MIRABEAU'S EULOGY ON FRANKLIN. 171 most elevated. With all his strong opinions, so often solemnly declared, so imperishably recorded in his deeds, he retained a tolerance for those who differed with him, which could not be surpassed in men whose principles hang so loosely about them as to be taken up for a convenient cloak, and laid down when found to impede their progress. In his family he was everything that worth, warm affections, and sound prudence could contribute to make a man both useful and amiable, respected and beloved. In religion, he would by many be reckoned a latitudinarian; yet it is certain that his mind was imbued with a deep sense of the Divine perfections, a constant impression of. our accountable nature, and a lively hope of future enjoyment. Accordingly, his death-bed, the test of both faith and works, was easy and placid, resigned and devout; and indicated at once an unflinching retrospect of the past, and a comfortable assurance of the future.' When the news of Franklin's death reached France, it called forth emotions that could be inspired only in the heart of the most generous of the nations, and the one that knew him best. On the eleventh of June, at the opening of the National Assembly, the great Mirabeau rose and said :— 'Franklin is dead! The genius that freed America, and poured a flood of light over Europe, has returned to the bosom of the Divinity. 'The sage whom two worlds claim as their own, the man for whom the history of science and the history of empires contend with each other, held, without doubt, a high rank in the human race. 'Too long have political cabinets taken formal note of the death of those who were great only in their funeral panegyrics. Too long has the etiquette of courts prescribed hypocritical mourning. Nations should wear mourning only for their benefactors. The representatives of nations should recommend to their homage none but the heroes of humanity. 'The Congress has ordained, throughout the United States, a mourning of one month for the death of Franklin; and, at this moment America is paying this tribute of veneration and gratitude to one of the fathers of her Constitution. Would it not become us, gentlemen, to join in this religious act; to bear a part in this homage, rendered, in the face of the world, both to the rights of man, and to the philosopher who has most contributed to extend their sway over the whole earth? Antiquity would have raised altars to this mighty genius, who to the advantage of mankind, compassing in his mind the heavens. and the earth, was able to restrain alike thunderbolts and tyrants. Europe, enlightened and free, owes at least a token of remembrance and regret to one of the greatest men who have ever been engaged in the service of philosophy and of liberty. 'I propose that it be decreed that the National Assembly, during three days, shall wear mourning for Benjamin Franklin.' Rochefoucauld and Lafayette both sprang to their feet to second the pro posal: but there was no need of seconding it; it was carried by acclamațion 172 JONATHAN EDWARDS' OF CONNECTICUT. The Assembly further decreed, that the address of Mirabeau should be printed, and that the president, M. Siéyes, should communicate to the Congress of the United States the resolution which the National Assembly had passed. M. Siéyes performed the duty assigned him by addressing a letter to the President of the United States, which was full of the feeling of the hour. Jonathan Edwards. Born in East Windsor, Conn., October 5, 1703. Died at Princeton, New Jersey, March 22, 1758.-Dr. Griswold opens his Prose Writers of America' with the following words :-"The first man of the world during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, was Jonathan Edwards of Connecticut. As a theologian Robert Hall and Thomas Chalmers admit that he was the greatest who has lived in the Christian ages; and as a metaphysician Dugald Stewart' and Sir James Mackintosh agree that he was never surpassed. In Great Britain, and on the continent of Europe men disavowed belief in some of his doctrines, but confessed that they had only protests to oppose to them: Edwards had anticipated and refuted all arguments. Adopting some of his principles, others built up for themselves great reputations by perverting them, or deducing from them illegitimate conclusions. In whatever light he is regarded, he commands our admiration. He was unequalled in intellect, and unsurpassed in virtue. Bacon was described as the 'wisest and the meanest of mankind;' but Edwards, not inferior to the immortal Chancellor in genius, suffers not even an accusation of anything unbecoming a gentleman, a philosopher, or a Christian. 