In August following, I became so disordered, by too close application to my studies, that I was advised to go home, and disengage my mind from study, for I began to spit blood. I took advice, but being brought very low, I looked death in the face more stedfastly. The Lord was pleased to give me a sweet relish of divine things, and my soul took delight in the blessed God.
*Saturday, October 18. In my morning devotions, my soul was exceedingly melted for, and bitterly mourned over, my exceeding sinfulness and vileness. I never before felt so deep a sense of the odious nature of sin. My soul was unusually carried forth in love to God, and had a lively sense of God’s love to me. And this love and hope, cast out fear.
*October 19. In the morning I felt my soul hungering and thirsting after righteousness. In the forenoon, while I was looking on the sacramental elements, and thinking that Jesus Christ would soon be “set forth crucified before me,” my soul was filled with light and love, so that I was almost in an ecstasy; my body was so weak, I could scarcely stand. I felt at the same time an exceeding tenderness and most fervent love towards all mankind; so that my soul and all the powers of it seemed, as it were, to melt into softness and sweetness. This love and joy cast out fear; and my soul longed for perfect grace and glory.
*Tuesday, October 21. I had likewise experience of the goodness of God in “shedding abroad his love in my heart,” and all the remaining part of the week, my soul was taken up with divine things. I now so longed after God, and to be freed from sin, that when I felt myself recovering, and thought I must return to college again, which had proved so hurtful to me the year past, I could not but be grieved, and I thought I had much rather have died; but before I went, I enjoyed several other sweet and precious seasons of communion with God.
I returned to college about November 6, and through the goodness of God, felt the power of religion almost daily.
November 28. I enjoyed precious discoveries of God, and was unspeakably refreshed with that passage, Hebrews xii. 22, 23, 24, so that my soul longed to wing away for the paradise of God; I longed to be conformed to God in all things.
Tuesday, December 9. God was pleased wonderfully to assist and strengthen me; so that I thought nothing should ever move me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord.—O! one hour with God infinitely exceeds all the pleasures of this lower world.
Towards the latter end of January, 1740–41, I grew more cold and dull in matters of religion, by means of my old temptation, ambition in my studies.—But through divine goodness, a great and general awakening spread itself over the college, about the latter end of February, in which I was much quickened, and more abundantly engaged in religion.
[This awakening was at the beginning of that extraordinary religious commotion through the land, which is fresh in every one’s memory. This awakening was for a time very great and general at New-Haven; and the college had no small share in it: the students in general became serious, many of them remarkably so, and much engaged in the concerns of their eternal salvation.
It could not be otherwise than that one whose heart had been so drawn to God, should be mightily animated, at the sight of such an alteration in the college, the town, and land; of mens reforming their lives, and turning from profaneness and immorality, to seriousness and concern for their salvation, and of religion’s reviving and flourishing almost every where. But as an intemperate zeal, soon mingled itself with that revival of religion: so Mr. Brainerd had the unhappiness to have a tincture of it. One instance of which it is necessary should be related.