulpit. 
 
 The death of Dr. Brainerd called forth many notices of his life and 
 
25 
 
 character, which were published in the various religious journals, not only- 
 in this country, but also in England. Among the most gratifying were the 
 tributes paid to his worth by brethren in the other denominations. The 
 editor of the Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia, in an extended notice of Dr. 
 Brainerd, published February 1st, 1867, says: “There are few people in 
 this city to whom he was not known, and by all was he admired and 
 esteemed, as a gifted and eloquent preacher, a laborious and self-denying 
 pastor, a sincere and steadfast friend, a true and devoted patriot, a genial, 
 kind-hearted, public-spirited, Christian gentleman. Than he, the Presby- 
 terian Church never had a warmer or more efficient friend, and yet his 
 denominational attachment happily never dwarfed him into a bigot, nor 
 circumscribed his sympathies within the domain of a selfish and little- 
 minded sectarianism. Christians of all denominations loved him, for he 
 fraternized with all, loving his own Church none the less. Of the great 
 Union prayer-meetings, held at Jayne’s Hall and other localities of blessed 
 memory, his was long an accredited master-mind. Often, when addressing 
 these popular Christian assemblies, as he alone could address them, did his 
 face shine, like that of Moses after his descent from the mount, with the 
 reflected glory of God, and yet ‘ he himself wist not that it shone,’ for he 
 was as humble as he was great, and only great because he was humble. 
 We have never known a wiser man — one whose speech was habitually so 
 characterized by the soundest judgment, safest counsel, and sweetest temper. 
 Both in his method of thought and expression he was singularly original, 
 evolving from his well-stored mind new and striking ideas, when others 
 thought they had exhausted the subject. His originality, too, was never 
 feigned; but always natural as the blowing of the wind, or the sports of a 
 little child. For more than twenty years was it our privilege to share the 
 Doctor’s personal intimacy, and never did we prize human friendship more, 
 or more deeply mourn its severance by the hand of death.” 
 
 Although Dr. Brainerd was for so short a time the pastor of the Fourth 
 Church, Cincinnati, the following extract from an article in the Cincinnati 
 Herald will show how precious his memory is to those who knew him there 
 in his early life : 
 
 “ Cincinnati’s interest in this noble Christian life finds its origin in these 
 same pastoral qualifications which, in their incipiency bore fair fruits in 
 the old Fourth Church, which still stands on the hill-side in the suburb of 
 Fulton. This church was feeble and poor — the congregation a mere hand- 
 ful — and Dr. Brainerd was with them but two years. Yet there are to-day, 
 on the banks of the Ohio and elsewhere, scores of men and women who are 
 among the most faithful workers in the Master’s vineyard, who date their in- 
 spiration to the Fourth Church of Cincinnati and its faithful pastor. He never 
 forgot them. When he visited Cincinnati, the churches of the city rarely 
 knew of his presence, but he called upon each member of tho old families 
 
26 
 
 within reach, and never omitted to stand upon the steps of his ‘first church/ 
 and when access was possible, entered his old pulpit for a few moments, 
 the better to recall the past. This love for Cincinnati did not wane'in 
 his latest years. Over the vicissitudes of Christ’s kingdom there his tears 
 often fell, for through the Herald , and otherwise, he kept himself in close 
 sympathy with its life. Cincinnati friends were welcomed to his fireside, 
 and if of the Fourth Church, he would sometimes get out a little old note- 
 book belonging to the early time, for the purpose of talking over and in- 
 quiring after the people of long ago. Many of these people upon whom he 
 bestowed remembrance were, when he knew them, laborers in the rolling 
 mills and ship-yards of Fulton ; poor women who toiled by the day to sup- 
 port their families, or young boys who worked for their scanty bread.” 
 
 The same writer declares that this Christ-like trait of preaching the 
 Gospel to the poor was characteristic of Dr. Brainerd through all his min- 
 istry, and was beautifully revealed among the mines at Scranton where 
 he spent the last few weeks of his life. He says, “ During his month at 
 Scranton his most enjoyed recreation was to go at noon-time and sit with 
 the begrimed and ignorant miners when they came out of the pits to eat 
 their lunch. Going among them, he would inquire, in his pleasant way, 
 whether there was not room on their plank for another man to sit. They 
 would crowd together and make room for him — and sitting among them 
 he would talk, while they ate, of their homes across the ocean, of their 
 families, their personal habits — and doubtless of the better country; they, 
 the while, not knowing who he was. Leaving them when the signal for 
 return to work was sounded, they would call after him familiarly, express- 
 ing in their rude speech the honest wish that he would come again.” 
 
