join together to sing the praises of God and the Lamb.' He heard of the wondrous virtues of a child of about 14, and noted them down in this wise: "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 comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for any thing, 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 for ever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the rich est of its treasures, she disregards it, and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any path of affliction. She has a singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct, and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful if you would give her all this world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence, 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." This young lady was Sarah Pierrepont, daughter of a minister, and like Jonathan Edwards having ministers for her ancestors, among them Thomas Hooker, one of the best of men; one who filled his earthly career with great deeds, and left a free and imperishable commonwealth as his monument. In Sept. 1723, having received at New Haven his degree of master of arts, several congregations invited Edwards to be their minister; but he declined every proposal, reserving 2 years more for study. In June, 1724, he entered on the office of tutor in Yale college; and he and his colleagues are remembered as "its pillar-tutors and glory;" all the while practising ascetic abstinence, not of food only, but of sleep, for the sake of closer diligence. In the summer of 1726 he received an urgent invitation to become the pastor of Northampton, as the colleague of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard; and on Feb. 15, 1727, in the 24th year of his age, he was introduced to his office. Every omen promised usefulness, honor, and happiness. His residence was in the most beautiful town of New England, where no one can live without imbibing love for the place. The inhabitants were all, even those who were mechanics, engaged in agriculture. The rich soil teemed with abundance; the people were none of them wealthy, but all enjoyed plenty, and the community was affluent. The scenery is as cheerful as it is beautiful, propitious to mental serenity, and there was scarcely another village

possessed of so much intellectual culture. It was the shire town of a very large county; the most populous, richest, and happiest town in western Massachusetts. Hardly was the young divine settled with a competent salary, than the thought of Sarah Pierrepont joined itself with his studies and his devotions. "Patience," said he to her in one of his love letters, pleading for an immediate union, "patience is commonly esteemed a virtue, but in this case I think I may almost regard it as a vice." She listened to his urgency, and on July 28, about 5 months after he was settled, the youthful preacher was joined in wedlock at New Haven with the wonderfully endowed bride of his choice. She was pure and kind, and uncommonly beautiful and affectionate, and notable as a housekeeper; he holy, and learned, and eloquent, and undoubtedly the ablest young preacher of his time; she 17, he 23. What was wanting to their happiness? The union continued for more than 30 years; and she bore him 3 sons and 8 daughters. In Feb. 1729, the senior pastor died at the good age of 85, and the young minister of 26 was left with the sole care of the town. Notwithstanding a weakly and infirm constitution, his zeal and industry were equal to every duty. His wife spared no pains to conform to his inclinations, and ministered cheerfully to his comfort, as her greatest glory and best service to God and her generation. She was a good manager; and he carried into the business of life the same thorough exactness which marked his researches. Yet he kept himself as free as possible from worldly cares, giving himself wholly to the work of the ministry; rose early, and employed himself in study all day long. He made no visits unless sent for by the sick or the sorrowing; but encouraged persons under religious impressions to come to consult him on the state of their souls, and they were sure of easy access and tenderness. The little exercise which he took consisted in solitary walking or in rides on horseback among the lonely woods; but his mind was in full action all the time he was abroad, and he would return richly laden with thoughts. His fame spread more and more widely. In July, 1731, he was prevailed upon, notwithstanding "his youth and modesty," to preach the Thursday lecture in Boston; and "divers ministers" found him to be a workman that need not be ashamed before his brethren; printed his sermon; approved his teaching" evangelical principles to the churches notwithstanding all their degeneracies;" and "heartily rejoiced in the special favor of Providence in bestowing such a rich gift on the happy church of Northampton." He gradually obtained universally the character of a good preacher, beyond any one of his times; writing out his thoughts with care, but uttering himself fluently and freely, in words full of ideas, without regard to his notes; above all, adding to his close reasoning and great acquaintance with divinity an inward sense of true experimental religion. His own experience and his rare powers of observation

