years longer, pursuing the study of theology. In his sophomore year he had chanced upon a copy of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, which made a profound impression upon him, and probably affected his whole career. As a Preacher. In 1724 he became a tutor at Yale College, where he showed the same skill in imparting knowledge as his father had done before him. At the end of two years he was called to Northampton to assist his maternal grandfather in his parish work, who, although eighty-four years of age, was still actively engaged in the ministry. When his grandfather died two years later Edwards was chosen pastor of the church, over whose charge he remained for twenty-three years. His fame and popularity increased until they reached their zenith in 1740, in which year his labors met with bountiful results, and there was such a revival of religion that the year is known as "the year of the great awakening." His power as a preacher lay not in his gift as an orator, for he was not oratorical, but in his vivid portrayal of details. The sermon which he preached at Enfield on Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was so vivid and realistic that the most startling results were produced. His text was, "Their feet shall slide in due time and his listeners, as he proceeded to depict the awful future in store for them unless they repented, were bowed down in agony and prayer. At times he had to quiet them in order that he might continue. It was this wholesale condemnation of his people that caused dissatisfaction, and he was finally forced to resign his charge in 1750, after a ministry in Northampton of nearly twentyfour years. He retired to the village of Stockbridge, where he was pastor of a small church and acted as missionary to a tribe of Indians-work for which he was unfit. Last Days. The College of New Jersey, or Princeton, had been founded in 1746. Aaron Burr, the President, had married a daughter of Jonathan Edwards, and, upon Burr's death, in 1757, Edwards was asked to become President in his place. He left his work at Stockbridge for this higher calling, for which his intellectual training had most fitly prepared him; but five weeks after his installation he met his death, which was brought about by inoculation for smallpox. As a Philosopher. - Edwards possessed the keen, analytic, logical mind of a metaphysician, and in this line of thought he is the only man in America who can lay claim to a world-wide reputation. Men admitted his logic, could find no fallacy in his arguments, and yet in his endeavor to extend the spirit of Calvinism he built up a system of philosophy which was distasteful to the people of his own times, and to-day has been discarded almost entirely. His greatest work, Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will, has been highly praised by such eminent philosophers as Sir James Mackintosh and Dugald Stewart. This treatise was written at Stockbridge and published in 1754. While it has been reviewed and discussed by theologians ever since that time, there is little in it to please or interest the student of literature to-day. The idealism which he advocated was almost identical with that of Berkeley. As a Man. In the pulpit he was merciless, and seemed to take delight in terrifying his people with the fear of a future punishment at the hands of an angry God. In his home he was simple and affectionate in his nature, a very devoted husband and father. His wife, Sarah Pierrepont, was the daughter of a minister at New Haven. Her deeply religious character had won his love in his college days, and upon his deathbed he sent this message to her by their daughter, who was at his side, “Tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever." Edwards was different from most of the ministers of his time in that he engaged but very little in public affairs. An Estimate. says: Of him Dr. Thomas Chalmers "I have long esteemed him, as the greatest of theologians, combining in a degree that is quite unexampled the profoundly intellectual with the devotedly spiritual and sacred, and realizing in his own person a most rare, yet most beautiful harmony between the simplicity of the Christian pastor on the one hand, and on the other all the strength and powers of a giant in philosophy." SUGGESTIONS FOR READING Selections found in Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature. HELPFUL BOOKS B. Wendell's Cotton Mather. A. P. Marvin's The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. |