t the old-fashioned hereditary
Presbyterianism, which had had time to slacken in the hundred years since
the foundation of the colony, was dismayed at the new and vivid life
imported by Whitfield from the Wesleyan revival in the English Church. It
was what always happens. A mixture of genuine sober-minded dread of
extravagance, or new doctrine, and a sluggish distaste to the more
searching religion, combine to lead to a spirit of persecution. This was
the true reason that the lad's youthful rashness of speech was treated as
so grave an offence. Brainerd's spirit was up. Probably he saw no cause
to alter his opinion as to Mr. Whittlesey's amount of grace, and he
stoutly refused to retract his words, whereupon he was found guilty of
insubordination, and actually expelled from Yale. A council of ministers
who assembled at Hartford petitioned for his restoration, but were
refused, the authorities deeming themselves well rid of a dangerous
fanatic.

Still, as a youth of blameless life and ardent piety, he was encouraged
by his friends to continue his preparation for the ministry, and he
persisted in reading hard, and going out between whiles to meditate in
the depths of the glorious woods. It is curious that while his homely
and rigid system precluded any conscious admiration of the beauties of
nature, it is always evident from his journal that the lightenings of
hope and joy which relieved his too frequent depression and melancholy,
were connected with the scenery and the glories of day and night. Sunrise
and the aurora borealis seem to have filled him with spiritual bliss, and
he never was so happy as when deep in the woods, out of the sight of men;
but his morbid, sensitive, excitable nature never seems to have been
understood by himself or by others.

Just as John Eliot's missionary zeal was the outcome of the earnestness
that carried the Puritans to New England, so the fresh infusion of
religious life, brought by Whitfield, produced an ardent desire on the
part of David Brainerd to devote himself to the remainder of the Indians;
and in the year 1742, at twenty-five years old, he was examined by an
assembly of ministers at Danbury, and licensed to preach the Gospel, when
he began at once with a little settlement of Indians at Kent, with such a
sinking of heart at his own unworthiness that he says he seemed to
himself worse than any devil, and almost expected to have been stoned
rather than listened to. Indeed,