Edwards was born October 5th, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. He was the son of Rev. Timothy and Esther Stoddard Edwards; was graduated at Yale College in 1720; studied theology at New Haven; from August 1722 to March 1723 preached in New York; from 1724 to 1726 was a tutor at Yale; on the 15th of February, 1727, was ordained at Northampton, Massachusetts; in 1750 was dismissed from the church there, and in 1751 removed to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He was called to Princeton in 1757, and died there March 22d, 1758.

  Sermon on Man’s Dependence, 1731; Sermon on Spiritual Light, 1734; first Revival at Northampton, 1735; “Narrative of Surprising Conversions,” 1736; publishes sermons on Justification, etc., 1738; The Great Awakening, 1740; Sermon at Enfield, 1741; publishes “Distinguishing Marks,” etc., 1741; “Thoughts on the Revival,” 1742; “Religious Affections,” 1746; troubles at Northampton, 1749; publication of “Qualifications for Full Communion,” 1749; “Reply to Williams,” 1752; “The Freedom of the Will,” 1754; treatises written on “Virtue and End of Creation,” 1755; publication of treatise on “Original Sin,” 1758.

Personal

  On the Sabbath felt wonderful satisfaction in being at the house of Mr. Edwards. He is a son himself and hath also a daughter of Abraham for his wife. A sweeter couple I have not seen. Their children were dressed, not in silks and satins, but plain, as becomes the children of those who in all things ought to be examples of Christian simplicity. She is a woman adorned with a meek and quiet spirit, and talked so feelingly and so solidly of the things of God, and seemed to be such an helpmeet to her husband, that she caused me to renew those prayers which for some months I have put up to God, that He would send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife. I find upon many accounts it is my duty to marry. Lord, I desire to have no choice of my own. Thou knowest my circumstances.

  I have 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, with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college. This makes me shrink at the thoughts of taking upon me, in the decline of life, such a new and great business, attended with such a multiplicity of cares, and requiring such a degree of activity, alertness, and spirit of government; especially as succeeding one so remarkably well qualified in these respects, giving occasion to every one to remark the wide difference. I am also deficient in some parts of learning, particularly in algebra, and the higher parts of mathematics, and in the Greek classics; my Greek learning having been chiefly in the New Testament…. My method of study, from my first beginning the work of the ministry, has been very much by writing; applying myself, in this way, to improve every important hint; pursuing the clue to my utmost, when any thing in reading, meditation, or conversation, has been suggested to my mind, that seemed to promise light in any weighty point; thus penning what appeared to me my best thoughts, on innumerable subjects, for my own benefit. The longer I prosecuted my studies in this method, the more habitual it became, and the more pleasant and profitable I found it. The farther I travelled in this way, the more and wider the field opened, which has occasioned my laying out many things in my mind, to do in this manner, if God should spare my life, which my heart hath been much upon; particularly many things against most of the prevailing errors of the present day, which I cannot with any patience see maintained (to the utter subverting of the Gospel of Christ) with so high a hand, and so long continued a triumph, with so little control, when it appears so evident to me that there is truly no foundation for any of this glorying and insult.

  On Wednesday, the 22d of last month, died of inoculation at Nassau Hall, an eminent servant of God, the reverend and pious Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New Jersey; a gentleman of distinguished abilities and of a heavenly temper of mind; a most rational generous, catholic and exemplary Christian, admired by all who knew him for his uncommon candour and disinterested benevolence; a pattern of temperance, meekness, candour and charity; always steady, solemn and serene; a very judicious and instructive preacher, and most excellent divine. And as he lived cheerfully resigned to the will of Heaven, so he died, or rather, as the Scriptures emphatically express it with regard to good men, he fell asleep in Jesus, without the least appearance of pain.

  The loss sustained by his death, not only by the College of New Jersey, but by the church in general, is irreparable. I do not think our age has produced a divine of equal genius or judgment.

	M. S.
	Reverendi admodam Viri,
	Jonathan Edwards, A. M.,
	Collegii Novæ Cæsariæ Præsidis.
	Natus apud Windsor, Connecticutensium, V. Octobris,
	A. D. MDCCIII. S. V.
	Patre Reverendo Timotheo Edwards oriundus;
	Collegio Yalensi educatus;
	Apud Northampton Sacris initiatus, XV. Februarii, MDCCCXXVI–VII.
	Illinc dimissus XXII. Junii, MDCCL.
	Et Manus Barbaros instituendi accepit.
	Præses Aulæ Nassovicæ creatus XVI. Februarii, MDCCLVIII.
	Defunctus in hoc Vico XXII Martii sequentis, S. N.
	Ætatis LV. heu nimis brevis!
	Hic jacet mortalis pars.
	Qualis Persona quæris, Viator?
	Vir corpora procero, sed gracili,
	Studiis intentissimis, Abstinentiâ, et Sedulitate Attenuato.
	Ingenii acumine, Judicio acri, et Prudentiâ,
	Secundus Nemini Mortalium.
	Artium liberalium et Scientiarum peritiâ insignis,
	Criticorum sacroram optimus, Theologus eximius,
	Ut vix alter æqualis; Disputator candidus;
	Fidei Christianæ Propugnator validus et invictus;
	Concionator gravis, serius, discriminans,
	Et, Deo ferente, Successu
	Felicissimus.
	Pietate præclarus, Moribus suis severus,
	Ast aliis æquus et benignus.
	Vixit dilectus, veneratus—
	Sed, ah! lugendus
	Moriebatur.
	Quautos Gemitus discedens ciebat!
	Heu Sapientia tanta! heu Doctrina et Religio!
	Amissum plorat Collegium, plorat et Ecclesia:
	At, eo recepto, gandet
	Cœlum.
	Abi, Viator, et pia sequere Vestigia.

