Part 17

The sermon created a profound impression, as is evident both from the immediate demand for its publication, indicated on the title-page, and from the commendatory preface to the original edition signed by two of the foremost ministers of Boston, the Rev. Thomas Prince, of the Old South Church, and the Rev. William Cooper, of the Brattle Street Church. "It was with no small difficulty," these gentlemen write, "that the author's youth and modesty were prevailed on, to let him appear a preacher in our public lecture, and afterwards to give us a copy of his discourse, at the desire of diverse ministers, and others who heard it. But, as we quickly found him to be a workman that need not be ashamed before his brethren, our satisfaction was the greater, to see him pitching upon so noble a subject, and treating it with so much strength and clearness, as the judicious will perceive in the following composure: a subject which secures to God his great design, in the work of fallen man's redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ, which is evidently so laid out, as that the glory of the whole should return to him the blessed ordainer, purchaser, and applier; a subject which enters deep into practical religion; without the belief in which, that must soon die in the hearts and lives of men. We cannot, therefore, but express our joy and thankfulness, that the great Head of the Church is pleased still to raise up, from among the children of his people, for the supply of his churches, those who assert and maintain these evangelical principles; and that our churches, notwithstanding all their degeneracies, have still a high value for just principles, and for those who publicly own and teach them. And, as we cannot but wish and pray, that the College in the neighbouring colony, as well as our own, may be a fruitful mother of many such sons as the author; so we heartily rejoice, in the special favour of Providence, in bestowing such a rich gift on the happy church of Northampton, which has, for so many lustres of years, flourished under the influence of such pious doctrines, taught them in the excellent ministry of their late venerable pastor, whose gift and spirit we hope will long live and shine in his grandson, to the end that they may abound in all the lovely fruits of evangelical humility and thankfulness, to the glory of God."

6. =It was of mere grace ... for our souls.= This passage may serve to illustrate the way Edwards expanded his sermons for the press (see Introduction, p. xxix). The manuscript reads as follows: "The Grace in giving this Gift was great in proportion to our unworthiness, it was given to us who instead of meriting that of G. which is of such Infinite Value merited Infinite Ill of him." Then follows a space, above and beneath which, between the lines, are the words, "in proportion to the blessedness we have benefit we have given in him." Continuing: "the giver in giving this gift is great according to the manner of giving. He gave him to us Incarnate he gave him to us slain that he might be a feast to our souls."

THE REALITY OF SPIRITUAL LIGHT

21. =Divine and Supernatural Light.= The original title-page of this, the author's second published sermon, reads as follows: "A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, shown to be both a Scriptural, and Rational Doctrine; In a Sermon Preach'd at Northampton, and Published at the Desire of some of the Hearers. By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the Church there. Job 28, 20. Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? Prov. 2, 6. The Lord giveth wisdom. Is. 42, 18. Look ye blind, that ye may see. 2. Pet. 1, 19. Until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts. Boston: Printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, M,DCC,XXXIV." The sermon has a preface in which Edwards modestly disclaims any forwardness or vanity in publishing it and begs his readers to peruse it without prejudice on this score, or because of the unfashionableness of the subject. This to the general public. What he says to his own people shows how affectionate their relations to their young minister were at this time and how high his regard was for them; it has a pathetic interest in view of their passionate rejection of him at the last. "I have reason to bless God," he writes, "that there is a more happy union between us, than that you should be prejudiced against any thing of mine, because 'tis mine." He felicitates them on having been instructed in such doctrines as those in the sermon from the beginning. "And I rejoice in it," he adds, "that Providence, in this day of Corruption and Confusion, has cast my lot where such doctrines, that I look upon so much the life and glory of the Gospel, are not only own'd, but where there are so many, in whom the truth of them is so apparently manifest in their experience, that any one who has had the opportunity of acquaintance with them, in such matters, that I have had, must be very unreasonable to doubt of it."

This is justly regarded as "one of the most beautiful and most eloquent" of Edwards's sermons (A. V. G. Allen, _Jonathan Edwards_, p. 67). It was preached at a time when the signs were multiplying of an increased interest in religion among the people of Northampton, preluding the great revival of the next and the following years. The original manuscript bears the date, August, 1733. The death of Mr. Stoddard in 1729 had removed the restraints of a long-established and unquestioned authority, and the results, as Edwards describes them, were deplorable. "It seemed," he says, "to be a time of extraordinary dullness in religion: licentiousness for some years greatly prevailed among the youth of the town; they were many of them very much addicted to night walking, and frequenting the tavern, and lewd practices, wherein some by their example exceedingly corrupted others." "But in two or three years ... there began to be a sensible amendment of these evils," and "at the latter end of the year 1733, there appeared a very unusual flexibleness and yielding to advice" in the young (_Narrative of Surprising Conversions_). The improved conditions reacted on the preacher and, as a consequence, we have the sermon on Spiritual Light.

