formed in the Divine image, and could never again sin. He was perfect. Closely connected in time with the movement thus briefly described, and having a general affinity with it, though carefully to be discriminated in many important respects, was the but series of revivals of which Jonathan Edwards was the central medium. Full justice has been done to the metaphysical skill of this remarkable man, and perhaps more than due admiration allotted to his intellectual power, — for, as a writer, he was too acute in analysis, too limited in his range of observation, and too little comprehensive in synthesis, to be fairly considered a well-proportioned philosopher; justice has certainly not been done to his religious character. Cold and phlegmatic in physical temperament, trained up to a Puritanical primness, scrupulously precise from mistaken notions of ministerial dignity, an absorbed student, inapt for social pleasures, solitary in his ways,* Jonathan Edwards was still possessed of a delicate sensibility, a fine appreciation of moral beauty, a faculty of concentrated contemplation, a deep enthusiasm, which in Catholic days would have made him a saint, and in a more liberal age might have expanded into poetry. One cannot read his works without feeling how much more of life and energy was in him than he was aware of, or could, under the conditions in which he was placed, embody in deeds. His dryness, hardness, severity, were accidental incrustations. The inward temper of the man was high and large. The very intensity of his speculative faculty, though exerted in but few directions, gives clear proof of his spiritual earnestness. Every line of that hair-splitting, chaff-chopping essay on the Freedom of the Will is instinct with the moral consciousness of the author, and a singular form of imagination animates his most abstract statements. His whole existence, indeed, was a conscious longing and waiting for salvation; and the strength of his faith in Election and Effectual Calling sprang from his own profound experience of the reality of sin, and still more of the reality of redemption. The germ of Edwards's writings and doings is to be found. in his favorite doctrine of the Sovereignty of God: 66 "I remember the time very well," he says, "when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, Edwards's Works, Vol. I., pp. 51-86. and his justice in eternally disposing of men according to his sov. ereign pleasure.' "The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since was on reading these words: - 'Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.' As I read, there came into my soul, and was, as it were, diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being. . I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be swallow. ed up in him for ever. I kept saying, and, as it were, singing, over these words of Scripture, and went to pray to God that I might enjoy him.” "The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up a sweet burning in my heart, an ardor of soul that I know not how to express." "And as I was walking and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together; it was a sweet, and gentle, and holy majesty, and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness." "From that time to this, I scarce have found the rising of any objection in my mind against the doctrine of God's sovereignty in the most absolute sense, and his showing mercy to whom he will show mercy, and hardening whom he will. God's absolute sovereignty and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of as much as of any thing that I see with my eyes; at least, it is so at times. I have often had, not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction of it. The doctrine has often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." * That significant sentence, "at least, it is so at times," will not be unappreciated by those who find it impossible to reconcile the thought of the eternal death of myriads of souls in hell with the eternal life-giving power of the Heavenly Father, and who feel assured that the unending woe of creatures must jar in discord with the Creator's harmonious bliss. But while protesting against the dogma of everlasting damnation as a libel upon Supreme Goodness, let us not heap indiscriminate reproach upon Edwards and those who think with him. His monstrous error grew out of reverence, and it was his faith in the holiness of the Almighty which led him into even his most appalling statements. A little more hope * Life of Edwards, Works, Vol. I., pp. 33 – 35. or a little less fear would have completely remoulded his theology, and made him a teacher of universal good-will. By a slight change of the axis of rotation in his spirit, the ecliptic and equator would have become coincident, and his life would have rolled on serene and perennially verdant. Still it must be cordially granted, that in his essays on "God's End in Creation," and on "The Nature of True Virtue,"† this good man has recorded some of the most profound and beautiful statements ever made; and it is not extravagant to add, that there are sentences in those papers which are as highly ideal, as concentrated in thought, as rich in suggestion, as any which Cudworth left in his sublime "Treatise on Immutable Morality." And yet with deference let it be questioned whether Edwards did touch the centre. He all but clearly perceived that God is God because he is Infinite Love, and so the One All-good, that the being, manifestation, relations of the Deity are but different modes of good-will, that his essential Divinity lives, moves, and has existence in his infinite disinterestedness, that his eternal sovereignty is for ever anew justified, for ever anew established, in his perfectly pure self-sacrifice. But he stopped just short of that truth of truths. "The