  He studied the Bible more than all other books, and more than most other divines do. He took his religious principles from the Bible, and not from any human system of body or of divinity. Though his principles were Calvinistic, yet he called no man father. He thought and judged for himself, and was truly very much of an original.

  In his youth he appeared healthy, and with a good degree of vivacity, but was never robust. In middle life, he appeared very much emaciated, by severe study, and intense mental application. In his person he was tall of stature—about six feet one inch—and of a slender form. He had a high broad, bold forehead, and an eye unusually piercing and luminous; and on his whole countenance, the features of his mind—perspicacity, sincerity, and benevolence—were so strongly impressed, that no one could behold it, without at once discovering the clearest indications of great intellectual and moral elevation.

  The person of Mr. Edwards,… was tall and slender. He was a little more than six feet in stature. His countenance was strongly marked with intelligence and benignity; and his manners were peculiarly expressive of modesty, gentleness, and Christian dignity. His voice, in public speaking, was rather feeble, and he had little or no gesture. Yet such were the gravity of his manner, the weight and solemnity of his thoughts, and the evident earnestness of his delivery, that few preachers were listened to with more fixed attention, or left a more deep and permanent impression. Mr. Edwards was the father of eleven children; three sons and eight daughters. One of these, his second daughter, died eleven years before him, in the 17th year of her age. All the rest survived him, and some of them a number of years. One only of his sons became a minister of the Gospel. This was his second son, Jonathan, who greatly resembled his venerable father in metaphysical acuteness, in ardent piety, and in the purest exemplariness of Christian deportment.

  He reminded you of Milton’s line, “The ground burns frore, and cold performs the effect of Fire.” A signal instance of this is recorded. A large congregation, including many ministers, were assembled to hear a popular preacher, who did not fulfil his appointment. Edwards was selected to fill this place, principally because, being in the habit of reading his discourses, he happened to have a sermon ready in his pocket. He ascended the pulpit accordingly, amid almost audible marks of disappointment from the audience, whom, however, respect for the abilities and character of the preacher prevented from leaving the church. He chose for his text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” and began to read in his usual quiet way. At first he had barely their attention; by and by he succeeded in riveting every one of them to his lips; a few sentences more, and they began to rise by twos and threes; a little farther, and tears were flowing; at the close of another, particularly deep groans were heard, and one or two went off in fits; and ere he reached the climax of his terrible appeals, the whole audience had risen up in one tumult of grief and consternation. And, amid all this, there stood the calm, imperturbable man, reading on as softly and gently as if he were in his own study. And, in reading the sermon, we do not wonder at the impression it produced upon an audience constituted as that audience must have been. It is a succession of swift thunder-claps, each drowning and deafening the one which preceded it. We read it once to a distinguished savant, who, while disapproving of its spirit, was compelled, literally, to shiver under the “fury of its power.”

  He was commanding as a pulpit teacher, not for grace of person; he was slender and shy; not for elocution; his voice was thin and weak; not for any trick of style; no man more disdained and trampled on it:—but from his immense preparation, long forethought, sedulous writing of every word, touching earnestness and holy life. He was not a man of company; he seldom visited his hearers. Yet there was no man whose mental power was greater. Common consent set him at the head of his profession. Even in a time of rapture and fiery excitement he lost no influence.

  As a preacher Edwards has been rarely if ever excelled since the days of the apostles. His manner was not oratorical, and his voice was feeble; but this was of little account, with so much directness and richness of thought, and such overwhelming power of argument, pressed home upon the conscience of the heart. In vain did any one attempt to escape from falling a prey under his mighty appeal. It was in the application of his subject that he specially excelled. The part of the sermon before this was only preparatory. Here was the stretching out of the arms of the discourse, to borrow a figure, upon the hearts and lives of his audience.

  Of the religion called “evangelical,” he was perhaps, the most perfect exemplification that ever existed. The child was father of the man. We see him, as a boy of ten, building a booth in a swamp near his father’s house, to which he and two of his companions used to go regularly to pray. In his eleventh year, we read of his demonstrating, with a kind of solemn jocularity, the absurdity of an opinion which had been advanced by a boy of his own age, that the soul was material, and remained in the grave with the body till the resurrection. At twelve, we find him beginning a letter to one of his sisters thus: “Through the wonderful goodness and mercy of God, there has been in this place a very remarkable outpouring of the Spirit of God.” He proceeds to inform his sister that he “has reason to think it is in some measure diminished, but he hopes not much, and that above thirty persons came commonly a Mondays to converse with father about their souls.” At the same time, he exhibited in things not religious, an intelligence truly remarkable. He wrote, in his twelfth year, an elaborate description of “the wondrous way of the working of the forest spider,” which shows that he possessed a rare talent for the observation of nature. One of the greatest of natural philosophers was lost to the world when Jonathan Edwards became a theologian…. Nobler than any of his works was the life of this good man.

  Was the man who could utter such blasphemous sentiments—for so they undoubtedly appear to us—a being of ordinary flesh and blood? One would rather have supposed his solids to be of bronze, and his fluids of vitriol, than have attributed to them the character which he describes. That he should have been a gentle, meditative creature, around whose knees had clung eleven “young vipers” of his own begetting, is certainly an astonishing reflection. And yet, to do Edwards justice, we must remember two things. In the first place, the responsibility for such ghastly beliefs cannot be repudiated by anyone who believes in the torments of hell.

  Edwards was pre-eminently a student. Tall in person, and having even a womanly look, he was of delicate constitution. He was, however, so temperate and methodical in his living that he was usually in good health, and able to give more time to study than most men. Twelve or thirteen hours of every day were commonly allotted to this. So devoted was he to his work as a student that he was most unwilling to allow anything to disturb it. Though he was careful to eat regularly and at certain fixed hours, yet he would postpone his meals for a time if he was so engaged in study that the interruption of eating would interfere with the success of his thinking. He was so miserly also in his craving for time that he would leave the table before the rest of the family and retire to his room, they waiting for him to return again when they had finished their meal, and dismiss them from the table with the customary grace.

