Success Quote by David Brainerd

Modesty is doing a lot of work here, but so is power. Brainerd’s careful “I cannot say much as yet” reads like humility, the pious hedge of a man trained to distrust self-congratulation. It also functions as an early progress report: the missionary taking the temperature of a new field, noting receptivity, signaling to patrons back home that the investment might pay off. The sentence is structured like a ledger of human material: “kind,” “well-disposed,” “attentive,” “willing.” Each adjective is both pastoral and managerial.

The subtext sits in the grammar. “The Indians” appear as a single collective subject, flattened into a type, while “my instructions” centers his authority as the axis of meaning. Their agency is permitted, but only in a narrow channel: they are “willing to be taught further.” Willingness becomes the proof of virtue, and “kindness” is framed less as mutual relationship than as openness to transformation. In other words, he’s not simply observing hospitality; he’s translating it into spiritual and cultural pliability.

Context matters: Brainerd wrote from the 1740s world of revival Protestantism and colonial expansion, where “success” was measured in conversions, behavioral change, and the establishment of Christian discipline. The language is gentle, but the project is not neutral. It’s the soft tone of a hard aim: remaking lives under the banner of salvation. That tension is why the line holds. It captures how colonial-era evangelism could sound like patient instruction while operating as a confident claim to define what “further” education should be.