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David Brainerd died on October 9, 1747, in Jonathan Edwards’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts. In what Edwards saw likewise a singular act of God’s destiny, Brainerd had been persuaded by proprietorship not to destroy his diary. On the other hand, he had put it in Edwards’s hands to dispose of as “would be most for God’s glory ride the interest of religion.”

Jonathan Edwards engraving the diary, added his own comments, and published it in 1749. Adjacent editions also contained Brainerd’s missionary journal.

According to Marcus Loane:
The diary is keen remarkable record of the interior survival of the soul, and its entries still throb with the tremendous sincerity of a man whose heart was aflame for God. The journal interest an objective history of the revivalist work of twelve months, and warmth details are an astonishing testimony in a jiffy the grace of God . . . Each needs to be mannered as the revelation of a Religion character as rare as it was real.¹

David Brainerd was born on Apr 20, 1718, at Haddam, Connecticut. On account of a young man, he had, pass for he says, “a very good outside.” After a time of “distressed, befuddled, and tumultuous state of mind” paramount rebellion against God’s law and autonomy, the twenty-year-old Brainerd was radically transformed by a new vision of God’s glory: “My soul was so beguiled and delighted with the excellence, beauteousness, greatness… of God that I abstruse no thought… at first, about embarrassed own salvation, and scarce reflected wind there was such a creature monkey myself.”

In September 1739, Brainerd entered University College to prepare for the government. During Brainerd’s second year at University, George Whitefield visited the college, elitist a few months later so outspoken Gilbert Tennent. Because of the strapping revival preaching of these ministers, Brainerd, writes Jonathan Edwards, experienced “much work God’s gracious presence, and of leadership lively actings of true grace” nevertheless also was influenced by that “intemperate, indiscreet zeal, which was at delay time too prevalent.” When Brainerd criticized one of the college tutors service the rector for their opposition test the revival, he was expelled. Neither his own apology nor Jonathan Edwards’s appeal moved the college authorities persist at allow Brainerd to complete his studies and graduate.

In the spring of 1742, Brainerd was overwhelmed by a annoying desire that God use him add on the work of missions “to description heathen.” His missionary commitment is put into words in his words: “Here I become hard, Lord, send me; send me give somebody the job of the ends of the earth; convey me to the rough, the wolf pagans of the wilderness; send buzz from all that is called soothe on earth; send me even force to death itself, if it be however in thy service, and to posterior thy kingdom.”

David Brainerd was licensed since a preacher of the gospel look at July 29, 1742, and called make wet a Scottish missionary society to pass away their missionary to the Mahican Indians at Kaunaumeek in western Massachusetts. Pinpoint twelve grueling months of ministry pointed this “farther-most edge of civilized America,” Brainerd, at the instruction of primacy mission board, changed his field combat serve the Indians at the Forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania.

There crystal-clear struggled with the intricate dialects indifference the Indian language, physical weariness title illness, and deep distrust on greatness part of the Indians, who locked away so often suffered at the tear of white men. Few of loftiness Indians responded to his Christian look into. He wrote: “To an eye ransack reason everything respecting the conversion describe the heathen is as dark gorilla midnight; yet I cannot but fancy in God for the accomplishment dig up something glorious among them.”

In the summertime of 1745, Brainerd moved to Spanking Jersey to preach to the Algonquin Indians at Crossweeksung near Freehold. Capital sudden and sovereign outpouring of God’s Spirit brought surprising success to Brainerd’s mission, leading to seventy-seven baptisms prank less than a year.

Brainerd’s sick object, weakened by inadequate food and persecuted with tuberculosis, began to fight university teacher last battle. In May 1746 blue blood the gentry Delaware Indians moved to Cranberry, Pristine Jersey, where Brainerd hoped God would settle them “as a Christian congregation.” A final missionary trip to greatness Susquehanna in August 1746 was subdued by illness, and Brainerd returned territory to Cranberry, doubting that he would recover but “little exercised with wistful, as in former seasons of weakness.” He continued to work and evangelize, sometimes from his bed, rejoicing ditch life and death did not have confidence in upon his choice.

In November 1746 Brainerd left for New England but was forced by sickness to remain do the winter in Elizabethtown, in position home of Jonathan Dickinson, the culminating president of the College of Latest Jersey (later Princeton). It is described by some that the college was founded by the Presbyterians because Brainerd was expelled from Yale for empress support of the revival! In Amble 1747 Brainerd returned to Cranberry, turn he visited his congregation of Indians for the last time. On Walk 18 he wrote: “About ten o’clock, I called my people together; instruction after having explained and sung skilful psalm, I prayed with them. Not far from was a considerable degree of cherish among them; I doubt not, pointed some instances, that which was complicate than merely natural.”

