BX 7260 .E3 E93 1904 Exercises commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2009 with funding from Princeton Tiieoiogicai Seminary Library http://www.arcliive.org/details/exercisescommeOOando JONATHAN EDAVARDS 1703 1Q03 EXERCISES COMMEMORATING TWO-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE y BIRTH OF JONATHAN EDWARDS HELD AT ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OCTOBER 4 AND 5 1903 Printed under the direction of the Faculty Andover, Massachusetts THE ANDOVER PRESS 1904 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF EGBERT COFFIN SMYTH, D.D., LL.D. CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR THEOLOGIAN, HISTORIAN PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 1863-1904 PREFACE As the oldest Congregational school of theology in America, Andover Seminary esteemed it a duty, while she also counted it an honor, to celebrate the bicentenary of America's foremost theologian. Within her lecture- rooms the system of Jonathan Edwards has been diligently studied and sympathetically expounded. Her first pro- fessor of sacred theology. Dr. Leonard Woods, is commonly represented as a mediator between the two divisions of orthodox Congregationalism in his day, yet in substance he was a vigorous advocate of the Edwardean system, and his successor, Professor Park, was even more widely known as its interpreter. If Edwardeanism no longer controls the doctrinal instruction at Andover, the fact is due to no lack of reverence, on the part of her teachers, for the power of philosophical analysis and logi- cal construction which has made Edwards famous for all time, or for the fundamental truths which he strove in thought to apprehend, but rather to causes whose opera- tion no philosophical or theological system of the past is able permanently to withstand. The aim of the bicentennial celebration was not merely to honor the memory of a great Christian leader, but also to attempt a discriminating estimate of the enduring value of his work, — an attempt which the lapse of time and the subsidence of dogmatic strife have at last brought within the range of possibility. Accordingly, in addition to representatives of her own faculty, the Seminary invited scholars of widely different antecedents, from outside of New England, to participate in the proceedings. The reader of the papers here published will observe differ- ences in point of view which will at least relieve the record of monotony, and, it is hoped, will not detract from its value. PREFACE The celebration began on Sunday, October fourth, with public worship in the Chapel, where a large congregation gathered to listen to the commemorative sermon by the Reverend William R. Richards, D.D., an alumnus of the Seminary, now pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York. For the public exercises on Monday after- noon a distinguished audience was assembled, including a large number of alumni and other ministers from neigh- boring towns, together with professors from Harvard and from Boston University. The church had been handsomely decorated for the occasion, and portraits of President and Mrs. Edwards, loaned by Miss Park, stood on either side of the pulpit. Professor Day presided, and on behalf of the Seminary extended a welcome to the guests. By way of introduction to the more formal papers, Professor Platner sketched in outline the religious conditions of New England in the time of Edwards, after which Pro- fessor Woodbridge, of Columbia University, presented a critical analysis of Edwards's work as a philosopher. At the close of this session the invited guests adjourned to Bartlet Chapel, where a reception was held and supper was served. Many took advantage of this opportunity to ex- amine the loan exhibition, consisting of the principal editions of Edwards's works, unpublished manuscripts and letters, and other objects of historical interest.^ Another large audience assembled for the evening ex- ercises, at which Professor Hincks presided. The first address was a sympathetic presentation of the salient features of Edwards's theology by Professor Smyth, who was a life-long student of the subject. A poem, en- titled " A Witness to the Truth," was read by its author, an Andover alumnus, the Reverend Samuel V. Cole, D.D., ' A list of the most important objects exhibited will be found in Appendix II. PREFACE President of Wheaton Seminary. It elicited much favorable comment. An interesting feature of the pro- gram was the reading of a congratulatory message^ from the Senate of the United Free Church College, Glasgow, which formed a suitable introduction to the closing ad- dress of the day, by Professor James Orr, D.D., of Glas- gow, who spoke upon " The Influence of Edwards." The exercises concluded with a piece of ancient psalmody, sung by the congregation to the tune of St. Martins. The memorial sermon, the poem, and the addresses of Professors Smyth and Woodbridge are here printed prac- tically without change. Professor Orr's address is slightly enlarged. Professor Platner's address, which was not read from manuscript, will be found to vary somewhat from the form in which it was delivered. In Appendix I are printed extracts from hitherto unpublished notes by Edwards, collected by Professor Smyth in illustration of statements made in his address. Thanks are due to Dr. Owen II. Gates for aid in cor- recting the proof sheets, and to Miss Mary W. Dwight for completing Professor Smyth's copy and for a careful revision of the proofs. The sudden death of Professor Smyth lends a peculiar interest to the publication of this little book, for it con- tains the final labors of his pen. He had taken the deepest interest in the Edwards celebration from the beginning, and was earnestly desirous that the printed record should be not unworthy of its subject. It is fitting that the volume should forever be closely associated with Dr. Smyth, to whose memory it is affectionately dedicated. J. W. P. Andover, May 12, 1904. ' This message, with reply, is printed in Appendix II. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Preface 5 Programme of the Celebration . . . .11 Commemorative Sermon 13 The Rev. William Rogers Richards, D.D. Introductory Address — Religious Conditions in New England in the time of Edwards ... 29 Professor John Winthrop Platner, D.D. Address — The Philosophy of Edwards .... 47 Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, LL.D. Address — The Theology of Edwards • • • • 73 Professor Egbert Coffin Smyth, D.D., LL.D. Poem — A Witness to the Truth . . . , . 95 President Samuel Valentine Cole, D.D. Address — The Influence of Edwards .... 105 Professor James Orr, D.D. Appendices 127 PROGRAMME SUNDAY, OCT. 4 10.30 A. M. PUBLIC WORSHIP in the Seminary Church. Sermon by the Rev. William Rogers Richards, D.D. New York IMONDAY, OCT. 5 AFTERNOON SESSION 3.30 o'clock Professor Charles Orrin Day, D.D., presiding. DEVOTIONAL EXERCISES. HYMN, No. 38. " All people that on earth do dwell." WORDS OF WELCOME. . . Professor Day ADDRESS : Religious Conditions in New England in the Time of Edwards. Professor John Winthrop Platner, D.D. ADDRESS: The Philosophy of Edwards. Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, LL.D. Columbia University HYMN, No. 190. " Holy Spirit, Lord of Light." (5 stanzas) II RECEPTION AND COLLATION BARTLET CHAPEL, 5.30 O'CLOCK (For invited guests) Exhibition of autograph and published writings of President Edwards and other objects of historical interest, loaned for the occasion. EVENING SESSION 7.00 o'clock Professor Edward Young Hincks, D.D., presiding. HYMN, No. 299. " Come, we who love the Lord." PRAYER. ADDRESS : The Theology of Edwards. Professor Egbert Coffin Smyth, D.D., LL.D. HYMN, No. 14. " Before Jehovah's awful throne." POEM. - President Samuel Valentine Cole, D.D. Wheaton Seminary CONGRATULATORY MESSAGE, from the Senate of the United Free Church College, Glasgow. ADDRESS : The Influence of Edwards. Professor James Orr, D.D., Glasgow. HYMN, No. 663. " Let children hear the mighty deeds." BENEDICTION. SERMON The Rev. WILLIAM ROGERS RICHARDS, D.D. PASTOR OF The Brick Presbyterian Church NEW YORK CITY SERMON JEREMIAH 33: 17 — " For thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel." The words are a prophecy of Christ and his eternal Kingdom, but the people who were first comforted by them had no clear expectation of that coming Kingdom. When they were told that David should never want a man, what they could first understand, — and no doubt did understand, — was this, that the breed of men of the old David- type was never to run out in Israel ; that in every time of emergency and peril, when hearts were fail- ing and knees trembling, — as in the old Philistine wars, when some Goliath was striding up and down between the camps insolently challenging any cham- pion to appear for Israel, — in such dark days the right champion would appear ; so the prophet says, the good cause would never be left to fall to the ground for lack of him. The Lord pledges his word to this. The thing is as sure as that covenant of the day and night which cannot fail while the world stands. And really that was the best promise that could be made to a people. For the gift of such a man as David was worth more to a nation than any other kind of gift that the Providence of God has ever bestowed. All the gold of India, and all the things that gold could buy, would not compare in value with this gift of a man. IS RICHARDS What a poor little kingdom Israel was, judged by our common standards of wealth and power. There were richer nations on every side, better armed nations, more populous nations. But Israel had the man ; no other of these nations, not all of them together, could show in those days a man like David, a man fit to sit on David's throne, a man with David's love for God, and trust in God, and earnest longing for God : and now those other nations, Babylon and Nineveh and Tyre and Egypt, with all their wealth and power, are mostly buried and forgotten as if they had never been ; but David, this king of Israel ! why, more people are singing his songs today, a hundred times over, than he ever ruled when he was alive. This influence is still in- creasing in the world. Such a man as that was the best gift that God could make to a nation. Now the promise was that so long as the nation of Israel continued, God would continue to bless them period- ically with this gift of men. Of course there were some periods of great degeneracy when such men seemed very scarce, but the supply never quite ran out. Even in the worst times, when all things were falling into chaos, always just at the crisis would appear some Elijah, or John Baptist, or other like man, firm enough to stand, if need be, alone against the world, and pull the world his way, God's way. The man was never wanting in the old days in Israel. And the man never shall be wanting. The i6 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON promise still stands in our Bible, only it has been freed from its old restriction to the nation of Israel. We have been taught to take all these promises more generously, but the promise has not been revoked. God is pledged to the world to keep up the breed of men. They may not always be Jews now ; they may not always be Greeks, or Romans, or Englishmen, or even Americans ; but there shall be such men ; the race is not to run out. Whatever the pessimists may say, the final outcome of this great world-experiment is not to be the hopeless degeneracy of manhood. Today, tomorrow, next year, — so long as the old world stands, if ever old David should come back to it again, the promise is that he shall find somewhere the man fit to sit upon his throne. We may not always see this man, for we do not know where to look for him. In times of quiet when the world is moving on its way smoothly and easily, we may often doubt his existence ; but when once more the storm breaks upon us, such times as try men's souls, there he stands, your Savonarola, Luther, Cromwell, Washington ; all down through the ages, David has not lacked his man yet. That is the promise ; and, friends, how good a promise it is. For this manhood is God's most precious commodity : of all the things he has made this has cost the most to make, and is worth the most when made. We Christians always get some hint of the infinite costliness of manhood when we 17 RICHARDS read in this book the price of our redemption, the precious blood of Jesus Christ. But even the older records of the rocks could tell a like story, for they show how lavishly the Creator has been using up whole races of his creatures in making way for man. If you are speaking of the expenditure of creative energy involved, I suppose a great mountain range is a very cheap product compared with one little child who is playing at the base of it. The whole land of Canaan had not cost so much in the making as that one man David. And as this gift of manhood has cost more than all others, so it is worth more. Any great crisis proves it. Watch those tremendous forces of the French Revolution running out into horrible disaster, because, as Carlyle says, no Cromwell had appeared in France, no man able to control these forces. There were certain dark days in the earlier part of our own civil war, when, as someone has said, a man able to lead the army of the Potomac would have been worth to the national government in hard cash not less than a million dollars a day. For lack of such a leader the war was dragging on at that awful expenditure of wealth. Our own age is one of great material progress, and there may be the more need to remind ourselves of this superlative value of manhood. Man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth, said the Master ; but man is always in danger of thinking that it does consist in those i8 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON things, when they are over-abundant. If he had little, — poor Peter, for instance, with his one little fishing boat, — he might make up his mind to throw that little away ; but the young ruler who had great possessions was in danger of throwing himself away instead. And so, in the bewildering abundance of good things which the Creator has now granted to have and enjoy, there is always danger that we men and women may lose a proper self-respect. We ought to remember that a nation might be enriched with all such gifts beyond the dreams of avarice, and yet not be worth a single day's visit from a man like David, if there was no hope of his finding in it a man to sit upon his throne. We must remember this in connection with all the different departments of our national life. When a foreigner comes to visit our country and asks what we have to show him worth seeing, many of us would point with peculiar pride to our schools and colleges, and that is well. But what if it should appear that what we really meant by a school was simply the fine building that houses it, or the many books in its library, or the costly apparatus in its laboratory, or the great size of its endowment ; the material things that it possesseth .