In our timidity and our shoddy opportunism, we are always stirred when a man appears on the horizon willing to stake his all on a conviction. David Brainerd was such a man.
"Let every preacher read carefully over the Life of David Brainerd." - John Wesley.
David Brainerd (1718 - 1747), missionary to the Native Americans, has long been admired for his single-minded devotion to God and to mission. This book, edited and annotated by Jonathan Edwards, has inspired missionaries and preachers, including John Wesley, Henry Martyn, William Carey, Jim Elliot, and Adoniram Judson. Indeed, Wesley, Brainerd's contemporary, urges, "Let every preacher read carefully over The Life of David Brainerd." The Life and Diary of David Brainerd is the main source of information we have on Brainerd and is the cause of his posthumous fame after only 29 years of life.

Jonathan Edwards was America's greatest theologian. Brainerd knew Edwards well and, suffering from tuberculosis, spent his few last months in Edwards' home. Edwards, so impressed by Brainerd, stopped work on his treatise Freedom of the Will to prepare The Life and Diary of David Brainerd: With Notes and Reflections. Remarkably, it is the eminent Jonathan Edwards' most reprinted book.