 It was, of course, in Philadelphia that Dr. Brainerd was best known, and 
 therefore most loved and honored. The following description is from the 
 pen of one who knew him intimately for many years, the Eev. Daniel 
 March, D.D., pastor of the Clinton Street Church, Philadelphia. It was 
 read, by request, before the congregation of the Old Pine Street Church, 
 and afterwards published in the American Presbyterian . 
 
 “ I shall always remember Dr. Brainerd as a man of genial spirits, pleasant 
 address, and hopeful temperament. I met him in all places; quite as 
 often in the street as anywhere else — he generally on horseback, and I as 
 generally on foot. He never would let himself pass without riding up to 
 the curb-stone and dropping a good-humored word, which made the walk 
 seem pleasanter to me for several squares after he was out of sight. 
 
 I never knew him to speak in a public meeting, large or small, religious 
 or secular, without diffusing a glow of kindly feeling through the audience, 
 and disposing every heart to respond to the sentiments and sympathies of 
 our common humanity. The great burdens of life were as heavy on him 
 
27 
 
 as on the rest of us, hut he had the happy faculty of hearing them him- 
 self, and helping others to bear them, with so much geniality, buoyancy 
 and hopefulness, as to take away half their weight. He supported his 
 own burden of care and responsibility with a good-humored and elastic 
 spirit, knowing that the strain upon the carriage, and the friction on the 
 wheels are less when the load rests upon springs. 
 
 In our Ministers’ Meeting, in our consultations upon the common good 
 of all our churches, in our efforts to raise money, or to relieve difficulties, 
 or to start new enterprises, we always looked to him for an apt remark, or 
 a telling illustration, or a “ little story,” that would make the task before 
 us seem lighter, and bring its accomplishment within the range of our 
 hopes. His playfulness always had a serious and practical turn. If he 
 cast the pleasant light of humor upon our most thoughtful deliberations, it 
 was only to scatter the shades of doubt and fear, and make the path of duty 
 plain. And it was a very great matter for us all to have a man among us 
 of large experience, of earnest purpose, and of practical judgment, who 
 could help us over the hard places with a touch of humor, and scatter the 
 clouds of despondency by a cheerful glance at better things to come. 
 
 Hr. Brainerd excelled greatly in his ready adaptation to times and cir- 
 cumstances. He had the happy art of putting things in their right place, 
 giving to every occasion its full and fit expression. Belonging to a profes- 
 sion which, by instinct, usage and education, clings to stately ceremonies 
 and established forms, he could step out of the old track with the grace of 
 propriety and the ease of unconscious adaptation. He could preach the 
 Gospel with tenderness and solemnity, in the church, in a market-house, 
 and in the open air. He could command the attention of citizens and 
 soldiers, in saloons and hospitals, in public streets and crowded squares, in 
 camp and on shipboard. He could preside with equal propriety over a 
 General Assembly, a Presbytery, or a prayer-meeting. He could make 
 himself heard and respected by the rich in their parlors and counting- 
 houses, and by the poor in their cheerless homes and lowly occupations. 
 In times of trouble and danger, when the cloud of national calamity hung 
 thick and dark over us all, he was a safe man to soothe the general alarm, 
 a brave man to meet the coming peril, a tender-hearted man to utter the 
 public sorrow. In times of joy and triumph, none rose with a more ex- 
 ultant and chifdlike joy upon the waves of public gratulation, none could 
 speak the common gladness, better than he. He had a quick sensibility 
 to catch the spirit of any occasion, and a ready tact to meet its demands. 
 Men who scoffed at religion, and made light of all sacred things, were not 
 likely to go unrebuked from his presence. The cultivated skeptic, and the 
 rude blasphemer found that in assailing him they had something more vital 
 and human than a walking book or an official gown to contend with. He 
 had a peculiar skill in setting the troubled and doubting in a position to 
 