  Such, in intellectual attainments and in spiritual quality, was Jonathan Edwards, when, at the age of twenty-four, he entered upon his work as minister of a parish on the frontiers of civilization. The remainder of his life was what he expected it to be,—an experience of labor and of sorrow; but always borne by him with meek and cheerful submission. He had ill health, domestic griefs, public misrepresentation, alienation of friends, persecution, even poverty. In 1751, he was so poor that his daughters had to earn money for household expenses by making fans, laces, and embroidery; and he himself, for lack of paper, had to do his writing, mostly on the margins of pamphlets, on the covers of letters, and on the remnants that his daughters could spare him from the silk-paper used by them in the manufacture of fans. Nevertheless, through it all, he bated not a jot of heart or hope, but still bore up and steered right onward. His chief business was in his study; and there he usually worked thirteen hours a day. Even out of the study, his mind was not at rest; when, for exercise, he rode on horseback, or walked in the woods, he kept on at his tasks of thought; in order that he might not forget anything that he had wrought out in these excursions, he was accustomed to pin a bit of paper upon his coat, for every idea that was to be jotted down on his return; and it was noticed that, sometimes, he would come home with his coat covered over with these fluttering memorials of his intellectual activity.

  His countenance is not such as we should expect a polemical theologian to wear, but is more like that of St. John, according thus with the deep mystical vein of which we have spoken. He is the doctor angelicus among our theologians, and, had he lived in the thirteenth century instead of the eighteenth, he would have been decorated by admiring pupils with such a title. If it be true that, in the last century, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, are the three great names in philosophy, there might have been added to the brief catalogue, had he chosen to devote himself exclusively to metaphysics, the name of Jonathan Edwards.

  Remarkable as were the intellectual developments of Edwards in his early life there was nothing sickly or premature about them. The greatness of his youth was only proportionate to the greatness of his manhood. His paper on the “Habits of Spiders,” written before he was thirteen years old, was a very remarkable production for a boy, but no more remarkable than those which were issuing from his pen at the age of fifty. He came of a sturdy and long-lived race, and except for that fatal experiment of inoculation for the small-pox, in March, 1758, he would naturally have continued till a ripe old age. His father died at 89, his mother at 99. His grandfather Stoddard died at 85, and his grandmother Stoddard at 92. Of his sisters, Esther lived to be 72; Mary, 75; Martha, 77; Eunice, 83; Ann, 91. It was during the years just preceding his death that his great works, those that secured him his world-wide fame, had been produced, and it is certainly natural to believe, if life and health had been continued, that other works, in the same general ranges of thought but with still higher ranges of power, would have been forthcoming.

  If we study Jonathan Edwards with proper sympathy, we must pronounce his life a great life. Though his character was colored by Puritan austerity, and his religious experience involved what many believe to have been morbid emotions, there is no questioning the fact of his masterful intellect and his stainless integrity…. Among the many able preachers of America, he stands as one of the greatest. He dwelt habitually on the weightiest doctrines of the Christian faith; and in his treatment of them there is a Miltonic grasp of thought and vigor of language. He was not eloquent in manner or expression; his voice was weak, and he kept his eyes closely fixed on his manuscript.

  While Edwards’ official connection with Princeton was short and came to an almost tragic close, it is yet true that in an important sense Princeton became the residuary legatee of his name and fame. His spirit has continued to be one of the moulding forces of the college’s life. The things in which he believed have been, in the main, the things in which Princeton has believed, and the type of religious life and experience which he prized most highly is the type that has always dominated the religious life and history of Princeton. The library of Edwards graces the University’s shelves; his portrait and statue dignify and beautify her walls, and among the presidents of the past he holds a place as one of the trinity of greatest names, Edwards, Witherspoon, McCosh.

  A unique opportunity was afforded for an attempt at appreciation from this broader point of view by the unveiling of a Memorial to Edwards in the First Church in Northampton on Friday, 22d of June, 1900, just a hundred and fifty years after his dismissal. This is not the only memorial of Edwards in Northampton. In spite of its ancient quarrel, the town has never been wanting in regard for its greatest inhabitant. The noble elm which tradition says he planted is still reverently preserved on the site of his dwelling and protected, as far as possible, from the ravages of time. Near the grave of his friend David Brainerd in the old burying-ground a citizen of the town years ago erected a stone inscribed to the memory of “The American Theologian,” and of his Scotch admirer, Dr. Chalmers. Not far off, by one of the gateways, a granite monument contains the names of Jonathan Edwards, his wife, and all their children side by side with one of a similar character recording the names of his son-in-law, Timothy Dwight, his wife, and their children. Worthiest of all tributes to his memory, erected not merely to perpetuate his name, but to continue the supreme work of his life, the promotion in varied forms of Christian service of the glory of God in the salvation of men, is the Edwards Church, founded in 1833, a daughter of the First Church, and one of the most flourishing of the religious societies of the town. The Memorial now placed in the First Church is a bronze tablet, set in a massive frame of green-stained oak, and containing a two-thirds length relief figure of Edwards, life size or larger, represented as if preaching. On the panel beneath the figure is the simple inscription:—

	In Memory of
	Jonathan Edwards
	Minister of Northampton
	From February 15 1727 to June 22 1750
	The Law of Truth was in his Mouth and
	Unrighteousness was not Found in His Lips
	He walked with me in peace and uprightness
	And Did Turn Many away from Iniquity
	Mal. 2:6.

