It seems plain, from comparison of different lives, that in the forms of religion which make everything depend upon the individual person's own consciousness of the state of his heart and feelings, instead of supporting this by any outward tokens for faith to rest upon, the more humble and scrupulous spirits often undergo fearful misery before they can attain to such security of their own faith as they believe essential.

Indeed, this state of wretchedness is almost deemed a necessary stage in the Christian life, like the Slough of Despond in the Pilgrim's Progress; and with such a temperament as David Brainerd's, the horrors of the struggle for hope were dreadful and lasted for months, before an almost physical perception of light, glory, and grace shone out upon him, although, even to the end of his life, hope and fear, spiritual joy and depression alternated, no doubt, greatly in consequence of his constant ill-health.
In 1739, in his twenty-first year, he became a student at Yale, and, between hard work and his mental self-reproach for the worldly ambition of distinction, his health broke down, haemorrhage from the lungs set in, and he was sent home, it was supposed, only to die.

He was then in a very happy frame of mind, and was almost sorry to find himself well enough to return to what he felt to be a scene of temptation.

That same year, his head was entirely turned by the excitement of George Whitfield's preaching; he was carried away by religious enthusiasm, and was in a state of indiscreet zeal, of which his better judgment afterwards repented, so that he destroyed all the portion of his journal that related to that year.

Indeed, his vehemence cost him dear, for, in the heat of a discussion, he had the misfortune to say, "Mr.Whittlesey, he has no more grace than this chair I am leaning upon." Mr.Whittlesey was one of the college tutors, and a gossiping freshman who overheard the words thought proper to report this to a meddling woman, who immediately walked off to the Rector of the college with the awful intelligence that young Brainerd said that Mr.Whittlesey had no more grace than a chair! The Rector had not the sense to silence the silly slander; he sent for the freshman, took his evidence, and that of the young men with whom Brainerd had been conversing, and then required him to make public confession and amends to Mr.Whittlesey before the whole assembled college,--a humiliation never previously required, except in cases of gross moral misconduct.