BRAINERD
\15
BRAMHALL
viii, 259; Jamieson, Relig. Biog, art. i, p. 68 ; Bacon, j Christian Spectator, vii, 324.
Brainerd, John, brother of David, was born in J Haddam, Conn., Feb. 28, 1720, and, like his brother, was brought up in a strictly religious household, and was educated at Yale College. David, before his death, requested John to take his place in New Jersey as mis- sionary to the Indians. Accordingly, he was licensed in 1748 as a preacher by the Presbyter}' of New York, and entered the missionary service (under the Scottish Society) in New Jersey, in which labor he spent eight years. During this period he was pressed by pecuni- ary trouble, his salary being too small to provide even the necessaries of life. In 1752 ho married. An at- tempt to transfer his Indian flock to Wyoming, on the Susquehanna, failed. In 1754 he was elected a trustee of Princeton College, and the year after the Scotch Society dismissed him, because the Indians, having parted with their lands, would soon be obliged to move. Soon after he received a call to succeed president Burr in the church at Newark, accepted it, again engaged with the Scotch Society for the Indians, was dismissed a second time, in September, 1757, and then finally resolved to accept the call of the congregation at New- ark. In the summer of 1759 he was at Crown Point, during the Canada war, as army chaplain, and had served in that capacity for a short time in 1756. He was moderator of the Synod of New York and Phila- delphia, at Philadelphia, in May, 1762. He took charge of the church at Deerfield, N. J., in 1777, after the church at Mount Holly had been burned down by the British. From the time of his settlement at New- ark in 1757 until his death, he never lost sight of his poor Indians or their spiritual and temporal welfare, and " his Indians clung to him with affectionate attach- ment to the last." He died at Deerfield, N. J., March, 1781.— Brainerd, Life of John Brainerd (Philad. 1865).
Brainerd, Thomas, D.D., a divine of the New School Presbyterian Church, was born in 1804, in Weston, New York, and while a child lived near Rome, Oneida Count}'. After graduating at Hamilton Col- lege, after a short study of law, he devoted his life to the ministry, and studied theology at the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass. After graduating, he removed to Philadelphia, and at times preached for the Rev. Dr. Patterson in the First Presbyterian church of the Northern Liberties. Subsequently removing to Cincinnati, Dr. Brainerd became an assistant of the Rev. Dr. Lyman Bsecher. In addition to these labors, he edited with ability a child's paper, a youths' maga- zine, the weekly Christian Herald, published at Cin- cinnati, and the Presbyterian Quarterly Review, in which the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, then a young man, as- sisted, and thus a mutual friendship was founded on affection and esteem between the two great families of divines. In 1836, Dr. Brainerd, in response to an ear- nest call from the congregation of the Pine Street Pres- byterian church, as successor to the Rev. Dr. E. S. Ely, became their pastor. During his ministerings, for over thirty years, he endeared himself to the suc- cessive generations who worshiped in this time-hon- ored church by his benignant love and devotedncss. Dr. Brainerd, while conscientiously fulfilling every de- mand upon his time, labored industriously and well in 'contributing to literary monthlies. He published va- rious sermons and tracts. In addition, some months before his death, he issued The Life of John Brainerd, the brother of David Brainerd, and his successor as Mis- sionary to the Indians of New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1865), which was most favorably received. He died suddenly from apoplexy at the house of his son-in-law, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in August, 1866. Dr. Brain- erd was one of the most active and persevering pas- tors in the Church, and inspired his people with the same spirit. As a platform speaker upon anniversary occasions he was always happy and effective, and as a
Christian gentleman he was respected and loved by all with whom he came in contact. He was a member of the committee of conference appointed on the part of the New School Assembly at its meeting in May, 1866, to meet a similar committee from the Old School. — American Presbyterian (newspaper).
Bramble is, in Isa. xxxiv, 13, the rendering of the Heb. nin, cho'ach, a thorn in general (rendered elsewhere "thistle" or "thorn"), as in Luke vi, 44, it stands for the Greek /3«ror, in the similar sense of any prickly shrub; but in Judg. ix, $4, 15, it repre- sents the term *1I3X, atad' (Psa. lviii, 9, " thorn"), which is generally thought to denote the Southern buckthorn ("spina Christi," or Christ's thorn, from the tradition that it furnished the thorny crown for our Saviour before his crucifixion), the Rhamnus paliurus of Linn., a brier-bush indigenous in Egypt (Cyrenaica according to Pliny, xiii, 33) and Syria, shooting up from the root in many branches (10 to 15 feet high), armed with spines, and bearing leaves resembling those of the olive, but light-colored and moro slender, with little whitish blossoms that eventually produce small, black, bitter berries (see Prosp. Alpin. Plantt. ^Eg. c. 5). The Arabs still call it atad (more com- monly ausi/J), a name that appears to have been in use among the Africans (i. e. Carthaginians), according to Dioscorides (6Voss. i, 119, pa/jvog, 'A^ipoi 'Araiir). Rauwolf (Trav. p. 460) found it growing at Jerusalem.