Chapter 8.
“Before the Savior’s face
The ransom’d nations bow,
O’erwhelm’d at His Almighty grace
Forever now;
He shows His prints of Love,
They kindle to a flame,
And sound through all the worlds above
The slaughtered Lamb!” ―Oliver’s.
In the presence of a large assemblage of Indians, including some white men whose curiosity had brought them thither, Brainerd baptized a number of native converts, and by this rite received them after public profession into the Christian Church. After the spectators had gone he called these believers to him and gave them suitable counsels as to their future conduct, and pointed out to them how necessary it would be for them to be watchful in view of their responsibility before God. The little group appear to have been much softened by this address, and as the speaker proceeded they took hold of each other’s hands as a sign of the new covenant of Christian brotherhood into which they had now entered.
The affection of these people towards their friend and pastor was very significant. Feeling it to be his duty to go on a visit to some other Indians at a distance, Brainerd asked them not only to excuse him for the sake of others, but to pray earnestly that his words might be blessed with success. They cheerfully assented and spent the whole night in prayer, ceasing not until they went out and saw the morning star in the sky. His interpreter was one of this praying band, and he spoke of the time as a season of much spiritual profit. On that same day an old Indian, who had been an idolater, and one who practiced many cruel rites, came to Brainerd, and gave up voluntarily his rattles, which are a kind of musical instrument used in the festivals and dances, and these being handed over to the Christian natives were speedily destroyed. With great simplicity these people, although in the enjoyment of a sense of God’s favor, were frequently filled with intense sorrow at the sight of their own unworthiness.
“I asked one of them,” says Brainerd, “who had obtained comfort and given hopeful evidences of being truly religious, why he now cried? He replied, when he thought how Christ was slain like a lamb, and spilled His blood for sinners, he could not help crying when he was all alone, and thereupon burst out into tears and cried again. I then asked his wife who had likewise been abundantly comforted wherefore she cried? She answered, “She, was grieved that the Indians here would not come to Christ as well as those at Crossweeksung.” I asked her if she found a heart to pray for them, and whether Christ had seemed to be near to her of late in prayer as in time past (which is my usual method of expressing a sense of the Divine presence). She replied, Yes, He had been near to her, and that at some times when she had been praying alone, her heart loved to pray so, that she could not bear to leave the place, but wanted to stay and pray longer.”
In the midst of these precious encouragements there was of course vouchsafed to Brainerd and his converts the grievous trouble of persecution and scoffing. Some idolatrous Indians who had come from a distance continually mocked these penitents and gibed at their tears; these also persistently refused to hear the missionary preach. He visited the king of the Delaware Indians, receiving promise of an open door to the work of the Gospel and also gathered the chiefs together for conversation, that is when they were sober, for we are told that they were drunk with the white man’s fire-water day after day. His experiences among the Indians at Invocanta Islands cannot be better told than in his own words: ―
“I visited the Indians again at Invocanta Islands and found them almost universally very busy in making preparations for a great sacrifice and dance. I had no opportunity to get them together in order to discourse with them about Christianity by reason of their being so much engaged about their sacrifice. My spirits were much sunk with the prospect so very discouraging and especially seeing I had now no interpreter but a pagan who was as much attached to idolatry as any of them (my own interpreter having left me the day before, being obliged to attend upon some important business, and knowing that he could neither speak nor understand the language of these Indians) so that I was under the greatest disadvantages imaginable. However, I attempted to discourse privately with some of them, but without any appearance of success, notwithstanding I still tarried with them.
“In the evening they met together, near a hundred of them, and danced round a large fire, having prepared ten fat deer for the sacrifice, ―the fat of whose inwards they burned in the fire while they were dancing, and sometimes raised the flame to a prodigious height, at the same time yelling and shouting in such a manner that they might easily have been heard two miles or more. They continued their sacred dance all night near the altar; after which they ate the flesh of the sacrifice, and so retired each one to his lodging.