-• That would prove that we had not yet learned what a school really is. Money is not the school. You will read of some great capitalist who has turned his pocket inside out and established a great university in our newer west ; an excellent thing for 19 RICHARDS him to do. His gift creates an opportunity for the teacher, if only you can find the teacher ; it sets up a throne, if only you can find the king. But that is all that money can do. All the wealth in Wall Street could not do for a college what Dr. Arnold did for Rugby ; or what Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes, and the other members of that extraordinary literary circle, have done for Harvard ; or what General Armstrong did for Hampton. The best promise possible for an institution of learning would not be that it shall never want money, but rather that it shall never want a man. We have never been told much about the endowments and buildings of the old Academy in Athens, or of the Lyceum ; but the world will never forget the men — Plato and Aristotle. We do not hear of any en- dowments in that little college which grew up more than eighteen centuries ago by the shores of the Sea of Galilee ; but the world will never forget the words that fell from the lips of its head Master, the Son of Man. It is the man who makes the college, and on the other hand the one great work of the college ought to be the making of men. And I thank God for the old schools and colleges of New England, which, whatever their faults, have cherished faithfully the traditions of a worthy manhood. So it is also in other departments of our national life, in the active professions, and in business. It might seem at first sight, that here the amount of 20 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON capital was the essential thing, the quality of man- hood only a secondary consideration ; but it is not so. The life even of the business world consisteth not in the abundance of the things that it possesseth, but in the character of the men who are using the things. Given the right sort of men, and sooner or later there will be capital enough. But given the capital, you cannot be so sure that you will always find the right sort of men. The world has more capital now than it quite knows what to do with. Even at the low rate of four per cent., your savings bank sets a limit to the amount it is willing to receive from you. No lack of capital : it is waiting all about us for some one to use it. The lack is of the man who is strong enough to use it royally ; and when once he appears, the man fit to sit on the throne of a great railroad corporation, or insurance company, or mining trust, and command it and make it go, — you know how such a man is prized, how much they will give him, — ^10,000 a year, 1^25,000, $50,000. If he is man enough, he can almost name his own price. It has been said lately that civilization is one long anxious search for the man who can carry a message to Garcia : and, we might add, for some other man who has a message worth sending to Garcia. The man is the great want in the business world. And in the social life of every community, how we depend on the men and women of the royal type. It is they who make any society worth living in, 21 RICHARDS and whose absence would make any society not worth living in. They make good society. Money cannot make society, though it might easily destroy it. When the people had little, and lived near the natural realities ; the backwoodsman with his ax and gun and paddle ; the sailors who go down to the sea in ships and see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep ; the farmer with his horses and cattle, and first-hand knowledge of the crops and how they fare in all sorts of weather — you know what good company such people are. Their range may be narrow, but within it they are perpetually interesting. But give these same people what we call the advantages of wealth ; let them shut themselves off from the real world by a multitude of man-made conventionalities and artifices ; unless you are care- ful, you will find, as Tolstoi affirms with so much passion, that you have destroyed all their living human interest. The wealth that ought to have lifted and broadened them, has really cramped and stifled them ; and all the usages of such a social world grow weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, till one might be tempted to repeat the remark of the witty French woman, that the more she saw of men the more highly she thought of dogs. That is what society often degenerates into. Oh, what need there is to remind ourselves in this age of the world that man's life con- sisteth not in the abundance of the things that he pos- sesseth ! The man himself is always what is wanted. 22 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON Now our text brings a promise from God that this perpetual want shall be perpetually supplied. If only you knew where to look for him, the man is somewhere to be found. If not in a palace up in Jerusalem, the Prince will be in a manger down in Bethlehem. God's promise shall not fail ; David shall not want a man to sit upon the throne. I have hoped that this old scripture text might be appropriate to the theme which will make tomorrow a memorable day here, and in so many of our older institutions of learning. In the New England of two hundred years ago God had his people, a peculiar people ; and they found him still faithful to his promise, for among those early New Englanders there were never wanting men. From the very beginning the English Puritan movement had been distinguished for the honor it did to simple man- hood. To a Puritan, rank and office and wealth, and all other outward accessories, sank into insignificance as compared with the human personality. Everyone knows Macaulay's description of those people, how they could look down with contempt on the great men of the earth in church and state, " being them- selves noble by right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand." These were the English Puritans. Now send off a ship-load of such people into any remote and desolate portion of the earth, and you may rest assured that they will be carrying with them, in the hull of their little ship, all the constituent elements 23 RICHARDS of a great and prosperous commonwealth : for the reason that they themselves are men, and fit to sit on thrones. Let me quote the words spoken last spring in the Congregational House in Boston, concerning the library there, with its treasure of old New England books. " For those who look upon these New Eng- land fields and hills," Dr. Gordon said, " as invested for more than two hundred years with the heroic humanity of their ancestors, who see the image of kingly men and queenly women burning in the sun that lights the world today, who hear in the murmur of the brook and the sigh of the river the voices that once made glad the holy places of the Most High, and who carry into the depth of nature, and into the contemporary world of man the sense of that pathetic, heroic, majestic past, these dead books will live again." Yes, they were kingly men and queenly women, the writers of these books, and the other founders of New England ; but among them all, or their de- scendants, there has not yet appeared a more kingly character than that great New Englander whose memory we shall celebrate tomorrow. It is not for me at this service to attempt any analysis of Edwards's contributions to philosophy, or theology, or education, or the revival of the churches. Others fitter for the task will treat of these themes tomorrow. But I shall command your assent when I affirm that greater than all the wise things that 24 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON Jonathan Edwards may ever have said, and all the fine things that he may have done, was the man himself. What made that day two hundred years ago memorable was that then another man was born into the world. That was evident from the time when he began to resolve those strange youthful resolutions of his. Let me read you one or two of them : — " Resolved so to live at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of the Gospel and of another world." Matthew Arnold was not the first to discover that " Tasks in hours of insight willed May be through hours of gloom fulfilled." Again : " Resolved never to give over, nor in the least slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be." Ah, another man had appeared ! And now after these long two hundred years, our American thought and life cannot escape the im- press of that mighty personality. This celebration does not mean that all of us could profess ourselves his disciples in philosophy and theology. His teach- ings on the operations of human will, or of the divine justice, may seem to some of us quite as remote from our customary thought as the Ptolemaic system, or Plato's ideas. But we do all of us honor and celebrate the man. Whatever Edwards had to say, he spoke always with the royal accent : whatever he had to do, it was with the royal bearing. Watch him 25 RICHARDS in the great crisis of his life, those days of bitterness and trial, when his people at Northampton turned against him, and drove him from the church and from the town ; see his patience and magnanimity and courage. You see him every inch a king. But had ever a great man a smaller stage for the display of his greatness .■' Through most of his life pastor of a little church in the country village of Northampton ; then, for the few remaining years, a missionary at Stockbridge ministering to a few red sheep out there in the wilderness. To be sure he was called to the presidency of Princeton ; but as if to prove that such a man as he owes nothing to the dignity of office, he died before he had fairly entered upon it. He had a son whom it may be proper to speak of as President Edwards. The father needs no such official title ; Jonathan Edwards is his name, the man himself. It was a time of crisis, and the man was not wanting. God had kept his promise to his people. And so through all the celebrations of tomorrow we do well to cheer our hearts with the assurance that as it has been, so it shall be ; and that to the end of the world, in the time of sorest need there shall never be wanting a man. " Wanted a man. " It is the great want always. A friend once asked me to preach a sermon on the theme, '• Wanted a Saint. " " Put it at your people," he said, "as an advertisement, as if it stood in the want-column in the newspaper, ' Wanted a Saint.' " It struck me as an attractive form of words ; but 26 COMMEMORATIVE SERMON when I tried to plan out the sermon, at once I ran up against a difficulty. Such advertisements in our papers, for coachmen, gardeners, cooks, and so forth, are designed to encourage applications from persons who deem themselves qualified to meet the want. But if you say " Wanted a Saint," and a stranger should then appear at your door and begin to re- hearse his own saintly qualifications, you would feel like locking the stable and setting a guard on the hat-rack. The real saints are not so fluent about their own saintliness. You could not advertise for a saint, with any hope that the right person would apply. But if not as an advertisement, you can issue this as a simple statement of the facts, " Wanted a Saint ; " wanted a man of faith and character. Nothing else in this world is wanted so much ; noth- ing else is worth so much. The community wants him ; the Lord wants him : and the promise of our text is that this want, the world's great want, can always be supplied. By God's grace that very kind of manhood that is wanted from you or me may be had. The man who is wanted shall not be wanting, that is the promise. We must let the Lord fulfill that promise. We are gathered here in a seat of learning, some of us in the immediate pursuit of an education. But the crown of education, the finest product of any school, is not the mere knowledge accumulated, it is the living personality developed ; it is the man, 27 RICHARDS the king, a man to sit upon the throne. Young Edwards, looking forward into the future, wrote down that long list of resolutions, and then spent his life in keeping them manfully. As we still look forward into the unknown future, any of us might well take example from him and ourselves subscribe a resolution ; and we could not do better than borrow it from this ancient word of Sacred Writ : What- ever the unknown future may be, and wherever in it my lot may be ordered, I hereby resolve that, with God's help, " there shall not be wanting there a man to sit upon the throne." 