ARTICLE II-JONATHAN EDWARDS AS A MAN; AND THE MINISTERS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

[Read at Northampton, before the Connecticut Valley Congregational Club, June 9, 1884.]

AFTER long ages of observation and experience it would be very difficult for any one to define the conditions on which God raises up the few leading intellects of our race. So various, not to say diverse are these conditions; so fresh and original is each new production, that He seems perpetually to baffle our research and keep the secret to Himself. If, in any given instance, we attempt to trace the wonderful result to peculiar mental and moral characteristics in the parents, meeting and blending in the child, we are apt to be confronted with the stubborn fact, that other children of the same parentage, are, in no special way, distinguished above their fellows.

Indeed, it often happens, that the man who comes upon the theatre of human action, with this kingly order of mind, and leaves his name as a heritage to all future generations, rises out of some obscure household, which except for him would never have attracted public notice, or have been kept in after remembrance. So Moses and David appeared upon the earth, and took their places in the records of the early world. So Socrates, Luther, Shakespeare, and others of this lofty name, came forward in their several generations, to act their conspicuous parts.

If we search for the cause of such transcendant greatness in special outward facilities for culture, in books, in schools, in travel, in intercourse with learned men, we shall find, as a common truth, that just when and where these facilities are the greatest, just when society has accumulated to the highest degree all helps to learning and intellectual culture,―libraries, richly endowed universities, accomplished teachers - costly apparatus, just then, somehow, the man we are looking for is not forthcoming. He has perhaps already come and gone, and we shall not in that particular nation or province see his like

again. One would show himself of a sanguine temperament who should expect the England of to-day with all its treasurehouses of learning, to reproduce a Shakespeare, or a Lord Bacon.

Or if we turn to outward nature, to happy influences of sun and sky-to a nice balancing of heat and cold-to favoring aspects of hills, mountains, and streams-to genial winds and beautiful landscapes, it will often occur, that this princely child whose character we are studying, enjoyed no rare opportunities of this kind, or, if he did the question will still arise, why, if these influences were fitted to nourish greatness in him, they were not equally fitted to nourish it in all his early playmates and companions. That brilliant French writer Rénan, in his life of Christ, thought he could discover in the sights and sounds and favoring aspects of nature around the ancient Nazareth, all the elements out of which to construct that marvelous Child Jesus, ignoring the fact that for thousands of years, before and since, children have been born and reared amid these self-same sights, and sounds, and influences, but only one of them is known on earth as Immanuel, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Prince of Peace.

Whatever method therefore we pursue, whatever considerations we urge to determine why it is that a few men of the race tower so loftily above the average, the real causes will probably still remain unknown, or will resolve themselves into the infinite wisdom and resources of God, the great first cause.

Nevertheless an intense interest always gathers about the early life of a truly great man. "The child is father of the man," and we eagerly search the records to find the first intimations of that superiority which afterwards becomes so impressive. And in this search we are often sorely disappointed, for all human life is of necessity set round with the customary and the commonplace, and it is only a very discerning eye that can detect at this early period the sure signs of coming greatness. When the time arrives that this lofty reach of intellect is fully recognized, then it is found that the incidents and memorials of the early age have largely perished, and can never be recalled. If loving kindred and friends had but known whereto this child was to grow how carefully would

these incidents of childhood have been garnered up and kept for future use!

By general consent Jonathan Edwards stands as one of the world's great thinkers, a masterly originator in the realm of ideas. And when we say "by general consent," we are aware that few men comparatively of this living generation have any intimate knowledge of his writings, or the scope and method of his great works. But the verdict of the foremost minds in the old world still more than in the new, assigns him this lofty place. The great divines, philosophers, and scholars of England and Scotland, living in a land of universities and libraries, were the first to discover the towering height of Edwards's genius. It was to them little less than a miracle, to hear a voice like his coming to them across the waters, and out of the depths of this new and half-wilderness land. They knew better than the men on our own shores, the actual reach of philosophic thought, among old and cultivated nations, and they unhesitatingly pronounced Jonathan Edwards one of the leading thinkers of the world. Our own people would hardly have dared to give him the lofty rank assigned him by such men as Sir James Mackintosh, Dr. Thomas Chalmers and many others.