“I enjoyed little satisfaction this night, being entirely alone on the island (as to any Christian company) and in the midst of this idolatrous revel, and having walked to and fro till body and mind were pained and much oppressed, I at length crept into a little crib made for corn and there slept on the poles.
“Lord’s Day, 21St September, 1745.―I spent the day with the Indians on the island. As soon as they were well up in the morning I attempted to instruct them, and labored for that purpose to get them together, but quickly found they had something else to do, for near noon they gathered together all their pow-wows (or conjurors) and set about half-a-dozen of them to playing their juggling tricks and acting their frantic, distracted postures, in order to find out why they were then so sickly upon the island, numbers of them being at that time disordered by a fever and bloody flux. In this exercise they were engaged for several hours making all the wild, ridiculous and distracted motions imaginable, sometimes singing, sometimes howling, sometimes extending their hands to the utmost stretch, spreading all their fingers, and they seemed to push with them as if they designed to fright something away, or at least keep it off at arm’s end, sometimes stroking their faces with their hands, then spouting water as fine as mist; sometimes sitting flat on the earth, then bowing down their faces to the ground, wringing their sides as if in pain and anguish, twisting their faces, turning up their eyes, grunting, puffing, etc.
“Their monotonous actions tended to excite ideas of horror, and seemed to have something in them, as I thought, peculiarly suited to raise the devil, if he could be raised by anything odd, ridiculous, or frightful. Some of them I could observe were much more fervent and devout in the business than others, and seemed to chant, peep, and mutter, with a good degree of warmth and vigor, as if determined to awake and engage the powers below. I sat at a small distance, not more than thirty feet from them (though undiscovered), with my Bible in my hand, resolving, if possible, to spoil their sport, and prevent them receiving any answers from the infernal world, and there viewed the whole scene. They continued their hideous charms and incantations for more than three hours, until they had all wearied themselves; and although they had in that space of time taken sundry intervals of rest, at length broke up, I apprehend without receiving any answer at all.
“After they had done pow-wowing, I attempted to discuss with them about Christianity, but they soon scattered, and gave me no opportunity for anything of that nature. A view of these things, while I was entirely alone in the wilderness, destitute of the society of any one that so much as named ‘the name of Christ, greatly sunk my spirits, gave me the most gloomy turn of mind imaginable, almost stripping me of all resolution and hope respecting further attempts for propagating the Gospel and converting these pagans, and rendered this the most burdensome and disagreeable Sabbath that ever I saw. But nothing I can truly say sunk and distressed me like the loss of my hope respecting their conversion. This concern appeared so great, and seemed to be so much my own, that I seemed to have nothing to do on earth if this failed. A prospect of the greatest success in the saving conversion of souls under Gospel-light, would have done little or nothing towards compensating for the loss of my hope in this respect; and my spirits now were so damped and depressed, that I had no heart nor power to make any further attempts among them for that purpose, and could not possibly recover my hope, resolution, and courage, by the utmost of my endeavors.”
