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Jonathan Edward's Most Popular Work: “The Life of David Brainerd” and Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Joseph Conforti
Joseph Conforti
Affiliation:
Associate professor of history and English in Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island.
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Extract

When students of early American religion remember David Brainerd, if they remember him at all, it is usually in the context of the First Great Awakening. Born in Haddam, Connecticut in 1718, Brainerd enrolled at Yale in 1739, shortly after he had experienced conversion. By his sophomore year, when New Haven was aflame with the religious fervor that spread like a brush fire through New England, Brainerd was recognized as one of the “New Light” student leaders at Yale. For this reason, he was among the first undergraduates to be disciplined by the college administration as part of an effort to contain religious enthusiasm. Rector Thomas Clap expelled Brainerd in 1742 for remarking that tutor Chauncy Whittelsey had no more grace than a chair and for attending a meeting of Separate Congregationalists in defiance of college rules.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 188 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1985

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References

1. Existing studies of Brainerd are admiring accounts written from an evangelical perspective. See Page, Jesse, David Brainerd: The Apostle to the North American Indians (London, 1903)Google Scholar; Day, Richard Ellsworth, Flagellant on Horseback: The Life Story of David Brainerd (Philadelphia, 1950);Google Scholar and Wynbeek, David, David Brainerd, Beloved Yankee (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1961)Google Scholar. Also see Shelton, Don O., “David Brainerd,” in Heroes of the Cross in America (New York, 1904), pp. 1–83;Google ScholarHarper, George McLean, “David Brainerd, A Puritan Saint,” in John Morley and Other Essays (Princeton, 1920), pp. 134–162;Google Scholar and Kilby, Clyde S., “David Brainerd,” in Heroic Colonial Christians, ed. Hitt, Russell T., (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 151–206.Google Scholar Kilby's is the most scholarly study of Brainerd.

2. See, for example, Gaustad, Edwin Scott, The Great Awakening in New England (New York, 1957), pp. 70, 105;Google ScholarTucker, Louis L., Puritan Protagonist: President Thomas Clap of Yale College (Chapel Hill, 1962), pp. 123, 133;Google ScholarBushman, Richard L., From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 204–206.Google Scholar

3. The Journal was published in two parts: Mirabilia Dei inter Indicos; or the Rise and Progress of a remarkable work of Grace, Among a number of Indians …Justly represented in a Journal, Kept… by David Bratnerd. Part two was titled Divine Grace Displayed; or the Continuance and Progress of a remarkable work of Grace Among some Indians belonging to the provinces of New Jersey and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1746)Google Scholar.

4. Gaustad, , Great Awakening in New England, p. 124;Google ScholarHudson, Winthrop S., Religion in America (New York, 1965), p. 78;Google ScholarCowing, Cedric B., The Great Awakening and the American Revolution: Colonial Thought in the 18th Century (Chicago, 1971), pp. 83–86.Google Scholar

5. The full title is An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, Minister of the Gospel, Missionary to the Indians, from the honourable Society in Scotland, for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and Pastor of a Church of Christian Indians in New-Jersey, Who died at Northampton in New-England, Octob. 9th 1747. in the 30th Year of his Age: Chiefly taken from his own Diary, and other private Writings, written for his own Use; and now published, by Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Minister of the Gospel at Northampton (Boston, 1749)Google Scholar. In this article, I shall refer to it as the Life of Brainerd or simply the Life.

6. Sweet, William Warren, The Story of Religion in America (New York, 1930), p. 236.Google Scholar

7. Miller, Perry, review of Howard, Philip E. Jr, ed., The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, New England Quarterly 23 (1950): 277;Google ScholarHeimert, Alan, Religion and the American Mind from the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 313.Google Scholar See also Winslow, Ola, Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography (New York, 1940), p. 273;Google Scholar and Beaver, R. Pierce, ed., Pioneers in Mission (Grand Rapids, 1966), p. 105.Google Scholar

8. Heimert, , Religion and the American Mind, pp. 312–314.Google Scholar

9. Greven, Philip, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977), pp. 70, 81, 101.Google Scholar

10. Johnson, Thomas H., The Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Bibliography (Princeton, 1940; reprint ed., New York, 1970), pp. 47–60.Google ScholarFree Will, which continued to fascinate systematic thinkers, was the only one of Edwards's works of substantive Calvinism that was reprinted repeatedly during the nineteenth century.

11. Jackson, Thomas, ed., Works of John Wesley, 14 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1960), 3:294;Google Scholar 8:328.