The principle enunciated in this sermon is the cardinal and controlling principle of the whole revival. The revival is just its exhibition and the experienced evidence, for Edwards at least, of its truth. Nothing in his account of the movement is more impressive than the way he studies it, tracing minutely the details of the process, wondering at its variety, whereby the Holy Spirit makes real and effectual the divine message (see Allen, _op. cit._ pp. 143 ff.). There was nothing essentially new in the principle itself; that God directly influences the soul, that the soul is capable of an immediate intuition of divine things, this had been the common teaching of all, and especially of all the Christian, mystics. Indeed, it may be doubted whether religion as a form of personal experience does not universally involve a consciousness of some such transcendent relationship (see W. James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, Boston, 1902, _passim_). What was new in Edwards's formulation of the doctrine was his manner of defining it, the way in which he relates it to the other parts of his system, his insistence on the supernatural character of this divine illumination, his sharp distinction between common and special grace. His doctrine of supernatural light appears, in fact, as a necessary corollary of his conception of the relation of man and God in the work of redemption expressed in his sermon on Man's Dependence. It is partly, at least, from this point of view that it seems to him not only scriptural, but reasonable. It was a doctrine intimately connected with his views of conversion. It was on this account no less than because of its emphasis of a mystical rather than a moral or legal principle in religion, that Edwards can speak of the doctrine as "unfashionable." The tendency of the age was to find more power in the natural constitution of man than he was willing to allow. Historically, however, it is in just this emphasis on the inner experience of the light and life of God in the heart that Edwards makes the transition from the older Calvinism to the more liberal theology of our own day.

The manuscript of this sermon is more than usually full of erasures and insertions, making it almost impossible to read, but suggesting something of the labor and care expended on its composition. It is written on twenty-six pages of the size of the facsimile in this volume, the last page containing only a line and a half. But the printed sermon is more fully elaborated.

RUTH'S RESOLUTION

45. =Ruth's Resolution.= This sermon was one of five "Discourses on Various Important Subjects, Nearly concerning the great Affair of the Soul's Eternal Salvation: viz. I. Justification by Faith Alone. II. Pressing into the Kingdom of God. III. Ruth's Resolution. IV. The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners. V. The Excellency of Jesus Christ. Delivered in Northampton, chiefly in the time of the late wonderful pouring out of the Spirit of God there. By Jonathan Edwards A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. Deut. iv. 8 [9]--Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. Boston: Printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green, in Queen Street over against the Prison. MDCCXXXVIII." The first four of these discourses were preached during the revival of 1734-1735 and were selected by the desire of the people as those from which they had derived special benefit; the fifth was selected by Edwards himself at the request of some persons from a neighboring town who heard it, and because he thought that a sermon on the excellency of Christ might appropriately follow the others, which were of an awakening character. They were prefixed to the American reprint of the _Narrative of Surprising Conversions_, which was first published in England. The cost of their publication was defrayed by the congregation,--a clear evidence of their deep interest, as they were at the time heavily burdened by the expenses of the new meeting-house. See Dwight, _Life of Edwards_, pp. 140 f.; cf. n. here following, p. 162.

The sermon on Ruth's Resolution has been selected as the shortest of the above discourses to illustrate a type of revival sermon in marked contrast to the sermon on Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. They all, however, bear out Edwards's own testimony concerning his preaching: "I have not only endeavored to awaken you, that you might be moved with fear, but I have used my utmost endeavors to win you" (Farewell Sermon). The manuscript of the sermon is dated April, 1735, and it seems to have been printed very nearly as it was written.

THE MANY MANSIONS

59. =The Many Mansions.= The Ms. of this hitherto unpublished sermon is dated, "The Sabbath after the seating of the New Meeting House, Dec. 25, 1737." The occasion was one of special interest to the people of Northampton. The old meeting-house, erected in 1661, had become too small for the congregation and dangerously dilapidated; in fact, on a Sunday in March in the year the new building was completed, while Edwards was preaching, just after he had "laid down his doctrines" from the text, "Behold, ye despisers, wonder and perish," the front gallery, "with a noise like a clap of thunder," suddenly and dramatically fell. Fortunately--by a special providence, it seemed to Edwards--no one of the hundred and fifty persons, more or less, involved in the catastrophe perished, or even had a bone broken, and only ten were hurt "so as to make any great matter of it." But the event showed that the building of a new meeting-house had been undertaken none too soon. The question of this new building had been brought forward in the town meeting of the spring of 1733, but it was first decided on in November, 1735, determined in part, no doubt, by the great revival of that year, when sixty, eighty, and a hundred were received into the church on successive communions. It then took two years to complete the structure. Incidentally, sixty-nine gallons of rum, besides numerous barrels of "cyder" and beer, were consumed by the workmen during the erection of the framework alone. Sixty men were engaged at 5s. a day for this part of the work, "they keeping themselves"--as Deacon Hunt's journal has it--"excepting drinks."

