Trails With Brainerd

Trails With Brainerd Copyright Doug Blair, Waterloo ON, 2019

Brainerd Up the Tree May 19, 2009

I hope the horse

Is ably hitched.

The pine-gum is

Strong and heady

In this stand of trees.

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And I have only

The woolen saddle-blanket

To keep me dry

As the dew comes on.

Up this gnarled oak,

With its autumn brown

And orange all but gone.

The ride from the

Settlement at Five Birches

Was windy and cool,

But I was oblivious.

Caught in the memory

Of the noon-hour’s lesson.

With no less than

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Fifteen natives gathered.

Captivated by the story

Of the Master blessing

And breaking and passing

The loaves and fishes.

Moses is getting

Very convincing

In the translation.

Seems they heard

The tone of my voice,

But followed more

Eagerly his cadence

And graceful hand-gestures.

Fifteen months ago it was,

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He stumbled into

My meeting,

Drunk and disorderly.

Even debilitated

By the native brew,

He was quick to take pity upon

My then feeble efforts

With the language.

No genuine conviction

Of soul in him, then,

But a servant’s heart.

My travel-mate and guard.

Together we watched

Nursing does and young.

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He excused himself

Early this afternoon,

Hearing of a sick cousin

To the south.

I will be alone

For the next eight days.

Six villages ahead.

God help me

To speak the Word,

Lovingly, earnestly.

My strangeness to them.

The village bustle, the hecklers.

I always marvel how news

Precedes my arrival.

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Children and elderly

Usually first to sense

Our good intentions.

Curious, respectful,

Very patient with my

Use of language.

(Moses predicted as much.)

The drawing-slate helps.

David! The moon has

Broken through that cloud!

Below, the horse, still.

Slow breath steaming.

Fodder completely gone.

How does one sleep, standing?

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Stiff, cramped and weak,

I probably could tonight.

But inside, thoughts

And memories quicken:

The college, the indiscretion,

The expulsion, the searching,

The still, small voice

Of my Lord.

And now here I am

Up a tree, contented;

With autumn branches

Like medieval window-panes

Against the night sky.

With faces and needs

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To lift up from

That last village.

How they love to laugh.

Even in face of

Deprivation, winter, sickness.

Child-like candidates for Heaven.

Moses had made some joke.

(Probably at my expense.)

Gleefully they examined me.

Head to toe.

Perhaps the story of

The bee-hive;

Or the black bear

Up the tree before me‌

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My studies, my papers,

Preparation?

Given way to horse-back

Prayers and sermonettes.

God, you have said

That the heart must believe;

The tongue must confess,

That Jesus Christ is Lord.

So, I am here with

Message of a Man

From across the Big Water,

Harvesting hearts,

Honouring, hugging,

Hoping for their dawn.

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Leaves rustle across pebbles

Like scurrying children.

Forgive me, Father,

No burden tonight

To watch and wait.

No throb in the chest.

No throat-lump.

No compulsion to plead.

Just an extraordinary

Sense of place,

Of purpose,

Of privilege.

To be in this wilderness,

Witness to a loving Saviour.

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I pray this cough

Clears from the chest soon.

Job’s Book

The Thirty-Eighth,

Speaks of Your majestic

Authority over all

The creation… the skies,

The trees, changing weather,

The ravens which cry.

And I, oh Lord,

Am seen by You…now sleep.

David Brainerd, October 1745, New Jersey

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Don't Call It Waste May 15, 2012

(Today's entry in ​Streams in the Desert​ by Mrs. Charles Cowman)

Only Through Death "Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a single grain, but if it dies away in the ground, the grain is freed to spring up in a plant bearing many grains" (John 12:24).

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Go to the old burying ground of Northampton, Mass., and look upon the early grave of David Brainerd, beside that of the fair Jerusha Edwards, whom he loved but did not live to wed.

What hopes, what expectations for Christ's cause went down to the grave with the wasted form of that young missionary of whose work nothing now remained but the dear memory, and a few score of swarthy Indian converts! But that majestic old Puritan saint, Jonathan Edwards, who had hoped to call him his son, gathered up the memorials of his life in a little book, and the little book took wings and flew beyond the sea, and alighted on the table of a Cambridge student, Henry Martyn.

Poor Martyn! Why should he throw himself away, with all his scholarship, his genius, his opportunities! What had he accomplished when he turned homeward from "India's coral strand," broken in health, and dragged himself northward as far as that dreary khan at Tocat by the Black Sea, where he crouched under the piled-up saddles, to cool his burning fever against the earth, and there died alone?

To what purpose was this waste? Out of that early grave of Brainerd, and the lonely grave of Martyn far away by the splashing of the Euxine Sea, has sprung the noble army of modern missionaries.

