Читать книгу The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chiefly Extracted from His Diary онлайн

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Jan. 14, 1743.—“My spiritual conflicts to-day were unspeakably dreadful, heavier than the mountains and over-flowing floods. I was deprived of all sense of God, even of the being of a God; and that was my misery. The torments of the damned, I am sure, will consist much in a privation of God, and consequently of all good. This taught me the absolute dependence of a creature upon God the Creator, for every crumb of happiness it enjoys. O, I feel that, if there is no God, though I might live for ever here, and enjoy not only this, but all other worlds, I should be ten thousand times more miserable than a reptile.

Lord’s day, Jan. 23.—“I scarce ever felt myself so unfit to exist as now: saw I was not worthy of a place among the Indians, where I am going, if God permit: thought I should be ashamed to look them in the face, and much more to have any respect shown me there. Indeed I felt myself banished from the earth, as if all places were too good for such a wretch. I thought I should be ashamed to go among the very savages of Africa; I appeared to myself a creature fit for nothing, neither heaven nor earth. None know but those who feel it, what the soul endures that is sensibly shut out from the presence of God: alas! it is more bitter than death.