EDWARDES, SIR HERBERT BENJAMIN EGER (town of Austria)
EDWARDS, AMELIA ANN BLANDFORD EGER (town of Hungary)
EDWARDS, BELA BATES EGERIA
EDWARDS, BRYAN EGERTON, SIR PHILIP DE MALPAS GREY
EDWARDS, GEORGE EGG, AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD
EDWARDS, HENRY THOMAS EGG
EDWARDS, JONATHAN EGGENBERG, HANS ULRICH VON
EDWARDS, LEWIS EGGER, EMILE
EDWARDS, RICHARD EGGLESTON, EDWARD
EDWARDS, THOMAS CHARLES EGHAM
EDWARDSVILLE (Illinois, U.S.A.) EGIN
EDWARDSVILLE (Pennsylvania, U.S.A) EGLANTINE
EDWIN (king of Northumbria) EGLINTON, EARLS OF
EDWIN, JOHN EGMONT, EARLS OF
EDWY EGMONT LAMORAL
EECKHOUT, GERBRAND VAN DEN EGOISM
EEL EGORIEVSK
EFFENDI EGREMONT, EARLS OF.
EFFIGIES, MONUMENTAL EGREMONT
EGAN, PIERCE EGRESS
EGBO EGYPT
EGEDE, HANS EHRENBERG, CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED
EGER, AQIBA EHRENBREITSTEIN
EDWARDES, SIR HERBERT BENJAMIN (1819-1868), English soldier-statesman in
India, was born at Frodesley in Shropshire on the 12th of November 1819.
His father was Benjamin Edwardes, rector of Frodesley, and his
grandfather Sir John Edwardes, baronet, eighth holder of a title
conferred on one of his ancestors by Charles I. in 1644. He was educated
at a private school and at King's College, London. Through the influence
of his uncle, Sir Henry Edwardes, he was nominated in 1840 to a
cadetship in the East India Company; and on his arrival in India, at the
beginning of 1841, he was posted as ensign in the 1st Bengal Fusiliers.
He remained with this regiment about five years, during which time he
mastered the lessons of his profession, obtained a good knowledge of
Hindustani, Hindi and Persian, and attracted attention by the political
and literary ability displayed in a series of letters which appeared in
the _Delhi Gazette_.
In November 1845, on the breaking out of the first Sikh War, Edwardes
was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir Hugh (afterwards Viscount) Gough, then
commander-in-chief in India. On the 18th of December he was severely
wounded at the battle of Mudki. He soon recovered, however, and fought
by the side of his chief at the decisive battle of Sobraon (February 10,
1846). He was soon afterwards appointed third assistant to the
commissioners of the trans-Sutlej territory; and in January 1847 was
named first assistant to Sir Henry Lawrence, the resident at Lahore.
Lawrence became his great exemplar and in later years he was accustomed
to attribute to the influence of this "father of his public life"
whatever of great or good he had himself achieved. He took part with
Lawrence in the suppression of a religious disturbance at Lahore in the
spring of 1846, and soon afterwards assisted him in reducing, by a rapid
movement to Jammu, the conspirator Imam-ud-din. In the following year a
more difficult task was assigned him--the conduct of an expedition to
Bannu, a district on the Waziri frontier, in which the people would not
tolerate the presence of a collector, and the revenue had consequently
fallen into arrear. By his rare tact and fertility of resource, Edwardes
succeeded in completely conquering the wild tribes of the valley without
firing a shot, a victory which he afterwards looked back upon with more
satisfaction than upon others which brought him more renown. His fiscal
arrangements were such as to obviate all difficulty of collection for
the future. In the spring of 1848, in consequence of the murder of Mr
vans Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson at Multan, by order of the diwan
Mulraj, and of the raising of the standard of revolt by the latter,
Lieutenant Edwardes was authorized to march against him. He set out
immediately with a small force, occupied Leiah on the left bank of the
Indus, was joined by Colonel van Cortlandt, and, although he could not
attack Multan, held the enemy at bay and gave a check at the critical
moment to their projects. He won a great victory over a greatly superior
Sikh force at Kinyeri (June 18), and received in acknowledgment of his
services the local rank of major. In the course of the operations which
followed near Multan, Edwardes lost his right hand by the explosion of a
pistol in his belt. On the arrival of a large force under General Whish
the siege of Multan was begun, but was suspended for several months in
consequence of the desertion of Shere Singh with his army and artillery.
Edwardes distinguished himself by the part he took in the final
operations, begun in December, which ended with the capture of the city
on the 4th of January 1849. For his services he received the thanks of
both houses of parliament, was promoted major by brevet, and created
C.B. by special statute of the order. The directors of the East India
Company conferred on him a gold medal and a good service pension of L100
per annum.
After the conclusion of peace Major Edwardes returned to England for the
benefit of his health, married during his stay there, and wrote and
published his fascinating account of the scenes in which he had been
engaged, under the title of _A Year on the Punjab Frontier in
1848-1849_. His countrymen gave him fitting welcome, and the university
of Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. In 1851 he returned to
India and resumed his civil duties in the Punjab under Sir Henry
Lawrence. In November 1853 he was entrusted with the responsible post of
commissioner of the Peshawar frontier, and this he held when the Mutiny
of 1857 broke out. It was a position of enormous difficulty, and
momentous consequences were involved in the way the crisis might be met.