The tablet was erected under authorization of the parish, but the cost was defrayed by public subscription. The Memorial, therefore, represents neither the contrition nor the pride of the local church, but rather a widely spread, and to a certain extent newly awakened regard for the genius and character of its subject and a sympathetic interest in what appealed to many as a simple act of historic justice.

Religious Affections, 1746

  The title of the “Treatise on the Religious Affections” might naturally lead us to expect a large expression of those tenderer feelings with which Edwards was, no doubt, naturally endowed. But in point of fact, if a sermon of Edwards is like a nail driven through a human heart, this treatise is just what clinches it. It is a sad thought how many souls it must have driven to despair. For after having equipped the underground laboratory of “revenging justice” with a complete apparatus of torture, such as to think of suggests nothing but insanity, he fills the unhappy believer’s mind with so many doubts and scruples that many a pious Christian after reading it must have set himself down as a castaway. No warmth of feeling, no joy in believing, no love of religious exercises, no disposition to praise and glorify God, no assurance of faith, can be depended on as a “gracious affection;” for “as the Devil can counterfeit all the saving operations that are preparatory to grace,”—in short, render every humble Christian so doubtful of his own state that “the peace which passeth all understanding” becomes a phrase without meaning.

  The sermon on the “Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the True Spirit of God” was followed by the treatise entitled “Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion, and the way in which it ought to be acknowledged and promoted” (1742); and four years later, by the elaborate work on “Religious Affections.” The latter sums up all that Edwards had learned, through his participation in the movement whose beginnings and early stages are described in the “Narrative,” and by his long-continued and most earnest endeavor to determine the true hopes of the spiritual life which had enlisted and well-nigh absorbed all the powers of his mind and soul. It is a religious classic of the highest order, yet, like the “De Imitatione Christi,” suited only to those who can read it with independent insight. They who can thus use it will find it inexhaustible in its strenuous discipline and spiritual richness, light, and sweetness. Its chief defect lies in its failure to discover and unfold the true relation between the natural and the spiritual, and to recognize the stages of Christian growth, the genuineness and value of what is still “imperfect Christianity.”

The Freedom of the Will, 1754

  He was not indebted to any other writer for the most important part of his materials, which he appears to have drawn almost entirely from his own reflections and resources. Though in many points he coincides with the opinions of authors, whose productions do not appear to have reached him, it is impossible to deny, that the structure and ingenuity of his arguments are his own, or to withhold from him the praise of an original writer.

  A masterpiece of metaphysical reasoning.

  The foundation of the literature of independent America was laid in a book which was published while it was still a subject of the British crown. Even at the end of a century, during which that literature has been sustained by much vigorous native genius, and has been cultivated by influences from France and Germany, as well as from the old country, the treatise of Jonathan Edwards on “The Freedom of the Will,” still remains its most original and in some respects its most important product…. The treatise on “The Freedom of the Will,” as a great philosophical and theological treatise, has had only an influence in England over a very limited circle. It has been presented to us in feeble dilutions, specially prepared for our market. But this part of his philosophy—this doctrine of motives—has had a most serious influence—a most debasing influence—on our religious morality in all directions. It has incorporated itself as easily into the Arminian as into the Calvinistical teaching. It has entered into alliance with the practical Mammonism which is undermining our national life. It has combined with the morbid tendencies of those who pore over their own mental conditions hindering action, fostering superstition. All these consequences would have shocked Edwards; for many of them his copyists are mainly answerable. In his own country he retains, and must always retain, a great power. We should imagine that all American theology and philosophy, whatever changes it may undergo, and with whatever foreign elements it may be associated, must be cast in his mould. New Englanders who try to substitute Berkeley, or Butler, or Malebranche, or Condillac, or Kant, or Hegel, for Edwards, and to form their minds upon any of them, must be forcing themselves into an unnatural position, and must suffer from the effort. On the contrary, if they accept the starting point of their native teacher, and seriously consider what is necessary to make that teacher consistent with himself—what is necessary that the divine foundation upon which he wished to build may not be too weak and narrow for any human or social life to rest upon it—we should expect great and fruitful results from their inquiries to the land which they must care for most, and therefore to mankind.

  The book upon the “Freedom of the Will,” which is his main title to philosophical fame, bears marks of the conditions under which it was composed, and which certainly did not tend to confer upon an abstruse treatise any additional charm. Edwards’ style is heavy and languid; he seldom indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with the details of the labyrinth in which he had wandered till every intricacy was plainly mapped out in his own mind, and frequently dwells at tiresome length upon some refinement which probably never occurred to anyone but himself. A writer who, like Hume, is at once an acute thinker and a great literary artist, is content to aim a decisive blow at the vital points of the theory which he is opposing, and leaves to his readers the task of following out more remote consequences; Edwards, after winning the decisive victory, insists upon attacking his adversary in every position in which he might conceivably endeavour to entrench himself.

  Has been subjected to the severest criticism by the ablest theologians and philosophers from time to time, yet in its main positions it still remains apparently as impregnable as ever.

  The reader of this celebrated treatise may well admire the sleuthhound-like sagacity and tenacity with which the keen-scented reasoner follows the devious tracks of his adversaries; yet he can hardly help feeling that a vast number of words have been expended in proving over and over again a proposition which, as put by the great logician, is self-evident. In fact, Edwards has more than once stated his own argument with a contemptuous brevity, as if he felt that he had been paying out in farthings what he could easily hand us in the form of a shilling…. In spite of any general assertions of Edwards to the contrary, we find our wills tied up hand and foot in the logical propositions which he knots inextricably about them; and yet when we lay down the book, we feel as if there was something left free after all. We cannot help saying E pur si muove.

