A fearful rate of labor; a strange, grave, quaint, ascetic, rigorous
life. It seems a mystery how the Reverend Joshua Moody could have
survived to write four thousand sermons, but it is no mystery why the
Reverend John Mitchell was called "a truly aged young man" at
thirty,--especially when we consider that he was successor at Cambridge
to "the holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting, and soul-ravishing Mr.
Shepard," in continuance of whose labors he kept a monthly lecture,
"wherein he largely handled man's misery by sin and made a most
entertaining exposition of the Book of Genesis."

For the minister's week-days were more arduous than his Sundays, and to
have for each parish both pastor and teacher still left a formidable
duty for each. He must visit families during several afternoons in every
week, sending previous notice, so that children and domestics might be
ready for catechizing. He was "much visited for counsel" in his own
home, and must set apart one day in the week for cases of conscience,
ranging from the most fine-drawn self-tormentings up to the most
unnatural secret crimes. He must often go to lectures in neighboring
towns, a kind of religious dissipation which increased so fast that the
Legislature at last interfered to restrict it. He must have five or six
separate seasons for private prayer daily, devoting each day in the week
to special meditations and intercessions,--as Monday to his family,
Tuesday to enemies, Wednesday to the churches, Thursday to other
societies, Friday to persons afflicted, and Saturday to his own soul. He
must have private fasts, spending whole days locked in his study and
whole nights prostrate on the floor. Cotton Mather "thought himself
starved," unless he fasted once a month at farthest, while he often did
it twice in a week. Then there were public fasts quite frequently,
"because of sins, blastings, mildews, drought, grasshoppers,
caterpillars, small pox," "loss of cattle by cold and frowns of