David Brainerd
Born to a farming family in Haddam, Connecticut, Brainerd soon turned his aspirations to the clergy and a life of study. The early death of his parents, combined with a naturally melancholy personality, caused him to be morose and to fixate on the brevity of life, so that his religious life was characterized by prolonged depressions punctuated by ecstatic experiences of God. He began to study for the ministry at Yale College in 1739. During his first year he showed signs of the tuberculosis that was to end his life prematurely. During the following year, the New Light preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerants such as Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport gained many adherents at the college, including Brainerd, and he became involved in a separate church founded by students. In November 1741 he was reported as saying that one of the local ministers who was a college tutor had “no more grace than a chair.” Determined to snuff out the New Light among the students, the Yale Corporation, led by its rector, Thomas Clap, expelled Brainerd for refusing to make a public confession.
Officially barred from the ministry, Brainerd nonetheless became an itinerant preacher, filling pulpits of New Light sympathizers throughout New England and New York. In the process he gained the admiration of many clergymen, including Jonathan Dickinson, a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey and commissioner of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Dickinson in 1742 first proposed that Brainerd become a missionary. To prepare himself, in 1743 Brainerd went to work with John Sargeant, missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New York in 1744. From 1743 to 1747 he ministered to the Indians in western Massachusetts, eastern New York, the Lehigh region of Pennsylvania, and central New Jersey. At the New Jersey Bethel mission (near Cranbury), he achieved his most notable successes. Out of his experiences here came the publication of two installments of his journals that described both the revivals among the Delaware Indians and his own spiritual turmoil and exultation.
Brainerd preaching to the Indians for all of his zeal, however, Brainerd’s constitution could not stand up to the hardships of wilderness living. In April 1747, seriously weakened by tuberculosis, he left New Jersey for the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in October.
In 1749 Edwards published An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, drawn from Brainerd’s extensive diaries and supplemented by Edwards’s own commentary. Edwards sought to portray Brainerd as a model of Christian saintliness who manifested his faith in good works and self-sacrifice, expurgating many passages that recorded Brainerd’s depressions and enthusiasms. Over the centuries, this work has achieved international fame, has gone through countless printings, and has inspired many missionaries in pursuing their call.
Minkema, Kenneth P., “Brainerd, David,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 84-5.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
come, look through this telescope
He gave . . . teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. (Ephesians 4:11–13) When you look heavenward on a clear night, you can see glory. But look through a strong telescope, and your mouth may drop. That’s what sitting under a gifted teacher can be like. God gave teachers to the church so that saints like us will see more glory than we would have on our own. He appoints them to study the cosmos of the Scriptures, look deeper into the galaxies of God’s revelation, see more glory than the rest of us fellow heirs would perceive with the naked eye of our own soul, and then labor to help us see it too. God gives some teachers extraordinary gifts to aid an extraordinary number of saints. One of those teachers is Jonathan Edwards. See the Whole Universe If all you know of Edwards is that he wrote the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” then take special note of this observation by John Piper: “Identifying Jonathan Edwards with ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ is like identifying Jesus with the woes against Chorazin and Bethsaida” (Matthew 11:21; Luke 10:13). The woes and wrath are real. But they are just one constellation in the biblical cosmos of God’s glory. There is a universe more to see! When Edwards looked through the lens of Scripture, he saw galaxies of God’s glory that drop the jaw and captivate the soul. He peered further than perhaps anyone else into the mysteries of God’s sovereignty and the nature of the Trinity, and he left for us unparalleled explanations of God’s purpose for creation, the nature of love, the justice of hell, and the crucial importance of the truth that “ God is glorified not only by his glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. ” Sound familiar? Be Captivated by Glory But oh, that explanation doesn’t come close to doing Edwards justice! Reading Edwards really is like looking through a high-powered telescope, into the night sky of Scripture, ablaze with the glory of God. You simply need to come take a look for yourself! So come! Come, take a look! You will be amazed, and, I pray, captivated by what you see.