Edwardes rose to the height of the occasion. He saw as if by inspiration
the facts and the needs, and by the prompt measures which he adopted he
rendered a service of incalculable importance, by effecting a
reconciliation with Afghanistan, and securing the neutrality of the amir
and the frontier tribes during the war. So effective was his procedure
for the safety of the border that he was able to raise a large force in
the Punjab and send it to co-operate in the siege and capture of Delhi.
In 1859 Edwardes once more went to England, his health so greatly
impaired by the continual strain of arduous work that it was doubtful
whether he could ever return to India. During his stay he was created
K.C.B., with the rank of brevet colonel; and the degree of LL.D. was
conferred upon him by the university of Cambridge. Early in 1862 he
again sailed for India, and was appointed commissioner of Umballa and
agent for the Cis-Sutlej states. He had been offered the governorship of
the Punjab, but on the ground of failing health had declined it. In
February 1865 he was compelled to finally resign his post and return to
England. A second good service pension was at once conferred on him; in
May 1866 he was created K.C. of the Star of India; and early in 1868 was
promoted major-general in the East Indian Army. He had been for some
time engaged on a life of Sir Henry Lawrence, and high expectations were
formed of the work; but he did not live to complete it, and after his
death it was put into the hands of Mr Herman Merivale. He died in London
on the 23rd of December 1868. Great in council and great in war, he was
singularly beloved by his friends, generous and unselfish to a high
degree, and a man of deep religious convictions.
See _Memorials of the Life and Letters of Sir Herbert Benjamin
Edwardes_, by his wife (2 vols., London, 1886); T. R. E. Holmes, _Four
Soldiers_ (London, 1889); J. Ruskin, _Bibl. pastorum_, iv. "A Knight's
Faith" (1885), passages from the life of Edwardes.
EDWARDS, AMELIA ANN BLANDFORD (1831-1892), English author and
Egyptologist, the daughter of one of Wellington's officers, was born in
London on the 7th of June 1831. At a very early age she displayed
considerable literary and artistic talent. She became a contributor to
various magazines and newspapers, and besides many miscellaneous works
she wrote eight novels, the most successful of which were _Debenham's
Vow_ (1870) and _Lord Brackenbury_ (1880). In the winter of 1873-1874
she visited Egypt, and was profoundly impressed by the new openings for
archaeological research. She learnt the hieroglyphic characters, and
made a considerable collection of Egyptian antiquities. In 1877 she
published _A Thousand Miles up the Nile_, with illustrations by herself.
Convinced that only by proper scientific investigations could the
wholesale destruction of Egyptian antiquities be avoided, she devoted
herself to arousing public opinion on the subject, and ultimately, in
1882, was largely instrumental in founding the Egypt Exploration Fund,
of which she became joint honorary secretary with Reginald Stuart Poole.
For the business of this Fund she abandoned her other literary work,
writing only on Egyptology. In 1889-1890 she went on a lecturing tour in
the United States. The substance of her lectures was published in volume
form in 1891 as _Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers_. She died at
Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, on the 15th of April 1892, bequeathing her
valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College,
London, together with a sum to found a chair of Egyptology. Miss Edwards
received, shortly before her death, a civil list pension from the
British government.
EDWARDS, BELA BATES (1802-1852), American man of letters, was born at
Southampton, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July 1802. He graduated at
Amherst College in 1824, was a tutor there in 1827-1828, graduated at
Andover Theological Seminary in 1830, and was licensed to preach. From
1828 to 1833 he was assistant secretary of the American Education
Society (organized in Boston in 1815 to assist students for the
ministry), and from 1828 to 1842 was editor of the society's organ,
which after 1831 was called the _American Quarterly Register_. He also
founded (in 1833) and edited the _American Quarterly Observer_; in
1836-1841 edited the _Biblical Repository_ (after 1837 called the
_American Biblical Repository_) with which the _Observer_ was merged in
1835; and was editor-in-chief of the _Bibliotheca Sacra_ from 1844 to
1851. In 1837 he became professor of Hebrew at Andover, and from 1848
until his death was associate professor of sacred literature there. He
died at Athens, Georgia, on the 20th of April 1852. Among his numerous
publications were _A Missionary Gazetteer_ (1832), _A Biography of Self
Taught Men_ (1832), a once widely known _Eclectic Reader_ (1835), a
translation, with Samuel Harvey Taylor (1807-1871), of Kuhner's
_Schulgrammatik der Griechischen Sprache_ and _Classical Studies_
(1844), essays in ancient literature and art written in collaboration
with Barnas Sears and C. C. Felton.
Edwards' _Addresses and Sermons_, with a memoir by Rev. Edwards A.
Park, were published in two volumes at Boston in 1853.
EDWARDS, BRYAN (1743-1800), English politician and historian, was born
at Westbury, Wiltshire, on the 21st of May 1743. His father died in
1756, when his maintenance and education were undertaken by his maternal
uncle, Zachary Bayly, a wealthy merchant of Jamaica. About 1759 Bryan
went to Jamaica, and joined his uncle, who engaged a private tutor to
complete his education, and when Bayly died his nephew inherited his
wealth, succeeding also in 1773 to the estate of another Jamaica
resident named Hume. Edwards soon became a leading member of the
colonial assembly of Jamaica, but in a few years he returned to England,
and in 1782 failed to secure a seat in parliament as member for
Chichester. He was again in Jamaica from 1787 to 1792, when he settled
in England as a West India merchant, making in 1795 another futile
attempt to enter parliament, on this occasion as the representative of
Southampton. In 1796, however, he became member of parliament for
Grampound, retaining his seat until his death at Southampton on the 15th
or 16th of July 1800. In general Edwards was a supporter of the slave
trade, and was described by William Wilberforce as a powerful opponent.
By his wife, Martha, daughter of Thomas Phipps of Westbury, he left an
only son, Hume.
In 1784 Edwards wrote _Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government
respecting the Trade of the West India Islands with the United States of
America_, in which he attacked the restrictions placed by the government
upon trade with the United States. In 1793 he published in two volumes
his great work, _History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies
in the West Indies_, and in 1797 published his _Historical Survey of the
French Colony in the Island of St Domingo_. In 1801 a new edition of
both these works with certain additions was published in three volumes
under the title of _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_.
This has been translated into German and parts of it into French and
Spanish, and a fifth edition was issued in 1819. When Mungo Park
returned in 1796 from his celebrated journey in Africa, Edwards, who was
secretary of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior
Parts of Africa, drew up from Park's narrative an account of his
travels, which was published by the association in their _Proceedings_,
and when Park wrote an account of his journeys he availed himself of
Edwards' assistance. Edwards also wrote some poems and some other works
relating to the history of the West Indies.
He left a short sketch of his life which was prefixed to the edition
of the _History of the West Indies_, published in 1801.
EDWARDS, GEORGE (1693-1773), English naturalist, was born at Stratford,
Essex, on the 3rd of April 1693. In his early years he travelled
extensively over Europe, studying natural history, and gained some
reputation for his coloured drawings of animals, especially birds. In
1733, on the recommendation of Sir Hans Sloane, he was appointed
librarian to the Royal College of Physicians in London. In 1743 he
published the first volume of his _History of Birds_, the fourth volume
of which appeared in 1751, and three supplementary volumes, under the
title _Gleanings of Natural History_, were issued in 1758, 1760 and
1764. The two works contain engravings and descriptions of more than 600
subjects in natural history not before described or delineated. He
likewise added a general index in French and English, which was
afterwards supplied with Linnaean names by Linnaeus himself, with whom
he frequently corresponded. About 1764 he retired to Plaistow, Essex,
where he died on the 23rd of July 1773. He also wrote _Essays of Natural
History_ (1770) and _Elements of Fossilogy_ (1776).
EDWARDS, HENRY THOMAS (1837-1884), Welsh divine, was born on the 6th of
September 1837 at Llan ym Mawddwy, Merioneth, where his father was
vicar. He was educated at Westminster and at Jesus College, Oxford
(B.A., 1860), and after teaching for two years at Llandovery went to
Llangollen as his father's curate. He became vicar of Aberdare in 1866
and of Carnarvon in 1869. Here he began his lifelong controversy with
Nonconformity, especially as represented by the Rev. Evan Jones
(Calvinistic Methodist) and Rev. E. Herber Evans (Congregationalist). In
1870 he fought in vain for the principle of all-round denominationalism
in the national education system, and in the same year addressed a
famous letter to Mr Gladstone on "The Church of the Cymry," pointing out
that the success of Nonconformity in Wales was largely due to "the
withering effect of an alien episcopate." One immediate result of this
was the appointment of the Welshman Joshua Hughes (1807-1889) to the
vacant see of St Asaph. Edwards became dean of Bangor in 1876 and at
once set about restoring the cathedral, and he promoted a clerical
education society for supplying the diocese with educated Welsh-speaking
clergy. He was a popular preacher and an earnest patriot; his chief
defect was a lack of appreciation of the theological attainments of
Nonconformity, and a Welsh commentary on St Matthew, which he had worked
at for many years and published in two volumes in 1882, was severely
handled by a Bangor Calvinistic Methodist minister. Edwards suffered
from overwork and insomnia and a Mediterranean cruise in 1883 failed to
restore his health; and he died by his own hand on the 24th of May 1884
at Ruabon.
See V. Morgan, _Welsh Religious Leaders in the Victorian Era_.
EDWARDS, JONATHAN (1703-1758), American theologian and philosopher, was
born on the 5th of October 1703 at East (now South) Windsor,
Connecticut. His earliest known ancestor was Richard Edwards, Welsh by
birth, a London clergyman in Elizabeth's reign. His father Timothy
Edwards (1669-1758), son of a prosperous merchant of Hartford, had
graduated at Harvard, was minister at East Windsor, and eked out his
salary by tutoring boys for college. His mother, a daughter of the Rev.
Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mass., seems to have been a woman of
unusual mental gifts and independence of character. Jonathan, the only
son, was the fifth of eleven children. The boy was trained for college
by his father and by his elder sisters, who all received an excellent
education. When ten years old he wrote a semi-humorous tract on the
immateriality of the soul; he was interested in natural history, and at
the age of twelve wrote a remarkable essay on the habits of the "flying
spider." He entered Yale College in 1716, and in the following year
became acquainted with Locke's _Essay_, which influenced him profoundly.
