Edwards, leaving Northampton in sorrow of heart, gave his incomparable powers to the work of the gospel among the Stockbridge Indians until summoned thence to the presidency of Princeton College.
When Brainerd fainted under his burden, it was William Tennent who went out into the wilderness to carry on the work of harvest.

But the great gift of the American church to the cause of missions was the gift of David Brainerd himself.

His life was the typical missionary's life--the scattering of precious seed with tears, the heart-sickness of hope deferred, at last the rejoicing of the harvest-home.

His early death enrolled him in the canon of the saints of modern Christendom.

The story of his life and death, written by Jonathan Edwards out of that fatherly love with which he had tended the young man's latest days and hours, may not have been an unmixed blessing to the church.