we resign this interpretation with great reluctance, for it is congenial with the most expansive charity of the human heart, and affords the strongest impulse to universal beneficence. We must fall back on a brotherhood which, though yet limited in extent, rests, like that of the earliest Christian Church, on a common inspiration from the Father of lights, a fraternal sympathy in a common regeneration. Yet we rejoice in that faith which allies us to the Divine nature; we would look forward with the eye of hope to the time when "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow" in fraternal reverence; and we would earnestly diffuse that revelation of love which shall hereafter unite men and angels in a brotherhood that shall be indeed universal. And what Christian heart will not leap to be associated in a brotherhood like this? Let not the Christian say that he is already affiliated to God by inward piety, and united to all his true children by religious sympathy, and that no external manifestation is needed to indicate such relations. Open concert is requisite, both for the encouragement and the increase of this assimilation. It is not enough that a despotic hierarchy has gathered multitudes under a system of mysterious ceremony. It is not enough that separate churches cherish exclusive organizations, which can never distinguish the cordial from the heartless professor. It is not enough that institutions and societies, of the religious and the worldly combined, exist for the removal of specific evils; these have, indeed, dimly illuminated the misty atmosphere of the past, but the dawn of a brighter day is now visibly at hand. "Let there be light!" is the renewed command of God, and his spirit again moves on the deep waters of human corruption. It points to a combination of Christian philanthropists, purer, freer, more extensive, and more energetic than the deluded and turbulent world has ever seen. The true principle on which such an association should be based is that of love. "By this," says our Lord, "shall all know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another "; and the surest test of this Christian love is the renunciation of the spirit and of every form of war, private or national. "Blessed are the peacemakers," says Jesus, "for they shall be called the children of God." If children of God, they are brethren of each other by the fraternal bond of love. This is the true foundation on which the vast edifice of human brotherhood is to be erected; and just so 1848.] Jonathan Edwards. 367 deeply as this delightful principle is cherished, will "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" dwell in every heart; and just so far as it is extended through the world, will every hostile action cease, till swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall not learn war any more. J. P. B. 2:02gord. ART. IV. JONATHAN EDWARDS.* We took occasion recently in the pages of this journal to treat of the father of Methodism, and of the revolution wrought by him in the religion of England. We now turn homeward, to speak of a contemporary of Wesley, of equal influence in his own sphere, and of far higher rank in the kingdom of ideas. It was, as we have seen, in the month of roses, 1703, that the rectory of Epworth heard a new voice, and John Wesley first saw the light. That same year, and, as more fitting, in the month of the sere and yellow leaf, the more grave and pensive October, the Puritan parsonage of East Windsor, Connecticut, that already-frequent blessing of the clerical home-heard the prattle of four little girls, rejoiced for the first time in a son. This son became the most noted theologian of his country. The metaphysician of Calvinism, he has been as much the father of a method of thought, as the Arminian disciplinarian has been of a method of action. To understand the career of the great Calvinist and his associates and antagonists, we must glance at the condition of New England at the opening of the last century. The state of religion here then resembled much its state in the mother country when Wesley came upon the stage. The fire of the old contest between Puritan and Churchman had been dying out. By the Revolution of 1688 new principles of toleration were incorporated into the British policy, which showed themselves in the old country by softening the former animosity between the Dissenters and the Establishment, and which * 1. The Works of JONATHAN EDWARDS, A. M. With an Essay on his Genius and Writings, by HENRY ROGERS; and a Memoir, by SERENO E. DWIGHT. London. 1839. 2 vols. pp. cclxxvi., 691, 969. 2. Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England. A Treatise in Five Parts. With a Preface. By CHARLES CHAUNCY, D. D., Pastor of the First Church of Christ in Boston. Boston. 1743. pp. 424. changed the face of things here, by taking from the Puritan Church its control over the State, and bringing forward a somewhat liberal party in the ranks of Congregationalism. The weight of the liberal party was proved by the foundation of Brattle Street church, in Boston, in 1698, and, nine years afterward, by the election of one of its founders, John Leverett, to the presidency of Harvard College, in spite of the violent opposition of the Mathers. In this movement, a spirit came to light which had long covertly existed, and which without doubt had some representatives in the cabins of the Mayflower and Arbella. Thus, at the very beginning of the last century, Harvard College showed something of the liberal tendency that has since stamped its history; and the rise of Yale College at that time, under the auspices of the more rigid class, and with some feeling of opposition to Harvard, gave intimation of those conflicts of opinion that have agitated New England to the present day. We do not say that there was any thing of the doctrinal antagonism that has since been so conspicuous. The Liberalism of that day was rather a spirit than a doctrine, a spirit of resistance to ecclesiastical despotism, and of regard for the right of private judgment and