  Witness President Edwards’s definition of “necessity.” The “Essay on the Will” hinges on a pure invention in the meaning attached to that word. Edwards’s idea of necessity, as he defines it, is not the English idea, is not the popular idea: it never was. It was not his own idea outside of the “Essay on the Will.” In his sermons he falls back, as other men of sense do, upon the popular idea. Even in the “Essay on the Will” he forgets his definition, and in some sections speaks of “necessity” and “freedom” as the common sense of men understands them. No preacher can accept Edwards’s definition of “necessity,” and preach it as the philosophical basis of his theology, without lapsing into fatalism. But no preacher can preach “necessity,” as Edwards himself preaches it in his sermons, without preaching the freedom of the human will to the full dictates of human consciousness. The most conclusive answer to the weak point in Edwards’s essay is the strong point in Edwards’s sermons.

  That masterpiece of earthly reasoning.

  My father’s library—that of a Presbyterian minister—was a bristling phalanx of puritanic writers. The eight volumes of Edwards’s works stood in the first rank, and were backed by other productions less able, but not lighter of digestion. My mother—my father died early—with a patient, humble, and devout mind, was able to derive daily and hourly nourishment from Scott’s “Commentaries,” Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” and Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest;” but to me, even in the moments of religious fervor, these books were always chips. They were the ever-returning, undeniable proof of the depravity of the natural heart, that so obstinately rejected them. Nor was it because I was unwilling to put hard work upon them, if only it brought any return. To me, the best thing in this library was Edwards’s “Treatise on the Will,” though I have cast that out, shred by shred, till not a trace of it remains in my spiritual constitution.

  Like Butler’s “Analogy,” it belongs among the few great books in English theology. It may claim the great and peculiar honor of having first opened up to the world a new subject of interest,—the neglected and almost unknown sphere of the human will in its vast extent and mystery. It attempted to fill an empty niche in the corridors of human thought. From an historical point of view, no one can question its significance. Whether its importance is now more than historical, it is fairly open to doubt. The book is a difficult one to read, and this difficulty has been generally supposed to lie in the nature of the subject rather than in the author’s method of exposition. But the close scrutiny to which it has been subjected has revealed a confusion in Edwards’ mind as one source of the difficulty which the student encounters.

  Is not a web of pure logic, but of schoolman’s logic, reinforced and illustrated by Biblical quotation, without too much regard to the original meaning and purposes of the passages cited. As literature, it is idiomatic and simple to baldness. The English is a mingling of philosophical phrases with the every-day talk of common people. “Do not” is “don’t;” “have not” is “han’t;” “them” is generally “em;” “cannot” is “can’t,” etc. There is not a word of ornament, nor a sentence that looks rhetorical; no quotable passages, only a steady and urgent progress from certain propositions to certain conclusions. In spite of occasional quibbles, the mental “grip” is astonishing; so that the reader is drawn on, however much against his will, to admit the plausibility of doctrines which his moral sense rejects. The definitions leave something to be desired; but, all deductions made, this is undoubtedly the ablest of Calvinistic works.

  It is now but little read, for we no longer see the subject from Edwards’s point of view. But it remains a monument of intellectual effort. To this day it is probably the most direct and subtle treatise on a philosophical theme written by any American. It justifies the assertion of more than one European critic that no work of the eighteenth century surpasses it in the vigor of its logic or in the sharpness of its argument.

Original Sin, 1758

  One of the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man.

  If there is any literary interest in the treatise on “Original Sin,” it lies in the revelation of Edwards’ character. He was penetrated with the mystic’s conviction of some far-reaching, deep-seated alienation which separates man from God. Out of his ideal of the divine perfection springs his consciousness of sin. But his conception of sin is after all lacking in what may be called an ethical motive. He defines sin as a negation,—the absence of reality. But in this negation he seems to include the infinite gulf which divides the creature from the Creator. All imperfection, finiteness as contrasted with the infinite, the interest in earthly things or all which is not God,—these, as well as the lack of entire disinterested devotion, or the darker vices which disfigure human life, enter into Edwards’ conception of sin.

General

  There are some things in your New England doctrine and worship, which I do not agree with; but I do not therefore condemn them, or desire to shake your belief or practice of them. We may dislike things that are nevertheless right in themselves. I would only have you make me the same allowance, and have a better opinion both of morality and your brother. Read the pages of Mr. Edwards’s late book, entitled “Some Thoughts concerning the present Revival of Religion in New England,” from 367 to 375, and when you judge of others, if you can perceive the fruit to be good, don’t terrify yourself that the tree may be evil; but be assured it is not so, for you know who has said, “Men do not gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles.” I have no time to add, but that I shall always be your affectionate brother.

  When posterity occasionally comes across them [his writings] in the rubbish of libraries, the rare characters who may read and be pleased with them will be looked upon as singular and whimsical, as in these days an admirer of Suarez, Aquinas or Dionysius Areopagita.

	But, my chief bane, my apostolic foe,
	In life, in labours, source of every woe,
	From scenes obscure did heav’n his Edwards call,
	That moral Newton, and that second Paul.
	He, in clear view, saw sacred systems roll,
	Of reasoning worlds, around their central soul;
	Saw love attractive every system bind,
	The parent linking to each filial mind;
	The end of heav’n’s high works resistless shew’d,
	Creating glory, and created good;
	And, in one little life, the gospel more
	Disclos’d, than all earth’s myriads kenn’d before,
	Beneath his standard, lo! what numbers rise,
	To care for truth and combat for the skies!
	Arm’d at all points, they try the battling field,
	With reason’s sword, and faith’s ethereal shield.

  That most acute reasoner, Jonathan Edwards.

  A profound searcher into the genuine sources of truth, well versed in the Holy Scriptures, a close and minute reasoner, a strenuous defender of holiness and the rights of God; plain and perspicuous in his method, unadorned but prolix in his language. On the whole, a most excellent writer, both practical and controversial.