These Indians, amongst whom he was then visiting, were very different from those he had left behind, and their customs as well as their language proved this. They never buried their dead, but allowed them to decay in cribs, above ground, then after a time they would take the bones and carefully wash them, and bury them in the usual manner. During his wanderings among these people, he met with a remarkable priest or reformer, who had been all his life endeavoring to restore the ancient religion of the Indians. He met Brainerd, dressed in full pontificals of bearskins, and a great mask of wood, one-half painted black and the other brown; with a most hideous mouth drawn awry. He danced, clashing his rattle of tortoise-shell, but never allowed any part of his body, not even his fingers, to be seen. He was evidently very devout, and much above the ordinary intelligence of these Indians, and invited Brainerd to come into his house or temple to discuss Christianity. He lamented freely the degenerate condition of the Indians, and said that their ignorance and wickedness so troubled him sometimes, that he went to the woods and lived alone there for months. “At length,” he said, “God comforted his heart, and showed him what he should do, and since then he has known God and tried to serve Him, and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.” Brainerd thus concludes his account of the time spent with this earnest seeker after God: ― “It was manifest he had a set of religious notions that he had looked into for himself, and not taken for granted upon base traditions, and he relished or disrelished whatever was spoken of a religious nature, according as it either agreed or disagreed with his standard. And while I was discussing he would sometimes say, “Now that I like, so God taught me so,” and some of his sentiments seemed very just. Yet he utterly denied the being of a devil, and declared there was no such creature known among the Indians of old times, whose religion he supposed he was attempting to revive. He likewise told me that departed souls all went southward, and that the difference between the good and bad was this, that the former were admitted into a beautiful town, with spiritual walls, or walls agreeable to the nature of souls, and that the latter would forever hover near those walls and in vain attempt to get in. He seemed to be sincere, honest and conscientious in his own way and according to his own religious notions, which was more than I ever saw in any other pagan. I perceived he was looked upon and derided among most of the Indians as a precise zealot, that made a needless noise about religious matters; but I must say there was something in his temper and disposition, that looked more like true religion than anything I ever observed amongst other heathens.
“But, alas! how deplorable is the state of the Indians upon this river! The brief representation I have here given of their notions and manners is sufficient to show that they are led captive by Satan at his will, in the most quiescent manner, and methinks might likewise be sufficient to excite the compassion and engage the prayers of pious souls for these their fellow-men who sit in ‘the regions of the shadow of death.” Very significant is the remark Brainerd further makes upon the character and circumstances of these people. He has been speaking of the fruitlessness of his labor to convert them to Christianity, and seems to sorrowfully account for it in these words: ―
“They live so near the white people that they are always in the way of strong liquor as well as the ill examples of nominal Christians, which render it so unspeakably difficult to treat with them about Christianity.”
Brainerd was glad to get back to Crossweeksung, and to meet with his beloved people once more. “To be with those,” he said, “seemed like being banished from God and all His people; to be with these, like being admitted into His family and to the enjoyment of His Divine presence.” They received him with much rejoicing, and, after his first service among them, on his retiring, being weary with his journeyings, they continued in prayer for two hours by themselves. On another occasion, he gathered them together to partake with him of the Lord’s Supper; a service of real communion with Christ and His people.
One day, after he had been preaching to a large audience, an Indian woman, quite a stranger to him and who had heard his voice for the first time, came forward to ask for the prayers of the Christians on her behalf, and, when she was made happy in a sense of sins forgiven, she expressed anxiety to return at once to her home, forty miles distant, in order to take the good news of salvation to her husband, that he also might be a Christian. Thus the work prospered, and the heart of the worker was abundantly cheered in his toil. Preaching became a joy to him, and the services which he held among the Indians his chief delight. The fears which had oppressed him as to their conversion, disappeared before this evident manifestation of the outpouring of the Spirit. Everywhere were signs of awakening, the squaws coming forward with their children to hear the good news of salvation, and old men who had been foremost in superstitious rites, asking with tears for forgiveness of their sin.
“The Word of God,” he says, “at this time, seemed to fall upon the assembly with a Divine power and influence, especially towards the close of my discourse, there was both a soul melting and bitter mourning in the audience. The dear Christians were refreshed and comforted-convictions revived in others and sundry persons newly awakened who had never been with us before; and so much of the Divine presence appeared in the assembly that it seemed that This was no other than the house of God and the gate of heaven.”
“With joy, we now approve
The truth of Jew’s love,
God, the universal God,
He, the door hath opened wide,
Faith on heathens hath bestowed,
Washed them in His bleeding side.
“Purged from the stains of sin,
By faith, they enter in;
Purchased and redeemed of old,
Added to the chosen race,
Now received into the fold,
Heathens sing the Saviour’s praise.”