see the light which their fears had hidden from their eyes. In his quick 
 and unceremonial adaptation to all times and persons and circumstances, 
 he was like the Divine Preacher, who proclaimed the word of life in the 
 synagogue and by the seaside ; in the streets, on the mountains, and in de- 
 sert places ; in private homes, in the marts of business, and by the wayside; 
 and always speaking with equal earnestness and propriety, whether con- 
 versing with a single listener or addressing assembled thousands. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd judged wisely what he could do, and he did it well. He 
 chose the place and mode of action in which his powers could work most 
 easily, and he did the task the better and with the less strain and friction, 
 because he had discretion and self-command enough to give his strength to 
 that which he could do best. Rejoicing that others possessed endowments 
 and opportunities not given to him, he improved his own proper gift so 
 well as to take a front rank with all who live to instruct and improve man- 
 kind. The world loses much talent and effort for good, just because many 
 fail to find the secret of their greatest strength, or, having found it, they 
 are not content to do that which they can do best. And hence we have 
 many unmanly complaints from those, who excuse themselves for failure, 
 by saying that, in some other position or profession, they could easily have 
 become greater and better men. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd was himself greater than his best performance. However 
 well he may have acquitted himself on any occasion, he left the impression 
 that he had more forces in reserve than he had brought into the field of 
 action. No one act or service of his seemed to have exhausted his capacity 
 to do more and better. This impression was undoubtedly due to the force 
 of character by which he controlled the convictions and stimulated the 
 expectations of others, whenever they came under the influence of his clear 
 mind and commanding will. No written composition, no reported speech 
 of his, no partial estimates of friends even, could have told a stranger how 
 much of a man he was in his living presence, and in his power to quicken 
 and control other minds. He was not unmanned or paralyzed by great 
 responsibilities, or unexpected circumstances, or by the overpowering in- 
 fluence of strong character and great reputation in others. He rose to the 
 demand of the occasion, and he met it easily, by looking through the glare 
 and parade and mystery directly to the simple and practical elements of 
 any question or duty. He could separate the practical and sure from the 
 mystical and uncertain, and he would never allow the dreams and subtle- 
 ties of idle speculation to impair the force of settled opinions and daily 
 duties. In climbing up the steep of the heavenly hill, he chose to keep the 
 tried and safe path, and he was not embarrassed or hindered in his course, 
 because, when he looked over the precipice, he could not see the bottom 
 of the abyss, or, when he looked up he could not measure the whole length 
 of the path by which he was journeying. And he showed his peculiar 
 
29 
 
 manliness and force of character, by imparting to others the feeling of 
 safety and self-possession which steadied his own mind. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd dwelt upon the plain and practical elements of truth. He 
 believed that the Gospel is its own best witness, and that the preacher 
 should show his fitness for his work by presenting truth in such a form as 
 to be understood and appreciated by all candid and attentive listeners. He 
 believed that the most essential truths are most easily understood, and that 
 the clear and distinctive doctrines of the Gospel are so immeasurably im- 
 portant that the minister of Christ can have little time for the embellish- 
 ments of fancy, or the mists of speculation. He made people understand 
 that he had opinions and principles, and good reasons for holding them, 
 and that when he spoke, it was not simply to supply a pleasant entertain- 
 ment for the hour, but to show that all have something infinitely important 
 both to believe and to do. He put forth his appeals and instructions in 
 such clear, practical, every-day forms, that common minds grasped the full 
 scope of his meaning, and the careless and the cavilling were made to feel 
 that in opposing or neglecting the claims of religion, they must slight the 
 lessons of their own experience and the deepest wants of their own nature. 
 He clothed the great spiritual truths of divine revelation in such a human 
 and homelike dress, that they could be received and recognized in the busy 
 street as well as in the sanctuary. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd had full faith in the capacity of the Gospel to supply the 
 chief elements of progress, in all states of human society, and to answer all 
 forms of unbelief. He was not afraid that any real discoveries in science 
 would impair the authority of divine revelation. If the philosophers do 
 not agree with Moses, it will be found in the end to be only the worse for 
 the philosophers, not to the discredit of Moses. And he was not very 
 much troubled, if ingenious and sceptical men could devise objections, 
 which, for a time, seemed hard to answer. Every new phase of unbelief 
 will have its day, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And Dr. 
 Brainerd kept himself up abreast of all the progress of the age, by keeping 
 himself in sympathy with that revealed truth, which is the chief element 
 of progress in all ages. He fully believed in the power of Christianity to 
 sustain itself against the most severe and subtle scepticism, and to vindi- 
 cate its divine origin, both by reasoning and by experiment, before all the 
 world. 
 
