In the middle colonies there was meanwhile developing an aspect of religion very different from that which commended itself to the orthodox Calvinism of New England. Undoubtedly the most important religious writing in America at the period with which we are now concerned was that of Jonathan Edwards. But the memory of another American, of widely different temper, has tended, during a century and more, to strengthen in the estimation of those who love comfortable spiritual thought expressed with fervent simplicity. JOHN WOOLMAN (1720-1772) was a John Quaker farmer of New Jersey, who became an itinerant preacher in 1746, and who began to testify vigorously against slavery as early as 1753. It was the Quakers' faith that we may save ourselves by voluntarily accepting Christ, by willing attention to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. This belief Woolman phrased so sweetly and memorably that Charles Lamb advised his readers to "get the writings of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers."

Woolman.

Though such writings as Woolman's throw light on a growing phase of American sentiment, they were not precisely literature. Neither was such political writing as we shall consider more particularly when we come to the Revolution; nor yet was the more scholarly historical writing, of which the principal example is probably the History of the Colony of Massachusets-Bay, by Governor THOMAS HUTCHINSON (1711-1780). Neglected by rea- Thomas son of the traditional unpopularity which sincere, selfsacrificing Toryism brought on the author, the last native governor of provincial Massachusetts, the book remains an admirable piece of serious historical writing, not vivid, picturesque, or very interesting, but dignified, earnest,

Hutchinson,

Edwards and Franklin.

and just. In the history of pure literature, however, it has no great importance.

Further still from pure literature seems the work of the two men of this period who for general reasons now deserve such separate consideration as we gave Cotton Mather. They deserve it as representing two distinct aspects of American character, which closely correspond with the two ideals most inseparable from our native language. One of these ideals is the religious or moral, inherent in the lasting tradition of the English Bible; the other is the political or social, equally inherent in the equally lasting tradition of the English Law. In the pre-revolutionary years of our eighteenth century, the former was most characteristically expressed by Jonathan Edwards; and the kind of national temper which must always underlie the latter was incarnate in Benjamin Franklin. Before considering the Revolution and the literature which came with it and after it, we may best attend to these men in turn.

V

JONATHAN EDWARDS

REFERENCES

WORKS: Works, 10 vols., New York: Carvill, 1830; Works, 2 vols., London: Bohn, 1865.

BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: A. V. G. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, Boston: Houghton, 1889; S. E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards, New York: Carvill, 1830; Holmes, “Edwards," (Works, VIII, 361–401); Sir Leslie Stephen, “Edwards,” (Hours in a Library, 2d series, Chapter ii, London, 1876); Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect, ed. H. N. Gardiner, Boston: Houghton, 1901.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Allen's Edwards, 391-393.

SELECTIONS: Carpenter, 16-26; Stedman and Hutchinson, II, 373-411.

JONATHAN EDWARDS was born at East Windsor, Con- Life. necticut, on October 5, 1703. In 1720 he took his degree at Yale, where he was a tutor from 1724 to 1726. In 1727 he was ordained colleague to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, minister, of Northampton, Massachusetts. Here he remained settled until 1750, when his growing severity of discipline resulted in his dismissal. The next year he became a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, in a region at that time remote from civilization. In 1757 he was chosen to succeed his son-in-law, Burr, as President of Princeton College. He died at Princeton, in consequence of inoculation for small-pox, on March 22, 1758.

Beyond doubt, Edwards has had more influence on subsequent thought than any other American theologian. In view of this, the uneventfulness of his life, so utterly apart from public affairs, becomes significant of the con

dition of the New England ministry during his lifetime. He was born hardly two years after Increase Mather, the lifelong champion of theocracy, was deposed from the presidency of Harvard College; and as our glance at the Mathers must have reminded us, an eminent Yankee minister of the seventeenth century was almost as necessarily a politician as he was a divine. Yet Edwards, the most eminent of our eighteenthcentury ministers, had less to do with public affairs than many ministers of the present day. A more thorough separation of Church and State than is indicated by his career could hardly exist.

Nothing less than such separation from public affairs could have permitted that concentration on matters of the other world which makes the work of Edwards still From his own time to

Jonathan Edword potent.

ours his influence has been so strong that to this day discussions of him are generally concerned with the question of how far his systematic theology is true. For our purposes this question is not material, nor yet is that of what his system was in detail. It is enough to observe that throughout his career, as preacher and writer alike, he set forth Calvinism in its Uncompromising most uncompromising form, reasoned out with great logiCalvinism. cal power to extreme conclusions. As for matters of earthly fact, he mentioned them only as they bore on his theological or philosophical contentions.

His

Early in life, for example, he fell in love with Sarah

Pierre

Pierrepont, daughter of a New Haven minister, and a Sarah descendant of the great emigrant minister Thomas Hooker, pont. of Hartford. Accordingly this lady presented herself to his mind as surely among God's chosen, an opinion which he recorded when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty, in the following words:

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him; that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be ravished with His love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her the whole world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her."

That little record of Edwards's innocent love, which felt sure that its object enjoyed the blessings of God's elect, has a tender beauty. What tradition has mostly remembered of him, however, is rather the vigor with which he set forth the inevitable fate of fallen man.

His most familiar work is the sermon on Sinners in the