28 Introductory Address RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF EDWARDS JOHN WINTHROP PLATNER, D.D. Professor of History Andover Theological Seminary ::m INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS It falls to my lot, by way of introduction to the subject of the day, briefly to set before you the framework in which Edwards is the picture, to sketch the surroundings within which his life was passed, and in particular to describe the state of religion in New England in his time. To have value, this must be done with reference to the life and work of Edwards himself. Consequently I shall make little effort to examine conditions which are unrelated to this central figure, but shall rather fix your attention upon those with which he himself was intimately concerned, either by reason of their influence upon him, or, more important still, by reason of his influence upon them. It is often asserted that all men, the great in- cluded, are the products of their age. The assertion contains no doubt a measure of truth. No man, however self-suflficient, can wholly shake off the influence of those political, social or religious con- ditions, in the midst of which he may chance to live. But to a certain number in every age it is given to bear the grave responsibility and enjoy the immeas- urable opportunity of leadership, — to exemplify in their own persons not product, but process, — to set in order the forces which shall mould the course of history, — yes, to incarnate in themselves those very forces. Such men are in a true sense creative. And as we scrutinize their character, we discover 31 PLATNER there a quality, undefinable yet unmistakable, which we call detachment, — a certain independence of spirit and action, by virtue of which they rise superior to circumstance, superior to the common limitations of time and place, and take their station among the elect of all the ages. They are not wholly emancipated from their age, but they are released from bondage to it. They are no longer among the ruled, but among the rulers. Jonathan Edwards illustrates, to a notable degree, this peculiar quality. He lived, and thought, and preached, and wrote in the New England of the eighteenth century, but in spirit he dwelt apart, where neither New England nor the eighteenth century controlled him, and from his isolation strove to gaze into the soul of things. To discern the con- stitution of the mind, to resolve the apparent anti- nomies of thought and experience, to justify the ways of God to man, even the most arbitrary, — these were his favorite employments. And in them all Edwards was spokesman for the race, though a still half-rude colony might be the theatre of his action, and the calendar mechanically register the dates of his mortal life. While he was grappling with the problem of the freedom of the will, far away across the sea another great philosopher, younger than himself, Immanuel Kant, was begin- ning to analyze the phenomena of consciousness, in search of its transcendental elements. How might each have elicited the other's best, if these two in- 32 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS tellectual giants could have been brought face to face, and have held discourse concerning the fun- damental realities ! And how would Europe and America have stood in silent admiration at the matching of such wit as theirs ! Kant was born, and lived, and died in Konigsberg, on the eastern border of European civilization ; Edwards dwelt in an English colony, on civilization's western frontier. But geography has never yet conquered genius, and provincial obscurity could not hide the spiritual light which streamed from these two great minds. The career of Edwards, when judged by ordinary standards, would scarcely be called successful. His childhood indeed was full of brilliant promise ; his student-life, most creditable ; his brief term of service in a Yale tutorship, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, an honor to himself and to his alma mater. His Northampton pastorate too, begun under the most favorable auspices, was carried on with earnestness and devotion, and accomplished marked results in arousing the indifferent to a new sense of the value of religion for human life. But with the lapse of time, Edwards encountered grow- ing opposition, and his pastorate ended in sorrow for himself and dishonor for his parishioners. It seemed no doubt very like a professional failure when, at the age of forty-seven, he was dismissed from his charge and turned adrift upon the world. He was not well adapted to meet the daily struggle for existence. Mere physical wants were never 33 PLATNER those which he was most interested in satisfying. Therefore we may well be thankful that, before too long a time had passed, the way was opened to another field of labor, where he could at least obtain the necessaries of life for his family and for himself. Patiently and cheerfully Edwards entered upon his new duties, with no word of rebuke for those who had rejected him, or of complaint against the lot which had brought him to so unpromising a field of labor. A true man of God, he won the hearts of the rude red men by his noble devotion, and brought into their lives a holy influence. Meanwhile he found intellectual satisfaction in creative labor, that most absorbing of occupations, and his thoughts lingered fondly in the most abstruse regions of meta- physical theology, where was their rightful home. But the settlement of the greatest philosopher of his day as a missionary among the Housatonic Indians, is again an event which must have seemed sadly to contravene the law of adaptation. At last there came an opportunity which seemed better suited to a man of Edwards's powers, — the offer of the presidency of Princeton College. After long delay, and with manifest reluctance, he accepted and entered upon the duties of the office, but only to lay them down almost immediately at the stern bid- ding of death. This too, in the eyes of the world, would be counted a failure. Yet, standing at our vantage point of time, how different appears the verdict of history upon the whole of Edwards's 34 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS career. Instead of failure we behold achjjeyement of the highest order, we see forces set in operation which affected life at many points, stimulating thought, quickening conscience, reforming society, and creating — it is hardly too much to say — a new epoch for American Christianity. Great political and religious changes had passed over the face of New England before Edwards came upon the scene. The original colonists had long been dead, and with them had vanished the early enthusiasm of their enterprise. Two generations had grown up under the hard conditions of frontier life, struggling with the reluctant northern soil, and constantly exposed to possible outbreaks of Indian ferocity. This contact with nature on her cruel side had rendered manners rude, and deadened spiritual sensibilities. Such education as Harvard was able to provide, although highly creditable to the colony, had not quite the same value as the university training the first settlers had enjoyed in their early English homes, and Yale College had but just opened its doors. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were about one hundred and twenty churches of the Congregational order in New England, two-thirds of which were in Massachusetts. These embraced within their mem- bership the large majority of professedly Christian people, yet the population was no longer religiously homogeneous. Not even the short and easy method of exclusion, formerly in vogue, had availed to 35 PLATNER preserve ecclesiastical purity. If non-conformists ',to "the New England way" had not succeeded in becoming permanent residents of the colonies, they at least had managed occasionally to stay long enough to start their propaganda, and always long enough to arouse dissension. Baptists had vexed the souls of the dominant party ever since John Clarke began to minister in Newport, and since Roger Williams and his twelve companions were "plunged" in Providence. The de- fection of President Dunster had alarmed all those interested in Harvard College, and moved the Cam- bridge minister to preach " more than half a score of ungainsayable sermons" in defence of "the comfort- able truth " of infant baptism. As the seventeenth century progressed, the leaders of the theocracy took vigorous measures to suppress the objectionable sect. "Experience tells us," says Samuel Willard, " that such a rough thing as a New England Ana- baptist is not to be handled over-tenderly." Yet the Baptists increased and, in Edwards's time, they formed an important element of the population. It may seem strange that the Religious Society of Friends should ever have been a disturbing element in any Christian community, yet so it was. When the " truth," as taught by George Fox and his fol- lowers, " brake forth in America," like many another truth in the course of history, it was unrecognized, spurned, and tried in the fires of persecution, that its alloy of error might be removed. The time had 36 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS not yet come when the colonists would recognize the truth, — which seems now as elementary as it is Biblical, — that "the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit withal." That time, however, would come, and all the sooner for the mysticism of Edwards, which after all is not re- motely akin to that of Fox. By far the most disliked and distrusted of all religious bodies in New England, next to the " Scarlet Woman " herself, was the Episcopal church. In the year of Edwards's birth, Keith and Talbot were touring the colonies in the interest of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Just after Edwards's graduation, Yale College, which was relied upon to preserve genuine Puritan tradi- tions, along with its cultivation of sound learning, threatened to apostatize, losing Rector Cutler and a tutor to the Episcopal communion. Not a little of the labor and responsibility required to maintain order and restore confidence in the college at this crisis, rested upon the shoulders of Edwards, and worthily did he repay the confidence reposed in him. He took no active part, it is true, in open war- fare against the Anglicans, but the principles of his teaching were such as to give stability and strength to the churches of his own order. One finds, how- ever, that anxiety over the gains made by Anglican- ism throughout New England, and over proposals to procure an American episcopate, continued far beyond the limits of Edwards's life-time. Among 37 PLATNER the "trials and difificulties," of which the Diary of Ezra Stiles gives a formidable list, we find " concern for the Congregational churches, and the prevalence of episcopacy and wickedness." The new charter of the Bay colony, issued the year Timothy Edwards was graduated from Har- vard, greatly altered the political situation by widening the suffrage and substituting what must have seemed like a secularized commonwealth in place of the old theocracy. Joshua Scottow's pathetic book, entitled " Old Men's Tears," bears witness to the feeling of despondency felt by con- servative men, as they beheld the passing of the old order. The year before Edwards was born, in the procession in Boston held in honor of the proclama- tion of Queen Anne, the ministers no longer took precedence of the civil magistrates. The change which was perhaps most keenly felt was the abolition of the special privileges long enjoyed by adherents of the '• standing order." What the national church was to England, that Congregationalism has been to the colony of Massa- chusetts Bay. The principle of toleration was new. It had but lately and reluctantly been recognized in the mother country, and it had many foes both there and in America. Increase Mather said of it, " I do believe that antichrist hath not in this day a more probable way to advance the kingdom of darkness." This principle, which permitted the existence, and thereby encouraged the growth of 38 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS several ecclesiastical bodies, was destined greatly to alter the religious complexion of New England. Edwards lived at the time when denominational history was just beginning. Now throughout the protestant world denominationalism has been largely determined by doctrinal divergences. This was the case in the eighteenth century, both in England and in America, and to Edwards more than to anyone else, — far more than to his great contemporary, John Wesley, — belongs the responsibility of having sharply defined the theological differences of that formative period. Christian life at the opening of the eighteenth century was probably less decadent in the American colonies than in England, where the corrupt social heritage of the Restoration, the popularity of a superficial " natural religion," and the irreligious influence of the French school were largely respon- sible for the condition of affairs. Orthodox belief and moral conduct had seemed there to degenerate together. A coarse cynicism characterized the speech and action of many of the gentry, and it was jestingly proposed that Parliament should pass an act omitting the word " not " from the Decalogue and inserting it in the Creed. But if moral deterioration in New England was less marked, it was never- theless grave enough, and the very severe codes of law then in force seemed unable to check its progress. Religious indifference was correspond- ingly wide-spread. 