JONATHAN EDWARDS, the first great metaphysical writer born in America, says of himself that he “possessed a constitution in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids, vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits, often occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence, and demeanor.” Perhaps it was the reaction of his extraordinary intellect against this physical organization which made possible for him the pitch of eloquence illustrated in his sermons on the sufferings of the lost in hell. While his celebrity is due chiefly to these, the permanent place which he holds in English literature is due to writings on metaphysical subjects to which he was inspired by Locke.

  He was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5th, 1703. His father was Rev. Timothy Edwards, and as his mother was the daughter of a clergyman, it may have been partly a result of such heredity that in his eighth or ninth year he “experienced two remarkable seasons of awakening,”—he being even then engaged with the attempt to solve “problems of God’s sovereignty,” which led him afterwards to write his treatise on “The Freedom of the Will” (1754). He had begun the study of Latin at the age of six, and the six years he spent at Yale, including two years after his graduation, made him a scholar of extraordinary attainments. He began preaching in 1722, spending eight months in New York, and returning to New England to continue his studies. In 1723 he became a tutor in Yale College, remaining there until 1726, when he returned to the pulpit, preaching at Northampton from 1727 until 1750, when he retired on account of a disagreement with his congregation over the propriety of prohibiting the younger members from reading books which he regarded as immoral. Becoming a missionary among the Housatonic Indians in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, he found leisure among them for completing four metaphysical works, including that on “The Freedom of the Will,” which made him famous. As a result he was chosen president of Princeton College, and installed February 16th, 1758. The smallpox was then prevalent in New Jersey, and as it was before the introduction of vaccination he was “inoculated” with the disease in its virulent form. His death resulted March 22d, 1758.

  Among his works are “A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections,” 1746; “An Essay on the Freedom of the Will,” 1754; and “The Doctrine of Original Sin Defended,” 1758. His writings suggest his power, but it is only when his imagination has free play in such sermons as “Wrath upon the Wicked to the Uttermost” that he reaches his climaxes. The “Transcendentalist” and “Come Outer” movements in New England, which made Emerson and Thoreau possible, are generally attributed to the reaction against the dreadful pictures drawn by the highly poetical imagination which inspired these sermons.