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gave him great insight into the human heart, and he knew what was in man, both in saint and sinner. His voice, though not strong, was clear and distinct; and his manner, though he used little of gesture, discovered his own fervor and effectually moved the hearts of his hearers. He often had sweet complacency in God and in the excellency of Jesus Christ. The holiness of God appeared to him the most lovely of all the divine attributes. God's absolute sovereignty and free grace, and man's absolute dependence on the operations of God's holy spirit, appeared to him more and more as sweet and glorious doctrines. He loved to adore him as a sovereign, and ask sovereign mercy of him; it seemed "that it would spoil heaven to receive it in any other way." Thus he taught his people the doctrines of the gospel, which were to his soul and theirs like green pastures. He himself in his humility was as a little white flower, which may be seen in the meadows in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about, all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.' To this New England Christian philosopher the village meeting house was the porch of the Academy, and plain country people the pupils who clung to him for views of spiritual glory. What teacher in his widest fame was greater than he? How poor in the comparison was Leibnitz, speaking to the old dowager electress of Hanover, or to the queen of Prussia, or to Prince Eugene! How did the gospel preacher, who declared divine truth, not indeed to the learned, but to the universal heart, rise in dignity above Massillon, pleasing the licentious court of Louis XV. with his beautiful diction; or even Butler, instruct ing Queen Caroline to fulfil all her parts and bless all her children! Is it strange that Edwards should have thought often of the millennium, or that it should have come into his mind that that happy period was to take its beginning in New England? Edwards shunned always mere speculative questions; but the Arminian doctrine, which made man's regeneration his own work, was regarded by him as of the most dangerous practical tendency. He held mind to be above matter; "the works of God in the conversion of one soul to be a more glorious work of God than the creation of the whole Inaterial universe;" and he saw no end to the immoral consequences of that human pride which would claim this greatest work as its own. "The doctrine of men's being the determining causes of their own virtue teaches them not to do so much as even the proud Pharisee did when he thanked God for making him to differ from other men in virtue." Against this pride he opened a war in 1734, begun by discourses on justification by faith alone. His assiduity and power were followed by a wonderful revival

of religion; his predecessor had had five harvests, but the harvest of this year and the next exceeded every thing that had been known at any time in any part of the country. It was on this occasion that Edwards printed a sermon on "A Divine and Supernatural Light imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God;" a performance imbued with his views of the source of knowledge as well as of the regenerating influence of the Spirit. He wrote a narrative of these surprising conversions, which was printed in England, and republished in Boston with some doctrinal discourses against the Arminians. In all his reading, the pleasantest thing to him had ever been to read of the advancement of Christ's kingdom, and his mind was entertained with the Scripture prophecies. In 1737, as he rode in the woods on the Connecticut river, and alighted to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, he had an extraordinary view of the glory of the Son of God, and his full, pure, and sweet grace and love, which kept him for an hour in a flood of tears, weeping aloud. On a Saturday night in Jan. 1739, he perceived so clearly how blessed a thing it is to walk in the way of duty, that it caused him to break forth into loud weeping; for he had an affecting sense how meet and suitable it was that God should govern the world and order all things according to his own pleasure, and he rejoiced in it that God reigned and that his will was done. The fruit of this excitement of mind was, two months after, in March, 1739, the beginning of a volume of discourses on universal history, treating the wonderful series of successive acts and events as the record of God's redeeming providence from the beginning-a conception not less sublime and more full of feeling than that of Bossuet in his "Universal History"—but failing in the execution alike from deficiency and from excess, the want of close knowledge of events, and the disposition to construct out of interpretations of prophecies a narrative also of the future, even to that perfect state of things settled for eternity. In this way years rolled over the eloquent messenger of celestial truth, and he was thoroughly happy. His wife also had the deepest religious experience, as though a glow of divine love came down from the heart of Christ in heaven into her heart in a constant stream, like a pencil of sweet light. A very great revival began to extend far and wide through the New England colonies, a subject of interest and instruction to the world, having, as many think, a permanent influence on the character of the people, fitting them for the great events in their history that were soon to come. Tradition still keeps in memory the wonderful effect of Edwards's sermon at Enfield on sinners in the hands of an angry God. He wrote "Thoughts on the Revival of Religion;" and, after long meditation, he, in 1746, gave to the world his "Treatise concerning Religious Affections," a work full of his spirit, permeated by all his cherished doctrines on morals, and marked by keen analysis of states of mind, which showed his self-possession in the

