Bio 7e David Brainerd

Brainerd's earthly life lasted 29 years, five months, 19 days. We can divide it into five unequal parts.
1. A melancholy boy - parentage, birth, parents' deaths (Apr 1718-Mar 1732)
We know little of Brainerd's childhood. The fifth of nine children (4 girls, 5 boys), he was born to Christian parents. Hezekiah Brainerd was a country squire, a JP and one of the King's counsel for the colony. Dorothy Mason was a widow when she married Hezekiah. Her father, Jeremiah Hobart (1630-1715), had been minister in Haddam. Ancestor, Peter Hobart, had ministered at Hingham, Essex before crossing the Atlantic and settling in Hingham, Massachusetts. The Brainerd country house was just above the west bank of the Connecticut River, some miles from the frontier town of Haddam.
A schoolhouse was established in Haddam in 1728. Perhaps David went there. His education was certainly thorough but basic. The simple Congregational church house the family attended was built in 1721 while David was still young. Long sermons and sober worship were the order of the day. The local parson was always treated with the highest respect.
The upbringing would have been strict but loving and Bible-centred. Books like Janeway's Token for children and Pilgrim's Progress would have been used. In those early days Brainerd had some marked religious experiences that he later mentions but they did not last.
When David was only nine his father died, away on business in Hartford. Five years later, in March, 1732, his mother also died. Brainerd confesses that he was a melancholy boy by temperament and no doubt these deaths, though perhaps more common then than now, added to the sense of seriousness with which he was constitutionally possessed.

2. A serious teenager - in his sister's house, studies, conversion (Mar 1732-Sep 1739)
After his mother's death Brainerd lived with newly married sister Jerusha and her husband Samuel Spencer. During this period he struggled to find Christ and knew a good deal of inner conflict. He confesses to hating things he found in Scripture, especially the idea that God could save or damn him. Like so many he wanted to be saved but on his own terms.
In April, 1737, he returned to the farm, where he worked for a year. He then began to study with his pastor, Phineas Fiske, in whose house he lived. Three of six Fiske daughters had married Brainerds; the families were close. Brainerd soon became a serious student of the Bible and took Fiske's advice to spend more time with older people rather than young people interested only in such things as card playing and 'frolics'. He also spent time with more sober-minded young people.
In Autumn, 1738 Fiske also died. All this while Brainerd had been seeking the Lord. Though he sometimes thought himself acceptable, he was not converted. All his religion, he saw, was just show. By February, 1739, he was in the habit of setting aside days for fasting and prayer to seek God. Eventually, on July 12, 1739, he was converted and blessed with a wonderful assurance of salvation in Christ. Unspeakable glory seemed to open to his view. To quote him

I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning until the Sabbath evening following, ... when I was walking again in the same solitary place where I was brought to see myself lost and helpless ... and here, in a mournful melancholy state, was attempting to pray; but found no heart to engage in that, or any other duty; my former concern, and exercise, and religious affections were now gone. I thought the Spirit of God had quite left me; but still was not distressed: Yet disconsolate, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy. And having been thus endeavouring to pray (though being, as I thought, very stupid and senseless) for near half an hour, ... as I was walking in a dark thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul: I do not mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing; nor do I intend any imagination of a body of light, some where away in the third heavens, or any thing of that nature; but it was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before, nor anything which had the least resemblance of it. I stood still, and wondered and admired! I knew that I never had seen before any thing comparable to it for excellency and beauty: It was widely different from all the conceptions that ever I had had of God, or things divine. I had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity, ... but it appeared to be divine glory that I then beheld: And my soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied, that he should be God over all for ever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness, and other perfections of God, that I was even swallowed up in him; at least to that degree, that I had no thought ... about my own salvation, and scarce reflected there was such a creature as myself.
Thus God, I trust, brought me to a hearty disposition to exalt him, and set him on the throne, and principally and ultimately to aim at his honour and glory, as King of the Universe.
I continued in this state of inward joy and peace, yet astonishment, until near dark, without any sensible abatement; and then began to think and examine what I had seen; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the evening following: I felt myself in a new world, and every thing about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was wont to do.
At this time, the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation; was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. If I could have been saved by my own duties, or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused. I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ.