*Wednesday, May 18. My circumstances are such that I have no comfort, of any kind, but what I have in God. I live in the most lonesome wilderness; have but one single person to converse with, that can speak English.¹ Most of the talk I hear, is either Highland Scotch or Indian. I have no fellow-Christian to whom I might unbosom myself, and lay open my spiritual sorrows, and with whom I might take sweet counsel about heavenly things, and join in prayer. I live poorly with regard to the comforts of life: most of my diet consists of boiled corn, and hasty pudding. I lodge on a bundle of straw, my labour is hard; and I have little appearance of success. The Indian affairs are very difficult; having no land to live on, but what the Dutch threaten to drive them from; they have no regard to the souls of the poor Indians; and they hate me, because I come to preach to them.――――But that which makes all my difficulties grievous to be borne, is, that “God hides his face from me.” ¹ This person was Mr. Brainerd’s interpreter; who was an ingenious young Indian belonging to Stockbridge, whose name was John Wauwaumpequunaunt, who had been instructed in the Christian religion by Mr. Sergeant; understood both English and Indian very well, and wrote a good hand. [Here he had various exercises of mind; from his first coming to Kaunaumeek, till he got into his own house, a little hut that he made chiefly with his own hands, with long and hard labour. How it was with him in those dark seasons he further describes in his diary for July 2.] “My soul is, and has for a long time been in a pitieous condition, wading through a series of sorrows, of various kinds. I have been so crushed down sometimes with a sense of my meanness and infinite unworthiness, that I have been ashamed that any, even the meanest of my fellow creatures, should so much as spend a thought about me, and have wished while I have travelled among the thick brakes, to drop into everlasting oblivion. In this case, I have almost resolved never again to see any of my acquaintance; and really thought, I could not be seen or heard of any more.――Sometimes the consideration of my ignorance has been a means of my great distress and anxiety. And especially my soul has been in anguish with fear, shame and guilt, that ever I had preached, or had any thought that way.――――Sometimes my soul has been in distress on feeling some particular corruptions: having at the same time, ten thousand former sins and follies presented to my view.――――And these attended with such external circumstances as mine at present are; destitute of most of the conveniences of life, and I may say, of all the pleasures of it; without a friend to communicate any of my sorrows to, and sometimes without any place of retirement, where I may unburden my soul before God, which has greatly contributed to my distress.”