Wednesday, September 30. I was obliged to keep my bed the whole day, through weakness. However I redeemed a little time, and with the help of my brother, read and corrected about a dozen pages in my M. S. giving an account of my conversion.
Friday, October 2. My soul was this day, at turns, sweetly set on God: I longed to be with him, that I might behold his glory: I felt sweetly disposed to commit all to him, even my dearest friends; my dearest flock, and my absent brother, and all my concerns for time and eternity. Oh that his kingdom might come into the world; that they might all love and glorify him; and that the blessed Redeemer might “see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied! Oh, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! Amen.”[¹]
[¹] Here ends his diary: these are the last words, that are written in it, either by his own hand, or from his mouth.
[The next evening we much expected his brother John from New-Jersey; it being about a week after the time that he proposed for his return. And though our expectations were still disappointed; yet Mr. Brainerd seemed to continue unmoved, in the same calm frame, that he had before manifested; as having resigned all to God, and having done with his friends, and with all things here below.
*On the morning of the next day, being Lord’s-day, October 4, as my daughter Jerusha (who chiefly tended him) came into the room, he looked on her very pleasantly, and said, “Dear Jerusha, are you willing to part with me?—I am quite willing to part with you; I am willing to part with all my friends: I am willing to part with my dear brother John, although I love him the best of any creature living; 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 an happy eternity together!”[¹] In the evening, as one came into the room with a bible in her hand, he said, “Oh, that dear book! that lovely book! I shall soon see it opened! the mysteries that are in it, and the mysteries of God’s providence, will be all unfolded!”
[¹] Since this, it has pleased God to take away this my dear child, on the 14th of February next following, after a short illness of five days, in the eighteenth year of her age. She was a person of much the same spirit with Mr. Brainerd. She had constantly taken care of, and attended him in his sickness, for nineteen weeks before his death, devoting herself to it with great delight, because she looked on him as an eminent servant of Jesus Christ. In this time, he had much conversation with her on things of religion; and in his dying state, often expressed to us, her parents, his great satisfaction concerning her true piety, and his confidence that he should meet her in heaven; and his high opinion of her, not only as a true Christian, but a very eminent saint; one whose soul was uncommonly fed and entertained with things that appertain to the most spiritual parts of religion; and one who, by the temper of her mind, was fitted to deny herself for God, and to do good beyond any young woman that he knew of. She had manifested a heart uncommonly devoted to God, in the course of her life, many years before her death; and said on her death-bed, that “she had not seen one minute for several years, wherein she desired to live one minute longer, for the sake of any other good in life, but doing good, living to God, and doing what might be for his glory.”
His distemper now apparently preyed on his vitals: not by a sudden breaking of ulcers in his lungs, as at Boston, but by a constant discharge of [♦]purulent matter, in great quantities; so that what he brought up by expectoration, seemed to be as it were mouthfuls of almost clear pus; which was attended with very great inward pain and distress.
[♦] “petulent” replaced with “purulent” per Errata
On Thursday, October 6, he lay for a considerable time, as if he was dying. At which time, he was heard to utter in broken whispers, such expressions as these; “He will come, he will not tarry.—I shall soon be in glory.—I shall soon glorify God with the angels.”—But after some time he revived.
The next day, viz. Wednesday, October 7, his brother John arrived from New-Jersey, where he had been detained much longer than he intended, by a mortal sickness prevailing among the Christian Indians. Mr. Brainerd was refreshed with seeing him, and appeared fully satisfied with the reasons of his delay; seeing the interest of religion and of the souls of his people required it.