12. Ibid., 8:328; Johnson, , The Writings of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 48–54;Google ScholarDwight, Sereno, Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd; … By Rev. Jonathan Edwards … (New Haven, 1822), p. 8;Google ScholarBeaver, , Pioneers in Mission, p. 106;Google ScholarMonk, Robert C., John Wesley: His Puritan Heritage (Nashville, 1966), p.221.Google Scholar

13. Styles, John, The Life of David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians; with an abridgment of his Diary and Journal (Newport, Isle of Wight, 1808; reprint ed., Boston, 1812)Google Scholar, preface.

14. Dwight, , Memoirs of Brainerd, p. 8;Google ScholarJohnson, , Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 47–60.Google Scholar

15. The Life of David Brainerd, … (New York, [1833])Google Scholar. This edition was reprinted frequently but never with a date. The number of copies distributed is estimated by Johnson, , Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, p. 55.Google Scholar

16. On the other nineteenth-century editions of the Life, see Johnson, , Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 52–55.Google Scholar Biographical sketches of Brainerd included the following: “Brainerd, David,” in The Gospel Treasury: Containing Biography: Compiled from the London Evangelical Magazine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1811), 2: 98–137;Google Scholar “David Brainerd not Forgotten,” reprinted from the Missionary Herald (1834), in Brainerd, Thomas, The Life of John Brain erd, the Brother of David Brainerd and His Successor as Missionary to the Indians of New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1865), PP. 463–466;Google ScholarWayland, Francis, “The Ministry of Brainerd,” American Presbyterian and Theological Review 3 (07 1865): 395–407;Google Scholar and Peabody, William B. O., “David Brainerd,” in Library of American Biography, ed. Sparks, Jared, vol. 8 (New York, 1837).Google Scholar

17. Dwight, , Memoirs of Brainerd, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

18. Bacon, Leonard, Thirteen Historical Discourses, on the Completion of two hundred years from the Beginning of the First Church in New Haven (New Haven, 1839), P. 245.Google Scholar

19. Quoted in Payne, E. A., “The Evangelical Revival and the Beginnings of the Modern Missionary Movement,” Congregational Quarterly 21 (1943): 228.Google Scholar

20. Martyn quoted in Kilby, “David Brainerd,” p. 200. On Ryland see Payne, , “The Evangelical Revival,” P. 228.Google Scholar

21. Clark, Elmer T., ed. The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, 3 vols. (Nashville, 1958), 2: 154, 486;Google Scholar 3:218; Wayland, , “The Ministry of Brainerd,” esp. P. 395.Google Scholar See also Kilby, , “David Brainerd,” pp. 199–202.Google Scholar

22. Spring, Gardiner, Memoir of Samuel John Mills (Boston, 1820; reprint ed., New York, 1829), p. 10;Google ScholarBrumberg, Joan Jacobs, Mission for Life, The Story of the Family of Adoniram Judson, (New York, 1980), pp. 25, 235.Google Scholar Sermons that described Brainerd as one of the missionary heroes of America include Levi Parsons, “Farewell Address,” in Memoir of Levi Parsons, First Missionary to Palestine from the United States, ed. Morton, Daniel O. (Burlington, Vt., 1830), p. 407;Google Scholar Leonard Woods, “A Sermon Delivered at the Tabernacle in Salem, Feb. 6, 1812”, in Beaver, , Pioneers in Mission, p. 263;Google Scholar and Holmes, Abiel, A Discourse before the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America, Delivered Nov. 3, 1808, (Boston, 1808), pp. 29–33;Google Scholar also see McLoughlin, William G., ed., Isaac Backus on Church, State, and Calvinism (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 177;Google Scholar and McCallum, James Dow, Eleazar Wheelock, Founder of Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H., 1939), p. 162.Google Scholar

23. I have borrowed this term from Charles Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety (Chapel Hill, 1982)Google Scholar, which examines Puritan devotional exercises. Though Hambrick-Stowe analyzes seventeenth-century popular religious practices, I have found his excellent work also suggestive for later periods.

24. See esp. The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (Boston, 1741).Google Scholar

25. Life of Brainerd, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Williams and Edward Parsons, 10 vols. (London, 1817; reprint ed., New York, 1968), 3: 553.Google Scholar All citations are from this reprint of Edwards's works. This edition of the Life includes Brainerd's Journal and other material not originally part of Edwards's biography. I have referred only to what Edwards included in the first edition of the Life.