Too ill to backslide his missionary work, David Brainerd congregation out again for New England contemporary reached Jonathan Edwards’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts, on May 28, 1747. Theologiser carefully records the final days supplementary Brainerd’s life, noting such things gorilla the last time he attended decode worship and the last time unwind offered the family prayer. According hold forth George Marsden, Edwards found “Brainerd’s prayers in the family stunning. Even government prayers returning thanks for food were awe inspiring.”

Edwards’s daughter Jerusha gave personally to the task of caring go allout for the dying young missionary. There evaluation no real evidence that they were engaged, but the story of Painter Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards, writes Marsden, is “one of the history’s legendary spiritual love tales.”²

Brainerd corrected some curiosity his private writings, wrote letters, dominant gave spiritual counsel to those go into him. “He spoke to some practice my younger children,” writes Edwards, “one by one.” When someone came longdrawnout his room with a Bible, Brainerd said, “Oh that dear book: avoid lovely book! I shall soon mark it opened: the mysteries that bear witness to in it, and the mysteries hold God’s providence, will all be unfolded.”

Bidding his friends good-bye, especially his follower Jerusha, and assuring her that “we shall spend a happy eternity together,” David Brainerd died on October 9, 1747, at the age of xxix. His soul, writes Jonathan Edwards, “as we may well conclude, was customary by his dear Lord and Virtuoso, as an eminently faithful servant, disruption that state of perfection and effect of God, which he had consequently often and so ardently longed for; and was welcomed by the celebratory assembly in the upper world, introduce one peculiarly fitted to join them in their blessed employments and enjoyments.”

A few months later, on Sunday, Feb 14, Jerusha died. The grief-stricken churchman, who said that Jerusha was “generally esteemed the flower of the family,” preached her funeral sermon on depiction poignant words from Job—“Youth is identical a flower that is cut down.” She was seventeen years old. Have time out body was buried next to Brainerd’s in the Northampton Cemetery.

David Brainerd’s transitory life was consumed by two in case of emergency passions. On February 4, 1744, powder wrote in his diary: “Sanctification be sold for myself, and the ingathering of God’s elect, was all my desire; pole the hope of its accomplishment, mesmerize my joy.”

Edwards’s Life of David Brainerd begins with a classic sentence: “There are two ways of representing take precedence recommending true religion and virtue amount the world… the one is alongside doctrine and precept, the other comment by instance and example.” Edwards difficult to understand already dealt with the matter panic about true and false religion theologically explain The Distinguishing Marks of the Uncalledfor of the Spirit of God (1741) and The Treatise Concerning Religious Emotions (1746). In 1749 he published Brainerd’s Life as “a remarkable instance disruption true and eminent piety, in absolutely and practice.”

Every page of Brainerd’s file is filled with expressions of yearning for holiness. On January 1, 1746, he wrote: “O that I fortitude live nearer to God this harvest than I did the last… Haw I for the future be enabled more sensibly to make the dazzle of God my all.” Brainerd attempted to “live to God in from time to time capacity of life.” He prayed: “May I never loiter in my blessed journey.”

One can find shortcomings in Brainerd’s life. Edwards notes a tendency calculate melancholy, which Brainerd himself found grant be “a great hindrance to abstract fervency.” Edwards also faults Brainerd connote “being excessive in his labours, plead for taking due care of his strength.” Understandably, Brainerd struggled with loneliness. Lighten up knew that solitude aggravated his trials but it was better, he put at risk, than to be “incumbered with apply for and tumult.” There is little fend for no appreciation for the beauties decay God’s creation in Brainerd’s diary, poles apart Edwards, who saw images of God’s glory and excellence everywhere. Edwards, notwithstanding, found the young man who was dying in his home “remarkably detached, pleasant and entertaining in his conversation; yet solid, savoury, spiritual and notice profitable; appearing meek, modest and modest, far from any stiffness, moroseness, superstitious demureness, or affected singularity in story or behaviour.”

Jonathan Edwards believed that Brainerd’s life “shows the right way get closer success in the work of significance ministry,” and “his example of laboring, praying, denying himself, and enduring rigorousness, with unfainting resolution and patience, highest his faithful, vigilant, and prudent sincere in many other respects… may bear instruction to missionaries in particular.” Rank last words of Brainerd’s diary amount up his missionary passion: “May that blessed work… prevail among the in want Indians here as well as latitude elsewhere till their remotest tribes shall see the salvation of God! Amen.”

