“And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity” (James 3:6a).
In the early 1740s, with revival fires burning, the student body of Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, “was greatly reformed, the students in general became serious, many of them remarkably so, and much engaged in the concerns of their eternal salvation.” But fires have been known to burn out of control.
Evangelist George Whitefield sometimes got carried away, and he became judgmental. Taking aim at some crusty old preachers he considered hindrances to the gospel, he said: “It is certain there is now a great degeneracy through all the Christian world, and though there may be many reasons assigned for that deadness, that lukewarmness….I am verily persuaded one great reason is this, That many pretend to preach the Lord Jesus Christ that are strangers to the power of Jesus Christ upon their own hearts…. A dead clergy will make a dead people.”
Pennsylvania pastor William Tennent published “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” The sermon began: “As a faithful Ministry is a great Ornament, Blessing, and Comfort, to the Church of GOD….So on the contrary, an ungodly Ministry is a great Curse and Judgment: These Caterpillars labour to devour every green Thing.”
With preachers in the crosshairs, pulpit fire was pitted against pulpit learning, though the two should always be close companions. Yale’s students preferred fire; its faculty, learning.
Students started meeting to hold one another accountable. One day, Samuel Whittelsey, a learned Yale board member, visited one of these little groups and prayed with them. His prayer must have lacked fire, for, when he left, one fellow asked sophomore David Brainerd what he thought about the minister. Oh, if he could have somehow held his tongue, but he didn’t. He said: “He has no more grace than this chair.”
A student in the hallway happened to overhear the comment, and the juicy tidbit got around, eventually making its way to a Yale official. Called on the carpet, Brainerd was required to apologize publicly. He refused and was promptly expelled. Two years of reflecting on his tart tongue led him to write Yale and “humbly ask the forgiveness of the governors of the college, and of the whole society; but of Mr. Whittelsey in particular.”
Brainerd continued his training privately and then launched a ministry among Native Americans in New Jersey. His spirituality deepened: “O that I could give up myself to him [God], so as never more to attempt to be my own, or to have any will or affections that are not perfectly conformed to him! But, alas, alas! I find I cannot be thus entirely devoted to God; I cannot live, and not sin.”
Brainerd’s efforts bore fruit, and soon he wrote of his congregation: “I know of no assembly of Christians, where there seems to be so much of the presence of God, where brotherly love so much prevails, . . . although not more than nine months ago, they were worshipping devils and dumb idols under the power of pagan darkness and superstition.”
Sadly, tuberculosis seized the young missionary. Lying on his deathbed in September 1747, the 29-year-old wrote: “My heaven is to please God, and glorify him, and to give all to him, and to be wholly devoted to his glory: that is the heaven I long for.”
A month later, on October 9, he breathed his last.
About the Columnist: Paul V. Harrison has pastored Madison FWB Church in Madison, Alabama since 2015. Previously, he pastored Cross Timbers FWB church in Nashville, Tennessee, for 22 years. He was an adjunct professor at Welch College for 17 years, teaching church history and Greek. Paul is the creator of Classic Sermon Index, a subscription-based online index of over 66,000 sermons, with clients including Harvard, Baylor, and Vanderbilt, among others: classicsermonindex.com.
