this movement that the New England Calvinist was associated with Whitefield, the golden-mouthed Chrysostom of the eighteenth century. Much has been written in regard to "The Great Awakening," particularly in reference to the excesses which characterized it. There is, however, ample evidence to prove that all of the influences of this revival were not negative. Beyond the peradventure of a doubt it "revitalized the dying orthodoxy of New England and turned the minds of many from the things that are of the earth to the eternal verities."

In some quarters nevertheless Edwards was severely criticized for some of the methods which he used during the great spiritual upheaval. He was blamed for "frightening poor, innocent little children with talk of hell-fire and damnation." And no matter how sympathetic our attitude, we must admit that some of his writings lend color to such accusations. In speaking of children he says, "They are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers, and are in a most miserable condition as well as grown persons; and they are naturally very senseless and stupid, being born as the wild ass's colt, and need much to awaken them." This they doubtless got, for we have ample evidence that the doctrine of fire-and

brimstone was an important phase of Edwards's theology. Here it might not be amiss to quote from his best-known sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God": "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide bottomless pit, full of fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready to singe it and burn it asunder." Recourse to the sermons of the shepherd of the Northampton flock show that at this period the people of that village were very frequently regaled with pabulum of this kind. We could possibly find here an explanation of some of the indisputable evils which followed "The Great Awakening."

But within a couple of years the village resumed its ordinary tranquillity. Later, however, a bitter church war between priest and people burst with almost unrestrained fury upon the little parish. To-day the village of Northampton is most heartily ashamed of its ungenerous treatment of the most distinguished man who ever dwelt within its borders. There is something nevertheless to be said on their side of the question. One of Edwards's admiring biographers speaks of him as "thorough in the government of his children." Sir Leslie Stephen says: "He adopted the plan, less popular now than then, and even more decayed in America than in England, of 'thoroughly subduing' his children as soon as they showed any tendency to self-will. He was a 'great enemy' to all 'vain amusements,' and even after his children had grown up he enforced their abstinence from such 'pernicious practice' and never allowed them to be out after nine at night. Any gentleman, we are happy to add, was given proper opportunities for courting his daughters after consulting their parents, but on condition of conforming strictly to the family regulations. This Puritan discipline appears to have succeeded with Edwards's own family; but a gentleman with 'flacid solids, rapid fluids,' and a fervent be

lief in hell-fire is seldom appreciated by the youth even of a Puritan village.”1

Edwards brought charges against a number of prominent young people of his congregation, accusing them of reading improper literature, very probably Richardson's Pamela. These accusations, involving practically all of the prominent families in the community, set the town in a blaze. At the same time a more serious battle was being waged as to who was eligible for admission to the Lord's Supper. To enter at length at this time into the intricacies of a church quarrel in a New England village in the middle of the eighteenth century would not be particularly edifying. We shall content ourselves with chronicling the result. Edwards was dismissed from his parish by a majority of more than two hundred to twenty, "a martyr to his severe sense of discipline." Thus at the age of forty-seven he found himself, with no means and a large family, turned adrift. It takes the night to bring out the stars; it takes adversity to bring out the best that is in a man. In his hour of darkness the frail, persecuted preacher never looked back but boldly set out to make the best of things as they were. Friends came to his aid; there were several pulpits ready to

1 Printed by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers.

accept his services; one call came from faraway Scotland. But for some inexplicable reason the position which he accepted was that of missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There is something both of the comic and the tragic in the idea of the great Calvinistic logician attempting to teach the rudiments of Christianity to the copper-colored children of the sun. It is rather hard to decide though whom we most pity, Edwards or the Indians. Stephen says: "He has remarked pathetically in one of his writings on the very poor prospect open to the Houssatunnuck Indians, if their salvation depended on the study of the evidence of Christianity. And if Edwards preached upon the topics of which his mind was fullest, their case would have been still harder. A sermon in the Houssatunnuck language, if Edwards ever acquired that tongue, upon predestination, the differences between the Arminian and the Calvinist schemes, liberty of indifference, and other such doctrines, would hardly be an inproving performance."

Whatever its influence upon the lives of the Indians, Edwards's exile in the wilderness was an important period of his life. Here it was that he wrote his famous treatise upon the Freedom of the Will, which can be regarded