congregational independence. It was obviously an important crisis in affairs, - a season of decay as well as renovation. Much indifference prevailed among Christian people. Men were not very willing to accept theology, as before, upon the basis of Puritan authority. The claims of religion must be examined, its doctrines proved, and, while the leading divines of Europe were striving to defend Christianity from assault, and legitimate its claims by reason and scholarship, the mind of New England in a measure felt the same want, and demanded strong thinkers to meet the craving for more light. When thus called for, men always come. Strong thinkers appeared. Verily, there were giants in those days. Harvard and Yale sent each its strong man, each man to be captain of a host. In the year 1720, the order of performance at the New Haven Commencement bore upon its list of graduates the name of Jonathan Edwards. Few, if any, of the goodly company at that ancient Commencement, as they listened to the oration of that youth of seventeen, had any very clear intimation of his destiny. The fathers and mothers, the youths and maidens, looked upon him, doubtless, with inter 1848.] His Creed. 369 est, as the first scholar in his class; the elders of the church hoped well of him, as they noted his serious spirit, and remembered the stanch faith of his father, the venerable minister of East Windsor. His classmates might have thought him a little stiff and reserved, even for those days, but could not help respecting the youth who had distanced them all in scholarship, and who at fourteen had read Locke with more pleasure than the miser finds in handfuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treasure." One year afterwards, the town of Boston and its vicinity sent forth its wisdom and beauty and strength to the village of Cambridge, and among the class of thirty-seven members at that Commencement, none was regarded with more honor than Charles Chauncy, a youth not yet seventeen, who bore a distinguished part in the services of the day. These youths became the religious leaders of their time. Edwards and Chauncy are the representative men of New England theology in the eighteenth century. Of them we are to treat, of Edwards principally, and Chauncy incidentally. They represent tendencies that have always existed in Christendom. In their own time, and under the New England garb, they illustrate diversities of creed and temper, that have ever shown themselves in the world, from the days of Tertullian and Origen, Augustine and Pelagius, to those of Calvin and Arminius, Chalmers and Channing. Did our limits permit, we might find instruction in portraying the chief scenes in Edwards's course of preparation for this great work. We might dwell upon his infancy and boyhood in the parsonage of East Windsor, trace his career through College, and describe the years during which he was fitting himself for the ministry, which were passed partly in theological studies and partly in the duties of a tutorship at New Haven. But, having to deal with a man who lived and ruled in the region of ideas, we may well spare sketches of scenes and events, and speak of the chief elements which during his preparatory period combined to make him what he became. The first element which determined his destiny undoubtedly was the creed in which he was educated, especially the characteristic feature of that creed, the sovereignty of God, and his acknowledged right, purely of his own will and without respect to human desert, to elect to heaven or doom to hell the souls of men. This doctrine he heard preached VOL. XLIV. 4TH S. VOL. IX. NO. III. 33 by his father, even from his boyhood. As a boy he thought it a horrible belief, and struggled against it earnestly, as he himself declares. But afterwards he found himself convinced of its truth, and, as he says, without ever being able to give any satisfactory account of the means or manner of the conviction. The second element consisted in his strong religious sensibility, which showed itself from early childhood, alike in the fervor and frequency of private prayer, and in the little meetings which he with a few other boys conducted, in a rude booth built by them in a retired spot, which to this day is pointed out as hallowed ground. Thus his expanding heart opened to the religious influences around him, and he stands, with Pascal and Leighton, amongst those who have accepted the dogma of elective sovereignty without that desperate struggle with early lusts that led Augustine, Luther, and Bunyan to disparage human will. The third element which we notice was his singular, perhaps unsurpassed, power of abstraction, his passion for meditating upon the causes of things, and his faculty of tracing causes to consequences by deductive processes of adamantine strength. We shall speak of this tendency more at large when we come to treat of his works. These elements had all exhibited themselves as early, at least, as his nineteenth year. When at this age he went to preach at New York, and delighted to roam along the beautiful banks of the Hudson, as he assures us he often did, for contemplation on Divine things, and for secret converse with God, he undoubtedly employed in the "sweet hours" there all the resources of his nature, education, and experience. He had learned to see the sovereign God in all things; in his views of nature and religion, he had manifested the sensibility of the poet, as well as the fervor of the devotee. His searching mind had already investigated the foundations of faith and knowledge, and struggled at once for a science of matter and spirit, creation and the Creator. He says that for some time previously his mind had been almost perpetually in the contemplation of Divine things. "I spent most of my time in thinking of Divine things from year to year, often walking alone in the woods and solitary places for meditation, soliloquy, and prayer, and converse with God; and it was always my manner to sing forth my contemplation. I was almost constantly in ejaculatory prayer, wherever I was." |