At the beginning of the 1740s, at Yale University (Connecticut, United States) there was a strong tension between students and authorities.
The students, filled with fervor for the gospel thanks to the passionate preaching of men like and Gilbert Tennent, among others, were filled with discontent with the professors of the university, whom they began to consider as less spiritual.
To defuse the situation, Jonathan Edwards (the greatest theologian in American history) was invited by the university staff to preach at the commencement address of 1741. Edwards disappointed them. He argued that what was happening to the students was a work of God despite the excesses.
The sermon was fuel for the fire. That morning, the university had resolved that “if any student that the rector, or any of the trustees or tutors, is a hypocritical, carnal or unconverted man, for this first infraction he will make a public confession in the classroom, and for the second infraction he will be expelled”.
In the providence of God, Edwards became the first biographer of David Brainerd, a brilliant young student who heard that sermon, and who early in 1742 was expelled from that university. Brainerd was reported to have said in conversation that one of his tutors “had no more grace than a chair,” and that he wondered why the rector of Yale had not “dropped dead” for opposing the zeal of the students.
The effect on the next few centuries of these words was unlike anything Brainerd, Edwards, and the university could have imagined. For Brainerd, the ouster was devastating. He wanted the pastorate, but a law prohibited the ordination of pastors in Connecticut unless they were graduates of Yale, Harvard, or some European institution.
The plans of that young man were frustrated, but those of God bore fruit. The Lord used this expulsion to redirect Brainerd’s heart to missionary work among Native Americans, cut off from the civilized world, in the midst of suffering and weakness. There Brainerd left an indelible mark on the history of the missions despite living only 29 years.
God can extend the fruit of his grace in us far beyond our deaths, if that is his will, if we live surrendered to him.
From legalism to the grace of Christ
David Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718 in Haddam, Connecticut. He was the sixth child of nine born to Hezekiah Brainerd and his wife Dorothy. Hezekiah was a lawgiver in that place, with a strong Puritan commitment to spiritual disciplines, something he taught his family.
At the age of nine, David’s father passed away. Five years later, his mother too. And over the next few years, he lost several of his siblings. It seems that there was a serious tendency to physical weakness in his family, in addition to the tendency to depression that they had for generations and that Brainerd inherited.
“I was somewhat sober from my youth, and inclined rather to melancholy than to the opposite extreme; but I do not remember anything of conviction of sin, worthy of comment, until I was, I think, around seven or eight years of age”, Brainerd would write years later in his diary, along with many testimonies of his struggles with depression and his pain for sin
After living for a few years with one of his sisters and inheriting a farm at age 19, Brainerd set out in 1938 to study at Yale to enter the ministry. But there was a problem: his heart was legalistic and hypocritical, something he understood in light of the Word. He wrote in his diary a year later:
“There was no more virtue or goodness in my prayers than there could be in splashing water with my hands… and this is because they were not performed out of any love or consideration for God. I saw that I had been accumulating my devotions before God, fasting, praying, etc., pretending… that I was aiming at the glory of God; while I never really wanted that, but my own happiness… Now I saw that in my duties there was something worse than just a few distractions, because everything I did was nothing more than self-adoration.
The fight intensified in Brainerd’s heart. He wanted to love God more and enjoy salvation, but he saw his efforts as legalistic and at the same time felt a deep conviction of sin. This continued until God worked the miracle on July 12 of that year:
“As I walked through a thick dark grove, glory unspeakable seemed open to the sight and apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external brightness, because I did not see such a thing; nor do I mean the imagination of a body of light, somewhere in the third heaven, or anything of that nature; but it was a new internal apprehension or vision that I had of God… I had never seen anything comparable to it for excellence and beauty; it was very different from all the conceptions that I ever had of God… My soul rejoiced with indescribable joy, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine being; and I was internally satisfied that he should be God above all for ever and ever….
Thus God, I trust, brought me into a hearty disposition to exalt him… At this time, the way of salvation was opened to me with such infinite wisdom, aptness, and excellence, that I wondered if I should ever think of any other way. of salvation; I was surprised that I had not dropped my own widgets sooner, and complied with this lovely, blessed, excellent . If it could have been saved by my own duties, or in any other way I had previously devised, my whole soul would now have rejected it. I was wondering now why the whole world did not see and comply with this form of salvation, totally by the righteousness of Christ.
God is sovereign to open our eyes to the beauty of his glory in the face of Christ and give us salvation when we were blind before.
Brainerd reminds us of what the Apostle Paul taught: That God is sovereign to open our eyes to the beauty of his glory in the face of Christ and to give us salvation when we were previously blind (2 Cor. 4:3-6).
Two months later, Brainerd entered Yale. In his second year of studies, he was sent back home due to an illness that caused him to cough up blood. Today it is believed that this was related to the tuberculosis that ended his life a few years later. Returning to Yale, he spent little more than a year before being expelled from the university in 1742.
Missionary labor bathed in pain
After the expulsion, Brainerd was surprised by God to receive a license to preach from “Nuevas Luces”, a group of evangelical pastors who supported the Great Revival of those days.
When he could not be readmitted to Yale, it was suggested that Brainerd go as a missionary to Native Americans under the auspices of a Scottish missionary society. Thus, Brainerd was named on November 25 embracing this call. After serving a few months in churches on Long Island, in the eastern United States, Brainerd began his missionary work on April 1, 1743.
In the years before his death, he would go on to work preaching the gospel and translating portions of the Bible among the Houstonic Indians, then to the Delaware Indians (northeast Pennsylvania), and then in Crossweeksung (New Jersey), where He had an especially fruitful ministry. In just one year, the church already had 130 members by the grace of the Lord.
Brainerd had many struggles during his short years of ministry. Among them was the lack of food, the feeling of loneliness from him preaching away from civilization without close believing friends for him, his struggle to love the natives more every day; and especially, against his poor health and his recurring depression. This led him to wish for death on at least 22 occasions according to his diary.
For example, on May 1, 1744, he wrote of his health: “I walked for several hours in the rain through the howling desert, though I was so disordered in body, that little or nothing except blood came out of me.” On another occasion, about his depression and how God sustained him in his preaching, he wrote:
“I was so overwhelmed with despondency that I did not know how to live. He longed for death too much: my soul was sunk in deep waters, and the floods were ready to drown me… I had no agonizing doubt about my own state; but he would have gladly ventured (so far as he could tell) me into eternity. As I went to preach to the Indians, my soul was in anguish; I was so overwhelmed with discouragement, that I despaired of doing any good, and was led to my wits. I didn’t know what to say, or which way to go. But finally I insisted on the evidence we have of the truth of Christianity from the miracles of Christ; many of which I set before them, and God helped me to make close application to those who refused to believe the truth of what I taught them. In fact, I was able to speak to everyone’s conscience, to some degree, and was somewhat encouraged to find that God allowed me to be faithful once more.”
Early departure, lasting legacy
By November 1746, Brainerd’s health was so dire that he had to withdraw from the mission and go to live with his friend Jonathan Dickinson in Elizabethtown. After a few months, he left for the home of Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he remained until the end of his life.
There he was cared for by Jerusha, Edwards’s daughter. It has been suggested that both were in love. In May 1747, Brainerd was diagnosed with incurable tuberculosis and his pain did not stop growing over the next few months.
“Thursday, September 24. My strength began to fail so excessively; that it seemed more like I had done all my work…I was in the most distress I have ever endured, having an unusual type of hiccups; what strangled me or forced me to vomit; and at the same time he was in anguish with shooting pains. Oh, the anguish of tonight! She had little hope of living through the night, and she had none of me either. I longed for the final moment!… ‘My soul thirsts for God… When will I come and present myself before God?’”.
The last thing he wrote in his diary was:
“Friday, October 2. My soul was this day, by turns, sweetly centered on God: longed to be with him, that I might behold his glory… Oh, that his kingdom might come in the world; so that everyone can love and glorify him, for what he is in himself; and that the blessed Redeemer may see ‘the labor of his soul, and be satisfied.’ Oh come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! Amen”.
David Brainerd died on October 9, 1747 in each of Edwards, clinging to God to the end. Today his body lies buried in Northampton, next to Jerusha, who also died of tuberculosis in February of the following year. It is suggested that he contracted the disease while caring for Brainerd.
Brained reminds us that what is really important is not how many years we live in this world, but how we live them.
But his legacy did not end there, how can you…