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ARTICLE V.-PRESIDENT WOOLSEY'S ADDRESS AT THE FUNERAL OF PRESIDENT DAY, COMMEMORATIVE OF HIS LIFE AND SERVICES.

I SUPPOSE that if the nearly 2500 graduates of Yale College who were educated here under President Day were asked who was the best man they knew, they would, with a very general agreement, assign him that high place. I can scarcely doubt that his family friends and other acquaintance would speak the same word. I certainly share in the opinion. And the character ascribed to him by so many would be not that of a blameless man merely, but of a man perfect and upright according to the standard of Scripture-a perfect man in Christ Jesus. This maturity of Christian virtue in him had a peculiarly peaceful cast. All was tranquil in his soul, and to the inward state the peace of his outer life corresponded. It was, therefore, in keeping, as peace beautified his life, that the evening of his long day should be calm repose, and his last end like the sinking of a cloudless sun.

I feel it to be a great honor to me, and it is an equal pleasure, to be permitted to pay my tribute of love and duty to such a man. It is, in some respects, also an easy task. Α man who stands up to utter words in honor of the dead ought, as I think, to speak the simple truth, to conceal no glaring fault, to be kind and charitable indeed, yet at the same time to be just. Otherwise he must feel that the verdict of his own conscience and of men is giving him the lie; and what is false eulogy worth when God's bar will set it all aside? It is difficult, therefore, sometimes, when you testify to the excellencies of good men, to know what to speak forth and what smaller blemishes to leave out of your estimate of their characters. But here there is no such difficulty. I have nothing to conceal. And this is ever recurring to my mind, that if the wise and good man, whom I am attempting to honor, knew that such a duty had fallen to me, and were allowed from the spiritual world to whisper his suggestions, although

he might justly desire to be held in a good light before his surviving friends, yet he would wish more than all that only words of truth should be spoken in honor of his memory. I' am thankful that I can speak thus, and yet pay him the unfeigned, unalloyed tribute of my highest reverence.

I ask your attention while I proceed to give some account of President Day's life, both in its earliest developments and in its later periods, then of his work in the world, and lastly, of his character.

A person who examines the map of the State of Connecticut, will notice a settlement in the northeast part of the town of Washington (as it is now called), in Litchfield county, which bears the name of New Preston, and at present contains two Congregational churches. In 1752, the legislature of the colony, departing from the received practice of confining parish limits within the boundaries of towns, formed a new parish out of portions of Kent, New Milford, and Washington. This step was met at first by complaints on the part of settlers in Kent, East Greenwich (now called Warren, and then a part of Kent), and New Milford, on the ground of enfeebling the adjoining churches. But there was good reason for the measure, as any one must admit, who has traveled over those formidable hills, which are penetrated by the valleys of the two Ashpetucks, and perceives that the settlers in New Preston would need to spend almost half the day of rest on the road to and from the house of God.

In 1757, this ecclesiastical society, lying near the corner of four towns, called a minister-Mr. Noah Wadhams-and, not long after his dismissal in 1768, invited Mr. Jeremiah Day to the vacant pulpit. Mr. Day, a native of Colchester, son of a farmer from Hampshire county, Mass., who was one of the first settlers of the town, was a graduate of Yale College of the year 1756. Between this year and 1763, he taught school at Sharon, where his father is said to have removed; then, although not a professor of religion, read divinity with Dr. Bellamy at Bethlehem, and after some time, having doubts of his fitness to preach, returned to the employment of a school teacher. In 1763, his brother having bequeathed to him at his death a tract of land on Sharon mountain, or Ells

worth, as it is now called, he went there to take possession, and to occupy himself with the labors of the farmer, to which he had had an apprenticeship in his boyhood before going to college. He represented the town in the General Assembly of the colony in 1766 and 1767. Here he married, and here his wife, a Miss Mills of Kent, died in 1767. Here, too, Divine grace affected his heart, and he resolved to devote himself to the preaching of the Gospel. He studied with the Rev. Cotton Mather Smith of Sharon, father of the late John Cotton Smith, Governor of Connecticut; was licensed to preach by the Litchfield Association in 1767, and was ordained as pastor of the church in New Preston in 1770. He was a man of note among his brethren, an able, successful minister. He lived until 1806, preaching to the people which first called him to the end of his ministerial life. Once, in 1801, he was moderator of the General Association, twice he preached the annual discourse before that body, and we find him in 1793 and 1794 engaged in missionary tours under the auspices of the Association in the more destitute parts of New York and Vermont.* By his third wife, who was the widow of the Rev. Sylvanus Osborn of Warren, and whom he married in 1772, he had four children, that grew up-Jeremiah; Thomas, long Secretary of the State of Connecticut, and author of the numerous and valuable volumes in which the cases decided by the Supreme Court of the State are reported; Noble, first a merchant in New Preston, then, towards the close of his life, a resident in Ohio; and finally, Mills, who died in 1812, while a tutor in Yale College.