26. For a negative view of this practice see Cross, Barbara M., ed., The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 1: 29–30.Google Scholar For a positive view see Woods, Leonard, History of the Andover Theological Seminary (Boston, 1885), pp. 168–169.Google Scholar

27. Edwards, , Life of Brainerd, p. 253.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., p. 544.

29. Adoniram Judson Gordon, quoted in Gordon, Ernest B., Adoniram Judson Gordon: A Biography, 2d ed. (New York, 1896), p. 85.Google Scholar

30. Bond, Alvan, Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fisk, A. M., Late Missionary to Palestine (Boston, 1828), P. 249.Google Scholar For other comments on private readings of the Life see, for example, Morton, , ed., Memoir of Levi Parsons, pp. 42, 107;Google ScholarClark, , ed., Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, 1:195, 287, 427;Google ScholarMcLoughlin, William G., ed., The Diary of Isaac Backus, 3 volt. (Providence, RI., 1979), 1: 9, 198, 414;Google ScholarCoke, Thomas, Extracts from the Journals of the Rev. Dr. Coke's Five Visits to America (London, 1793), pp. 13–16;Google Scholar and Bonar, Andrew A., Memoirs and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne (Edinburgh, 1894), p. 28.Google Scholar

31. Edwards, , Life of Brainerd, p. 563.Google Scholar

32. Woods, , History of Andover Theological Seminary, pp. 168–169.Google Scholar

33. On the influence of the Edwardsian doctrine of disinterested benevolence see Conforti, Joseph A., “Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity: Theology, Ethics, and Social Reform in Eighteenth-Century New England,” William and Mary Quarterly 34, 3d ser. (1977): 572–589;CrossRefGoogle ScholarConforti, , Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement (Grand Rapids, 1981)Google Scholar, chaps. 7–9; and Lowe, Wolfegange E., “The First American Foreign Missionaries: The Students, 1810–1829: An inquiry into their Theological Motives” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1962)Google Scholar. Interestingly, while noting the influence of the Edwardsian doctrine of disinterested benevolence, Lowe completely ignores Brainerd as a model of true virtue and missionary piety.

34. See the biographical sketches in Lowe, “The First American Foreign Missionaries,” appendix.

35. Boardwell, Horatio, Memoir of Rev. Gordon Hall, A. M., One of the First Missionaries of the American Board of Commisszonersfor Foreign Missions at Bombay (Andover, Mass., 1841), pp. 21–22;Google ScholarMorton, , ed., Memoir of Levi Parsons, p. 407.Google Scholar See also Bond, , Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fisk, pp. 93, 182;Google ScholarSpring, , Memoir of Samuel John Mills, pp. 234–236;Google Scholar and Rice, John Holt and Rice, Benjamin Holt, Memoir of James Brainerd Taylor (New York, 1833), p. 301.Google Scholar

36. Tracy, Joseph, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston, 1842), p.238.Google Scholar

37. Edwards, , Life of Brainerd, p. 564.Google Scholar

38. In addition to the memoirs of John Brainerd, Samuel J. Mills, Levi Parson, Pliny Fisk, Gordon Hall, and James Brainerd Taylor already cited, see Taylor, James Barnett, Memoir of Luther Rice, One of the First American Missionaries to the East (Baltimore, 1840)Google Scholar; Woods, Leonard, Memoirs of the American Missionaries Formerly Connected with the Society of inquiry Respecting Missions in the Andover Theological Seminary (Boston, 1833)Google Scholar; and the numerous memoirs of Adoniram Judson, who was raised as a Congregationalist but became a Baptist and was known as the “Baptists' Brainerd.” The Judson hagiography is described in Brumberg, Mission for Life, pp. 11–13. See also the inspirational biographies of missionary women such as Knowles, James D., Life of Mrs. Ann H. Judson (Philadelphia, 1830),Google Scholar and Winslow, Miron, A Memoir of Mrs. Harriet Wadsworth Winslow (Boston, 1835).Google Scholar

39. Bond, , Memoir of Fisk, p. 259;Google ScholarMorton, , ed., Memoir of Levi Parsons, pp. 370–371.Google Scholar

40. Strong, William E., The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston, 1910), p. 36.Google Scholar

41. Lesser, M. X., Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide (Boston, 1981).Google Scholar

42. Clark, , ed., Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, 1: 300;Google Scholar Frank Baker, From Wesley to Asbury: Studzes in Early American Methodism (Durham, NC., 1976), p. 71.Google Scholar

43. Lesser, , Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide, pp. 21–100.Google Scholar Johnson estimates that the tract society alone distributed nearly a million items by Edwards in the nineteenth century; Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, p. xi.

44. For the former view see Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, and McLoughlin, William G., Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar; for the latter view see Delattre, Roland A., Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, 1968),Google Scholar and Scheick, William J., The Writings of Jonathan Edwards: Theme, Motif, and Style (College Station, Tex., 1974).Google Scholar

45. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902; reprint ed., New York, 1958), p. 174;Google ScholarSprague, William, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York, 1858), 3:116;Google ScholarGordon, , Adoniram Judson Gordon, pp. 85–86.Google Scholar