Chapter 10.
“With force of arms we nothing can,
Full soon were we down-ridden;
But for us fights the proper Man,
Whom God Himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, who is this same?
Christ Jesus is His name,
The Lord Sabaoth’s Son;
He and no other one
Shall conquer in the battle.
” ―Luther.
The opening of the new year of grace one thousand seven hundred and forty-six brought to the heart of Brainerd much self-examination, and led him to consecrate himself afresh to God and His service. What he had done already began to tell upon him, and, while the happy manifestation of a blessing on his work had inspired him with new hope, it was only too evident to him that the end must soon come. Living as one whose span of life was speedily shortening, his mind was filled with solicitude for the souls of his Indians, and a desire to expend every remaining hour in labor for them. While many would have recognized in signs of physical break — up a sufficient reason for retiring from the field, Brainerd urged himself on to increasing effort. The toils of the past gave him little satisfaction; he was always depreciating anything he had done or suffered in the cause. “God has carried me through numerous Hats and labors in the past,” he writes in his diary. “He has amazingly supported my feeble frame, for having obtained help of God I continue to this day. O that I might live nearer to God this year than I did the last! The business to which I have been called, and which I have been enabled to go through, I know has been as great as nature could bear up under, and what would have sunk and overcome me quite, without special support. But alas! alas! though I have done the labors and endured the trials, with what spirit have I done the one and borne the other? How cold has been the frame of my heart oftentimes and how little have I sensibly eyed the glory of God in all my doings and sufferings! I have found that I could have no peace without filling up all my time with labors, and thus necessity has been laid upon me. Yea, in that respect, I have loved to labor, but the misery is, I could not sensibly labor for God as I could have done. May I, for the future, be enabled more sensibly to make the glory of God my all!”
Once again his enemies came about him, and Brainerd was in danger from those of his own nation. Occasionally news from the outer world reached him, and from this he found that his aims were deliberately perverted, and many were making mischief so that they might hinder him in his work.
One day he tells us how, coming away from public worship, tidings greatly distressed him, for he was informed that he was represented to be a Roman Catholic in disguise, and that he was only instigating the Indians to rise against the English. This rumor made some immediately hold aloof, and others were quite willing for proper steps being taken to arrest him for punishment. His answer was clear upon the point; he had strictly “minded his own business,” he says, “and had nothing to do with parties and sects, preaching Christianity pure and simple,” neither inviting to nor excluding from any meeting any, of any sort or persuasion whatsoever. Again he finds refuge in prayer, and quiets himself with the consolations of God’s Word. He is much refreshed in his own soul during his expositions to the Indians, and on opening the forty-sixth Psalm he felt that he could confide in the power and protection of the Almighty, even though his enemies should slander his character and seek to put him to death as a traitor to his earthly king. His feelings under this reproach are vividly expressed in the notes he wrote at the time, and he there threw a gleam of light upon the probable causes which have led him into such a path of persecution. He closely examines himself, and is jealous for the honor of God, and the success of His work among those poor heathen. “My spirits were still much sunk with what I heard the day before of my being suspected to be engaged in the Pretender’s interest, it grieved me that after there had been so much evidence of a glorious work of grace among these poor Indians, as that the most carnal man could not but take notice of the great change made among them, so many poor souls should still suspect the whole to be only a Popish plot, and so cast an awful reproach on this blessed work of the Divine Spirit, and at the same time wholly exclude themselves from receiving any benefit by this Divine influence. This put me upon searching whether I had ever dropped anything inadvertently that might give occasion to any to suspect that I was stirring up the Indians against the English; and could think of nothing unless it was my attempting sometimes to vindicate the rights of the Indians, and complaining of the horrid practice of making the Indians drunk, and then cheating them out of their lands and other properties; and now I remember I had done this with too much warmth of spirit, which much distressed me; thinking that it might possibly prejudice them against this work of grace, to their everlasting destruction. God, I believe, did me good by this trial, which seemed to humble me, and show me the necessity of watchfulness, and of being wise as a serpent, as well as harmless as a dove. This exercise led me often to the throne of grace, and there I found some support, though I could not get the burden wholly removed.”
In his intercourse with the Indians he was constantly cheered with finding that his words had been a comfort and help to this people. One poor woman came to tell him in her broken English how she obtained release from all her fears, and was able to rejoice in being by Christ delivered from all her sins. Here is the substance of the conversation between the missionary and this simple and believing soul.