'Born in a country which was still almost a wilderness; educated in a college which had scarcely a local habitation; settled, a large part of his 1 I quote from the new and excellent edition of this work from the press of Porter & Coates, Philadelphia, 1870, which contains an additional and able survey of the progress of American Literature by Prof. Dillingham, executed with care and ability. In the New World,' said Dugald Stewart, the state of society and of manners has not hitherto been so favorable to abstract science as to pursuits which have come home directly to the business of human life. There is, however, one metaphysician of whom America has to boast, who, in logical acuteness and subtlety, does not yield to any disputant bred in the universities of Europe. I need not say that I allude to Jonathan Edwards. But at the time when he wrote, the state of America was more favorable than it is now, or can for a long period be expected to be, to such inquiries as those which engaged his attention; inquiries, by the way, to which his thoughts were evidently turned, less by the impulse of speculative curiosity than by his anxiety to defend the theological system in which he had been educated, and to which he was most conscientiously and zealously attached. The effect of this anxiety in sharpening his faculties, and in keeping his polemic vigilance constantly on the alert, may be traced in every step of his argument.' Hazlitt, whose 'Principles of Human Action' show im to have been a close and original student of mental phenomena, and whose knowledge of metaphysical authors entitles him to an authoritative opinion on the subject, says of the Treatise on the Will,' and its author: Having produced him the Americans need not despair of their metaphysicians. We do not scruple to say that he is one of the acutest, most powerful, and of all reasoners the most conscientious and sincere. His closeness and candor are alike admira ble. Instead of puzzling or imposing on others, he Rev. Dr. Alexander-of Princeton fame-has described his character as a preacher. He was commanding as a pulpit teacher, not for grace of person; he was slender and shy; not for elocution; his voice was thin and weak; for any trick of style; no man more disdained and trampled on it :-but from his immense preparation, long forethought, sedulous uniting of every word, touching earnestness and holy life, He was not a man of company; he seldom visited his hearers. Yet there was no man whose mental power was greater. Common consent set him at the head of his profession. Even in a time of raptures and fiery excitement he lost no influence. The incident is familiar of his being called on a sudden to take the place of Whitefield, the darling of the people, who failed to appear when a multitude were gathered to hear him. Edwards, unknown to most, in person, with unfeigned reluctance, such as a vainer man might feel, rose before a disappointed assembly and proceeded with feeble manner to read from his manuscript. In a little time the audience was hushed; but this was not all. Before they were aware, they were attentive and soon enchained. As was then common, one and another in the outskirts would arise and stand; numbers arose and stood; they came forward, they pressed upon the centre; the whole assembly rose; and before he concluded, sobs burst from the convulsed throng. It was the power of fearful argument.'-Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of Am. Literature, vol. i. pp. 94-95. ANCESTRY OF EDWARDS. 173 life over a church upon the confines of civilization, and the rest of it in the very midst of barbarism, in the humble but honorable occupation of a missionary, he owed nothing to adventitious circumstances. With a fragile body, a fine imagination, and a spirit the most gentle that ever thrilled in the presence of the beautiful, he seemed of all men the least fitted for the great conflict in which he engaged. But He, who, giving to Milton the Dorian reed, sent out his seraphim to enrich him with utterance and knowledge, with fire from the same altar purified the lips of Edwards, to teach that 'true religion consists in holy affections,' the spring of all which is 'a love of divine things for their own beauty and sweetness.” The two men who have put forth the greatest influence on the religious thought and character of America, are Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. It may be more proper to say that the theological and metaphysical mind of New England was moulded almost entirely by Edwards; while the religious feeling of the masses-especially in the less thickly settled regions of the South and West-was permanently tinged and controlled by Wesley. But together they have held a mightier sway over the religious classes, than all the other theologians of the continent. Whitefield was the Prince of preachers.' Panting for a new and broader field for Christian philanthropy, he reached Savannah only six years after Oglethorpe had founded it, and at the age of twenty-three began his immense labors. An Evangelist of fire, he went like Peter the Hermit throughout the Colonies, melting vast crowds-men and women alike—by the irresistible power of his eloquence. But that magic sway was limited chiefly to those who heard him, and the wand fell from his hand at death.' But when Edwards and Wesley laid off their mortality, their empire had only just begun. Like so many of the illustrious men of the Colonial times, he was fortunate in his ancestry. He sprang from the best stock of the two Englands—the Old and the New-which meant the best on the earth. They were tall, stalwart, broad-shouldered, handsome, long-lived. They were men of massive, active brain, ripe learning, sensitive temperament; exalted reverence, and courageous manhood. 