  In the New World the state of society and of manners has not hitherto been so favourable to abstract science as to pursuits which come home directly to the business of human life. There is, however, one metaphysician of whom America has to boast, who, in logical acuteness and subtility, does not yield to any disputant bred in the universities of Europe. I need not say, that I allude to Jonathan Edwards. But, at the time when he wrote, the state of America was more favourable than it now is, or can for a long period be expected to be, to such inquiries as those which engaged his attention; inquiries (by the way) to which his thoughts were evidently turned, lest by the impulse of speculative curiosity, than by his anxiety to defend the theological system in which he had been educated, and to which he was most conscientiously and zealously attached. The effect of this anxiety in sharpening his faculties, and in keeping his polemical vigilance constantly on the alert, may be traced in every step of his argument.

  Jonathan Edwards, as a philosopher, as well as a divine, had few equals, and no superior, among his contemporaries. His works will live as long as powerful reasoning, genuine religion, and the science of the human mind, continue to be objects of respect…. “The Treatise on Religious Affections” discovers his profound acquaintance with the nature of genuine religion, and with all the deceitful workings of the human heart. “The Inquiry into the Freedom of the Human Will” displays the talent of the author as a metaphysician, and his accurate knowledge of the Arminian and Calvinistic controversy. His “Defence of the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin,” designed partly as an answer to a work on that subject by Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, discovers the same high qualities which belong to his former works, with a greater portion of excellent critical interpretation of the Scripture. His style, it is to be regretted, repels many from the examination of his writings; but a little perseverance and attention will render it familiar to a diligent student, and the effect of his close and convincing reasoning will prove eminently beneficial to the understanding.

  This remarkable man, the metaphysician of America, was formed among the Calvinists of New England, when their stern doctrine retained its vigorous authority. His power of subtile argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient Mystics, with a character which raised his piety to fervour.

  No sooner does he sit down to investigate a subject, than his passions seem as completely hushed as though their breath had never ruffled the soul; its surface looks as tranquil, as motionless, and we may add, as cold as a sea of ice, and the turbulence of passion seems as little likely to disturb the fixed calm of the one as the winds of heaven to raise tempests in the other.

  To theological students his works are almost indispensable. In all the branches of theology, didactic, polemical, casuistic, experimental, and practical, he had few equals, and perhaps no superior. The number and variety of his works show the intenseness of his industry and the uncommon strength of his intellectual powers, “The Inquiry into the Will” is a masterly work, which, as a specimen of exact analysis, of profound or perfect abstraction, of conclusive logic, and of calm discussion, will long support its high reputation, and will continue to be used as a classic material in the business of intellectual education.

  Universal history does but seek to relate “the sum of all God’s works of providence.” In 1739, the first conception of its office, in the mind of Jonathan Edwards,… was nobler than the theory of Vico: more grand and general than the method of Bossuet, it embraced in its outline the whole “work of redemption”—the history of the influence of all moral truth in the gradual regeneration of humanity.

  Seeds from Edwards have taken root in strange fields. A single stalk from his philosophy has shed beauty and perfume over wastes of modern speculation. Many, of whose opinions all is dross that is not borrowed from him, have exhibited the poverty of their natural powers in assaults upon his system; and others, incapable of penetrating beyond the shell of his logic, and understanding the beauty of his life and doctrine, have done him much greater injury by professing to be of his school.

  Edwards’s writings, as a whole, display an exceedingly strong and comprehensive memory, great force and perspicuity of thought, and powers of ratiocination equalled by few of that or any other age. These powers, which he possessed in so eminent a degree, were still further strengthened by the most unceasing exertion. His intellectual labors knew no relaxation, and so fixedly that his mind becomes associated with one branch of enquiry, that his whole existence may be said to have been absorbed in it. His mind, shut out as it were by his processes of abstraction from the contemplation of the external world, seemed to concentrate its whole energies in the analysis of those materials which lie deep buried within. The subjection of his being to one particular train of thought, placed his passions and feelings so perfectly under control as to give him the appearance of an individual without those ordinary emotions which characterize the human family; hence we find him under the most exciting circumstances as calm and collected as if he were perfectly indifferent as to the result of his investigations.

  The pages of Edwards especially I have read with so solemn and deep an interest as listening to a great and holy man.

  We owe much to Edwards in the way of harmonizing the theology of the Bible with the reason and the moral intuition of man. Some find that theology hard to be understood, and therefore treat it as a mystery, not to be investigated. Some, failing to reconcile it with their reason or their intuitions, reject it, and the Bible with it. Some seek to explain away the more obvious theology of the Bible, derogating from the authority of the book, and using it only as it may serve their own rational eclecticism. Edwards did neither. While he saw the doctrines and their difficulties he mastered both, and held fast by his moral intuitions on the one hand, and the doctrines of the Bible on the other, till he bound them together by a compact and glowing chain of logic.

  I may have the usual bias of a discoverer and editor. But I shall be surprised if this treatise [“Treatise on Grace,”] do not at once take rank with its kindred one, on “The Religious Affections.” There is in it, I think, the massive argumentation of his great work on “The Will;” but there is, in addition, a fineness of spiritual insight, a holy fervour not untinged with the pathetic “frenzy” of the English Mystics, as of Peter Sterry and Archbishop Leighton, and—especially towards the close—a rapturous exultation in the “excellency and loveliness” of God, a glow in iteration of the wonder and beauty and blessedness of Divine Love, and a splendor of assertion of the CLAIMS, so to speak, of God the Holy Spirit, which it would be difficult to over-estimate.