When the building, like several others of the period, a commodious, oblong structure with a tower, belfry and weather-cock vane at one end of it, was nearly finished, the important matter of seating the congregation was taken up. This also was an affair of the town. It had already been decided at the annual town meeting in the spring to have pews along the walls and "seats" or benches only on both sides of the "alley" (broad aisle). The actual plan of the sittings, still extant, shows pews also around the benches on the floor, separated from the wall-pews by the narrow aisles, and five pews in the gallery. These pews were of the high, square variety, with seats on hinges, and were evidently regarded as places of superior dignity. Towards the end of the year, the town held a series of meetings with especial reference to the seating. The question of primary importance concerned the apportioning of the sittings according to social rank. At the meeting in November, a committee of five of the most prominent citizens was instructed to draw up "their Scheam or Platt for Seating of the meeting House and present it to the Town" for approval. The following month the committee was further instructed by the following votes:

"1. Voted That in Seating the new meeting House the committee have Respect principally to men's estate.

"2. To have Regard to men's Age.

"3. Voted that some Regard and Respect [be paid] to men's usefullness, but in a less Degree." And that no mistake should be made, a committee of six was appointed to "estimate the pews and seats," that is, to "dignify" or appraise their social value.

Another connected question concerned the seating of the sexes. At the meeting in November, it was voted that males should be at the south, females at the north, end; the men at the right of the pulpit, the women at the left. At the first meeting in December the town distinctly refused to allow men and their wives to sit together. But this was clearly opposed to the sentiment of some of the more influential members of the community, for at the adjourned meeting four days later, when "The Question was put whether the Committee be forbidden to Seat men & their wives together, Especially Such as Incline to Sit together: It passed in the Negative." Under this indirect and qualified authorization, married people were for the most part seated together in the pews, but apart on the benches, while in some cases the husband was assigned to a pew and the wife to a bench.

The events and conditions here described are reflected in Edwards's sermon, especially in what he says of the extent of the "accommodations" in heaven and in his remarks on the "seats of various dignity and different degrees and circumstances of honor and happiness" there, as compared with what we find in houses of worship on earth.

As indicating the size of Edwards's Northampton congregation, it may be interesting to observe that the seating-plan above referred to contains the names of nearly six hundred persons. And he had his audience all about him. The pulpit, surmounted by a huge sounding board, was in the middle of one of the longer sides of the building, not at the end, as is the custom now. For further particulars, see J. R. Trumbull, _History of Northampton_, Vol. II, Chap. vi.

This sermon is more fully written out than most of Edwards's unpublished sermons. In preparing the copy for the present volume, the editor had in mind the general analogy of the other sermons here published. The abbreviations--X (Christ), G. (God), F. H. (Father's House), etc.--have accordingly been interpreted, and omitted sentences or phrases, indicated in the Ms. by dashes or spaces, have been supplied from the context. All such additions, however, are inserted within square brackets.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

78. =Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.= The full title-page of this, Edwards's most famous sermon, read in the original edition as follows: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. A sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8th 1741. At a time of great Awakenings; and attended with remarkable Impressions on many of the Hearers. By Jonathan Edwards A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. Amos ix. 2, 3.--Though they dig into Hell, thence shall mine Hand take them; though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the Top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my Sight in the Bottom of the Sea, thence will I command the Serpent, and he shall bite them. Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green in Queen Street over against the Prison, 1741."

Benjamin Trumbull in his _History of Connecticut_ (New Haven, 1818), Vol. II, p. 145, records the circumstances under which this sermon was delivered as told to him by Mr. Wheelock, a minister from Connecticut (Enfield, Conn., was at that time included in Hampshire County, Mass.), who heard it. "While the people in neighboring towns," writes Trumbull, "were in great distress for their souls, the inhabitants of that town were very secure, loose, and vain. A lecture had been appointed at Enfield, and the neighboring people, the night before, were so affected at the thoughtlessness of the inhabitants, and in such fear that God would, in his righteous judgment, pass them by, while the divine showers were falling all around them, as to be prostrate before him a considerable part of it, supplicating mercy for their souls. When the time appointed for the lecture came, a number of the neighboring ministers attended, and some from a distance. When they went into the meeting-house, the appearance of the assembly was thoughtless and vain. The people hardly conducted themselves with common decency. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, of Northampton, preached, and before the sermon was ended, the assembly appeared deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard. This was the beginning of the same great and prevailing concern in that place, with which the colony in general was visited." The circumstances, thus, under which this sermon was preached were exceptional; the excitement of the Great Awakening was at its height; the congregation to whom the sermon was addressed were notorious for their apathy; Edwards doubtless felt that an exceptionally strong presentation of their danger was necessary to arouse them. And this sermon is probably the most tremendous of its kind ever delivered by a Christian minister.