'We attach a good deal of importance to these facts; for however common it may be in Democracies, to speak slightingly of noble descent, yet all men of sense are well aware that nothing more valuable can be inherited than good, sound blood,-strong, healthy constitutions, ample and vigorous frames, well put together,—unless indeed it may be what is so gen erally allied to all these qualities, strong healthy brains, vigorous intellect, and manly character.'' 'Four generations back, on his father's side, his ancestor was a clergyman of the E-tablished Church in London in the time of Elizabeth. Hiss on emigrated to Hartford, in Connecticut, in the middle of the seventeenth century. He George Whitefield established an Orphan House at Savannah, after the model of the one at Halle, and sustained it by the contributions which his eloquence extorted. His 'House of Mercy' lived and flourished, a great blessing, until his death in 1770. He made his grave in New England. "LESTER'S Life and Public Services of CHARLE! SUMNER, one vol. 8vo, 690 pp., Fifth Edition, United States Publishing Company, New York, 1874. 174 LIFE AND GENIUS OF EDWARDS. was a merchant, as was also his son Richard, who superadded to that worldly The next in descent was the Rev. Timothy He was a graduate of Harvard, and the In the old French War he accompanied ar He married the daughter of the calling a life of eminent piety. Edwards, the father of Jonathan. first minister of East Windsor. expedition as chaplain on its way to Canada. Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, with whom he lived more than sixty-three years, when she died, in her ninety-ninth year. This lady, the mother of Jonathan Edwards, is spoken of as possessed of superior force of understanding, and refinement of character.' ' To Jonathan Edwards was the only son in a family of eleven children. the genial and inspiring influence of those ten gifted and noble sisters, his best biographer attributes many of the graces which adorned his beautiful character. But with no attempt to trace his history, I shall only glance at his chief charac teristics. By so much as the genius of Edwards rose above the other great men of his time, by so much did he surpass them in the greatness of his intellectual creations. In so far as his conceptions of the attributes of God towered above those of his fellows, just so far did he transcend them in the grandeur of his spiritual delineations. Sin was to him the deepest crime. To a father of absolute beneficence, it was the darkest filial impiety. To a sovereign, supreme treason. As against the author of all law, chaos-as against infinite love, fiendish hateas against supreme beauty, the ugliest deformity—as against unbounded beneficence, unmixed malevolence. Any departure from absolute purity of character, war against the King of kings. So fearfully exacting, so unswerving and relentless was the standard by which each soul must be judged. By so much as his spiritual perceptions of the guilt of sin eclipsed the feeble ideas of others, by so much did his views of its consequences. If rebellion against God was an infinite crime, just as immeasurable must be its punishment. If holiness on earth partook of the purity of heaven, so, too, must the joys of the redeemed, and the sufferings of the damned trend on the infiHis imagination clothed the regions of the lost with horrors that never found a place even in the august splendors of Dante's Hell. Like the Italian poet, he invoked physical imagery, for he could use no other that men would understand. In reading his sermon on Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, we do not wonder that, as it fell from the white lips of the majes tic prophet, it drove his gentler hearers to the verge of madness. 1 Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature. Edited to date by M. Laird Simons. This work, which receiving such new value through Mr. Simons' labors, is being issued in superior style, in monthly numbers, by T. Ellwood Zell, of Philadelphia, and demands a place in all Libraries. 2 REV. DR. SAMUEL MILLER, who wrote for Jared Sparks' American Biography an admirable life of Edwards, says, in speaking of the home of his childhood and youth-His father's family seems to have been a scene of the most pure and refined intellectual and moral influence, as well as of the most sound and enlightened piety. Perhaps in no domestic circle in the land were habits of thought, of intelligence, of literary taste, of industry, and of religion in all its loveliness, more conspicuous than in that of which he was a mem ber. There is no human influence better adapted to exert a happy power in forming the character of a young man than the society of cultivated, refined, and virtuous sisters. In this respect, young Edwards was peculiar ly favored. Himself the only son, associated with ten sisters of enlightened, polished minds, and engaged, to a considerable extent, in the same studies with himself, he manifested all that softness, refinement, and moral correctness which the society of such sisters was eminently adapted to impress. He was in a school fitted to impart the finest moral finish to intellectual culture."-p. 1a. |