  He was a thorough Calvinist, but such a Calvinist that he hesitated not to differ from Calvin wherever he seemed to differ from the Scriptures. The Saybrook Platform was drawn (chiefly through the agency of the Trustees of the Saybrook Collegiate School, which he afterwards entered) when he was five years of age. The “Westminster Catechism” in Latin and “Ames’s Theological Theses” were recited, as a college exercise, when he was a student. He respected these venerable symbols, but his own thinking went immeasurably beyond them. His massive and majestic intellect was too great to be bound by human authority; it reverenced the Infinite Intellect too much to be governed, in its methods or results, by the opinions of men…. He was the most progressive thinker of his age. When Franklin opposed the new method of inoculation, Edwards offered himself as a subject for it, and actually died from the secondary fever resulting. He might have been called a new-measure man in religion,—afraid of nothing that worked good and was agreeable to the Scriptures. He convinced a generation that feared more than they knew about revivals of their utility and benefit.

  His controversial acuteness and subtlety in drawing distinctions entitle his works to their high rank. He had little turn for style. Dry and precise, without either felicity or ornament, his writings are calculated to repel all but hard students of their particular subjects.

  In the middle of the eighteenth century, he is still in bondage to the dogmas of the Pilgrim Fathers; he is as indifferent to the audacious revolt of the deists and Hume as if the old theological dynasty were still in full vigour; and the fact, whatever else it may prove, proves something for the enduring vitality of the ideas which had found an imperfect expression in Calvinism. Clearing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still find in Edwards’ writings a system of morality as ennobling, and a theory of the universe as elevated, as can be discovered in any theology. That the crust was thick and hard, and often revolting in its composition, is, indeed, undeniable; but the genuine metal is there, no less unmistakably than the refuse.

  I am glad to hear of your reading. The effect produced on you by Jonathan Edwards is very similar to that produced on me when I took the same mental bath. His was a mind whose grasp and intensity you cannot help feeling. He was a poet in the intensity of his conceptions, and some of his sermons are more terrible than Dante’s “Inferno.”

  Edwards was distinguished for the early development of his metaphysical tastes and ability, and for the freedom, even to audacity, with which he attempted to adjust the Calvinists theology to the principles and conclusions of a reasoned philosophy. As a consequence he not only established a new and independent school of Calvinistic theology, which has been known as the New England or the Edwardian Theology, but contributed very largely to the development of speculative tastes, and of confidence in speculative inquiries among the scholars of America. The influence of this school has not been inconsiderable upon theology and philosophy in Great Britain, where the name of Edwards has been familiarly known from the first appearance of his Treatise on the Will…. The impulse and direction to the speculations of Edwards were furnished by Locke. He mastered Locke’s Essay when he was thirteen years old, studying it with a keener delight than “a miser feels when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold.” But he was not exclusively a student of Locke, as might be inferred from his secluded situation and limited opportunities. He was a zealous reader of most of the writers accessible in the English language, and was familiar with the course of speculation in the mother country, reading the writers of all schools with equal ardor, and never abandoning the confident belief that whatever is true in theology could be shown to be both true and reasonable in philosophy. Edwards was at once a scholastic and a mystic; a scholastic in the subtlety of his analysis and the sustained vigor of his reasonings, and a mystic in the sensitive delicacy of his emotive tenderness and the idealistic elevation of his imaginative creations, which at times almost transfigures his Christian faith into the beatific vision.

  I was especially interested in Jonathan Edwards, with whom (except in his physical notions of hell) I have great sympathy—a case of reversion I suppose, to some Puritan ancestor. If he had only conceived of damnation as a spiritual state, the very horror of which consists (to our deeper apprehension) in its being delightful to who is in it, I could go along with him altogether. What you say of his isolation is particularly good, and applies to American literature more or less even yet.

  By his power of subtle argument, his religious fervour, and his peculiar doctrines respecting free-will, Edwards has obtained a high and lasting reputation. He has perhaps never been surpassed as a dialectician.

  As a theologian, as a metaphysician, as the author of “The Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will,” as the mighty defender of Calvinism, as the inspirer and the logical drill-master of innumerable minds in his own country, and in Great Britain, he, of course, fills a large place in ecclesiastical and philosophical history. But even from the literary point of view, and in spite of his own low estimate of his literary merits, he deserves high rank. He had the fundamental virtues of a writer,—abundant thought, and the utmost precision, clearness, and simplicity in the utterance of it; his pages, likewise, hold many examples of bold, original, and poetic imagery; and though the nature of his subjects, and the temper of his sect, repressed the exercise of wit, he was possessed of wit in an extraordinary degree, and of the keenest edge. In early life, he was sadly afflicted by the burden of checking the movements of this terrible faculty; but later, it often served him in controversy, not as a substitute for argument, but as its servant; enabling him, especially in the climaxes of a discussion, to make palpable the absurdity of propositions that he had already shown to be untenable.

  Franklin snatched from heaven its electric fire; Edwards pierced the skies to an eternal realm. Both were among the most famous of their age—New-World prodigies that had made themselves powerful on both sides of the Atlantic. The fame of Edwards had spread from his quiet New England town to Glasgow and Edinburgh long before his treatise on the Will startled Boswell’s inquisitive intellect. Franklin expended in practical labors the hours that Edwards gave to holy musings and speculative lore. Yet it is doubtful which of these clear intellects was of the greater weight in human affairs; whether Edwards, composing his rare work in silent study, was not more of the philosopher than Franklin, founding his schools and planning his library; whether Franklin has not preached with more success even than the gifted pastor of Northampton the lesson of humanity and benevolence to endless generations. Upon a close comparison they will not appear altogether unlike.

