A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS
The story of the Jukes as published by Mr. Dugdale has been the text
of a multitude of sermons, the theme of numberless addresses, the
inspiration of no end of editorials and essays. For twenty years there
was a call for a companion picture. Every preacher, orator, and editor
who presented the story of the Jukes, with its abhorrent features,
wanted the facts for a cheery, comforting, convincing contrast. This was
not to be had for the asking. Several attempts had been made to find
the key to such a study without discovering a person of the required
prominence, born sufficiently long ago, with the necessary vigor of
intellect and strength of character who established the habit of having
large families.
In 1897 a professional scholarly organization--to which the author has
the honor to belong--assigned to him, without his knowledge or consent,
the duty of preparing an essay upon Jonathan Edwards for the May meeting
of 1898. The study then begun led to a search for the facts regarding
his family, and when it came to light that one of Jonathan Edwards'
descendants presided over the New York Prison Commission when it
employed Mr. Dugdale to make a study of the Jukes, the appropriateness
of the contrast was more than ever apparent.
In this study the sources of information are the various genealogies of
families in which the descendants of Mr. Edwards play a part, various
town histories and church and college publications, but chiefly the
biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias in which the records of the
men of the family are chronicled. It would be impossible to follow out
the positions occupied by the various members but for the pride they
all feel in recording the fact that they are descendants of Jonathan
Edwards. A good illustration of this may be had in the current
announcements of the marvelously popular novel, "Richard Carvel," in
which it is always emphasized that Mr. Winston Churchill, the author,
is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.
Only two Americans established a considerable and permanent reputation
in the world of European thought prior to the present century,--Benjamin
Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736, Dr. Isaac Watts published in
England Mr. Edwards' account of the beginning of the great awakening in
the Connecticut valley. Here more than a century and a half ago, when
the colonies were small, their future unsuspected and the ability of
their leaders unrecognized, Jonathan Edwards "erected the standard of
Orthodoxy for enlightened Protestant Europe." Who can estimate the
eloquence of that simple fact? Almost everything of his which was
published in the colonies was speedily republished in England. Of what
other American philosopher and theologian has this been true? Here are
a few of the tributes to Mr. Edwards:
_Daniel Webster_: "The Freedom of the Will" by Mr. Edwards is the
greatest achievement of the human intellect.
_Dr. Chalmers_: The greatest of theologians.
_Robert Hall_: He was the greatest of the sons of men.
_Dugald Stewart_: Edwards on the Will never was answered and never will
be answered.
_Encyclopaedia_: One of the greatest metaphysicians of his age.
_Edinburgh Review_: One of the acutest and most powerful of reasoners.
_London Quarterly Review_: His gigantic specimen of theological argument
is as near to perfection as we may expect any human composition to
approach. He unites the sharpness of the scimetar and the strength of
the battle-axe.
_Westminster Review_: From the days of Plato there has been no life of
more simple and imposing grandeur than that of Jonathan Edwards.
_President McCosh, of Princeton_: The greatest thinker that America has
produced.
_Lyman Beecher_: A prince among preachers. In our day there is no man
who comes within a thousand miles of him.
_Griswold's Prose Writers_: The first man of the world during the
second quarter of the eighteenth century.
_Hollister's History of Connecticut_: The most gifted man of the
eighteenth century, perhaps the most profound thinker in the world.
_Moses Coit Tyler_: The most original and acute thinker yet produced in
America.
This is the man whose intellectual life has thrilled in the mental
activity of more than 1,400 men and women of the past century and a
half, and which has not lost its virtue or its power in all these years.
England and Scotland are not wont to sit at our feet even in this day,
and yet they sat at the feet of Jonathan Edwards as in the presence of a
master when he was a mere home missionary, living among the Indians, to
whom he preached every Lord's day.
The birth of fame is always an interesting study. It is easy to play the
part of a rocket if one can sizzle, and flash, and rise suddenly in
darkness, but to take one's place among luminaries and shine with
permanent brilliancy is so rare an experience as to present a
fascinating study.
Jonathan Edwards was twenty-eight years of age, had been the pastor
of a church on the frontier, as Northampton was, for four years without
any notable experience, when he was invited to preach the annual sermon
before the association of ministers at Boston. Never since that day
have Boston and Harvard been more thoroughly the seat of culture and
of intellectual power than then. It was a remarkable event for a young
man of twenty-eight to be invited to come from the Western limit of
civilization and preach the annual sermon before the philosophical,
theological, and scholastic masters of the East. This sermon was so
powerful that the association published it. This was his first
appearance in print. So profoundly moved by this effort were the
churches of New England that the clergymen generally gave public thanks
to the Head of the Church for raising up so great a teacher and
preacher. Thus was born the fame of Jonathan Edwards.
It is nearly 170 years since then. Science and invention, enterprise and
ambition have done great things for America and for Americans. We have
mighty universities, libraries, and laboratories, but we have no man who
thinks more clearly, writes more logically, speaks more vigorously than
did Jonathan Edwards, and we have never had such a combination of spirit
and power in any other American. This mastery is revealing itself in
various ways in hundreds of his descendants to-day, and it has never
ceased to do it since his blood gave tonic to the thought and character
of his children and his children's children.