(Leonard Woolsey Bacon)

Brainerd Best Remembered January 24, 2010Â

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Â

It is scarcely possible for us to imagine pictures of

greater moral sublimity than those of Brainerd, which

sometimes gleam upon us even from slight hints in

his journal. At times we behold the lonely man with

drawing far into the dark forest, and there, in some

natural inner temple, formed by the intermingling

branches of the beautiful white and yellow pine, the

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dark cypress, and the golden-flowered tulip-tree,

monarchs of the wood, against which no feller has

ever come up praying for his Indians, and startling

by the strange sounds the passing savage, as he tracks

the steps of some beast of chase. At other times, we

find him in his solitary log-hut of rudely-hewn pine

or cedar, standing some miles remote from any dwell

ings of the Indian, with his door closely fastened to

keep out the wolf or bear, and seated near his lighted

torch, after a day of consuming toil, breaking far in

upon the hours of midnight, in reading some book of

deep thought or writing in his journal. At times

the storm rages, thunder peals through the echo

ing forest, arid trees torn from their roots, or broken

through their stems, fall to the earth with the noise

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of artillery and frighten even the wild beasts to their

lair. On some such lonely night, we may conceive

ourselves watching the earnest missionary s pen as he

traces in his journal, in passages like the following,

the record of recent experience, or the reflection of

present feelings and anticipations :

"About six at night I lost my way in the wilder

ness, and wandered over rocks and mountains, down

hideous steeps, through swamps, and most dreadful

and dangerous places. The night being dark, and

few stars to be seen, I was greatly exposed, much

pinched with cold, and distressed with an extreme

pain in my head, and attended with sickness at my

stomach. I have frequently been thus exposed, and

sometimes lain out the whole night, but God has

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hitherto preserved me, and blessed be his name ! Such

fatigues and hardships as these serve to wean me

from the earth, and I trust will make heaven the

sweeter."

... harvest at length came with something of

primeval promise and fruit. Among Brainerd's ear

liest converts was an ancient Indian, whose head was

white with the snows of a hundred years ; and on

evenings after the chase was ended, little companies

began to gather towards the missionary's hut, to lis

ten to the strange story of the gospel. Brainerd was

never able to speak with fluency in the tongues of the

Indian tribes ; and it is remarkable that he had little

influence among the Indians until the heart of his

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interpreter was renewed. There have been writers

on missions who, overlooking this essential feature in

the case, have argued from the eventual triumphs of

Brainerd in proof of the efficacy of preaching by in

terpreters. The reverse conclusion would be more

correct. Interpreters are not generally converts; and

it was not until this young Indian became "one soul"

with his master, by his common faith, that much good

was done. And there is a reason behind these facts

which explains them : To teach Christianity to others,

we must not only convey ideas but sympathies ; but

how unfit to be the medium of the latter, is the man to

whom the gospel has never come with power!

He is like a broken electric cord, through which the life

current will not pass.

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Going forth now with a companion who shared

no little of his own fervour, and whom faith had

suddenly made eloquent, his mission entered on a

new life. He was now among the Indians of Crossweeksung,

in Jersey, near to the sea. The chiefs in

general regarded him with little favour, for he

wanted the noble and athletic form which in Eliot

at once commanded the respect of savage hearts.

But his deep emotion won the interest of the women ;

and after his first public address in this new region,

he was accompanied by many of them for fifteen

miles, who, walking near to his horse's head, received

new instruction, and helped to circulate on every

side intelligence of the wonderful teacher. The in-

terest spread, in some districts, with the speed of a

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prairie fire ; and now the glad missionary often

found himself towards evening, after the chase, sur

rounded by three or four thousand huntsmen and

warriors, eager to listen to the message from the

Great Spirit. The web of Brainerd's journal, which

had so often been woven with gloom, at this period

breaks out in brightest colours.

(Taken from Great Missionaries by Andrew Thomson; 1862; London, T. Nelson and Sons)

Cherith Needful March 19, 2011

(Today's entry in ​Streams in the Desert ​by Mrs. Charles Cowman)

Hiding Place

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"Hide thyself by the brook Cherith" (1 Kings 17:3).

God's servants must be taught the value of the hidden life. The man who is to take a high place before his fellows must take a low place before his God. We must not be surprised if sometimes our Father says: "There, child, thou hast had enough of this hurry, and publicity, and excitement; get thee hence, and hide thyself by the brook--hide thyself in the Cherith of the sick chamber, or in the Cherith of bereavement, or in some solitude from which the crowds have ebbed away."

Happy is he who can reply, "This Thy will is also mine; I flee unto Thee to hide me.

Hide me in the secret of Thy tabernacle, and beneath the covert of Thy wings!"

Every saintly soul that would wield great power with men must win it in some hidden Cherith. The acquisition of spiritual power is impossible, unless we can hide ourselves from men and from ourselves in some deep gorge where we may absorb the power of the eternal God; as vegetation through long ages absorbed these qualities of sunshine, which it now gives back through burning coal.

Bishop Andrews had his Cherith, in which he spent five hours every day in prayer and devotion. John Welsh had it--who thought the day ill spent which did not witness eight or ten hours of closet communion. David Brainerd had it in the woods of North America. Christmas Evans had it in his long and lonely journeys amid the hills of Wales.

Or, passing back to the blessed age from which we date the centuries: Patmos, the seclusion of the Roman prisons, the Arabian desert, the hills and vales of Palestine, are forever memorable as the Cheriths of those who have made our modern world.

Our Lord found His Cherith at Nazareth, and in the wilderness of Judea; amid the olives of Bethany, and the solitude of Gadara. None of us, therefore, can dispense

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with some Cherith where the sounds of human voices are exchanged for the waters of quietness which are fed from the throne; and where we may taste the sweets and imbibe the power of a life hidden with Christ.

--Elijah, by F. B. Meyer.

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