During his college course he kept note books labelled "The Mind,"
"Natural Science" (containing a discussion of the atomic theory, &c.),
"The Scriptures" and "Miscellanies," had a grand plan for a work on
natural and mental philosophy, and drew up for himself rules for its
composition. Even before his graduation in September 1720 as
valedictorian and head of his class, he seems to have had a well
formulated philosophy. The two years after his graduation he spent in
New Haven studying theology. In 1722-1723 he was for eight months stated
supply of a small Presbyterian church in New York city, which invited
him to remain, but he declined the call, spent two months in study at
home, and then in 1724-1726 was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning
for himself the name of a "pillar tutor" by his steadfast loyalty to the
college and its orthodox teaching at the time when Yale's rector
(Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over to the Episcopal Church.
The years 1720 to 1726 are partially recorded in his diary and in the
resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this time. He had
long been an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied as
to his own "conversion" until an experience in his last year in college,
when he lost his feeling that the election of some to salvation and of
others to eternal damnation was "a horrible doctrine," and reckoned it
"exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet." He now took a great and new
joy in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical
interpretation of the Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystic joys is
the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almost ascetic in his
eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no time, to maintain
the strictest temperance in eating and drinking. On the 15th of February
1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his
grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting
pastor, his rule being thirteen hours of study a day. In the same year
he married Sarah Pierrepont, then aged seventeen, daughter of James
Pierrepont (1659-1714), a founder of Yale, and through her mother
great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker. Of her piety and almost nun-like
love of God and belief in His personal love for her, Edwards had known
when she was only thirteen, and had written of it with spiritual
enthusiasm; she was of a bright and cheerful disposition, a practical
housekeeper, a model wife and the mother of his twelve children. Solomon
Stoddard died on the 11th of February 1729, leaving to his grandson the
difficult task of the sole ministerial charge of one of the largest and
wealthiest congregations in the colony, and one proud of its morality,
its culture and its reputation.
In 1731 Edwards preached at Boston the "Public Lecture" afterwards
published under the title _God Glorified in Man's Dependence_. This was
his first public attack on Arminianism. The leading thought was God's
absolute sovereignty in the work of redemption: that while it behoved
God to create man holy, it was of His "good pleasure" and "mere and
arbitrary grace" that any man was now made holy, and that God might deny
this grace without any disparagement to any of His perfections. In 1733
a revival of religion began in Northampton, and reached such intensity
in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the
business of the town. In six months nearly three hundred were admitted
to the church. The revival gave Edwards an opportunity of studying the
process of conversion in all its phases and varieties, and he recorded
his observations with psychological minuteness and discrimination in _A
Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of
Many Hundred Souls in Northampton_ (1737). A year later he published
_Discourses on Various Important Subjects_, the five sermons which had
proved most effective in the revival, and of these none, he tells us,
was so immediately effective as that on the _Justice of God in the
Damnation of Sinners_, from the text, "That every mouth may be stopped."
Another sermon, published in 1734, on the _Reality of Spiritual Light_
set forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the
revival, the doctrine of a "special" grace in the immediate and
supernatural divine illumination of the soul. In the spring of 1735 the
movement began to subside and a reaction set in. But the relapse was
brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the
Connecticut valley and whose fame had reached England and Scotland, was
followed in 1739-1740 by the Great Awakening, distinctively under the
leadership of Edwards. The movement met with no sympathy from the
orthodox leaders of the church. In 1741 Edwards published in its defence
_The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God_, dealing
particularly with the phenomena most criticized, the swoonings, outcries
and convulsions. These "bodily effects," he insisted, were not
"distinguishing marks" of the work of the Spirit of God; but so bitter
was the feeling against the revival in the more strictly Puritan
churches that in 1742 he was forced to write a second apology, _Thoughts
on the Revival in New England_, his main argument being the great moral
improvement of the country. In the same pamphlet he defends an appeal to
the emotions, and advocates preaching terror when necessary, even to
children, who in God's sight "are young vipers ... if not Christ's." He
considers "bodily effects" incidentals to the real work of God, but his
own mystic devotion and the experiences of his wife during the Awakening
(which he gives in detail) make him think that the divine visitation
usually overpowers the body, a view in support of which he quotes
Scripture. In reply to Edwards, Charles Chauncy anonymously wrote _The
Late Religious Commotions in New England Considered_ (1743), urging
conduct as the sole test of conversion; and the general convention of
Congregational ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay protested
"against disorders in practice which have of late obtained in various
parts of the land." In spite of Edwards's able pamphlet, the impression
had become widespread that "bodily effects" were recognized by the
promoters of the Great Awakening as the true tests of conversion. To
offset this feeling Edwards[1] preached at Northampton during the years
1742 and 1743 a series of sermons published under the title of
_Religious Affections_ (1746), a restatement in a more philosophical and
general tone of his ideas as to "distinguishing marks." In 1747 he
joined the movement started in Scotland called the "concert in prayer,"
and in the same year published _An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit
Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for
the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on
Earth_. In 1749 he published a memoir of David Brainerd; the latter had
lived in his family for several months, had been constantly attended by
Edwards's daughter Jerusha, to whom he had been engaged to be married,
and had died at Northampton on the 7th of October 1747; and he had been
a case in point for the theories of conversion held by Edwards, who had
made elaborate notes of Brainerd's conversations and confessions.
In 1748 there had come a crisis in his relations with his congregation.
The Half-Way Covenant adopted by the synods of 1657 and 1662 had made
baptism alone the condition to the civil privileges of church
membership, but not of participation in the sacrament of the Supper.