“Me try, me try save myself, but my strength be all gone, could not let me stir bit further. Den last, me forced let Jesus Christ alone, send me hell if He please.”
“But you were not willing to go to hell, were you?
“Could not me help it. My heart becomed wicked for all. Could not me make her good?
“I asked her how she got out of this case.
“By-by my heart be grad desperately.
“I asked her why her heart was glad.
“Grad my heart Jesus Christ do what He please with me. Den me tink, grad my heart Jesus Christ send me to hell. Did not me care where He put me, me to be Him for all.”
Brainerd explains that this poor woman held to it that if it was the will of the Lord that she should go anywhere, to suffer anything, however terrible, she was satisfied. Some days afterward, however, she obtained a clearer light on the will of God, and while quite ready still to rejoice in affliction, she entered into the joy of those who know Christ as a perfect and sufficient Savior from all sin. On the day of her baptism she expressed her gratitude to the kind Christians in Scotland who had sent Mr. Brainerd to preach to the Indians; she said, “her heart loved these good people so that she could scarce help praying for them all night.”
One of the most interesting cases of conversion which Brainerd notes in his journal is that of a very aged woman, who appeared childish and broken in strength, and who came to him for spiritual advice. From such a one he was not prepared to hear anything like a rational idea on the subject of religion. But in this he was disappointed. After being led by the hand into his room, she tried to make him understand the anguish of her soul. Her chief distress was, she told Brainerd, that she should never find Christ. As he knew she had never been instructed in Christian doctrine he pressed her with questions in order to find out the real cause of her distress. Her answer was to this effect: ―
“She had heard me preach many times, but never knew anything about it, never felt it in her heart, till the last Sabbath, and then it came, she said, all in, as if a needle had been thrust into her heart, since which time she had had no rest day or night. She added that on the evening before Christmas, a number of Indians being together at the house where she was, and discoursing about Christ, their talk pricked her heart, so that she could not sit up, but fell down on her bed, at which time she went away (as she expressed it) and felt as if she dreamed, and yet is confident she did not dream. When she was thus gone she saw two paths, one appeared very broad and crooked, and that turned to the left hand. The other appeared straight and very narrow, and that went up the hill to the right hand. She traveled, she said, for some time up the narrow right-hand path till at length something seemed to obstruct her journey. She sometimes called it darkness, and then described it otherwise, and seemed to compare it to a block or bar. She then remembered what she had heard me say about striving to enter in at the strait gate (although she took little notice of it at the time when she heard me discourse on the subject), and thought she would climb over this bar. But just as she was thinking of this she came back again, as she termed it, meaning that she came to herself, whereupon her soul was exceedingly distressed, apprehending that she had since turned back and forsaken Christ, and that, therefore, there was no hope of mercy for her.”
This remarkable statement, by one evidently sincere, led Brainerd to ask further questions, believing as he did that it was one of the devices of Satan to deceive her and make her believe that she was under real conviction of sin. But ere long he was satisfied that this Indian mother, bowed down with the weight of fourscore years, really and truly was under the strivings of the Holy Ghost, and had been thus divinely taught as to her way of salvation. Before long she, too, was able to enter the strait gate, and become a pilgrim to the heavenly mansions thus late in life.
Cries and lamentations met him at every turn as he talked to the people about the love of God and Christ Jesus. “It was an amazing season of power amongst them,” he says, “and seemed as if God had “bowed the heavens and come down.” So astonishingly prevalent was the operation upon old as well as young, that it seemed as if none would be left in a secure and natural state, but that God was now about to convert all the world. And I was ready to think then that I should never again despair of the conversion of any man or woman living, be they who or what they would. It is impossible to give a just and lively description of the appearance of things at this season, at least such as to convey a bright and adequate idea of the effects of this influence. A number might have been seen rejoicing that God had not taken away the principal influence of His blessed Spirit from this place. Refreshed to see so many striving to enter in at the strait gate, and animated with such concern for them, they wanted to push them forward, as some of them expressed it. At the same time numbers, both of men and women, old and young, might be seen in tears, and some in anguish of spirit, appearing in their very countenances, like condemned malefactors turned towards the place of execution with a heavy solicitude sitting on their faces; so that there seemed here (as I thought) a lively emblem of the solemn day of accounts, mixture of heaven and hell, of joy and anguish inexpressible. The concern and religious affection was such that I could not pretend to have any formal religious exercise among them, but spent the time in discoursing to one and another, as I thought most proper and seasonable for each, and sometimes addressed them all together, and finally concluded with prayer. Such were their circumstances at this season that I could scarce have half-an-hour’s rest from speaking from about half-an-hour before twelve o’clock (at which time I began public worship) till past seven at night.”
He made at this time several visits to Elizabethtown to see the “correspondents,” as the representatives of the Missionary Society were called. Here he discussed many plans for the enlargement of the work, and particularly his desire to establish Indian towns or settlements, to found a little colony, which should be a “mountain of holiness,” but we have no record that in this aim he was successful. He had an unexpected trouble at the end of March of this year, in the sudden illness of his schoolmaster with pleurisy. Far away from medical assistance, the burden of nursing and tending the sick man fell upon him, and this duty he performed with infinite tenderness and self-sacrifice. He watched him constantly, sleeping on the floor at night that he might be ready if wanted. His own health began again to fail as a consequence, and his only solace was to snatch a few moments of the night in communion amid the silence of the woods.
“Alas, my days pass away as chaff!” he cries in one of these meditations, “it is but little I do or can do that turns to any account, and it is my constant misery and burden that I am so fruitless in the vineyard of the Lord. O that I were spirit, that I might be active for God! This (I think) more than anything else makes me long that this corruptible might put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. God deliver me from clogs, fetters, and a body of death that impede my service for Him.”
This desire to fly away, not for rest but for increased activity, was to be satisfied ere long. The frail tenement was not to abide much longer, and for Brainerd the day of deliverance was not far off. Somewhat wearied with incessant traveling, he expresses a wish at this time to settle among his people at the Indian territory. This he felt he might be justified in desiring, seeing that the congregations gathered from time to time consisted of those who by his ministry had been called from darkness to light.
“I never, since I began to preach,” he says, “could feel any freedom to enter into other men’s labors, and settle down in the ministry where the Gospel was preached before. I never could make that appear to be my province; when I felt any disposition to consult my ease and comfort, God has never given me any liberty in that respect, either since or for some years before I began to preach. But God having increased my labors, and made me instrumental in gathering a church for Him among the Indians, I was ready to think it might be His design to give me a quiet settlement and a stated home of my own.”
This is perhaps the only time in his journal where he mentions a personal preference; but this perfectly natural desire was not to be fulfilled, and he again quite patiently and willingly accepted the providential working out of the Divine plan, however much human nature was contradicted thereby. He considered it clear that he was marked out for solitariness and hardship, and should be destitute of house and home comforts, which he was delighted to see others enjoy, calling himself by Divine grace a “pilgrim hermit,” and says, that although as quick as any in the appreciation of the joys of human companionship, yet all these, “compared with the value and preciousness of an enlargement of Christ’s kingdom, vanished like the stars before the rising sun.” Falling on his knees in presence of this disappointment he once more utterly resigns himself and all that he counts dear to the will of God. “Farewell!” he cries, “farewell friends and earthly comforts, the dearest of them all, the very dearest, if the Lord calls for it; adieu, adieu, I will spend my life to my latest moments in caves and dens of the earth if the kingdom of Christ may be thereby advanced.”
In this complete consecration there was doubtless a human love laid on the altar, “the very dearest” may have referred to a secret attachment with the daughter of his great friend and literary executor, Rev. Jonathan Edwards. This Jerusha was a young girl, ripe in Christian experience and full of a similar spirit to that of Brainerd. Not even her name appears in any of his private diaries or papers, but we have the evidence of her father for the fact of their mutual love for each other. We shall meet her at his deathbed, to which sacred spot,
“Blessed beyond the common walk of men,
Quite on the verge of home,”
we shall now speedily pass with hushed footsteps and reverent feeling.
“Oh, lightest burden, sweetest yoke!
It lifts, it bears my happy soul,
It giveth wings to this poor heart;
My freedom is Thy grand control.
“Upon God’s will I lay me down,
As child upon its mother’s breast;
No silken couch or softest bed,
Could ever give me such deep rest.”
Madame Guyon.