midst of the most exciting scenes. No one has better analyzed and described the affections of the human mind under religious influences; and though his style in this work is neither polished, nor concise, nor correct, his characterizations of counterfeit piety are sometimes worthy of the pen of a La Bruyère or a Rochefoucauld. His house was always the home of hospitality. In 1747 he invited the missionary Brainerd, whose life was wasting away with a hectic fever, to come under his roof; and with the exception of a short visit to Boston to consult physicians, Brainerd remained with him, nursed and cared for and comforted, till his death. Meantime war raged between France and England; Edwards's parishioners took an eminent part in the capture of Louisburg in 1745; and it happened in the next year that the night after a day of fasting and prayer, appointed for the colony, and kept most fervently at Northampton, the terrible French "armada," under the duke d'Anville, was finally dispersed, and utterly confounded; "the nearest parallel," said Edwards in his plea for a visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer, "the nearest parallel with God's wonderful works of old in Moses's, Joshua's, and Hezekiah's time, of any that have been in these latter ages of the world." This trust in Providence never failed him; but his life was now destined to meet with seemingly one of the saddest of afflictions. The New England of that day appeared to grudge a home to its noblest sons, as though resolved that they should elsewhere find their shelter. One of the two greatest had felt himself, while yet a boy, forced to run away; and the other, the Dante of the New England churches, as Osgood of New York rightly calls him, was destined to be driven into exile. The civil tribunals take cognizance of offences against the law; the ecclesiastical courts of the Catholic church exercised a supervision over the inmost actions of the soul. Among the Puritans that power of the keys was taken from ecclesiastical courts, bishops, and priests, and transferred to the several bodies of covenanted believers. The members of each New England visible church exercised a brotherly superintendence over one another, and dealt with those offences of mind or heart of which the laws of the land took no notice. Edwards discerned levities of manner, consequent as it seemed on reading books which a severe morality could not approve, and he invoked the attention of his church to the subject. The church disapproved of the scandal which would follow an inquiry, and let the matter fall to the ground. Here then it appeared that there was some deeper defect; the church, under the lax discipline of Stoddard, had been filled up with persons who, though outwardly well behaved, were not saints by calling. The Catholic church offered bread to the people, the cup only to the consecrated; the reformation established the equality of all believers, and the Lutherans and the Anglican church offered bread

and wine alike to all. Calvin and the Congregationalists offered both to every one who partook of either, but confined them both to visible believers, the regenerate, the elect; and baptized only the children of communicants. On this latter system were the churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut originally founded; but the Catholic church from the beginning, and the Lutheran and the Anglican for centuries, had baptized all children born within their pale; and the influence of their example, prevailing more and more after time had enfeebled the passion for dissent, made the New England people generally desire to secure the ordinance of baptism for their offspring. Half-way covenants, and an opening of the church doors to the unregenerate, was the consequence. The half-way system was illogical and superficial, and there was nothing half-way about Edwards. According to the Catholic church, the eucharist was changed into the body and blood of Christ himself; the Lutherans held Christ to be present with and under the elements; but Calvinists held Christ to be present only in the soul of the believer, and therefore there was no place at the Lord's table for the unregenerate, for those who could not ascend in spirit into the presence of Christ in heaven. As the seal of a covenant, the sacrament presupposes conversion. Edwards desired to enforce the rule, which in the Northampton church had been evaded, not abrogated; and the pure-minded, sincere, logical, consistent pastor found himself at variance with a church of seemingly visible Christians, who made no profession of that in which real Christianity was admitted to consist. The pastor would have sanctifying grace go before admission to full communion; the brethren were of opinion that the Lord's supper is a converting ordinance. A Congregational minister is only the moderator of his church; Edwards was overborne by the majority. He proposed to deliver a course of lectures on the subject, and they refused him their consent. After years of difference of opinion, the greatest man in the New England churches was, on June 22, 1750, driven away from his congregation, to which he had devoted the 24 best years of his life; and now, as his decline was beginning, with a wife and 10 living children, of whom but one was provided for by marriage, he was left without any visible means of support. He must quit the scenes that he loved; the groves in which he had meditated; the modest mansion where he had studied; the elm trees which his own hands had planted. Throughout the whole controversy, it is hard to say which was most admirable, the single-hearted humility of Edwards, or his martyr-like firmness; and when afterward he gave an account of his ejectment, he candidly revised his own (conduct, and sought to find cause of blame in himself. When the news reached Scotland, his friends there invited him to come over and establish himself in that country; Samuel Davies of Virginia, the same who uttered the famous prophecy about