Edwards's grandfather and predecessor, Solomon Stoddard, had been even
more liberal, holding that the Supper was a converting ordinance and
that baptism was a sufficient title to all the privileges of the church.
As early as 1744 Edwards, in his sermons on the Religious Affections,
had plainly intimated his dislike of this practice. In the same year he
had published in a church meeting the names of certain young people,
members of the church, who were suspected of reading improper books,[2]
and also the names of those who were to be called as witnesses in the
case. But witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list, and
the congregation was in an uproar. A great many, fearing a scandal, now
opposed an investigation which all had previously favoured. Edwards's
preaching became unpopular; for four years no candidate presented
himself for admission to the church; and when one did in 1748, and was
met with Edwards's formal but mild and gentle tests, as expressed in the
_Distinguishing Marks_ and later in _Qualifications for Full Communion_
(1749) the candidate refused to submit to them; the church backed him
and the break was complete. Even permission to discuss his views in the
pulpit was refused him. The ecclesiastical council voted by 10 to 9 that
the pastoral relation be dissolved. The church by a vote of more than
200 to 23 ratified the action of the council, and finally a town meeting
voted that Edwards should not be allowed to occupy the Northampton
pulpit, though he did this on occasion as late as May 1755. He evinced
no rancour or spite; his "Farewell Sermon" was dignified and temperate;
nor is it to be ascribed to chagrin that in a letter to Scotland after
his dismissal he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to
Congregational church government. His position at the time was not
unpopular throughout New England, and it is needless to say that his
doctrine that the Lord's Supper is not a cause of regeneration and that
communicants should be professing Christians has since (very largely
through the efforts of his pupil Joseph Bellamy) become a standard of
New England Congregationalism.
Edwards with his large family was now thrown upon the world, but offers
of aid quickly came to him. A parish in Scotland could have been
procured, and he was called to a Virginia church. He declined both, to
become in 1750 pastor of the church in Stockbridge and a missionary to
the Housatonic Indians. To the Indians he preached through an
interpreter, and their interests he boldly and successfully defended by
attacking the whites who were using their official position among them
to increase their private fortunes. In Stockbridge he wrote the _Humble
Relation_, also called _Reply to Williams_ (1752), which was an answer
to Solomon Williams (1700-1776), a relative and a bitter opponent of
Edwards as to the qualifications for full communion; and he there
composed the treatises on which his reputation as a philosophical
theologian chiefly rests, the essay on _Original Sin_, the _Dissertation
concerning the Nature of True Virtue_, the _Dissertation concerning the
End for which God created the World_, and the great work on the Will,
written in four months and a half, and published in 1754 under the
title, _An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that
Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency_.
In 1757, on the death of President Burr, who five years before had
married Edwards's daughter Esther, he reluctantly accepted the
presidency of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University),
where he was installed on the 16th of February 1758. Almost immediately
afterwards he was inoculated for smallpox, which was raging in Princeton
and vicinity, and, always feeble, he died of the inoculation on the 28th
of March 1758. He was buried in the old cemetery at Princeton. He was
slender and fully six feet tall, and with his oval, gentle, almost
feminine face looked the scholar and the mystic.
_The Edwardean System._--It is difficult to separate Edwards's
philosophy from his theology, except as the former is contained in the
early notes on the Mind, where he says that matter exists only in
idea; that space is God; that minds only are real; that in
metaphysical strictness there is no being but God; that entity is the
greatest and only good; and that God as infinite entity, wherein the
agreement of being with being is absolute, is the supreme excellency,
the supreme good. It seems certain that these conclusions were
independent of Berkeley and Malebranche, and were not drawn from
Arthur Collier's _Clavis universalis_ (1713), with which they have
much in common, but were suggested, in part at least, by Locke's
doctrine of ideas, Newton's theory of colours, and Cudworth's
Platonism, with all of which Edwards was early familiar. But they were
never developed systematically, and the conception of the material
universe here contended for does not again explicitly reappear in any
of his writings. The fundamental metaphysical postulate that being and
God are ultimately identical remained, however, the philosophical
basis of all his thinking, and reverence for this being as the supreme
good remained the fundamental disposition of his mind. That he did not
interpret this idea in a Spinozistic sense was due to his more
spiritual conception of "being" and to the reaction on his philosophy
of his theology. The theological interest, indeed, came in the end to
predominate, and philosophy to appear as an instrument for the defence
of Calvinism. Perhaps the best criticism of Edwards's philosophy as a
whole is that, instead of being elaborated on purely rational
principles, it is mixed up with a system of theological conceptions
with which it is never thoroughly combined, and that it is exposed to
all the disturbing effects of theological controversy. Moreover, of
one of his most central convictions, that of the sovereignty of God in
election, he confesses that he could give no account.