To acknowledge however the masterly greatness of Edwards in the world of thought, it is not necessary that we should accept his opinions in full. No finite intellect is able to grasp all truth. Minds vastly inferior to that of Edwards may come in at a later stage and find out deficiences and mistakes in his work. No man has ever yet been able to free himself from all the prejudices and philosophic tendencies of the particular age in which his lot is cast and plant himself upon the broad platform of the fixed and everlasting.

The greatness of Edwards is seen in that he instinctively took up some of the highest themes that can occupy the human mind;-took them up as one self-moved and born for the purpose, took them up in a manner original to himself and not as a copyist. He held these themes before his own mind and before the minds of others with a most wonderful force and tenacity. Other thinkers might come in afterwards to modify his system and improve upon his methods. But he was the pioneer breaking through the tangled forests where men had

not gone before. Other travelers might follow who would find ways to improve and straighten the path which he had made, but they never could take away his glory as an originator and discoverer.

The fame of Plato to-day is not that he reached the heights of unchangeable truth. Many of his conclusions cannot for one moment stand the test of a Christian age and a Christian philosophy. But his greatness will remain fixed long as the world stands. He towers aloft, among the chiefest men of the race, because he marched with such a kingly step into this realm of thought. As to Edwards's ancestry, parentage, and early education, the story, though capable of large expansion, may be told, in general, in few words.

His earliest American ancestor was William Edwards, who was in Hartford only four or five years after its first English settlement. He there married Mrs. Spencer, widow of Mr. William Spencer, who had been a prominent man in the Massachusetts Bay before his coming to Hartford. By this marriage he had a single child, Richard Edwards, born in 1647. His wife had three children by her previous marriage. This Richard Edwards grew to be one of the substantial and most influential men in Hartford. He was employed in many matters of public trust and responsibility. He was twice married, had twelve children, and died in 1718 at the age of 70. His oldest child was Timothy, born in 1669, who was fitted for college, and was graduated at Harvard in 1691, a scholar of a very high grade. Yale College did not come into existence until nine years after Timothy Edwards had finished his college course.

Three years after graduation he married Esther Stoddard, of Northampton, and with his young wife went directly to Windsor, east side of the river, afterwards East Windsor, but then known as Windsor Farme, and there continued his ministerial labors sixty-three years. There Jonathan Edwards was born, Oct. 5, 1703, about half a mile south of East Windsor Hill. He was fitted for college in his father's house, as were many other boys, and was graduated at Yale in 1720. It may not be generally known that it was only by a singular course of events that Jonathan Edwards ever came to be minister at Northampton. Three years and more before his coming hither he

had received and accepted a call to a parish in Connecticut, and was about ready to be settled, when a sudden turn of affairs caused delay and finally broke up the plan altogether. The facts in this case are the following:

Edwards, as we have said, was graduated at Yale in 1720, just as the college, after long wanderings to find a home, had settled down in New Haven. He finished his college course close upon his seventeenth birthday. One of Jonathan Edwards's classmates at Yale was his uncle, Daniel Edwards, two or three years older than himself, son of Richard Edwards, of Hartford. In that day of early marriages and large households it not infrequently happened that nephews and nieces. were older than uncles and aunts. Jonathan Edwards's oldest sisters, Esther and Elizabeth, were older than the youngest children of their grandfather Richard; but Jonathan, falling midway in the family, was a little younger than his uncle Daniel.

After graduation, Edwards remained about the college at New Haven for two years, pursuing various studies, some miscellaneous, and some looking toward the ministry. In 1772, at the age of nineteen, he was invited to supply a Presbyterian pulpit in New York. He remained there from August, 1722, to April, 1723. This was the day of small things, even in New York. The place where he preached was in a small building on William street, between Liberty and Wall streets. The congregation to which he preached was a section of the First Presbyterian Church, separating itself for a time from the main body because of dissatisfaction with the pastor.

The main body itself, from which this fragment had been separated was only six years old, having been organized in 1716, and this was the beginning of Presbyterianism in New York. The Dutch Church was there earlier, but the dominant church order there at that time was the Episcopal, which stoutly opposed any new-comers, and this earliest Presbyterian Church building was erected by the help of contributions from Scotland and Connecticut.

While thus occupied in New York he received a letter from Bolton, Conn., a town about fifteen miles east of Hartford. The glory of New England in that day was largely in her old