39 PLATNER Then, at the time of greatest need, the cause of vital religion in old England, thanks to the Wes- leyan movement, received a fresh influx of splendid energy, which permeated all classes of society, and turned back the tide of irreligion and moral laxity. In New England, at the same time, the " Great Awakening," as it must ever be called, infused new life into every church and community within her borders. And it was Jonathan Edwards more than anyone else, — with the sincerity, earnestness and directness of his preaching, — who started this vast movement. The Awakening was far from being merely a series of sensational revivals. In spite of its fanatical excesses (with which Edwards had no sympathy), it was accompanied by a veritable moral reformation. Edwards directed all his preaching, even the most terrible, towards the great end of transforming character in accordance with the will of God. How he harmonized his theological deter- minism with his proclamation of the Gospel, his realistic portraitures of future woe with his doctrine of the divine love, we need not here inquire. The problems are at least as old as St. Paul. And just such antinomies as these, although incapable of solution by the laws of logic, are proved historically to be no bar to useful and effective service in the kingdom of Christ. Edwards found New England morally decadent ; he left it under the power of an awakened moral sense. But this result was wrought by distinc- 40 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS tively religious means, Edwards made no effort to be a moral reformer without morality's highest sanction, and against the Arminian conception of virtue he registered an unqualified protest. No human effort, no ethical teaching, however lofty, could avail to change the heart or transform char- acter. Only divine power could do this, working from within outward, making the tree good from its roots, cleansing the heart, out of which are the issues of life. And the moral tonic thus adminis- tered accomplished its cure. " Conversion " did result in moral reformation. By means of his accurate insight into the nature of true virtue, Edwards established anew the rightful relationship between cause and effect in character-building. But if he denied the efficacy of unaided human effort to save the soul, he also denied the efficacy of a mere correct religious theory. " No merely speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion " would suffice. Only the power of God, with its response in the life of obedient faith, could perform the miracle. Edwards found ecclesiastical discipline relaxed under the system of the half-way covenant ; he over- threw that system, tightened the cords which bound believers into one body, and redeemed the churches from secularization. The half-way covenant had long been in use in Northampton and in other sections of New England, where it had come to enjoy all the prestige of established custom. It is a 41 PLATNER shallow optimism which would regard this phenom- enon as insignificant. A vital issue was at stake, namely this : is religion form, or is it substance ? If candidates were admitted to the church without manifesting any fitness to assume its responsibilities, the church would at once take on the character of a corpus permixtum, a character which, however true or false in itself, was clearly in violation of the historic principles of Puritanism. Edwards com- batted this conception, and it cost him his pastorate; but the qualifications for full communion were once more stated, in their earlier sense, and sooner or later the churches came over to his view. , Edwards found New England un-theological ; he left it equipped with all the apparatus for an energetic theological life. When he began his min- istry the churches lacked a just appreciation of the value of Christian theology, and of the beneficial service it should be made to render. To be sure, the early colonists had brought with them the system of doctrine generally accepted by English Puritans, and the Westminster standards had always been those of American Congregationalism. But orthodoxy, in Edwards's day, had become stereo- typed and conventional. The familiar history of all scholasticism was here being repeated, the end of which is death. No great leaders had arisen to state anew the problems of theology, much less to attempt their solution. But upon these problems Edwards pondered long and deeply. He noted, in 42 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS his own experience, divergences from those conven- tional rules which he had been taught were universal. And when he discovered that he had not " ex- perienced regeneration exactly in those steps in which divines say it is generally wrought," he resolved " never to leave searching " until he had discovered " why they used to be converted in those steps." Now this is the first step in theological progress, boldly to confront and to interrogate the past. Always respectful toward his predecessors, Edwards was not the blind follower of any, and his independ- ence, and effort to be thorough, while they led him into no heresies, as they have led some others, did lead him so to restate the doctrines commonly called Calvinistic, as to open a new chapter of American religious thought. Theological parties are rightly described as dating from this time, and it was Edwards's sharp definition of the issues which called them into being. He himself stands at the head of that highly interesting succession of divines, — Hopkins, Bellamy, Emmons, Dwight and the rest, down to our own Professor Park, — who are known as the "New England School." Recoiling from the severity of his clear-cut Calvin- ism, the Arminian party diverged from the Edward- ean, and sub-divided within itself. The more evan- gelical wing, under the leadership of Wesley and his followers, moved on into Methodism, now numerically the strongest protestant communion in the world. 43 PLATNER The less evangelical, under the leadership of Chauncy, Mayhew, and later James Freeman, developed into the liberal societies called Unitarian, now numerically among the weakest. Of other varieties of theological opinion, many of which find their beginning in this formative period, there is no time to speak. But when we ask ourselves what service Edwards rendered which appeals most strongly to the religious sympathies of today, I think we shall not find it in his system of theology. We must rather seek it in his spiritual insight and his mysticism. He had beheld not simply the infernal terrors but also the beatific vision, and this was for him evermore the profoundest of realities. Direct intuition of God's will and personal communion with the Holy Spirit were the forces which controlled him. His purely religious influence, stamped clear and strong upon his own age, is one of the church's most precious possessions. Systems of thought may arise, and flourish, and decay ; though they bear within them the potency of life, yet it is in ever changing forms, and the fact of their continuity may easily escape all but professional students of the past. In the great circuit of the world's intelligence, they have no continuing city. But the search of a soul after God stands possessed of an imperishable interest. Whether it be an Origen or an Augustine, a St. Francis or a Luther, a Wesley or an Edwards, ancient and modern times unite in paying homage to their memory. And upon the face of the fair monu- 44 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS ments which posterity shall rear, this inscription should ever stand : Here once more, in the person of this man of God, was exemplified the union of the human and the divine. As the flower turns upward, to drink in the sun's life-giving beams, so this soul opened towards heaven, and received the very life of God. 45 Address THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE, LL.D. Professor of Philosophy Columbia University THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS In the preface to his book on Jonathan Edwards, Professor Allen quotes with approval the remark of Bancroft, " He that would know the workings of the New England mind in the middle of the last century, and the throbbings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study of Jonathan Edwards. " And Professor Allen adds, " He that would under- stand the significance of later New England thought, must make Edwards the first object of his study. " Time has at last set the limit to the truth of such remarks. To understand the philosophy and theol- ogy of today in New England or the country at large, the student must undoubtedly seek his founda- tions elsewhere than in the thought of Edwards. His influence is now largely negligible. The type of thinking which most widely prevails, is so far re- moved from him, in such notable contrast to him, finds its roots so markedly in other sources, that in- terest in him is more antiquarian than vitalizing. But the remarkable thing is that these statements, true today, were not true in 1889, when Professor Allen's book appeared. To question then the sound- ness of his estimate, or that of Bancroft's, could at best involve only the censure of a mild exaggeration. A few days and nights, even at that time, might have been spared the student of New England thought from surrender to Edwards. That less than twenty years could have involved 49 WOODBRIDGE such a change, is itself a significant commentary on the power of Edwards's work. It has failed not through refutation, but through inadequacy. Today we get so much more elsewhere, and find other richer sources to stir us to progress or controversy. It is to Greek philosophy, and to British and German philosophy and theology, that the student must give his days and nights, if he is to understand our thought. And so for us, I take it, New England thought, impressed in its beginnings so potently by Edwards that he dominated it either positively or negatively for a century and a half, has failed to af- ford a foundation for progressive development in either philosophy or theology. It is to be noted further that the foundations we now rest upon, have not been laid by our contemporaries. They reach far back into the past, to Edwards's contemporaries abroad, to his predecessors by many centuries. Sig- nificant as the thought of New England has been on its speculative side, it has not contained enough native, original strength to preserve it from the in- adequacy which profoundly marked it through its ignorance of history. The courses in philosophy and theology offered in our colleges, universities, and seminaries today, are so immeasurably superior to those offered twenty years ago, that one can read- ily understand why the types of philosophy and theology are so vastly different and owe such differ- ent allegiance. But one would be a poor observer, if he did not recognize the peculiar vigor of that 50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS New England thought, which may have ceased to in- fluence him profoundly. So I would not have these remarks construed into a belittling of Edwards or his influence. I have made them because, in connection with that in- fluence, they indicate the fact from which it must be estimated. More than this : this fact, viewed in the light of what Edwards himself did and of what his early years gave promise, has given me the most suggestive insight into the man's power and versatil- ity, and a more satisfactory estimate of his person- ality as a thinker. For he was a man with an undeveloped possibility, greater to my mind than the actuality attained. He did not belong to the men we cannot imagine different, but to the men, whom, the better we know them, the more we seem compelled to view in other light. What he might have been, becomes, at least for the student of phil- osophy, as insistent and suggestive a question as what he was. One cannot write history as it ought to have been. Yet this truth ought not to blind us to the fact that there have been great persons, whose position in history has been not only influential, but, more sig- nificantly, critical. To such persons is chargeable not only what their influence has been, but also what it has not been. If the thought of New Eng- land has been largely determined by Edwards in its positive achievements, it has been almost equally determined by him in what it has failed to achieve, for SI WOODBRIDGE he undoubtedly possessed, although he did not carry through in his work, those elements which in large measure would have made that thought more stable and lasting. It has failed through lack of real phil- osophical insight. But it was just this insight which Edwards possessed in a very remarkable degree, but failed to carry through in his work. And this is the more significant because no other American, per- haps, has possessed philosophical insight of equal power. It would of course be futile to attempt to say what American thought would have been if Edwards had not lacked philosophical thoroughness. Yet it ap- pears to me undoubtedly true that it no longer finds him influential because of just this lack, and that it presents today little continuity with its past. It has appeared to me instructive, therefore, to consider with some detail, this lack of philosophical thorough- ness in Edwards's work, in order to an appreciation of his critical significance in the history of American thinking, and of the profoundly interesting character of his own thought. Edwards's " Notes on the Mind," of uncertain though doubtless early date, incomplete, detached, and of most varying worth, are doubtless for the student of philosophy the most impressive products of Edwards's thought. While they reveal his philos- ophical ability as perhaps none of his publications reveals it, they cannot be credited with contributing to his influence. They were not a known factor. 