Edwards's reputation as a thinker is chiefly associated with his
treatise on the Will, which is still sometimes called "the one large
contribution that America has made to the deeper philosophic thought
of the world." The aim of this treatise was to refute the doctrine of
free-will, since he considered it the logical, as distinguished from
the sentimental, ground of most of the Arminian objections to
Calvinism. He defines the will as that by which the "mind chooses
anything." To act voluntarily, he says, is to act electively. So far
he and his opponents are agreed. But choice, he holds, is not
arbitrary; it is determined in every case by "that motive which as it
stands in the view of the mind is the strongest," and that motive is
strongest which presents in the immediate object of volition the
"greatest apparent good," that is, the greatest degree of
agreeableness or pleasure. What this is in a given case depends on a
multitude of circumstances, external and internal, all contributing to
form the "cause" of which the voluntary act and its consequences are
the "effect." Edwards contends that the connexion between cause and
effect here is as "sure and perfect" as in the realm of physical
nature and constitutes a "moral necessity." He reduces the opposite
doctrine to three assumptions, all of which he shows to be untenable:
(1) "a self-determining power in the will"; (2) "indifference,... that
the mind previous to the act of volition (is) in equilibrio"; (3)
"contingence ... as opposed to ... any fixed and certain connexion (of
the volition) with some previous ground or reason for its existence."
Although he denies liberty to the will in this sense--indeed, strictly
speaking, neither liberty nor necessity, he says, is properly applied
to the will, "for the will itself is not an agent that has a will"--he
nevertheless insists that the subject willing is a free moral agent,
and argues that without the determinate connexion between volition
and motive which he asserts and the libertarians deny, moral agency
would be impossible. Liberty, he holds, is simply freedom from
constraint, "the power ... that any one has to do as he pleases." This
power man possesses. And that the right or wrong of choice depends not
on the cause of choice but on its nature, he illustrates by the
example of Christ, whose acts were necessarily holy, yet truly
virtuous, praiseworthy and rewardable. Even God Himself, Edwards here
maintains, has no other liberty than this, to carry out without
constraint His will, wisdom and inclination.
There is no necessary connexion between Edwards's doctrine of the
motivation of choice and the system of Calvinism with which it is
congruent. Similar doctrines have more frequently perhaps been
associated with theological scepticism. But for him the alternative
was between Calvinism and Arminianism, simply because of the
historical situation, and in the refutation of Arminianism on the
assumptions common to both sides of the controversy, he must be
considered completely successful. As a general argument his account of
the determination of the will is defective, notably in his abstract
conception of the will and in his inadequate, but suggestive,
treatment of causation, in regard to which he anticipates in important
respects the doctrine of Hume. Instead of making the motive to choice
a factor within the concrete process of volition, he regards it as a
cause antecedent to the exercise of a special mental faculty. Yet his
conception of this faculty as functioning only in and through motive
and character, inclination and desire, certainly carries us a long way
beyond the abstraction in which his opponents stuck, that of a bare
faculty without any assignable content. Modern psychology has
strengthened the contention for a fixed connexion between motive and
act by reference to subconscious and unconscious processes of which
Edwards, who thought that nothing could affect the mind which was
unperceived, little dreamed; at the same time, at least in some of its
developments, especially in its freer use of genetic and organic
conceptions, it has rendered much in the older forms of statement
obsolete, and has given a new meaning to the idea of
self-determination, which, as applied to an abstract power, Edwards
rightly rejected as absurd.
Edwards's controversy with the Arminians was continued in the essay on
_Original Sin_, which was in the press at the time of his death. He
here breaks with Augustine and the Westminster Confession by arguing,
consistently with his theory of the Will, that Adam had no more
freedom of will than we have, but had a special endowment, a
supernatural gift of grace, which by rebellion against God was lost,
and that this gift was withdrawn from his descendants, not because of
any fictitious imputation of guilt, but because of their real
participation in his guilt by actual identity with him in his
transgression.
The _Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue_, posthumously
published, is justly regarded as one of the most original works on
ethics of the 18th century, and is the more remarkable as reproducing,
with no essential modification, ideas on the subject written in the
author's youth in the notes on the Mind. Virtue is conceived as the
beauty of moral qualities. Now beauty, in Edwards's view, always
consists in a harmonious relation in the elements involved, an
agreement of being with being. He conceives, therefore, of virtue, or
moral beauty, as consisting in the cordial agreement or consent to
intelligent being. He defines it as benevolence (good-will), or rather
as a disposition to benevolence, towards being in general. This
disposition, he argues, has no regard primarily to beauty in the
object, nor is it primarily based on gratitude. Its first object is
being, "simply considered," and it is accordingly proportioned, other
things being equal, to the object's "degree of existence." He admits,
however, benevolent being as a second object, on the ground that such
an object, having a like virtuous propensity, "is, as it were,
enlarged, extends to, and in some sort comprehends being in general."
In brief, since God is the "being of beings" and comprehends, in the
fullest extent, benevolent consent to being in general, true virtue
consists essentially in a supreme love to God. Thus the principle of
virtue--Edwards has nothing to say of "morality"--is identical with
the principle of religion. From this standpoint Edwards combats every
lower view. He will not admit that there is any evidence of true
virtue in the approbation of virtue and hatred of vice, in the
workings of conscience or in the exercises of the natural affections;
he thinks that these may all spring from self-love and the association
of ideas, from "instinct" or from a "moral sense of a secondary kind"
entirely different from "a sense or relish of the essential beauty of
true virtue." Nor does he recognize the possibility of a natural
development of true virtue out of the sentiments directed on the
"private systems"; on the contrary, he sets the love of particular
being, when not subordinated to being in general, in opposition to the
latter and as equivalent to treating it with the greatest contempt.
All that he allows is that the perception of natural beauty may, by
its resemblance to the primary spiritual beauty, quicken the
disposition to divine love in those who are already under the
influence of a truly virtuous temper.
