Chapter 4.
“I do not ask., O Lord, that Thou shouldst shed
Full radiance here.
Give but a ray of peace, that I may tread
Without a fear.
I do not ask my cross to understand, ]
My way to see;
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
And follow Thee.” ―A. A. Procter
The opening of the year 1743 finds David Brainerd bidding farewell to his friends with the earnest solemnity of one who does not expect ever to look upon their faces again. Dangers, neither few nor slight, awaited him in his new departure. The rigors of a severe winter had set in; the means of conveyance were absolutely limited to his horse plodding over roadless wastes, and news came swiftly that the Indians and the white settlers at Fort Delaware were in conflict, and it would be extremely risky for the young missionary to venture at such a time upon his work.
But Brainerd, standing now on the threshold of his new sphere, looked forward full of faith in God. He had long ago counted the cost, and deliberately made a choice which meant separation from the world of civilized life with its advantages, and association with hardship, toil, and possibly an early and lonely death. He calmly made his preparations. The small property which he inherited from his father, bringing him in a sufficient livelihood, was immediately realized, and the money invested to pay the expenses of a God-fearing young man at college as a candidate for the ministry. Having thus divested himself of his money for the glory of God, he preached his farewell sermon, choosing the house of an old saint, who could not attend public worship in consequence of infirmities; and the following morning his friends for the last time knelt with him in prayer, and bade him good-bye. He rode many miles, and crossing the Sound reached Long Island, then inhabited by Indians. With mingled feelings of self-despising and hope in God did the young missionary approach the wigwams of the people for whom he was willing and glad to give up all that was dear, and even life itself, so that he might win them for Christ. On Wednesday, March 9th, 1743, he made this note in his diary: ―
“Endeavored to commit myself and all my concerns to God. Rode sixteen miles to Manturk, and had some inward sweetness on the road, but something of flatness and deadness after I came there, and had seen the Indians. I withdrew, and endeavored to pray, but found myself awfully deserted and left, and had an afflicting sense of my vileness and meanness. However, I went and preached from Isaiah 53:1010Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. (Isaiah 53:10), Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him,’ etc. Had some assistance, and I trust something of the Divine presence was amongst us. In the evening I again prayed and exhorted among them, after having had a season alone, wherein I was so pressed with the blackness of my nature that I thought it was not fit for me to speak so much as to Indians.”
At the last moment, the instructions from the Society, of which he was now the representative, were not to go to Fort Delaware, but to proceed to a place called Kaunaumeck, in the province of New York, hidden away among the dense woods between Stockbridge and Albany, and inhabited almost entirely by the Indians. This spot he reached on the 1St of April, and there found a lodging on a heap of straw. Casting himself on the ground, he was fiercely attacked with melancholy, and abhorred himself as the most detestable and unworthy of human beings. He longed for some Christian heart to cheer him; some of the dear friends left far behind to support by their sympathy and counsel his fainting spirit. Instead of this consolation, his trouble was embittered by the visit of an Irishman and a Dutchman, who had come some distance to hear him preach, and indulged, to his great distress, in continual profanity. In his anguish of mind, he crept into a hovel, and there groaned out to God, who graciously gave His servant that comfort which none other could afford.
His position was no enviable one from the point of view of earthly comfort. He was not the man to complain, indeed he rejoiced in afflictions, and felt, that deserving nothing at all, the smallest gift was in mercy. He never knew that the words he penned then in the solitudes of that Indian wilderness we should ever read, and one night he wrote a few words in his diary, which gives us a fairly good idea of the desolateness of his position: ―
“My circumstances are such,” says he, “that I have no comfort of any kind but what I have in God. I live in this most lonesome wilderness, having but one single person to converse with that can speak English, most of the talk I hear is either Highland Scotch or Indian. I have no fellow-Christian to whom I might unbosom myself or lay open my spiritual sorrows, with whom I might take sweet counsel in conversation about heavenly things, and join in social prayer. I live poorly with regard to the comforts of this life, most of my diet consists of boiled corn, pastry, pudding, etc. I lodge in a bundle of straw, my labor is hard and extremely difficult, and I have little appearance of success to comfort me. The Indians have no land to live on but what the Dutch people lay claim to, and these threaten to drive them off. They have no regard to the souls of the poor Indians, and by what I can learn, they hate me because I came to preach to them. But what makes all my difficulties grievous to be borne is, that God hides His face from me.”