52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS They are not inconsistent with his elaborate treat- ises, as Professor Gardiner maintains that they are not, but one would not be led to suspect them from these treatises. I dismiss consideration of them for the present, therefore, to return to them after speak- ing of some of his completed works. Foremost of these is undoubtedly his " Enquiry into Freedom of Will." The reader of this Enquiry today must add his tribute to the many bestowed by others on its great- ness. But just because it is so great, its lack of philosophical thoroughness is remarkable. What amazes one about it is that an analysis of the will so acute, so sane, so dispassionate, so free from preju- dice or tricky argument, and so sound, if the dis- tinction of terms made by Edwards is admitted, could yet, with hardly a trace of rational justification, be linked with a Calvinistic conception of God and the world. I do not mean that it is at all amazing that Edwards's conception of the will should be held by Calvinists, or be thought consistent with their positions, but rather that a mind that could so pro- foundly philosophize about the will, could be so insensible of the -need of further philosophy to link his results with his theological convictions. More than this : that a mind so fair and dispassionate in his analysis of the will, could be so unfair and pas- sionate in his theological setting of it. The first two parts of the Enquiry, with the ex- ception of Sections ii and 12 of Part II, which are 53 WOODBRIDGE exegetical, are to be classed among the greatest of philosophical writings. That Edwards is not unique in what he here discloses does not detract from his greatness. Spinoza, Hobbes and Hume all have the same doctrine, but exhibit no greater philosophi- cal skill in the exposition of it. Significant too for his remarkable power is the fact that these men had, at first hand, acquaintance with other philosophies, which he altogether lacked. In these parts, and in- deed in the whole work, wherever Edwards seeks to fix or distinguish terms, he is remarkably acute. A notable illustration of this among many equally nota- ble, is his analysis of the term "action " in Part IV^ Section 2. His clear insistence on the need of such analysis, and his skill in executing it, rank him among the great logicians. Simple distinctions in argument, but of weighty import, abound, such as this : " Infallible foreknowledge may prove the necessity of the event foreknown, and yet not be the thing which causes the necessity." Everywhere the impression is left that such simple distinctions are the fruit of careful thought and the utterances of a mind sure of its grasp. So long as Edwards gives himself up to the analysis, this sureness is evident, so evident indeed, that he lets the argument carry itself by its own worth without any attempt at persuasion. The results of the analysis are notable. Necessity may be one in philosophical definition, but it is as diverse in existence as the realms where it is found. 54 THE PHILOSOPHY Of EDWARDS Natural and moral necessity are both necessity, but different kinds of it. Causal relations may exist be- tween mental events as well as between physical events, without making mental events physical. What makes moral necessity repugnant is its con- fusion with natural necessity, which is as if one were to confuse mind with matter. We should recognize too that necessity is not some exterior fate, compel- ling events, but the actual linkage which the events disclose in their existence, and that they do disclose such linkage wherever they exist, in the mind as well as in nature. Did it not exist in the mind, there would then be no linkage between motive and act, between end and means. Again, whether an act is voluntary, and so free, depends on whether it is the result of volition or of something else. The causes of volition, whatever they may be, do not affect its voluntary aspect or destroy the function of the will, any more tl^an the causes of life destroy the functions of life. Again, moral praise or blame does not belong to the causes of men's acts but to the acts themselves, just as natural praise or blame be- longs not to the causes of a thing but to its value. Yet moral merit is different from natural merit, as the mind is different from nature. So one might continue until he had exhibited all the results of the analysis. I am of course aware that attempts have been made to overthrow this analysis of Edwards, but I confess that I find nothing in the analysis which 55 WOODBRIDGE should lead one to make the attempt. Motives to that effort are derived from other sources, and almost exclusively from ethical or theological in- terests. Nothing in the whole analysis is hostile to morality, until that analysis ceases to be analysis, and becomes instead a revelation of God's activity or the secret workings of some ultimate being. It is not hostile to morality because it discloses most powerfully and convincingly the fact that man by the necessity of his own nature must act and judge with an appreciation of the value and responsibility of his acts, just as the sun by the necessity of its own nature must shine. To show that is not to drive morality out of human life, but to found it in the constitution of things. It is philosophy at its best. And just because it is philosophy at its best, we look eagerly for its continuance. But here Edwards fails us. He does not continue. Perhaps he could not. And the fact that he did not, or could not, is the critical thing for his philosophy and influence. As we proceed to the remaining parts of the Enquiry, containing his polemic against the Armin- ians, we pursue arguments which have no philosoph- ical relation to what has preceded. There is no longer philosophical analysis and construction at a sustained height, but only flashes of it here and there, amid pages of rhetorical attempts at per- suasion, tricky arguments, and sophistry. There is no philosophical carrying through of the doctrine of S6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS the will. Repeatedly he is content to dispose of a difficulty in Calvinism by pointing out that Armin- ianism has the same difficulty. He argues that if total moral inability excuses a man totally, partial inability should excuse him partially, and in proper numerical proportion. This remarkable argument he illustrates by his figure of the balance which can turn ten pounds but no more, forgetting, apparently, the deep significance of the fact that it can turn anything less than ten pounds, forgetting, in short, the vast difference between degrees of ability and no ability at all. To the objection that men are blameless if God gives them up to sin, he can only cry, " Then Judas was blameless after Christ had given him over." To these instances of philosoph- ical weakness many more could be added, especially Part IV, Section 9, where the question is discussed, " How God is concerned in the existence of sin." It is exceptionally remarkable that the man who wrote the first two parts of the work could have written this section. His apparent unconsciousness of the significance of the fact that his own theory of the will might, with equal justice, be linked with totally different ultimate positions, is also note- worthy. He recognizes the simple and cogent truth that his doctrine is not false just because Hobbes and the Stoics held it. But he fails to see that their holding of it may point to other con- clusions than the Calvinistic. It is not that Edwards prostitutes his philosophy 57 WOODBRIDGE to his theological convictions. To my mind there is not the slightest proof of that, and, so far as I know, it has never been seriously maintained. The fact is rather that the philosopher never became the theo- logian or the theologian the philosopher. It is futile to try to understand Edwards's Calvinism from his philosophy or his philosophy from his Calvinism. In him they are juxtaposed, not united. But they are not equally juxtaposed. The theology over- shadows the philosophy. The latter, however, is of such superior merit to the former in depth of in- sight and cogency of reasoning, that one is irre- sistibly led to speculate on what Edwards would have been, if the philosophy had overshadowed the theology. One recognizes that his influence would have been vastly different, that it has consequently been a critical influence for American thought. This juxtaposition instead of union of philosophy and theology is seen in Edwards's other work. I will consider it in the two remaining writings which are of particular philosophical interest, namely the dissertations on " God's Last End in the Creation," and the " Nature of True Virtue." These disser- tations, although never published by Edwards, were written earlier than his last publication in 1757. They are not, even if actually written after the " Enquiry Concerning Freedom of Will," unpre- meditated works. The suggestion of them is frequent in his sermons and other writings, from which we could largely construct them. One natu- 58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS rally asks, therefore, why they were not published. Unpublished manuscripts left by eminent men is so frequent an occurrence, that the question might be answered by this common fact. But acquaintance with those dissertations gives a pointed interest to the question. For while they present a general agreement with the rest of Edwards's work, and evince that juxtaposition of philosophy and theology which has been remarked, they exhibit a real simpli- fication of his thought and suggestive indications of almost conscious attempts at unification. Their total effect is rather to weaken than to strengthen his theology. As they are not essentially polemic, but rather more the work of a disinterested inquirer, the logical trend of the thought becomes more natural and inevitable. All the more logical revul- sion is occasioned consequently by the juxtaposition of the elements of an unrelated theology. One is led to suspect that Edwards was becoming conscious of his intellectual duality, and that the dissertations were not published because they must consequently appear to him as incomplete, as faulty, as demand- ing the work of adjustment. His original power, his versatility, his constant growth, make it improb- able that his death in his fifty-fifth year occurred when his intellectual life was fixed beyond alteration. One is tempted, therefore, to regard these later writings, not as the mere conclusions of previous positions, but as works of promise. It is interesting to note that the dissertation on 59 WOODBRIDGE " God's Last End in the Creation " begins, after an explanation of terms, with a consideration of " what reason dictates in this affair," although it is admitted that the affair is "properly an affair of divine reve- lation." The justification of reason's dictates in spite of this fact, really amounts to submitting the facts of revelation to the judgment of reason. For Edwards contends that "no notion of God's last end in the creation of the world is agreeable to reason, which would truly imply any indigence, insufficiency, and mutability in God." This dictate of reason, with which, as Edwards would show, revelation is in most consistent agreeableness, contains in unde- veloped form the recognition of God's last end in the creation. God is his own last end. The developed form of this statement we read, wondering if indeed these are the words of the greatest of American theologians, and not rather the words of some disciple of Plotinus or of a Christian Spinoza. "As there is an infinite fulness of all possible good in God — a fulness of every perfection, of all excellency and beauty, and of infinite happiness — and as this fulness is capable of communication, or emanation ad extra; so it seems a thing amiable and valuable in itself that this infinite fountain of good should send forth abundant streams. And as this is in itself excellent, so a disposition to this in the divine being, must be looked upon as an excellent disposition. Such an emanation of good is, in some sense, a multiplication of it. So far as the stream 60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS may be looked upon as anything besides the foun- tain, so far it may be looked on as an increase of good. And if the fulness of good that is in the fountain, is in itself excellent, then the emanation, which is as it were an increase, repetition, or multi- plication of it, is excellent. Thus it is fit, since there is an infinite fountain of light and knowledge, that this light should shine forth in beams of com- municated knowledge and understanding : and as there is an infinite fountain of holiness, moral excel- lence and beauty, that so it should flow out in communicated holiness. And that, as there is an infinite fulness of joy and happiness, so these should have an emanation, and become a fountain flowing out in abundant streams, as beams from the sun. Thus it appears reasonable to suppose that it was God's last end, that there might be a glorious and abundant emanation of his infinite fulness of good ad extra, or without himself ; and that the disposition to communicate himself, or diffuse his own FUL- NESS, was what moved him to create the world," Mystic pantheism could not be more explicit. Edwards appears not to have been wholly insen- sible to the possibility of such an interpretation. And here is to be noted an instance of that apparent consciousness of a need of unification which has been remarked. The first objection against his view which he considers is to the effect that his position may be "inconsistent with God's absolute independence and immutability : particularly, as 6i WOODBRIDGE though God were inclined to a communication of his fulness, and emanations of his own glory, as being his own most glorious and complete state." To this he answers, " Many have wrong notions of God's happiness, as resulting from his absolute self- sufficience, independence and immutability. Though it be true, that God's glory and happiness are in and of himself, are infinite and cannot be added to, and unchangeable, for the whole and every part of which he is independent of the creature ; yet it does not hence follow, nor is it true, that God has no real and proper delight, pleasure or happiness, in any of his acts or communications relative to the creature, or effects he produces in them ; or in anything he sees in his creatures' qualifications, dispositions, actions and state. God may have a real and proper pleasure or happiness in seeing the happy state of the creature ; yet this may not be different from his delight in himself." To let this answer suffice, reason must silence its questions. It is no answer at all, but simply a theological proposition juxtaposed to the philosophy. The silencing of reason is still more apparent in his second answer to the objection. " If any are not satisfied with the preceding answer, but still insist on the objection, let them consider whether they can devise any other scheme of God's last end in creating the world, but what will be equally obnoxious to this objection in its full force, if there be any force in it." 