Washington, entreated him to remove to Virginia, offering to surrender to him his own parish, and pleading that he and he only had weight enough by his representations in Great Britain to stop the illiberal oppression of Presbyterians by the governors of the Old Dominion. But neither Scotland nor Virginia could offer him a certain provision; and the man whose intellectual endowments were unequalled in the land, had no option but to accept a small offer from the agent of the London society for propagating the gospel to become a missionary to the remnant of Housatonnuck Indians at Stockbridge. The handful of white settlers that had gathered round the tribe also asked him to become their pastor. The trifling income thus obtained was slightly improved by the delicate handiwork of his wife and daughters, which was forwarded to Boston to be sold. It was apparently hard that so wise and great a man should have so limited a sphere of duty; but in truth his sphere was enlarged by his removal, and now embraced the whole English world. A mind like his yearned for intimate intercourse with its kind; at Northampton, Edwards was the centre of a wide circle of influence, visited by many guests, consulted by many churches; at Stockbridge, all his preaching to the Indians was uttered extempore, without notes, aided by an interpreter; and when he was once established in a house of his own, he found himself possessed of more leisure for study than he had ever before enjoyed. The next 6 years of his life were years of uninterrupted study. The narrow apartment that formed his work-room found him early, all the day, and late at his desk; he scarcely shared the meals of his family, except to ask Heaven's blessing on them; and it is the tradition, that while his wife and the children continued at their repast, Edwards would retire to his pursuits, coming out only to return thanks when they had done. The development of the views which had long engaged and swallowed up his mind, formed the chief entertainment and delight of his life. He was happy in these employments. His method of study had ever been by writing; applying himself to improve each important hint, and penning down his best thoughts on innumerable subjects, for his own benefit. But now in his absolute retirement, like a father of the church in the wilderness, his thought was for his fellow men in the world, and his sense of duty cheered him on to undertake for his country and the world a refutation of opinions which, as he believed, were false in themselves, though they were brought forward with an air of triumph as the achievement of superior liberality and discernment. The main point in the discussion between Arminians and Calvinists first engaged him. The topic had been carefully considered by him from the time he was 15 years old, and he had kept minutes of his thoughts during the intervening period; it was therefore with a perfect mastery of the subject that he made it his first object in his seclusion to finish and bring before the

world an "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will." This, written out in a very short period of time, not exceeding 5 months, was published in 1754. While he was engaged in preparation for this work, Aaron Burr, the president of the college of New Jersey, at Princeton, after a three days' personal acquaintance at Stockbridge, married Edwards's third daughter. Distressed and enfeebled by a half year's illness, his partial recovery only sent him into new fields, and he completed a dissertation on "God's Last End in the Creation of the World," which is a picture of his own character, reasoning, and mind. He also wrote a dissertation on the "Nature of True Virtue," in which he embodied the convictions that he had formed in youth, and had carried with him through life, as the very centre and heart of his religious experience and his philosophical reflections. One essay more belongs to this period, in which he touched none but the highest and most momentous subjects; it is the discourse on "Original Sin." But the more he accomplished the more he longed to accomplish, and he took upon his mind and his heart what he himself saw was to be "a great work:" Christian theology in the form of a history; a revision and completion of the history of redemption which he had written at Northampton; a history to be carried on with regard to all three worlds, heaven, earth, and hell. The plan of other treatises crowded also upon his active mind. These studies were interrupted by the death of his son-in-law, the president of Princeton college, and for his successor the trustees of that institution looked to the wilds on the frontier of Massachusetts. They called Edwards from his task of teaching the Housatonnucks to take charge of the central seminary of the country. After some hesitation he consented to accept the invitation, repaired to Princeton, kindled by his presence and his words the liveliest interest among the students, and on Feb. 16, 1758, was installed as president. The small pox was prevailing in the neighborhood; as an act of precaution he was inoculated, took the disease under a malignant form, and had only to prepare to die. To his wife, who was absent, he sent his kindest love; recalled the uncommon union which had so long subsisted between them, and trusted that as their union had been spiritual in its nature, it would continue for ever. "Trust in God, and ye need not fear," were his last words; and then, 34 days after his installation as president, at the early age of 54, all of him that was mortal calmly and without a struggle fell asleep. He was buried at Princeton with every tribute that reverence for his genius and piety could offer. His wife was not long divided from him; his daughter soon joined her husband, who had preceded them all; so that in a week and a year the 4 graves of Edwards, his wife, his son-in-law, and his daughter, were added to the burial place of Princeton.-In considering the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the first thing to be borne in mind is his childlike,

