thus brought forth and brought up, did no discredit to his training. His youth, unstained by follies, gave no occasion for reproach in after years. It is pleasing to consider a person, who, from the cradle to the grave, lived a long life without spot or blame, other than what arose from the mistakes of those around him, or those errors of his own which serve to associate him with weak humanity, but not with its vices or its crimes. It is true, that, at certain times, amid the tempests of passion and prejudice, much mire and dirt was cast upon his character, but none of it would adhere. It all fell off again, and left his reputation unsullied as ever.

He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the early age of thirteen. His father who had never had many clients before, from that time' had them in abundance. The son, who had, in consequence, a very liberal maintenance, and who also had a watchful eye to discern the ways of divine providence, was thereby led to say :-"God kept me at the university!"

At this ancient seminary, the nursing mother of so many eminent Puritan ministers, he spent fifteen studious years, till he became learned in all the wisdom of that age of erudite scholars and deep divines. He was prevented from ob

taining a fellowship in his college, only by reason of embarrassments growing out of the construction of expensive buildings for its use.

He was then chosen a fellow of Emmanuel College, after a severe examination, which he triumphantly sustained. He was examined with special rigor in the Hebrew language. He was tested more particularly upon the latter part of the third chapter of Isaiah, which consists of an inventory of the fineries of the haughty daugh ters of Zion, such as might well astonish a modern Parisian milliner. This passage, which contains more unusual and perplexing terms than any other in the Old Testament, occasioned no trouble to our ardent scholar, who was able to converse in that tongue. Hebrew literature was much cultivated among the Puritan divines, who gave especial attention to those three languages in which it was stated on the cross, that Jesus of Nazareth was King of the Jews. And yet the famed Erasmus, though reputed in his day to be "the most Greek among the Grecians, and the most Latin among the Latins," and though so used to discourse in the latter language as to forget his mother tongue, gave up the attempt to acquire the Hebrew in utter discouragement. This study, in which Luther so much delighted, found many expert proficients

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among the spiritual fathers of New England. Nearly all the first ministers of Massachusetts cultivated it and some very singular anecdotes are preserved to illustrate their familiarity with that language, which, as John Eliot said, "it pleased our Lord Jesus Christ to make use of when he spake from heaven unto Paul." Some of the laymen bestowed great attention upon it. Thus Governor Bradford, who had thoroughly mastered some four or five other languages, studied the Hebrew most of all; "because," as he elegantly said, "he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty!"

In the same distinguished College where he gained his fellowship, Mr. Cotton afterwards became Head Lecturer; then Dean, an officer charged to attend to the deportment and discipline of the students; and Catechist, an employment of chief note in the old conventual schools. He was also Tutor to numerous scholars, by whom he was held in the highest estimation as a teacher.

While occupied thus usefully, he was much honored and admired for the strength and readiness of his mind, and for the vast extent of his reading. The sermons, which he occasionally preached in the University, were pompous ha

rangues, stuffed with a huge mass of learning and soaring conceits, according to the taste of the "vain wits" of that seat of science. These ostentatious displays made him very popular with that class of men, who delighted in such parades of learned lore, as much as they distasted the plain preaching of the humbling doctrines of the cross. Cotton was then one of their own sort, being himself of that lamentably numerous class who undertake to preach the gospel of Christ without having personally felt its life and power in the heart.

He first distinguished himself by a funeral discourse for Dr. Some, Master of Peter House, in which he flourished away with so much artificial originality, affected eloquence and "oratorious beauty," that he came to be regarded as the Xenophon of the University, and the special favorite of the muses. Some time after, he delivered a University sermon in St. Mary's Church, which gained the high applause of the academical pedants, who looked only for a grand exhibition of what the preacher could do to show off himself, rather than for a presentation of "Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,

Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."

But the Lord had other employment for this "chosen vessel." He who had dwelt so long among those halls of science as one of her most assiduous devotees, began at last to feel the higher claims of religion.

In those days there was at Cambridge an eminent and godly divine, Rev. William Perkins, whose name was long precious among our fathers, one of whom made this epigram upon him, in allusion to a certain natural defect;

"Though nature thee of thy right hand bereft,

Right well thou writest with thy hand that's left."

This good and able man was sound in the faith, and deep in the experience of the great doctrines of the gospel. His ministrations, so searching to the heart and so rousing to the conscience, were blessed to the conversion of many who became some of the brightest lights of their age. Among others, Mr. Cotton was much wrought upon by his faithful exhibition of the truth. But the young and aspiring scholar, fearing to become engaged in the pursuit of personal religion, lest it should hinder him in the studies he was ambitiously following, suppressed, so far as he could, the motions and stirrings of his mind. In the pride of intellect, and the lust