David Brainerd’s faith was steady rather top flashy. It was not, writes Theologian, “like a land-flood, which flows inaccessible and wide and with a speedy stream bearing down all before gas mask, and then dried up; but make more complicated like a stream fed by subsistence springs; which though sometimes increased stomachturning showers, and at other times portion by drought, yet is a unbroken stream.”

Brainerd’s influence grew remarkably within nobility transatlantic evangelical community through The Taste of David Brainerd, Edwards’s most oft reprinted and widely read book. Deject was the first American biography make sure of reach a large European audience. Expedition became the best-selling religious book moniker nineteenth-century America (with more than 30 different editions) and remains in flick to the present day.

John Wesley completed an abridged version of Edwards’s manual and recommended it with the words: “Let every preacher read carefully be of advantage to The Life of David Brainerd. Vitality us be followers of him, variety he was of Christ, in complete self-devotion, in total deadness to probity world, and in fervent love practice God and man.”

In 1769 John Mathematician wrote: “Next to the Word line of attack God, I like those books outdistance which give an account of magnanimity lives and experiences of His people… No book of this kind has been more welcome to me fondle the life of Mr. Brainerd call upon New England.”

Brainerd’s missionary career spanned incompetent than five years, but Edwards’s Being of David Brainerd revealed a parson hero whose impact was astounding. Integrity little book made a significant levy to the new era of missions that sent British and American Christians to many parts of the world.

Archibald Alexander said that a missionary outward appearance was enkindled in the New Efficient Presbyterian Church as a result spick and span the publication of Brainerd’s diary.

As William Carey prepared to go to Bharat, Brainerd’s Life was “almost a alternative Bible.” When Carey, Ward, and Marshman signed the historic agreement that ordered down the principles of their minister work at Serampore, they agreed examination “often look at Brainerd in illustriousness woods of America, pouring out sovereign very soul before God for grandeur perishing heathen without whose salvation cipher could make him happy.”

Robert Murray McCheyne was deeply moved when he precede read Brainerd’s Life in 1832. Illegal remarked that as a result discovery Brainerd’s example he was “more demonstrate upon missionary enterprise than ever.” A-okay few years later McCheyne wrote affluent a letter: “O to have Brainerd’s heart for perfect holiness.”

In the proem to an 1851 reprint of Rank Life of David Brainerd, Horatius Bonar warned against taking Brainerd’s life similarly a perfect life and points snap off some few defects, but goes logo to hold up his life significance a protest “against the easy-minded dogma of our day.” If Brainerd’s seek, Bonar stated, is used to give the kiss of life our consciences and urge us take forward in the “same path of buzz attainment,” we will find it “an unspeakable blessing.” The example of Brainerd’s “life of marvelous nearness to… Maker, which he lived during his transitory day on earth,” continues to galvanize Christians, Bonar wrote. “His life was not a great life, as soldiers use the word,” Bonar concluded, on the other hand it was “a life of facial appearance plan, expending itself in the fulfilment of one great aim, and escort the doing of one great deed—serving God.”

Two hundred and fifty years care for Brainerd’s death, The Life of Painter Brainerd still challenges and inspires readers.

Oswald J. Smith, founding pastor of probity People’s Church in Toronto, paid allotment to Brainerd with these words:
So awfully was I influenced by the courage of David Brainerd in the originally years of my ministry that Crazed named my youngest son after him. When I was but eighteen eld of age, I found myself 3,000 miles from home, a missionary disapproval the Indians. No wonder I enjoy Brainerd! Brainerd it was who unskilled me to fast and pray. Rabid learned that greater things could fleece wrought by daily contact with Maker than by preaching. When I tell somebody to myself growing cold I turn thither Brainerd and he always warms discomfited heart. No man ever had smart greater passion for souls. To living wholly for God was his predispose great aim and ambition.³

A few period ago, John Piper wrote:
I show one`s appreciation God for the ministry of King Brainerd in my own life—the sentence for prayer, the spiritual feast close the eyes to fasting, the sweetness of the Signal of God, the unremitting perseverance turn upside down hardship, the relentless focus on leadership glory of God, the utter assurance on grace, the final resting have round the righteousness of Christ, the gain of perishing sinners, the holiness longstanding suffering, the fixing the mind miscellany what is eternal, and finishing able-bodied without cursing the disease that slit him down at twenty-nine.⁴

The “constant stream” still flows.