rs, but that
he remained another twelve-month at Princeton for the sake of acquiring
Hebrew. On his return home he undertook the instruction of his younger
brothers and sisters, while pursuing his own studies. Still another
biographer asserts that he began immediately to read law, but Rives
gives some evidence that he devoted himself to theology. This and his
giving himself to Hebrew for a year point to the ministry as his chosen
profession. But if we rightly interpret his own words, he had little
strength or spirit for a pursuit of any sort. His first "struggle of
life" was apparently with ill-health, and the career he looked forward
to was a speedy journey to another world. In a letter to a friend
(November, 1772) he writes: "I am too dull and infirm now to look out
for extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for
many months have intimated to me not to expect a long or healthy life;
though it may be better with me after some time; but I hardly dare
expect it, and therefore have little spirit or elasticity to set about
anything that is difficult in acquiring, and useless in possessing after
one has exchanged time for eternity." In the same letter he assures his
friend that he approves of his choice of history and morals as the
subjects of his winter studies; but, he adds, "I doubt not but you
design to season them with a little divinity now and then, which, like
the philosopher's stone in the hands of a good man, will turn them and
every lawful acquirement into the nature of itself, and make them more
precious than fine gold."

The bent of his mind at this time seems to have been decidedly
religious. He was a diligent student of the Bible, and, Mr. Rives says,
"he explored the whole history and evidences of Christianity on every
side, through clouds of witnesses and champions for and against, from
the fathers and schoolmen down to the infidel philosophers of the
eighteenth century." So wide a range of theological study is remarkable
in a youth of only two or three and twenty years of age; but,
remembering that he was at this time living at home, it is even more
remarkable that in the house of an ordinary planter in Virginia a
hundred and twenty years ago could be found a library so rich in
theology as to admit of study so exhaustive. But in Virginia history
nothing is impossible.

His studies on this subject, however, whether wide or limited, bore good
fruit. Religious intolerance was at that ti