disposition to communicate himself, or to diffuse his own Fulness, was what moved God to create the world," he says; but he does not say that this fulness, wherein will, wisdom, bliss, are blended in one ineffable beauty, is Love. A "respect to himself, an infinite propensity to, and delight in, his own glory," is still in Edwards's conception the Divine end; and this indistinctness of view in relation to the essential benignity of God makes his whole scheme of thought inconsequential and contradictory, and gives a limited sense to the grand words "goodness" and "holiness," as used by him. If we define the holiness of God as being a "love of himself," § and not a love of absolute love, although we may add that he is "being in general or universal being," we shall still inevitably attribute to him a selfish sovereignty. The glory of God being his "one last great end in creation," it follows, according to Edwards, that the "Sover Edwards's Works, Vol. VI, pp. 9-124. Ibid, Vol. VI., pp. 53, 59. p. 325. + Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 395-471. § Ibid., Vol. VI., p. 53. eign Disposer has established all events by previous necessity, and orders his own conduct and its connected consequences for the fulfilment of this end. Evil in all its forms. and degrees, therefore, is predetermined, in order that "all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, holiness, should be manifested."* "Unless sin and punishment had been decreed, . . . . . there could be no manifestation of God's holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing preference in his providence of godliness." This leads us into the heart of Edwards's system. But let not one unacquainted with his writings at once burst forth in indignant reproof of this accusation against God, that he is "the author of sin." Let him first consider that no philosophy ever has, or ever will, fully explain the existence of evil; that every profound thinker of ancient and modern times has found himself obliged to admit that the very conception of Good involves its opposite of Evil, and that, in fact, the beauty of the former is seen to be brighter by contrast with the dark deformity of the latter. And next let him be sure that he understands Edwards's meaning. His real thought is thus expressed : "The goodness of God gives the being as well as the happiness of the creature. And the glorifying of God's mercy, as it presupposes the subject to be miserable, and the glorifying of his grace, as it supposes the subject to be sinful, are not to be conceived of as ultimate ends, but only as certain ways and means for glorifying the exceeding abundance and overflowing fulness of God's goodness." Edwards had a sublime conception before his mind of an harmonious order unfolding for ever and ever, by which the communion of saints are to be raised through constant ascension in glory to a perfect unity with God; and any one, who will read the treatise on "Decrees and Election" side by side with the teachings of his great master, § will confess that he has presented the dogma of predestination in a form far less dishonorable to God, less in conflict with our intuitions of right, and less shocking to our best instincts, than that in which Calvin * Edwards's Works, Vol. V., pp. 357 – 360. t Ibid., Vol. V., p. 404. Ibid., Vol. V., pp. 351 - 412. § Calvin's Institutes; compare B. I., c. xv., § 8, B. II., c. ii., § 3, B. III., c. xxi. xxiii. has stated it. He, at least, does not mock men with an empty shadow of freedom, and haunt them with a mere phantom of responsibility. A passing notice of Edwards's doctrines upon "God's sovereignty" and "decrees" has been given, because we are thus prepared to understand his view of holiness, and without a clear notion of this we cannot judge aright of the part which he and his followers took in revivals. Throughout creation and the spiritual world he saw an ever-progressive manifestation of the Divine holiness. "Holiness," he says, "is the beauty of the Godhead, the divinity of the Divinity, the good of the infinite Fountain of good, without which God himself would be an infinite evil, without which there had better have been no being." * So in man" the first objective ground of all holy affections is the transcendent amiableness, the infinite loveliness, of the Divine Nature." "The very life and soul of all true religion is in the affections." On this subject of the affections Edwards is truly eloquent and instructive, and few writers of any age have come nearer to laying open the most profound and beautiful mystery of man's springs of action. According to his view, "all acts of the affections of the soul are in some sense acts of the will, and all acts of the will are acts of the affections." He denied that there was a "self-determining power" in man, because he referred all emotion up to God as its author. Nothing of the dry, hard necessitarianism of Hobbes, and the large school of naturalists, appears in Edwards. He never saw in the universe a vast mechanism, through ages and ages grinding on in cold passivity, and turning out events and characters to pattern; but nature and humanity seemed to him warmly alive with the interflowing and overflowing energy of the Being of beings. Everywhere he beheld a magnificent revelation of God's goodness; and thought that a "love of divine things for the beauty and sweetness of their moral excellency is the spring of all holy affection." Hence the very principle of religion is with him a disinterested love for goodness in itself; any thought of the influence which religious obedience may have upon one's own lot must be wholly secondary; the saint must lose a regard to his own interests in joyful adoration of the infinite moral glory of God. * Edwards's Works, Vol.IV., p. 211. Ibid., Vol. III., p. 94. t Ibid., Vol. V., pp. 172, 173. |