Jeremiah Day, the oldest of these children, was born August 3, 1773, on the western slope of the bleak hill of New Preston, near where the present stone church is situated. Here, in the quiet and simplicity of a country parish, afar from the principal roads and settlements, his early years were spent, and as he grew up and became able to labor, his father gave the garden into his hands, and hoped that he would devote himself to the farmer's employment. His brother Thomas remembered the pleasant way he had of getting work

* See a memoir of him in Conn. Evang. Mag., vol. vii., 212-216, for December, 1806.

upon the garden out of the younger boys. After rain he would. say-"Boys, this is a good time to work in the garden; the weeds will come up easy now." In a dry season he would say" Boys, this is a good time to work in the garden; the weeds will die quick now." He always loved a garden from that time onward, and has been in the habit of taking part of his exercise in this way. And, perhaps, the anecdote I have mentioned will identify child and man in the minds of those who know what a fund of pleasantry lay hid within his most serious and reserved character, as well as in the minds of that larger number who know that he always sought to win, and never to drive, those of whom he had the control, to do what was right.

In the autumn of the year 1785, Mr. David Hale, a brother of the well-known Nathan Hale, who was hanged as a spy by the British in 1776, came into the family to study divinity, and paid for his board by instructing the children. Under him our friend began to fit for Yale College, at which Mr. Hale had just been graduated. This instructor seems to have had a happy influence in the house, not only as a teacher but as a religious friend. It was his practice, after the services on Sunday, to call the family together and explain to them some portion of Scripture; and the impressions which he made were long afterwards remembered. After his departure from New Preston, our friend was sent to Waterbury to continue his education for college under Mr. Joseph Badger and Mr. John Kingsbury. He entered college in 1789.

I have not fallen upon many particulars of his college life. There is no reason to doubt that the peculiarly lovely character, the dutiful, quiet, gentle traits which are testified by very aged persons as having shone in him before, accompanied him to New Haven, and as a scholar he was excellent. But it became necessary for him, on account of his health, to leave college in 1791, and he was not able to return until 1793. During a part of the interval he was employed in teaching school in Judea, or the eastern part of Washington, and, perhaps, also in Kent. He seems, too, to have spent some time at Blanford, in Massachusetts, with Mr. Badger, then minister there, who had married a relative of his mother.

It was in the winter of 1791, during this interval in his college life, that he made a profession of religion. The outward change was not marked, for his life was blameless, his temper mild, and his deportment serious before. And, as was natural for him, he seems to have said very little of his inward feelings to those who were about him. His impressions were excited by reading "Doddridge's Rise and Progress." He joined the church at home just after he commenced keeping a school in Washington.

Returning to college in 1793, and thus falling back two years, he remained there until his graduation in 1795. In the spring of that year President Stiles died, and Dr. Dwight, being chosen to succeed him soon after, presided at the commencement, when young Day received his degree. Dr. Dwight had left a large and flourishing academy at Greenfield. It was no slight testimony to the confidence which the young collegian had inspired, that he was selected to succeed Dr. Dwight in this school. Here he remained nearly a year, and, while here, received the appointment of a tutor in Williams College, which was then in its infancy, having been founded but three years before, and placed under the direction of President Fitch, a former graduate of our institution. Mr. Day consulted Dr. Dwight in regard to accepting the place, and by his advice was led to consent; but in the autumn, his health becoming feeble and his spirits depressed, he wished to revoke his acceptance. He was, however, persuaded to go up to the college and fill the office until another person could be found to take the place, and then, on the improvement of his health, he remained there two years. At the end of this period, he was invited to the same office in his alma mater, where, among his colleagues, were the late President Davis of Hamilton College, and Mr. Charles Denison of New Haven, who had been fellow tutors with him at Williamstown, as well as Professor Silliman, who was to be associated with him for so long afterwards. In this office he continued for nearly three years, through all which his instructions, as was the manner then, were confined to one class-to that which was graduated in 1802. During this office he began to exercise his preaching powers, having been licensed so to do in 1800 by the Association

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