Closely connected with the essay on Virtue is the boldly speculative
_Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World_. As,
according to the doctrine of virtue, God's virtue consists primarily
in love to Himself, so His final end in creation is conceived to be,
not as the Arminians held, the happiness of His creatures, but His
own glory. Edwards supposes in the nature of God an original
disposition to an "emanation" of His being, and it is the excellency
of this divine being, particularly in the elect, which is, in his
view, the final cause and motive of the world.
Edwards makes no attempt to reconcile the pantheistic element in his
philosophy with the individuality implied in moral government. He
seems to waver between the opinion that finite individuals have no
independent being and the opinion that they have it in an
infinitesimal degree; and the conception of "degrees of existence" in
the essay on Virtue is not developed to elucidate the point. His
theological conception of God, at any rate, was not abstractly
pantheistic, in spite of the abstractness of his language about
"being," but frankly theistic and trinitarian. He held the doctrine of
the trinitarian distinctions indeed to be a necessity of reason. His
_Essay on the Trinity_, first printed in 1903, was long supposed to
have been withheld from publication because of its containing Arian or
Sabellian tendencies. It contains in fact nothing more questionable
than an attempted deduction of the orthodox Nicene doctrine,
unpalatable, however, to Edwards's immediate disciples, who were too
little speculative to appreciate his statement of the subordination of
the "persons" in the divine "oeconomy," and who openly derided the
doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son as "eternal nonsense";
and this perhaps was the original reason why the essay was not
published.
Though so typically a scholar and abstract thinker on the one hand and
on the other a mystic, Edwards is best known to the present generation
as a preacher of hell fire. The particular reason for this seems to
lie in a single sermon preached at Enfield, Connecticut, in July 1741
from the text, "Their foot shall slide in due time," and commonly
known from its title, _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_. The
occasion of this sermon is usually overlooked. It was preached to a
congregation who were careless and loose in their lives at a time when
"the neighbouring towns were in great distress for their souls." A
contemporary account of it says that in spite of Edwards's academic
style of preaching, the assembly was "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."
Edwards preached other sermons of this type, but this one was the most
extreme. The style of the imprecatory sermon, however, was no more
peculiar to him than to his period. He was not a great preacher in the
ordinary meaning of the word. His gestures were scanty, his voice was
not powerful, but he was desperately in earnest, and he held his
audience whether his sermon contained a picturesque and detailed
description of the torments of the damned, or, as was often the case,
spoke of the love and peace of God in the heart of man. He was an
earnest, devout Christian, and a man of blameless life. His insight
into the spiritual life was profound. Certainly the most able
metaphysician and the most influential religious thinker of America,
he must rank in theology, dialectics, mysticism and philosophy with
Calvin and Fenelon, Augustine and Aquinas, Spinoza and Novalis; with
Berkeley and Hume as the great English philosophers of the 18th
century; and with Hamilton and Franklin as the three American thinkers
of the same century of more than provincial importance.
Edwards's main aim had been to revivify Calvinism, modifying it for
the needs of the time, and to promote a warm and vital Christian
piety. The tendency of his successors was--to state the matter
roughly--to take some one of his theories and develop it to an
extreme. Of his immediate followers Joseph Bellamy is distinctly
Edwardean in the keen logic and in the spirit of his _True Religion
Delineated_, but he breaks with his master in his theory of general
(not limited) atonement. Samuel Hopkins laid even greater stress than
Edwards on the theorem that virtue consists in disinterested
benevolence; but he went counter to Edwards in holding that
unconditional resignation to God's decrees, or more concretely,
willingness to be damned for the glory of God, was the test of true
regeneration; for Edwards, though often quoted as holding this
doctrine, protested against it in the strongest terms. Hopkins,
moreover, denied Edwards's identity theory of original sin, saying
that our sin was a result of Adam's and not identical with it; and he
went much further than Edwards in his objection to "means of grace,"
claiming that the unregenerate were more and more guilty for continual
rejection of the gospel if they were outwardly righteous and availed
themselves of the means of grace. Stephen West (1735-1819), too,
out-Edwardsed Edwards in his defence of the treatise on the _Freedom
of the Will_, and John Smalley (1734-1820) developed the idea of a
natural (not moral) inability on the part of man to obey God. Emmons,
like Hopkins, considered both sin and holiness "exercises" of the
will. Timothy Dwight (1752-1847) urged the use of the means of grace,
thought Hopkins and Emmons pantheistic, and boldly disagreed with
their theory of "exercises," reckoning virtue and sin as the result of
moral choice or disposition, a position that was also upheld by Asa
Burton (1752-1836), who thought that on regeneration the disposition
of man got a new relish or "taste."
JONATHAN EDWARDS[3] the younger (1745-1801), second son of the
philosopher, born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 26th of May
1745, also takes an important place among his followers. He lived in
Stockbridge in 1751-1755 and spoke the language of the Housatonic
Indians with ease, for six months studied among the Oneidas, graduated
at Princeton in 1765, studied theology at Bethlehem, Connecticut,
under Joseph Bellamy, was licensed to preach in 1766, was a tutor at
Princeton in 1766-1769, and was pastor of the White Haven Church, New
Haven, Connecticut, in 1769-1795, being then dismissed for the nominal
reason that the church could not support him, but actually because of
his opposition to the Half-Way Covenant as well as to slavery and the
slave trade. He preached at Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1796-1799 and
then became president of Union College, Schenectady, New York, where
he died on the 1st of August 1801. His studies of the Indian dialects
were scholarly and valuable. He edited his father's incomplete
_History of the Work of Redemption_, wrote in answer to Stephen West,
_A Dissertation Concerning Liberty and Necessity_ (1797), which
defended his father's work on the Will by a rather strained
interpretation, and in answer to Chauncy on universal salvation
formulated what is known as the "Edwardean," New England or
Governmental theory of the atonement in _The Necessity of the
Atonement and its Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness_ (1785).