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS Surely we have in this dissertation no thorough consideration of what reason dictates in the affair. He has in effect, as Professor Allen justly remarks, " sacrificed all that is not God," and all the theology of the world superimposed and insisted on, cannot avoid that sacrifice. The mind that produced the work on the will, and had so irresistibly followed the dictates of reason up to this point, may have been unconscious of the gap. If so, this unconsciousness reveals anew the sharp duality in this great intellect. If not, adjustment of some sort must have been felt to be necessary, before the work could be given to the world. If the Calvinistic theology it contains should be eliminated from the dissertation on the " Nature of True Virtue," there would remain a conception of virtue almost identical with Spinoza's. Disinterested love to God is presented as the highest exercise of the virtuous man, who will exercise it highly in pro- portion to his knowledge of God, and also will desire that as many as possible should share in the same exercise and enjoy its benefits. These benefits do not really consist in rewards, but the virtuous soul finds in virtue itself its true good and highest happi- ness. " So far as the virtuous mind exercises true virtue in benevolence to created beings, it seeks chiefly the good of the creature ; consisting in its knowledge or view of God's glory and beauty, its union with God, conformity and love to him, and joy in him." This is all in thorough harmony with Spinoza. 63 WOODBRIDGE But Edwards's total conception differs from Spinoza's in one very important particular. With Spinoza man must love God in proportion as he knows God, and ignorance of the divine nature is consequently the cause of all wickedness, is indeed wickedness itself. But with Edwards man may know God com- pletely and yet remain vicious. The devils believe and tremble, but cease not, therefore, to be devils. For while virtue grows as the knowledge of God grows, a virtuous disposition must first be given, natural or derived. Without such a virtuous dispo- sition implanted or native in the heart, there can be no virtuous exercise. Wherever in intelligent beings this disposition is lacking, vice must prevail in spite of perfect knowledge of God and his last end in the creation. " Christians," says Edwards, " have the greatest reason to believe, from the scriptures, that in the future day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, when sinners shall be called to answer before their judge, and all their wickedness, in all its aggravations, brought forth and clearly manifested in the perfect light of that day ; and God shall reprove them, and set their sins in order before them, their consciences will be greatly awakened and convinced, their mouths will be stopped, all stu- pidity of conscience will be at an end, and con- science will have its full exercise ; and therefore their consciences will approve the dreadful sentence of the judge against them ; and seeing that they deserved so great a punishment, will join with the 64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS judge in condjcmning them Then the sin and wickedness of their heart will come to its highest dominion and completest exercise; they shall be wholly left of God, and given up to their wickedness, even as the devils are ! When God has done wait- ing on sinners, and his Spirit done striving with them, he will not restrain their wickedness as he does now. But sin shall then rage in their hearts, as a fire no longer restrained and kept under." This emphasis on the necessity of a virtuous dis- position to the exercise of virtue, was one of the im- portant principles in Edwards's doctrine of the will. Its reappearance here is natural. But it reappears with such force and clearness as to amount to the recognition pf something arbitrary in the scheme of things, an element persistently refusing to be re- lated, a reality naturally and originally obnoxious to God. It seriously interferes with the divine power. It can have no place in a world which is the emana- tion of the divine fulness of perfection. One is tempted to think that its presence in Edwards's thinking is due to a concession to his theology, that it is another instance of that unrelated juxtaposition I have insisted on. And so it may well be. But it serves to make that juxtaposition still more apparent. It is true, however, that this dissertation on the nature of true virtue, if taken by itself, exhibits a greater degree of philosophical thoroughness than is to be found elsewhere in Edwards's work. What- ever may have influenced him thus to emphasize the 6S WOODBRIDGE underlying necessity of a virtuous disposition to the exercise of virtue, this dissertation, with the prin- ciple admitted, is most thoroughly worked out. And it is just this thoroughness which makes the dis- sertation emphasize anew the duality of Edwards's mind. It emphasizes it so emphatically, that the suspicion is once more aroused that he was be- ginning to feel the need of adjustment between the unrelated elements of his thought. Lack of adjustment, the juxtaposition of unre- lated principles in an ordinary mind, is not a cause of interest. But I have tried to point out that in Edwards there is no ordinary juxtaposition. It is extraordinary. It is crucial for our understanding of the man. It is necessary for a clear character- ization of his influence. It reveals itself with such steady accumulation as to amount to a demand, not altogether conscious perhaps, for a revision of the whole system. It reveals Edwards not as a man of a single idea, with opinions changelessly fixed and doggedly supported, but as a man of remarkable versatility, of steady growth, of rich promise, but as a man too, who only late in life gave evidence of a possible unification of the diverse elements of his nature. Of these elements the theological was the most prominent both by his exposition and his per- sonal influence. It was his theology that he be- queathed to New England, his theology, be it said, however, stamped with the peculiar force of his great personality. And it was not a philosophically 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS grounded theology. Its own force spent, it could not draw on Edwards's other work. Its failure of continued influence becomes his failure. Yet philosophy was there with unusual excellence. Surely one must recognize that Edwards has influ- enced American thought critically, that he gave to it, in its first significant and original outburst, the theological instead of the philosophical cast, with a theology left so unrelated to a real insight into human nature and the world's nature, that it was bound to fail with the failure of personal conviction of its truth. '^ A man so profoundly interesting on account of his versatility and the peculiar way its elements were composed in him, so interesting too on account of the nature of his influence, cannot be dismissed without some attempt at an understanding of his intellectual character. It is too easy an explanation of him which would point to his time, his education, his occupation. For, let me insist again, he was distinctly a great man. He did not merely express the thoughts of his time, or meet it simply in the spirit of his traditions. He stemmed it and moulded it. New England thought was already making toward that colorless theology which marked it later. That he checked. It was decidedly Arminian. He made it Calvinistic. To his own personal con- victions he was forced, through his removal from Northampton, to sacrifice the work in which he had unselfishly spent his best years. His time does not 67 WOODBRIDGE explain him. We must look to his intellectual history. Perhaps he would remain altogether enigmatic, were it not for what he has told us of himself, and for what his early " Notes on the Mind " reveal. These Notes contain an outline of philosophy, which for penetration and breadth of interest finds no superior in the work of other minds equally mature. More than this, it surpasses the work of many maturer minds which have yet received the recognition of history. We know that its inspiration was mainly Locke, but its promise of superiority to him is evident. The remarkable verbal similarity these Notes reveal to the writings of Berkeley, has led to a comparison of Edwards with the Irish bishop and a search for traces of his influence. These have not been found. Nor is the philosophy unmistakably Berkeley's. It is more the germ of that mystic pantheism which was disclosed later with such clear- ness in the dissertation on God's Last End in the Creation. The trend of his thinking is not so much revealed in such Berkeleyan expressions as these : •'When we say that the World, i. e. the material Universe exists nowhere but in the mind, we have got to such a degree of strictness and abstraction, that we must be exceedingly careful, that we do not confound and lose ourselves by misapprehension. That is impossible, that it should be meant, that all the world is contained in the narrow compass of a few inches of space, in little ideas in the place of the 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS brain ; for that would be a contradiction ; for we are to remember that the human body, and the brain itself, exist only mentally, in the same sense that other things do ; and so that, which we call place, is an idea too. Therefore things are truly in those places ; for what we mean, when we say so, is only, that this mode of our idea of place appertains to such an idea. We would not therefore be under- stood to deny, that things are where they seem to be. For the principles we lay down, if they are narrowly looked into, do not infer that. Nor will it be found, that they at all make void Natural Philos- ophy, or the science of the Causes or Reasons of corporeal changes. For to find out the reasons of things, in Natural Philosophy, is only to find out the proportion of God's acting. And the cause is the same, as to such proportions, whether we suppose the World only mental, in our sense, or no." The trend of his thinking is revealed rather in such pantheistic expressions as these : " Seeing God has so plainly revealed himself to us ; and other minds are made in his image, and are emanations from him ; we may judge what is the Excellence of other minds, by what is his, which we have shown is Love. His Infinite Beauty is his Infinite mutual Love of Himself. Now God is the Prime and Original Being, the First and Last, and the Pattern of all, and has the sum total of all perfection. We may therefore, doubtless, conclude, that all that is the perfection of Spirits may be resolved into that 69 WOODBRIDGE which is God's perfection, which is Love." " When we speak of Being in general, we may be understood of the Divine Being, for he is an Infinite Being : therefore all others must necessarily be considered as nothing. As to Bodies, we have shown in another place, that they have no proper Being" of their own. And as to Spirits, they are the communications of the Great Original Spirit ; and doubtless, in metaphysical strictness and propriety, He is, as there is none else. He is likewise In- finitely Excellent, and all Excellence and Beauty is derived from him, in the same manner as all Being. And all other Excellence, is, in strictness only a shadow of his." " We shall be in danger, when we meditate on this love of God to himself, as being the thing wherein his infinite excellence and loveliness consists, of some alloy to the sweetness of our view, by its appearing with something of the aspect and cast of what we call self-love. But we are to con- sider that this love includes in it, or rather is the same as, a love to everything, as they are all com- munications of himself. So that we are to conceive of Divine Excellence as the Infinite General Love, that which reaches all, proportionally, with perfect purity and sweetness." Indeed if these Notes inspire one to curious re- search into the indebtedness of Edwards to others, Berkeley is but one of several philosophers that will be suggested. But the search thus far has been vain, and it appears true that its vanity is 70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDWARDS due, not to the lack of evidence, but to the fact that there is no indebtedness which can be counted as significant. These Notes are all the greater warrant, therefore, for ranking Edwards