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sincere, unquestioning acceptance of the truth of every word in the Holy Scriptures, of every event recorded there, of every miracle and every prophecy; the actual fall of man, the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The next is, the intensity of his attachment to the system of Calvinism as opposed to that of Arminianism; he declares it himself everywhere; if in any thing he departed from its essential principles, it was done without his consciousness, and therefore, according to every rule of interpretation, his words are never to be forced into an antagonism to the reformed confessions of faith. These points being premised, the characteristics of all that Edwards has written are threefold. He looks always to establish the reasonableness of his views. The doctrine of a divine incarnation, for example, approves itself, as he thought, to human reason; and he cites in proof of this the authority of Greeks and Romans, the most philosophical nations of the world. He even refers to the anima mundi of Blount and the pantheism of Spinoza. He scoffs at the pretensions of greater liberality put forward by the Arminians, and puts reason and common sense on the side of orthodoxy. In this battle, he was in Europe preceded by Leibnitz, with whose works he was not acquainted, and was followed by Lessing and Kant, who were at all times ready to defend the sternest doctrines of orthodoxy, election, free grace, and eternal punishment, and especially the Trinity. "There is," says he, no need that the strict philosophic truth should be at all concealed from men, no danger in contemplation and profound discovery in these things. The truth is extremely needful to be known; and the more clearly and perfectly the real fact is known, and the more constantly it is kept in view, the better. The clear and full knowledge of that which is the true system of the universe will greatly establish the doctrines which teach the true Christian scheme of divine administration in the city of God." Least of all would Edwards give up the individual right of free inquiry, for he says: "He who believes principles because our forefathers affirm them, makes idols of them; and it would be no humility, but baseness of spirit, for us to judge ourselves incapable of examining principles which have been handed down to us." In harmony with this principle, and indeed as a necessary consequence of it, his teachings all bear the marks of universality. He knows no scheme of Christianity that is the fruit of time; the Logos took counsel with the Father; the divine administration of which he desired to unfold the character began from eternity and reached forward to eternity. The third great characteristic of his mind is its practical character. His system has in view life and action; he puts aside all merely speculative questions, and while he discusses the greatest topics that can engage the mind of man, he never treats them but because of his overwhelming consciousness of their important bearing on conduct and morals. He never involves himself in sublapsarian or supralapsarian subtleties; he VOL. VII.-2

never proposes as a problem the contradictory question, if willingness to be damned must precede hope of salvation; he moves in the real world among his fellow men, and brings theology down from the dim clouds of speculation to the business and the bosoms of the universal people.

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It is one of the strangest misconceptions that has ever been uttered about Edwards, that he drew his philosophy from Locke. In the dismal want of books, the essay of Locke was the work which trained him to philosophical meditation; but his system was at its foundation, as well as in every part of its superstructure, the very opposite of the theory of Locke.On the subject of the origin of ideas, the views of Edwards accord with those of Leibnitz, which in the present day have been in some measure popularized by Cousin. The doctrine that all truth is derived from sensation and reflection he discards as a low, miserable notion of spiritual sense." "A clear apprehension of things spiritual" he calls by the name of "light," and attributes it not to "the external senses," not to "the inferior powers," but to a new principle," "the divine nature in the soul." "It is some excellent communication from the divine beauty and glory." "It is the Spirit of God that gives faith in him," were the words of his sermon at the Boston lecture in 1731; and 3 years later he enforced at large that it is a doctrine of reason, that " "a divine supernatural light is immediately imparted to the soul by the Spirit of God." There and elsewhere he teaches that knowledge of spiritual truth cannot be derived from "second causes," from the senses, from flesh and blood; that it is a wisdom not earthly or sensual or natural, but descending from above; that it is "nearly related to a participation of the Deity;" that it is "a kind of emanation of God's beauty;" that "it is the image and participation of God's own knowledge of himself;" that "it is beyond man's power to obtain this knowledge and light by the mere strength of natural reason," and by natural reason he means the understanding as it deals with knowledge acquired through the senses; in a word, that "to see spiritual things depends on the sense of the heart." The term is not well chosen; but by sense of the heart he means what later philosophers mean by intuitive reason; and by "spiritual understanding," that higher faculty which reaches at truth which is not received by the senses, "and could be produced by no exalting, varying, or compounding of that kind of perceptions or sensations which the mind had before." In like manner he finds the idea of causality "implanted by God in the minds of all mankind." And generally, "there is an infinite fountain of light and knowledge, and light shines forth in beams of communicated knowledge." "The Spirit bears witness with our spirits." "There is some new sensation or perception of the mind;" a new simple idea." As a consequence, the contrast of Edwards with Locke and those who came after him appears