PAGE. - 172 CHAPTER VI. The third year of his Misssionary Labours; from CHAPTER VII. The fourth year of his Missionary Labours; from April 1746, to April 1747 281 INTRODUCTION. THE Life of DAVID BRAINERD here offered to the reader, is taken, by permission of the Rev. JOSIAH PRATT, Editor of the Missionary Register, from that work, with the addition of some farther passages from President Edwards' Memoir, which seemed too valuable to be omitted. The Editor of this volume, in prefixing a few Introductory remarks, will first give one or two general reflections occasioned by the Memoir, and then such particulars respecting its usefulness in the cause of Missions, and respecting the congregation over which Brainerd laboured, and the present state of the North American Indians, as he has collected from other sources. He adds also a slight sketch of the progress of Missionary labours. The DEVOTEDNESS of Brainerd to our Heavenly Master was the most striking peculiarity of his character. He gave up himself entirely to his work, abandoning every thing for it. While he himself underwent all sort of privations, he surrendered his own private property without reserve to educate others. God always honours such devotedness. Self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ has a present reward in the good done, as well as a future reward from the Lord of all. The success with which it pleased God to crown Brainerd's labours, perfectly corresponded to that patient zeal and holy earnest ness, that vehemence and devotedness, which the same God bestowed on him to enable him with unwearied labour steadily to seek success in the faithful, self-denying, and diligent use of means. The DISTRESSING EXPERIENCE through which Brainerd passed, his times of sorrow and despondency, his disappointed hopes and his sensibility to sin, make his history much more generally useful and interesting than it would otherwise have been. Sorrow makes up so large a portion of the lives of men, and all God's children have to pass through so much conflict and tribulation, that they cannot realize the blessedness of sympathy of feeling with those who have never felt sorrow. When a most eminent Christian like Brainerd goes through those afflictions and trials which are common to all, he is brought nearer to us. The Lord of glory himself chose to be "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;" and for ever blessed be our God for all the comfort that this gives to his suffering people, they know that he is touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Yet while our interest in this work is increased by the distressing experience which it records, we should guard against those peculiarities which occasion needless distress. Constitutional melancholy was a part of Brainerd's character, and no doubt tended to aggravate those seasons of depression to which his life shews that he was subject. He seems to the Editor, also to have suffered unnecessarily from the endeavour, in the great aim and scope of his labours, to separate, as a motive of his conduct, God's glory and his own personal interest: things which are perfectly united together, and should never be disjoined as if they were inconsistent. If glory to God in the highest be the first part of the Angelic Song on the birth of the Saviour, it is inseparably joined with peace on earth, and good-will towards men. God's glory, and his creatures' happiness while seeking that glory, form one blessed result that need never be disjoined. The SUCCESS which attends a free and full declaration of the Grace of the Gospel, after other means have been tried in vain, is a very striking and instructive feature in the history of the Church. The well-known fact in the commencement of the Greenland Mission, after a considerable trial of other means, of the happy effect of a simple declaration of the sufferings of Christ, accords with Brainerd's History as given in page 233. Mr. Newton records a similar instance in a letter to Hannah More, mentioned in the interesting biography just published of that valuable female. The fact is as follows: Mr. Newton says, 'A friend of mine was desired to visit a woman in prison,-he was informed of her evil habits of life, and therefore spoke strongly of the terrors of the Lord, and the curses of the law; she heard him awhile, and then laughed in his face; upon this he changed his note, and spoke of the Saviour, and what he had done and suffered for sinners; he had not talked long in this strain, before he saw a tear or two in her eyes; at length she interrupted him by saying, 'Why sir, do you think there can be any hope of mercy for me?' He answered 'Yes, if you feel your need of it, and are willing to seek it in God's appointed way. I am sure it is as free for you as for myself.' She replied, Ah! if I had thought so, I should not have been in this prison. I long since settled it in my mind that I was utterly lost; that I had sinned beyond all possibility of forgiveness; and that made me desperate.' He visited her several times, and when she went away, (for she was transported) he had good reason to hope that she was truly converted. He gave me this relation more than forty years ago, and it has been, I hope, 6 |