among the great, original minds. But for the understanding of his intellectual his- tory, it is not mainly important to discover the sources of his ideas. It is important rather to note that he began his life of constructive thought in philosophy, and in a philosophy grounded in reason, giving little promise of the theologian that was to be, but abundant promise of the philosopher whose mysticism should increasingly shine forth in his latest works, in part a reminiscence, in part a re- covery of the impulse of his youth. This philosophy, however, was never to yield its proper fruitage. It was arrested by emotional ex- periences for which Edwards himself could not ac- count. He became a theologian of his peculiar type, not through the logical processes of his thinking, but through a kind of mystical intuition. He gives us this account of it : "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 never could give an account how or by what means I was thus con- vinced, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary in- fluence of God's Spirit in it, but only that now I 71 WOODBRIDGE saw further, and my mind apprehended the justness and reasonableness of it. * * * * God's abso- lute sovereignty and justice with respect to sal- vation is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes." Supervening upon his natural philosophical bent, such experiences, revealing a nature swayed as much by unanalyzed emotions as by reason, account for those aspects of Edwards's thought which have been noted. So potent were those experiences in their effect, that his original position was never recovered in its simplicity and originality. So disrupting were they intellectually, that his philosophy and theology remained to the close of his life almost completely divorced and unrelated. Such experiences were so consonant with Edwards's native mysticism, that one can readily understand why they never fully rose to the dignity of a contradiction in his thinking. So significant were they for his influence that we remember him, not as the greatest of American philosophers, but as the greatest of American Calvinists. 72 Address THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS EGBERT COFFIN SMYTH, D.D., LL.D. Professor of Ecclesiastical History Andover Theological Seminary THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS Edwards is too large for ordinary measuring rods. The best appreciations suggest more than is said, — are best for this reason. There is always in him something that seems to require the supposition of a fourth dimension. You will not expect me, within the time pre- scribed, to review his theological treatises, nor to state in detail his doctrinal opinions, either with or without an attempt to estimate their value. I shall take the subject assigned, "The Theology of Edwards," in its strictest sense, and speak — mainly on a single line — of his Doctrine of God. But in doing this I shall endeavor to keep in mind two things, — the immediate purpose of this celebration, and what is due to Edwards in specializing in re- spect to any part of his thinking. We meet to offer a sincere, grateful, intelligent tribute to his memory, to uncover anew, if we may, the sources of his power, to feel afresh the tonic in- fluence of his vigorous and rigorous reasoning, to catch some fresh inspiration for our own busy thoughts and lives, to come again under the influ- ence of one who was called of God to bring many of His wandering and lost children into their Father's house, and guide them to the fountains of eternal truth. We honor him most, as we understand him best ; and we best understand him as we discover how 75 SMYTH marvellously in him, mind and heart, doctrine and life, the boldest and loftiest speculation and the purest and deepest feeling were attuned, one to the other, in full rich harmony ; how, in the range and variety of his inquiries and studies, and the growth and progress of his knowledge and opinions through years of intensest application and varied ministrations, there was one central thought, one controlling pur- pose ; how, also, remarkable as is his analytic power, he seeks for wholes, and thinks and acts in wholes, as when, in his younger years, his whole soul, in a way he did not then understand, came into entire accord with the absolute sovereignty of God, or, when, the year before he died, he gave to the Trust- ees of the College at Princeton, as a reason for hesitancy about accepting their offer of its Presi- dency, that he 'had had on his mind and heart a great work, long ago begun, a History of Redemption, a body of divinity, in an entire new method, .... a method which appeared to him the most beautiful and entertaining, wherein every divine doctrine will appear to the greatest advantage, in the brightest light, in the most striking manner, showing the ad- mirable contexture and harmony of the whole.' " The admirable contexture and harmony of the whole," this is the key that unlocks for us the inner- most chamber, discloses the central principle, of Edwards's thought. It has been easy, in some respects to miss this. He left no Summa Theologica, no Body of Divinity. 76 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS His works are special Dissertations and Observations, Controversial Treatises, Sermons, a Life of Brainerd, Studies and Practical Guides in Experimental Re- ligion. His Diary ends early. His Note Books have been seen by but few, and have not been used so as to derive from them all that is possible for a knowledge of the history of his thinking, and es- pecially for the light they may shed upon its unity. Yet without this appreciation misunderstanding is quite sure to arise. I could say more on this point were this the appropriate occasion. If ever there was a theologian who saw a whole, and was guided and controlled by the sense of this relationship of every part or aspect of universal being and life — "the admirable contexture and harmony of the whole," — it was Jonathan Edwards. He shed no tears, so far as we are told, when he was dismissed at Northamp- ton, deep as was the wound inflicted, but when the council at Stockbridge decided in^ favor of his under- taking a most honorable work in a position of emi- nence and wide influence, though he had long been wonted to self-control, the tears fell. A study of Edwards's theology which brings us into touch with its inward principle and development will naturally start with his college essay entitled " Of Being," first published by Dr. Dwight in an appendix to the Life i. It was characteristic of its author to seize upon this topic, and treat it as of ' An exact reprint may be found in the I'roceedivgs of the American Antiquarian Society , Oct. 1895, pp. 241-245. See also Ibid., Oct. 1896, pp. 251-252. 17 SMYTH primary importance. Something is. " That there should absolutely be nothing at all is utterly im- possible. The mind can never, let it stretch its conceptions ever so much, bring itself to conceive of a state of Perfect nothing. It puts the mind into mere Convulsion and Confusion to endeavor to think of such a state A state of Absolute nothing is a state of Absolute Contradiction. Absolute nothing is the Aggregate of all the Absurd (.'') contra- dictions in the World : a state wherein there is neither body, nor spirit, nor space ; neither empty space nor full space ; neither little nor Great, narrow nor broad ; neither infinitely Great space, nor finite space, nor a mathematical point ; neither Up nor Down; . . no such thing as either here or there, this way or that way, or only one way. When we go about to form an idea of Perfect nothing we must . . shut out of our minds both space that has something in it, and space that has nothing in it, . , nor must we suffer our thoughts to take sanctuary in a mathematical point. When we Go to Expel body out of Our thoughts we must Cease not to leave empty space in the Room of it, and when we go to expel emptiness from Our thoughts we must not think to squeeze it out by anything Close, hard and solid, but we must think of the same that the sleep- ing Rocks dream of, and not till then shall we Get a complete idea of nothing." Something is, — Being, infinite, omnipresent, eter- nal, the consciousness which includes all other con- 78 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS sciousnesses, and in which the universe has its being. Edwards never lost this vivid sense of God, His Reality, His Immediacy. It is the first, the funda- mental thing to be taken into account in an under- standing of his Theology. It is requisite to a just interpretation and valuation of his controversial treatises — necessary as a knowledge of climate, of sky, soil, water-courses, to a science of the growth of flowers or forests, necessary as atmosphere to vitality. It is more instructive, for instance, to learn how and why he was so persistent and uncompro- mising a Determinist, could not be satisfied with what has been called " soft Determinism," than to follow his tireless logic as he chases an ambiguity or a fallacy out of the world and beyond the bounds in- habitable by any intelligence. And it is this con- stant sense of God, irrepressible, pouring forth in vivid metaphor and poetic image, and fervent appeal, in words of force and fire, and again of calm and sweet delight, that draws us to him, and while we are with him at once thrills and rests our spirits, as when, on a high mountain pass, or in some deep ravine, with craggy steeps and signs of Titanic ele- mental powers all about us, the eye rests on some perfect flower. At the heart of Edwards's most rugged and vigorous Determinism is the immediate- ness, the very peace, of God. This Divine, Infinite Reality, expressed in Being, necessary to thought, implicit in all finite conscious- 79 SMYTH ness, is in immediate relation to the human spirit. This immediateness does not exclude mediateness, — a method of Divine revelation by symbols and types, by the ministries of Nature, prophets and priests, gospels and sacraments, by the Incarnate Word. But it does mean that all such media are of value in so far as, and only so far as, there is in them and by them in contact with our spirits the living God. Is there any other theologian in whose experience and teaching this realization of the Divine Presence is so palpable .'' It is the more noteworthy because never was there a divine who gave himself more diligently to the study of the written word, following it not only in perusal, but in annotation, citation, appli- cation, with persevering and tireless fidelity, nor one who surpassed him in power of analysis and deduc- tion. Yet behind the letter and the logic, broader than the range of dialectic, and reaching farther than the subtlest discrimination of thought, is evi- dent, as the space that holds the countless stars, the Presence to his inmost consciousness of the God he loved with a pure surpassing love and served with a marvelous consecration. In this apprehension of the Divine as real Being, everywhere present, is implied its knowableness. One would like to see in our time a mind like that of Edwards, — or Edwards himself, if that might be, — dealing with the Agnosticism which oppresses many. How he would toss on the horns of his dia- lectic a scientific knowing that we do not and can- 80 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS not know, that religious verities cannot be verified ! Agnosticism as a belief, a knowledge, or a bar to knowledge, would seem to him like that belief in nothing which elicited his youthful polemic, and this characteristic comment : " If any man thinks that he Can think well Enough how there should be nothing I'll engage that what he means by nothing is as much something as anything that ever he thought of in his Life, and I believe that if he knew what nothing was it would be intuitively evident to him that it Could not be." We may presume, also, that with the early Chris- tian Apologists he would emphasize that the soul is naturally capacitated to know God, and that such knowledge has always been in some degree in its possession ; that not only is it found where the Christian revelation has shed its light, but is con- tained in other religions as well. Such is his con- tention in one of his unpublished papers, and eagerly would he appropriate whatever progress has been made in these later days in the science of compara- tive religion. The testimony of prophets of Jehovah, of Christian experience, above all of Him who spake as never man spake, would flame out with surpassing splendor, for the theme would kindle his highest powers. Especially, we may believe, would he speak with reassuring tones to any who are now more or less disquieted by what is termed, rather vaguely, and sometimes a little emptily, the changed view of Scripture, — meaning, however, more par- 8i SMYTH ticularly, new suppositions or conclusions as to the origin, construction, collection of its several books, in a word new light upon their literary history, and their relation to successive changes or stages in the religious progress of mankind. On the one hand we may be sure that Edwards would be no less eager than the most enthusiastic scholar to learn all that can be discovered in this field of investigation, behind no one in courage and sincerity of utterance. Nor would his high idealism make him indifferent, in any degree, to historic facts, not even in the most narrow and insufficient meaning of this much abused phrase. His idealism was not subjectivism. He would recognize that there are facts with which the truth of divine revela- tion is bound up, which are its actual expression. Incommensurateness of fact and idea would not mean to him their disjunction. Nor was he a mere mystic. No one in the history of our churches has had a greater influence on prac- tical piety. He insisted on charity in speech and benevolence in deed. Virtue is Love. In the re- ligious movements of which he was a leader he ex- hibited sanity and sagacity. It is enough to refer to his discriminating treatment of the inward testi- mony of the Holy Spirit. And though he did not mingle directly in political affairs, he has been credited by a recent historian with having, "more than any other man, settled the principle which fully justified to the American mind the complete sever- 82 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS ance of the State from ecclesiastical functions or concern. 