  Puritanism to such men was a girdle, not a fetter; it held them together and made them march forward in line, instead of straggling along without aim or purpose. But in time the girdle became a chain; the people began to fret under it and threw it off; and this was the very period at which Edwards and Franklin appeared. The one contended stoutly for the old faith, in all its strictness and with all its alarming penalties for sin; the other, with genial and prudent good nature, sought to introduce a milder sway, more friendly to the general development of mankind. Both were powerful forces, and had other forces more powerful behind them; but the time had come for puritanism to withdraw from the scene, and the controversial writings of Edwards furnished the salvo of theological artillery under cover of which the army of the Puritans fell back in good order, leaving the field to Democracy and the philanthropists.

  But after all criticisms have been made upon Edwards as philosopher and theologian, it remains that he strongly expressed an idea of the might and majesty of God, and of his august government of the universe. Again, some of his conclusions anticipated, and are in close argument with, the dicta of modern science. Evolution, heredity, natural laws, as expounded by Darwin, Spencer, or Galton, teach not less truly than did Edwards the potency, almost the inflexibility, of inheritance and environment. Dr. Holmes, the most strenuous anti-Calvinist in recent American literature, in his “Mechanism in Thoughts and Morals,” sometimes seems to join hands with the eighteenth-century philosopher, sprung, like himself, from sturdy Connecticut ministerial stock.

  Having made these qualifications, it only remains to add that Edwards may be justly called the father of modern Congregationalism. If he seemed to have been defeated by his expulsion from Northampton, his expulsion made the issue clear and he triumphed in his fall. Most of the Puritan churches accepted his principles, banished the Half-way Covenant, and took on the form which they still retain. As one by one they went over to his side, they found it hard to understand how there ever could have existed a different practice. It became the custom to refer to the times of the Theocracy as “those unhappy days when things secular and religious were strangely mixed up in New England.” And yet the Congregational churches have never been able to escape altogether from the effects of that “unhappy” connection, if so it must be regarded. It has given them a certain distinction, the consciousness of which they prize. They have continued to retain a sense of relationship to the state, and to feel themselves responsible for its welfare. Nor have the cases been rare in which its clergy have given themselves to political and legislative duties, as if a natural and congenial work.

  In the passionate effort of Edwards to revive the pristine force of orthodox Calvinism, the theology of the fathers reached the highest point. It was sincere, it was terribly earnest, it was almost impregnably logical; but it was so highly developed that even though we knew nothing of its circumstances we might shrewdly guess it to be, like so many great works of art, essentially a thing of the past. In point of fact, we know its circumstances.

  New England at this time possessed, in Jonathan Edwards, the most subtle metaphysical reasoner that America has ever produced.

  His writings belong to theology rather than literature, but there is an intensity and a spiritual elevation about them, apart from the profundity and acuteness of the thought, which lift them here and there into the finer ether of purely emotional or imaginative art…. In Edwards’s English all is simple, precise, direct, and business-like.

  Jonathan Edwards is a thinker difficult to appreciate and very easy to misunderstand. His faults lie on the surface, while his merits are to be discovered only by sympathetic study. He is not only the greatest of all the thinkers that America has produced, but also the highest speculative genius of the eighteenth century…. Take him all in all, in the beauty of his character, in the elevation of his thought, his claim to stand amid the great thinkers of the world is indisputable. In England here we have just been making welcome the new edition of Bishop Butler’s works—edited by the statesman who in his retirement shows his undiminished vigour and reveals his lifelong interest in theology—and I have been comparing Butler’s answer to Tindal with Edwards’s, with the result that I am forced to confess that while the rigour and vigour of inexorable logic and the strength which comes from a concentration due to the careful exclusion of all irrelevant matter are with Butler, the elevation, the insight, the oversight, the feeling of the magnitude of the problem, and the forecast of the lines along which the ultimate answer must move are all with Edwards.

  The style of his writing is obscure and heavy in the extreme. He aimed only at the exact expression of his thought and seems to have made no effort to attain clearness. His lifelong habit of writing down his thoughts as they occurred to him, and his other habit of pursuing any line of thought to its end, no doubt aided him in thinking, but his isolation and his lack of experience in the oral discussion of philosophical questions prevented his realization of the necessity of clear statement. In some of his sermons he rises almost to eloquence, and there his sentences are well constructed and full of energy, but this is true of none of his philosophical works.

  Edwards is an example of the power of the 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.

  One of the great philosophical intellects of the world…. If he could have given himself to literature, science, or pure philosophy, mankind would be the richer. Yet as it is, he is one of the very few American writers whose fame is world wide.

  This sifting process must be applied to Edwards. As a whole, Edwards is incredible, impossible. He is nearly as much in the wrong as he is in the right. He carries his vast treasure in the earthen vessel of radical inconsistency and fundamental error. No single treatise of Edwards can to-day commend itself in its entireness to the free and informed mind. In his treatment of the Will, the Religious Affections, the Nature of Virtue, the History of Redemption, God’s Final End in Creation, the scheme and process of salvation, the Christian church cannot follow him as a whole, and those who insist upon all or none do their best to make it none. Only wise criticism, large and generous interpretation, the careful winnowing of the chaff from the wheat, the clear discrimination of the precious and imperishable in Edwards from the worthless and deplorable, can restore him to his legitimate pre-eminence among American theologians.

  More and more, as I have returned from time to time to the study of Edwards’ writings, have I been impressed with his intellectual powers and with the sanctity of his character. It is a pity that in this country so many of “the merely literary”—as Newman would style them—appear to know nothing of his writings save passages in the Enfield sermon. They would find, if they looked for them, in Jeremy Taylor, “the Shakespeare of preachers,” delineations of future torment which rival the pictures of terror in that sermon. It is beyond question that Edwards was a theological genius of the first order. He was, besides, an eminently holy man. He mixed, in his soul and in his writings, with the rigor of Calvin the sweetness of St. Francis. He is the Saint of New England.