Northampton, 1747 · Story · Friendship
Brainerd and Edwards
The missionary David Brainerd died in Jonathan Edwards's house at Northampton, and Edwards wrote his life.
The daughter of Edwards who nursed the dying Brainerd died four months after him, in her eighteenth year.
We are confident, then, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
- When
- 28 May to 12 October 1747 AD
Summary
In the spring of 1747 the young missionary came to stay with the family. Apart from some weeks in Boston he remained with them until his death in the autumn. His host came to know him well in those months and recorded his conversation, his prayers and his last words.
- Brainerd died at Northampton on Friday, 9 October 1747, in the thirtieth year of his age.
- Edwards's funeral sermon for Brainerd took 2 Corinthians 5:8 as its text.
- The Life of Brainerd is Edwards's edition of Brainerd's diary, with Edwards's own narrative between the entries.
A Guest at Northampton
Brainerd and Edwards knew each other a little before the stay of 1747.
Brainerd and Edwards tells of a dying guest and the family that received him, as the head of that family recorded it. It belongs to the value of friendship, because a household took in a dying man, kept him for months and stood by him to the end.
The question it answers is how Brainerd came to die in Edwards's house, who nursed him, and what Edwards made of him. It follows Edwards's own record of the stay, from Brainerd's arrival to the funeral sermon and the published Life.
Edwards wrote that he first saw Brainerd at New Haven, "at the time of the commencement, when he offered that confession to the rector of the college".
Edwards was "one he was pleased then several times to consult on that affair", and he wrote of the stay of 1747 as "a more full acquaintance".
Brainerd's Last Months in Dates
The first meeting can be dated only roughly, and every later date is exact.
Nine of the ten dates fall between May 1747 and February 1748.
- Their first acquaintanceAbout 1743"near four years before"
- Brainerd comes to NorthamptonThursday, 28 May 1747"He came from Long Meadow to Northampton"
- He sets out for BostonTuesday, 9 June 1747"set out from Northampton for Boston", by his diary
- A daughter of Edwards writes from Boston of his illness23 June 1747"who was with him"
- He returns to NorthamptonSaturday, 25 July 1747"I arrived here at Northampton", by his diary
- His words to JerushaLord's day, 4 October 1747"Dear Jerusha, are you willing to part with me?"
- His brother John arrivesWednesday, 7 October 1747"his brother John arrived from New Jersey"
- Brainerd diesFriday, 9 October 1747"expired, on Friday, Oct. 9, 1747"
- The funeral and the sermonMonday, 12 October 1747"interred on the 12th following"
- Jerusha dies14 February 1748"after a short illness of five days"
A timeline of ten rows, each with a date and Edwards's words from the Life or the sermon.
His brother John arrives, Brainerd dies, The funeral and the sermon, Jerusha dies
The Guest in the House
The guest arrived already dying and still prayed with the family.
Edwards wrote that Brainerd arrived "in a confirmed, incurable consumption". Of his company he said, "I found him remarkably sociable, pleasant, and entertaining in his conversation; yet solid, savoury, spiritual, and very profitable."
At the family prayers, Edwards recalled, "he generally made it one petition in his prayer, 'that we might not outlive our usefulness.'"
Jerusha's Nineteen Weeks
Edwards's footnote names the daughter who cared for Brainerd and how long she did so.
In a footnote to the Life, Edwards wrote that Jerusha "had constantly taken care of and attended him in his sickness, for nineteen weeks before his death".
He added that Brainerd had a "high opinion of her" and counted her "a very eminent saint".
Near the end Brainerd spoke to her of parting and of his brother John: "I have committed him and all my friends to God, and can leave them with God. Though, if I thought I should not see you and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part with you. But we shall spend a happy eternity together!"
The Book from the Diary
Edwards's Preface explains what the published account kept and what it left out.
Edwards's Preface says that "what Mr. Brainerd wrote in his diary, out of which the following account of his life is chiefly taken, was written only for his own private use".
It adds that "a few days before his death, he ordered some part of his diary to be destroyed", and that other parts were "left out for brevity's sake".
The 1834 text notes that the parts outside quotation marks "are the words of the publisher, President Edwards".
The Preface also credits Brainerd with skill "in discerning what within himself was to be laid to the score of melancholy".
The Death and the Funeral
Edwards recorded the hour of the death and the company at the funeral.
Edwards gives the hour of the end, writing that Brainerd lay still "till about six o'clock in the morning" before he died.
Edwards wrote that the funeral followed a sermon preached the same day. It was attended "by eight of the neighbouring ministers, and seventeen other gentlemen of liberal education, and a great concourse of people".
The Sermon and the Friends of Christ
Edwards's funeral sermon spoke of where the saints go at death.
The sermon is titled True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord.
Edwards read his text in the King James form, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."
Of the saints who are with Christ he said that they are more than "Christ's servants" and are "his friends, John xv. 15."
February 1748
Edwards closed his footnote on Jerusha with words of his own grief.
Edwards wrote of his daughter that "it has pleased a holy and sovereign God to take away this my dear child by death".
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Jonathan Edwards, An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, with a memoir by Sereno E. Dwight, revised and corrected by Edward Hickman (first published 1834), Banner of Truth reprint.
- Jonathan Edwards, Preface to the Life of Brainerd, printed before the Life in the same volume (1834)
- Jonathan Edwards, True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord, preached at Brainerd's funeral on 12 October 1747 and printed in that volume of the Works (1834)