What a glimpse of a brave soul in perpetual spiritual eclipse, but sticking to his post of duty, loyal to God; “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” With his own hands he built himself a hut to dwell in, and night after night leaving this poor abode he would wander on the dark moor, talking, moaning, praying by turns, now catching bright glimpses of heavenly rapture, then plunged again into gloomy dejection.
“I have been so crushed down sometimes,” he writes, “with a sense of my meanness and infinite unworthiness, that I have been ashamed that any, even the meanest of my fellow-creatures, should so much as spend a thought about me, and have wished sometimes, while traveling among the thick brakes, to drop as one of them into everlasting oblivion.”
Occasionally, when weary, he lies on his straw and pours forth his feelings in rhyme: ―
“Come, death, shake hands; I’ll kiss thy bands:
‘Tis happiness for me to die.
What! dost thou think that I will shrink?
I’ll go to immortality.”
As an instance and evidence of the extreme sensitiveness of this man, we find that in his lonely and friendless condition he was again worrying himself about the expulsion from college. He set down in writing a most humble retractation and confession, and prayed the rector and authorities of the college to give him his degree, but, as we have seen, they were inexorable, and left the sting to rankle in his breast.
We have no evidence that Brainerd had any special gift of tongues, and from his own observations, noted down from time to time, it would appear that he had to labor very diligently to master the language of the North American Indians. The complex character of the language may be imagined when we find our English word “question” in the Iroquis is “kremmogkodonaltootiteavreganumeouash.”Another missionary who was laboring among the Indians at Stockbridge was his chief helper in this difficulty, and to visit this Mr. Sergeant for instruction he had to constantly ride on horseback through the wild, dark forests, twenty miles from place to place, and this too in the depth of winter. Thus it will be seen that this pursuit of knowledge was under real difficulties, especially when it is remembered that he was a delicate, ailing man, a fervent spirit urging on a feeble, aching frame.
For a whole year he worked on at Kaunaumeck, sharing the life and hardships of the Indians, preaching to them faithfully the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but with small success. He felt that his ministry was not the power it ought to be, and therefore he persuaded the Indians to emigrate from that place to Stockbridge, where his friend Mr. Sergeant could more acceptably work amongst them. As soon as this plan had been carried out, Brainerd hastened to New Jersey, and finding the Commissioners of the Society at Elizabethtown, told them of his readiness to be sent to other Indians, where he might begin work again. They immediately responded to his request by sending him to the native encampments on the Forks of the Delaware, which was destined to be his future sphere. Before starting out afresh, however, he had several invitations to become the pastor of New England congregations, and especially did the people who had formed a church at East Hampton and Long Island beg that he would be their minister. To many a man in his position the suggestion would have been a temptation not to be disregarded. He was in a wretched state of health and physically quite incapable of enduring the privations of Indian life, and East Hampton was then a charming settlement amid the finest scenery, and he would have had the grateful attention of a wealthy and devoted people. Then his first essay as a missionary to the Indians had not been altogether successful, even with the assistance of his friend Mr. Sergeant, at a comparatively near station, and if he went to the Forks of Delaware he would be quite isolated from his friends and kindred. It was a crisis in his life, and the position must for a time at least have been a difficult and painful choice with him. The only note he leaves us of the momentous decision is extremely brief. “Resolved to go on then with the Indians, if Divine providence permitted, although I had before felt some inclination to go to East Hampton, where I was educated to go.” His mind, once made up, Brainerd lost no time in setting forth, disposed of his books, clothes, etc., and in the pouring rain began a long march through the wilderness. He had to ford the Hudson river, and to go nearly a hundred miles beyond through the woods, and at last on Saturday, the 12Th of May, 1744, he reached a little settlement of Irish and Dutch people, twelve miles from the Forks of Delaware, where he would have to work. The journey had prostrated him, and more dead than alive he caught first sight of the wigwams of the Indians. This constant feeling of breaking up seems to have excited in Brainerd a thirst for winning souls ere the end should come. Henry Martyn, fragile and exhausted after dragging himself across Persian plains, is perhaps most like this young Puritan missionary in his weakness of body and consuming energy of soul. What infinite pathos there is in these brief records of his experiences at this time. He had enjoyed a brief sleep, and awoke on the Lord’s Day amid his new surroundings.