His collected works were edited by his grandson Tryon Edwards in two
volumes, with memoir (Andover, 1842). His place in the Edwardean
theology is principally due to his defence against the Universalists
of his father's doctrine of the atonement, namely, that Christ's
death, being the equivalent of the eternal punishment of sinners,
upheld the authority of the divine law, but did not pay any debt, and
made the pardon of all men a possibility with God, but not a
necessity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--There have been various editions of Edwards's works.
His pupil, Samuel Hopkins, in 1765 published two volumes from
manuscript containing eighteen sermons and a memoir; the younger
Jonathan Edwards with Dr Erskine published an edition in 4 volumes
(1744 sqq.), and Samuel Austin in 1808 edited an edition in 8 volumes.
In 1829 Sereno E. Dwight, a great-grandson of Edwards, published the
_Life and Works_ in 10 volumes, the first volume containing the
memoir, which is still the most complete and was the standard until
the publication (Boston, 1889) of _Jonathan Edwards_, by A. V. G.
Allen, who attempts to "distinguish what he (Edwards) meant to affirm
from what he actually teaches." In 1865 the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart
edited from original manuscripts _Selections from the Unpublished
Writings of Jonathan Edwards of America_ (Edinburgh, 1865, printed for
private circulation). This was the only part of a complete edition
planned by Grosart that ever appeared. It contained the important
Treatise on Grace, Annotations on the Bible, Directions for Judging of
Persons' Experiences, and Sermons, the last for the most part merely
in outline. E. C. Smyth published from a copy _Observations Concerning
the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption_ (New
York, 1880), a careful edition from the manuscript of the essay on the
Flying Spider (in the _Andover Review_, January 1890) and "Some Early
Writings of Jonathan Edwards," with specimens from the manuscripts (in
_Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_, October, 1895). In
1900 on the death of Prof. Edwards A. Park, the entire collection of
Edwards's manuscripts loaned to him by Tryon Edwards was transferred
to Yale University. Professor Park, like Mr Grosart before him, had
been unable to accomplish the great task of editing this mass of
manuscript. "A Study of the Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards" was
published by F. B. Dexter in the _Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society_, series 2, vol. xv. (Boston, 1902), and in the
same volume of the _Proceedings_ appeared "A Study of the Shorthand
Writings of Jonathan Edwards," by W. P. Upham. The long sought for
essay on the Trinity was edited (New York, 1903) with valuable
introduction and appendices by G. P. Fisher under the title, _An
Unpublished Essay of Edwards's on the Trinity_. The only other edition
of Edwards (in whole or in part) of any importance is _Selected
Sermons of Jonathan Edwards_ (New York, 1904), edited by H. N.
Gardiner, with brief biographical sketch and annotations on seven
sermons, one of which had not previously been published.
For estimates of Edwards consult: _The Volume of the Edwards Family
Meeting at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, September 6-7, A.D. 1870_
(Boston, 1871); _Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect, Being the Addresses
Delivered in Connecticut with the Unveiling of a Memorial in the
First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the One
Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of his Dismissal from the Pastorate
of that Church_, edited by H. N. Gardiner (Boston, 1901); _Exercises
Commemorating the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Jonathan
Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary, October 4-5, 1903_
(Andover, 1904); and among the addresses delivered at Stockbridge in
October 1903, John De Witt, "Jonathan Edwards: A Study," in the
_Princeton Theological Review_ (January, 1904). Also H. C. King,
"Edwards as Philosopher and Theologian," in _Hartford Theological
Seminary Record_, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 23-57; H. N. Gardiner, "The
Early Idealism of Jonathan Edwards," in the _Philosophical Review_,
vol. ix. (1900), pp. 573-596; E. C. Smyth, _American Journal of
Theology_, vol. i. (1897), pp. 960-964; Samuel P. Hayes, "An
Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals," in _American Journal of
Psychology_, vol. xiii. (1902), pp. 550 ff.; J. H. MacCracken,
"Philosophical Idealism of Edwards" in _Philosophical Review_, vol.
xi. (1902), pp. 26-42, suggesting that Edwards did not know Berkeley,
but Collier, and the same author's _Jonathan Edwards' Idealismus_
(Halle, 1899); F. J. E. Woodbridge, "Jonathan Edwards," in
_Philosophical Review_, vol. xiii. (1904), pp. 393-408; W. H. Squires,
_Jonathan Edwards und seine Willenslehre_ (Leipzig, 1901); Samuel
Simpson, "Jonathan Edwards, A Historical Review," in _Hartford
Seminary Record_, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 3-22; and _The Edwardean, a
Quarterly Devoted to the History of Thought in America_ (Clinton, New
York, 1903-1904), edited by W. H. Squires, of which only four parts
appeared, all devoted to Edwards and all written by Squires.
(H. N. G.; R. WE.)