 Dr. Brainerd could advance with the real advance of the age, and he 
 could adapt himself easily to the changing circumstances of society and the 
 world. He kept even pace with the time, and refused to grow old, in feel- 
 ing and spirit, while the years of toil and suffering were growing heavy 
 upon his shoulders. He never fell into the habit of thinking that truth 
 and virtue were fast leaving the earth, that all changes were for the worse, 
 and that things were a great deal better in the world when he was young. 
 
30 
 
 He always liked to class himself among the young men, and he was sure to 
 show so much buoyancy, hopefulness and adaptation, as to make the young 
 men feel at home in his company. 
 
 He respected the wisdom, the virtue and precedents of the past, and yet 
 he felt called upon to use them all, in attaining a sounder wisdom and 
 loftier virtue. 
 
 When the form or issue of great questions of principle or duty changed, 
 he was quick to meet the new demand. He was not the man to spend his 
 strength in fighting over an old battle, when there was no longer any de- 
 mand for the conflict. 
 
 Hr. Brainerd was truly and conscientiously denominational in his prin- 
 ciples and preferences, and yet he was liberal and conciliatory towards all. 
 We had no truer man to rely upon, when the order, the doctrine, the good 
 name and the associated interests of our own churches were to be main- 
 tained ; and when the fit occasion came to forget all denominational differ- 
 ences, and unite in common efforts and supplications for the growth and 
 harmony of all Churches alike, none could cause all hearts to flow forth in 
 common sympathies and efforts more happily than he. No minister in the 
 city had a larger personal acquaintance with ministers and laymen outside 
 of his own denomination, and none would have received a more ready wel- 
 come to other pulpits, no one would have been more sure to speak kindly 
 and acceptable words, whatever sect or class of Christians he might ad- 
 dress. And yet he was wise and hearty in giving the great strength of his 
 life and labor to the upbuilding of his own denomination. It is for the 
 interest of the one universal Church, that every branch shall be united and 
 strong, and any minister’s life will be worth most to the cause of Christ, 
 when he works most freely and earnestly in the way of his own choice, and 
 with such forms and instrumentalities as he can use best. Christianity is 
 scandalized in the eyes of the world, not by the existence of different de- 
 nominations, but by the unchristian mode in which they treat each other. 
 
 Hr. Brainerd labored cheerfully and uncomplainingly for a whole genera- 
 tion in his chosen profession, and found in the work of the ministry his 
 exceeding great reward. He expressed no regret that he had abandoned 
 other pursuits, or that he saw others making themselves rich, while he, 
 with greater effort, ability and sacrifice, must live and die poor. He felt 
 rich in his own heart and life, if he could lead others to lay up for them- 
 selves imperishable treasures in heaven. In thirty years’ time, he passed 
 through many vicissitudes of trial, difficulty and discouragement, as well as 
 of toil, hope and success; but in them all, he bore himself honorably and 
 bravely, and in the darkest days, he had grace given him for his own neces- 
 sities, and a reserve of faith and cheerfulness with which to strengthen his 
 brethren. He bore up under great bodily infirmities, and worked on hope- 
 fully and successfully, while daily expecting the end, anxious only to be 
 
31 
 
 found at his post when the Master came. His unsteady hand and faltering 
 step indicated no abatement of high purpose and firm resolution to carry his 
 burden till the Master bid him lay it down. And so he went on his way, 
 bearing his own sorrows lightly, that he might comfort others in their afflic- 
 tion, living upon a bare competence that he might enrich others with the 
 resources of his gifted mind and chastened heart, forgetting his own dis- 
 couragements that he might cheer others in their despondency, hoping all 
 things, believing all things, enduring all things, if by any means he might 
 save some/ 7 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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