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JONATHAN EDWARDS

[Jonathan Edwards was born, of ministerial stock, at East Windsor, Conn., Oct. 5, 1703, the same year as John Wesley. For the greater part of his life he was a parish minister of immense influence with his congregation. He was settled at Northampton, Mass., in 1727, where he remained until 1750. Dismissed for his views on qualifications for full communion, he was shortly called to Stockbridge, where he remained six years. But he was also known far beyond the borders of his parish as a preacher, and in the latter half of his life he became famous at home and abroad by his works on metaphysical theology, particularly The Freedom of the Will, 1754, and Original Sin, 1758. In 1757 he was called to Princeton as President, but died the next year, on March 22. His metaphysics and theology, and his powers as a logician, matters a little aside from the following study, are excellently presented in a Life by Rev. A. V. G. Allen, Boston, 1891. The standard text of his works, which has been followed in the extracts, is that of the so-called Worcester edition of 1809, reprinted in New York in 1847.]

JONATHAN EDWARDS and Benjamin Franklin are like enormous trees (say a pine and an oak), which may be seen from a great distance dominating the scrubby, homely, second growth of our provincial literature. They make an ill-assorted pair, the cheery man of the world and the intense man of God, — but they owe their preeminence to the same quality. Franklin, it is true, is remarkable for his unfailing common sense, a quality of which Edwards had not very much, his keenest sense being rather uncommon. But it was not his common sense, but the cause of his common sense, namely, his faculty of realization, that made Franklin eminent. This faculty is rare among men, but it was possessed by Franklin to a great degree. His perceptions of his surroundings - material, intellectual, personal, social, political-had power to affect his mind and action. He took real account of his circumstances.

Now this power of realization was the one thing which makes Edwards remarkable in literature. It is true that he was very

devout, very logical, very hard-working, but so were many other men of his time. The remarkable thing about Edwards (and it explains his other qualities) was that he realized his thoughts, and through that fact alone made his hearers realize them. Doubtless the things that were real to Edwards were not the things that were real to Franklin. The things that were real to Franklin were phenomenal to Edwards and of little concern to him. Franklin, intensely curious about the processes of nature, managed to snatch the lightning from the clouds; but Edwards, who regarded all externality as the thought of God, was content, as a rule, to wander in the woods, intent on the Creator and oblivious of the creation. Franklin, extremely interested in the political affairs of the day, snatched also the sceptre from the tyrant or helped to snatch it. Edwards took no concern in current politics, but devoted his life to restoring a rebellious world to its lawful God. Franklin may have thought Edwards a fanatic, and Edwards would have thought Franklin a reprobate. But they were men of much the same sort of mental power.

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There can be no doubt that Edwards conceived his ideas in a manner more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady" than most people. Hence his ideas were powers within him, as other people's were not they made him do this and that, as other people's do "Once more," says his biographer (of our own time), "he was overcome and burst into loud weeping, as he thought how meet and suitable it was that God should govern the world, ordering all things according to his own pleasure." We can receive that idea into our minds without disturbance of any kind; with Edwards it often had physical consequences. It is often said

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that Edwards pressed his logic too far. The fact was that certain ideas were real to him. Hence he was led to state, for instance, that "when the saints in heaven shall look upon the damned in hell, it will serve to give them a greater sense of their own happiness. Few persons reading the sermon on The Wicked Useful in their Destruction Only, will dissent from its doctrine on any logical ground. We dissent from it because the ideas called up are too feeble to hold their own before the inconsistent ideas of sympathy, tolerance, indifferentism, humanity, which are more real to us than they were to Edwards.

It is this power of realizing his conceptions, making them forces in his mind, that made Edwards great. He went to Enfield once and preached to a congregation which had assembled in a very ordinary any-Sunday mood. In his quiet way, leaning upon one arm and without gesture, his eye fixed upon some distant part of the meeting-house, he preached a sermon which New England “has never been able to forget." The congregation was aroused beyond belief: he had not gone far before the tears and outcries drowned his voice, and he paused to rebuke his hearers and to bid them allow him to go on. Few of us, probably, have ever seen such an effect caused by the spoken word alone. Turn to the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and see if you find an explanation of such emotion in others, or if you feel any especial emotion yourself. The ideas will be wholly unreal to many of us, as unreal as the legends of King Arthur, or even more so; they have no force when we conceive them. They were real to Edwards, and he made them real to his congregation to Edwards they were but minor corollaries of ideas which sustained and uplifted him; to the congregation they were at the time all-powerful and of terrible effect.

As we read Edwards to-day we can perceive this power, but we cannot do much more. We cannot realize his ideas ourselves until we devitalize a whole host of ideas of our own time. We must probably content ourselves with imagining what has been. Nor is it especially profitable to examine the technical means by which he succeeded in the great aim of literature. Edwards is an example of the power of unrhetorical rhetoric. His most marked rhetorical means were negative: he instinctively avoided what was likely to stand between him and his hearer, and so his personality had full sway. But Edwards' literary significance at present lies chiefly in the fact that he was a New Englander who made the world aware of the New England mind. That he should have been a theologian was natural; so was Cotton Mather, chiefly, who had performed a somewhat similar service half a century before. Each had presented what had long been the dominant factor in New England life.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE, JR.

NATURE AND HOLINESS

FROM about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words, Cant. ii. 1, used to be abundantly with me, I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the valleys. The words seemed to me sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. The whole book of Canticles used to be pleasant to me, and I used to be much in reading it, about that time; and found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that would carry me away in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world; and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of soul that I know not how to express.

Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father of some things that had passed in my mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together; and when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father's pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together; it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness.

After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, and moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for continuance; and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was as sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, so to speak, at the first appearance of a thunder storm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. While thus engaged, it always seemed natural to me to sing, or chant forth my meditations; or, to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a singing voice. . . .

The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness; to be with God, and to spend my eternity in divine love, and holy communion with Christ. My mind was very much taken up with contemplations on heaven, and the enjoyments there; and living there in perfect holiness, humility, and love; and it used at that time to appear a great part of the happiness of heaven, that there the saints could express their love to Christ. It appeared to me a great clog and burden, that what I felt within, I could not express as I desired. The inward ardor of my soul seemed to be hindered and pent up, and could not freely flame out as it would. I used often to think,

how in heaven this principle should freely and fully vent and express itself. Heaven appeared exceedingly delightful, as a world

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