INTRODUCTION

Summary

TheDiary and the Journal of David Brainerd—the former being the delineation of his own innermost life, and the latter the narrative of his missionary work among the Red Indians—are full of interest, for many reasons. But this surely is their principal attraction, that they set before the reader a consummate picture of the saintly character. As he passes from page to page, he feels with a constantly increasing conviction that he is in the company of a man of God. Mr. William James, in his brilliant and yet somewhat inadequate book on The Varieties of Religious Experience, has recently analysed that gracious and queenly composite which we call Saintliness. One of its ingredients, he says, is the surrender of the will to the Ideal Power, a surrender often so thoroughgoing that it becomes sacrifice and asceticism. Another feature is the strength or equanimity or fortitude, which enables the nature to soar far above both selfishness and fretting anxiety. To these must be added a heavenly purity that cleanses the man from whatever is low and earthly, and transmutes him more and more into a child in the blameless family of God. There is a fourth essential—the charity, the Christian love, which flows out in an irresistible tide even to enemies, and which extends its welcome to the beggar in his rags as well as to the comrade who is chosen and tried.