who dared to criticize the Lord's anointed. His tongue was in danger of a cleft stick. In church and state the preacher reigned supreme. But Edwards, born in 1703, came into the world just in time to see, as a young man, the Mathers, son and father, fight their last losing battle for the old faith and the old theocracy. It would not be altogether amiss to say that Jonathan Edwards was the successor of Cotton Mather as the champion of the iron-clad Calvinism of an earlier day.

Dr. O. W. Holmes used to refer to himself as a "Brahman of the Brahmans." Edwards also could boast of a priestly ancestry. His father, Timothy Edwards, was for sixty years minister of the East Parish of Windsor, Connecticut, and his maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, was one of the ecclesiastical giants of his day. Perhaps it is not altogether an unmixed evil that the usual anecdotes, both real and fabulous, of Edwards's youthful days are lacking. All signs, however, point to extraordinary intellectual precocity. At the age of twelve he wrote a letter refuting with some skill the idea of the materiality of the soul. The same year he produced an elaborate account of the habits of the spider based on his own observation. At thirteen he entered Yale College,

which had been founded about fifteen years before. In speaking of the foundation of this ancient New England institution President Hadley says: "Yale College was founded after a fashion, at the beginning of the eighteenth century along the north shore of Long Island Sound. For many years it was difficult to say what it was and where it belonged." During Edwards's college days his Alma Mater was somewhat of a pilgrim and a stranger on the face of the earth, moving from one town to another every year or so. But such as the college was, Edwards followed it faithfully and remained with it two years as a special student after he received his first degree in 1719. And, in addition, for two years (1724-1726) he was a tutor at Yale and, according to Dr. Stiles, was one of the "pillar" tutors. We read elsewhere that he filled and sustained his office with great ability, dignity, and honor.

As we turn the meager pages which tell of his earlier years we sometimes feel a human curiosity to know more. Was he ever a real boy when he ought to have been such, or was he simply a miniature old man? What had he in common with the rollicking student of to-day? Was his soul so warped by a harsh theology and his mind so debauched with

intellectuality that his sympathies were narrow and his life cabined, cribbed, confined? Sometimes we are inclined to give one answer and sometimes another, but at the best we can do little more than idly speculate. In regard to the inner life of Jonathan Edwards, however, we do not have to grope long in darkness, and when we know the facts of a man's soullife we cannot but know what manner of a man he was among his fellows.

We read in his diary these significant words: "On Jan. 12, 1723, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God and wrote it down, giving up myself and all that I had to God, to be for the future in no respect my own; to act as one that had no right to himself in any respect and solemnly vowed to take God for my whole portion and felicity, looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were; and his law for the constant rule of my obedience, engaging to fight with all my might against the world, the flesh, and the devil, to the end of my life." Nor was he content with a devotion to simply theological abstractions. He made resolution after resolution affecting every phase of his life. His writings during the Yale period show him to be a high-minded young man fighting, as many a youth has done, the old battle between

the promptings of his heart and the teachings of the faith of his fathers. As we read his resolutions we see that one of his incentives for piety was the not particularly noble thought of the advantages which it would win for him in the next world. The ascetic tendency which was such a dominant characteristic of New England life finds full expression in his earlier writing. Some of his resolutions for self-mortification could have been written by a Saint Simeon Stylites. These characteristics in the young New Englander are not hard to explain in the light of his environment, but other phases of his intellectual life have proved almost inexplicable to his biographers.

Now and then we find in his early writings paragraphs which could have well been written by the "God-intoxicated" Spinoza. There is little in common between the teachings of the inspired Hebrew and the harsh Augustinian Calvinism with which Edwards had been indoctrinated from his earliest youth. The fact that Edwards, who had never read Spinoza, was able to strike such a deep philosophical note is additional evidence of the transcendent genius of this wonderful boy. Yet Spinoza was not the philosopher with whom Edwards had the most in common. The writings of his early twenties are strongly tinctured with

Berkeleyan idealism. As to whether he had ever read the works of the English philosopher has long been a mooted question. But within recent years the best authorities have lent the weight of their influence to the negative side. Consequently, if we accept their dictums, we have another illustration of the marked originality which characterized Edwards in the days of his young manhood. Nevertheless, it matters little whether or not he read Berkeley. At this period of his life he showed a depth of insight which makes us wonder what his contribution to the world of thought would have been had he devoted his life to philosophy. Yet even then he was preeminently not a metaphysician but a theologian. Years afterward, in speaking of the intellectual and spiritual battles of these days, he said: "From my childhood up my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty in choosing whom he would to eternal life and rejecting whom he pleased, leaving them eternally to perish and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. I remember the time very well when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men according to his sovereign pleasure, but