“Rose early, felt very poorly after my long journey, and after being wet and fatigued. Was very melancholy; have scarce ever seen such a gloomy morning in my life, there appeared to be no Sabbath, and the children were all at play, I, a stranger in the wilderness and knew not where to go, and all circumstances seemed to conspire to render my affairs dark and discouraging. Was disappointed respecting an interpreter, and heard that the Indians were much scattered, etc. Oh, I mourned after the presence of God, and seemed like a creature banished from His sight! Yet He was pleased to support my sinking soul amidst all my sorrows, so that I never entertained any thought of quitting my business among the poor Indians, but was comforted to think that death would ere long set me free from these distresses.”
He became a little more encouraged, however, on finding the Indians so willing to listen to him, although some of their practices, especially funeral rites, which he was compelled to witness, greatly shocked him. In obedience to orders which reached him from the Society, Brainerd now journeyed to Newark, in New Jersey, where the Presbytery were waiting to ordain him. This solemn occasion much impressed him. He was utterly out of health, and after passing the examination underwent a sleepless night, but got through very well, and his probation sermon from the text, “Delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles,” etc., was very favorably received. His old friend, Rev. Mr. Pemberton, gave the ordination charge; the principal listener was, he tells us, “composed and solemn, without distraction, and I hope that then, as many times before, I gave myself up to God, to be for Him and not for another.”
The official statement written to the Society in Scotland declares, “We can, with pleasure, say that Mr. Brainerd passed through his ordination trial to the universal approbation of the Presbytery, and appeared uncommonly qualified for the work of the ministry. He seems to be armed with a great deal of self-denial, and animated with a noble zeal to propagate the Gospel among those barbarous nations who have long dwelt in the darkness of heathenism.”
After his ordination Brainerd was eager to return to his work, but an attack of illness delayed his departure. This enforced leisure of a few days with his friends produced in his mind unmingled feelings of thankfulness and self-abasement. He had some sweet seasons of communion with his fellow-Christians, gaining, thereby, hope and encouragement for the task which lay before him. The kindness of his friends filled him with gratitude. “I wondered,” he says, “that God should open the hearts of many to treat me with such kindness, and myself to be so unworthy of any favor from God or any of my fellow-men.”
His illness, undoubtedly had much to do with the constant melancholy which, like a cloud, overcast his life. He makes a note in his diary, that “I was much exercised with pain in my head; however, I determined to set out on my journey towards Delaware in the afternoon, but when the afternoon came my pain increased exceedingly, so that I was obliged to betake myself to bed. The night following, I was greatly distressed with pain and sickness, was sometimes almost bereaved of the exercise of reason by the extremity of pain. Continued much distressed till Saturday, when I was somewhat relieved by an emetic, but was unable to walk about till the Monday following in the afternoon, and still remained very feeble. I often admired the goodness of God, that He did not suffer me to proceed on my journey from the place where I was so tenderly used and to be sick by the way amongst strangers. God is very gracious to me, both in health and sickness, and intermingles much mercy with all my afflictions and toils.”
The ever-present sense of his own sinfulness recalls an ancient sacred poem, with which this chapter shall fitly close.
“If I could shut the gate against my thoughts,
And keep out sorrow from this room within,
Or memory could cancel all the notes
Of my misdeeds, and I unthink my sin:
How free, how clear, how clean, my soul should be,
Discharged of such a loathsome company.
“Or were there other rooms within my heart
That did not to my conscience join so near,
Where I might lodge the thoughts of sin apart,
That I might not their clamorous crying hear,
What peace, what joy, what ease should I possess,
Free from the horrors that my soul oppress!
“But, O my Savior, who my refuge art,
Let Thy dear mercies stand ‘twixt them and me,
And be the wall to separate the heart
So that I may at length repose me free;
That peace, and joy, and rest, may be within,
And I remain divided from my sin.”