1 Yet, on the other hand, it is noteworthy, as the author to whom I have just referred points out, that this service was rendered, not directly, but through Edwards's religious teaching.^ And it would still doubtless be on this line, and with this power, that he would influence, if living among us, the doubt and distrust of our time. "The gospel," he wrote, after witnessing, analysing, and studying in many forms its divine power, — "The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a begging for its evidence so much as some think : it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself." ^ "Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and con- viction of the truth of the gospel ... . by a sight of its glory, it is impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all After all that learned men have said to them, there will remain innumerable doubts on their minds ; they will be ready, when pinched with some great trial of their faith, to say ' How do I know this or that ? How do I know when these histories were written .-' Learned men .... tell me there is equal reason to believe these facts, as any what- soever that are related at such a distance ; but how ^ The Rise of Religious Liberty in America, A History. By Sanford H. Cobb, N. Y. The Macmillan Co., 1902. Page 485. 2/6., pp. 485-486. 3 Treatise on Religious Affections, Sect. V., I. Works, Vol. V., p. 186; ed. Dwight. 83 SMYTH do I know that other facts which are related of those ages ever were ? ' " i Edwards's solution of the difficulty of the un- learned is good for all. The scholar needs it as well as others. Still the gospel is its own best evi- dence ; its demonstration is "the demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Edwards knew this gospel by its supreme result in character and life ; knew it in his own protracted, analysed, tested, profound ex- perience ; saw it in a life, united with his own, so constant in cheerfulness, benevolence, devoutness, divine communion, that its spiritual raptures seem scarcely more wonderful than it would have been had they not been vouchsafed ; observed it in its effect in many places and successive seasons, in persons of various ranks, callings and ages, and this with as keen a psychological eye as one may read of, quickened in its watchfulness by a profound sense of responsibility; and in these impressive and memorable words he gives us his testimony both as to the reality and value of the knowledge the gospel imparts : " He that sees the beauty of holiness, or true moral good, sees the greatest and most impor- tant thing in the world. . . . Unless this is seen nothing is seen that is worth the seeing ; for there is no other true excellency or beauty. Unless this be understood, nothing is understood worthy the exercise of the noble faculty of understanding. This is the beauty of the Godhead, the divinity of divinity • Itnd., pp. 182-183. 84 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS (if I may so speak), the good of the infinite fountain of good. Without this, God Himself (if that were possible) would be an infinite evil ; we ourselves had better never have been, and there had better have been no being. He therefore in effect knows noth- ing that knows not this ; his knowledge is but the shadow of knowledge, or the form of knowledge, as the apostle calls it And well may regen- eration, in which this divine sense is given to the soul by its Creator, be represented as opening the blind eyes, raising the dead, and bringing a person into a new world." ^ Edwards included in what may be known of God His existence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the editions of his collected works there is no formal discussion of this subject. The doctrine, however, plainly appears in various aspects, particularly in affecting representations of the excellence and glory of the Redeemer, and discriminating discussions of the work of the Holy Spirit. In general it may be said that it pervades his system of theology, so that this would be unintelligible without it. The doc- trine, in a word, is present in his published writings, as it generally is in Holy Scripture, that is, in ob- vious presuppositions, implications, and practical applications. It sheds light upon the most intimate and profound experiences revealed in the Christian consciousness, and is implied in manifold known operations and effects pertaining to the life of the ' Ihxd., p. J58. 85 SMYTH children of God. It makes the via cruets a via lucis. It belongs to the far, high, pure, ever burning lights that guide upward to the immediate vision of Him all whose blessedness and majesty and glory, with the entire good of the universe, are involved and insured in this, that He is eternally and essentially Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In the delightful " Treatise on Grace," printed for private circulation by Mr. Grosart, Edwards says, " Though the word person be rarely used in the Scriptures, yet I believe that we have no word in the English language that does so naturally repre- sent what the Scripture reveals of the distinction of the eternal Three, — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — as to say, they are one God, but three persons." ^ He recognizes also the mystery of the doctrine, and our dependence for knowledge and guidance re- specting it on Sacred Scripture, which, he says, — referring directly to an inquiry into the nature of the Holy Spirit, — " certainly should be our rule in matters so much above reason and our own notions." ^ In Manuscripts mostly as yet unpublished, either in whole or in part, are numerous papers on the subject. I may say in passing that when in this address I use the term " Observation," or "Obser- vations," for a source of information respecting Edwards's opinions, I refer to statements derived from these Manuscripts. I Op. cit., p. 43. 2/6., pp. 43,47- 86 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS How often we come closest to some great leader, in his deepest thoughts and aims, as a biographer gives us a glimpse of his youth, its intuitions, per- ceptions, aspirations, dreams. The key to the life usually hangs in that closet. Whatever critics may conclude, the Church will always be profoundly grateful for the picture in the Third Gospel of the Child Jesus among the doctors. A study of the Observations of Edwards shows that deep thoughts upon the Trinity came to him in the beginnings of his theological studies, indeed, some paragraphs in the published Series entitled "The Mind," in all probability carry us back yet farther.^ It appears, also, that for a number of years, perhaps down close upon the time when he must have been much absorbed in labors connected with the " Revival," and the " Great Awakening," and again after he had left Northampton, that is to the last, the same theme engaged his thought. ^ Nowhere is there any indication of dissatisfaction with the accepted historic doctrine. Rather it is an endeavor, by what the writer himself regards as in- tense thought, to bring the doctrine more clearly to 'See No. I. Excellency [Dwight's, ed. I. pp. 696, 697]; also, No. 45, Paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 9, 12 [/i., pp. 699, 700, 701]. The earliest Observation on the Trinity in the series entitled " Aliscellanies " is numbered 94, which is equivalent to 142. The number 52 is usually added to those in this series on account^of its beginning with the alphabet,— first a single letter, then double letters. But I find that there is no J nor ,J7, also no r nor vv, so that the added number should be 48. No. i, of Series " The Mind," is appar- ently, unless " Of Being " is prior, the earliest college composition by Ed- wards of which we have any knowledge. It was probably composed in his Sophomore or early in his Junior year. It contains the germ of his many subsequent philosophical remarks upon the Trinity. No. 94(142) of the " Miscellanies" is supposed to have been written towards the close of his residence at the College as a graduate student ( i72o-i722), and before his Tutorship. See Dwight, I. p. 56 ; also Appendix I. to this volume, No. A. 87 SMYTH view, and this by seeing it as reflected in the mirror of self-consciousness. The attempt was not novel, but it is remarkable in its clearness of conception, and in its presentation and answering of objections. I had prepared a statement of its positions and method, with quotations from hitherto unused doc- uments, but must omit the reading, that I may allude to other topics.^ What is most striking, for myself I should say instructive and helpful, in the discussions is the clear conviction, the fearless claim of the Reasonableness of the doctrine from the point of view of what the writer calls " naked Reason," the repeated assertion of the power of human reason to deal with the subject, and the foundation of the claim in a broader view of the likeness of man to God. In the human spirit there is a three-fold dis- tinction which is a resemblance to the Trinity of the Divine Nature. I may not conceal my impression that it would have been happy for the New England Theology, at least, and the interests it represents, if Edwards's thoughts on this subject had obtained an earlier and wider publicity. I must, however, add with equal frankness and distinctness that I have no suspicion that they have ever been withheld from any doubt as to the writer's Trinitarianism. For the reason already suggested I must omit what I had written respecting his treatment of the Incarnation, — except to say that the same principle which guides his thought on the Trinity is applied I See Appendix I. A. 88 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS by him to this doctrine. I refer to the principle of man's likeness to his Maker. Edwards thus recog- nizes distinctly and interestedly, what has become a first principle in our later and best Christologies.^ He does not, however, follow out this principle to its legitimate results in our conception of the Divine method of recovering men to God. That which is essential in the constitution of the Redeemer's Per- son must be fundamental in our interpretation of what He is and does for us as our Redeemer. There is, through the Divine Creative Son, who be- came man, a natural sonship of man to God which must have a place in our thought of the sonship which is by grace. To have missed this application of his own principle may be regarded as a chief immediate cause both of what was most excessive and defective in Edwards's teaching. His thought of God is still further disclosed to us in his interpretation of the revealed Purpose or End of God in Creation. His "Dissertation" on this topic, which ranks with his principal works, was written, it is supposed, for publication, though it did not appear until several years after his decease. From notes found among his papers it was con- jectured that he was thinking of some revision of it, but no evidence has appeared that he was meditating any material change. The Observations contain numerous papers on the same theme, running from his early days into the ' See Appendix I. B. 89 SMYTH years at Stockbridge. In these manuscripts we overhear Edwards saying to himself in his study substantially what is expressed in the " Disserta- tion." The light of the one blends harmoniously with that of the other. Yet there is in the unpub- lished series a fascinating variety and freshness of utterance, and as we follow in them the growth of his thought, we come in some respects into closer in- timacy with it, and are impressed with its richness and fulness. Several questions have arisen in the interpreta- tion of the " Dissertation." Does its author regard happiness as the End } Does he subordinate virtue to happiness .•* Does he understand, in making the glory of God the End, that receiving glory is what is aimed at, so that the " apparent effect " of what is said is, the glorification of " an infinite and celestial selfishness .■' " Was he perplexed in thought, when he wrote the " Disser- tation," by seeing before him, in his recoil from Deism, a menacing pantheism .-' And for relief was he in his last years, turning for the first time to the " Christian doctrine of the Trinity .-' " I think, after examining the Observations as well as reading anew the " Dissertation," that these ques- tions must all be answered in the negative, although Happiness no doubt enters largely into Edwards's thought of the Divine Purpose. The Observations are most emphatic in their evi- dence that Edwards's thought is not that God's 90 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS chief end in creation is that of receiving glory. His conception is precisely the opposite. His funda- mental thought of God, — one that he connects again and again with Creation, — is that of a Being whose absolute Perfection implies self-impartation, reciprocity, mutual Love, which itself is an energy so intense and complete that into it as an act of in- tercommunication is poured the fullness of Infinite Being. This conception of the Trinity Edwards early and late connects with the Creation of the Universe. God does not create to meet a deficiency in his own nature, but just the contrary. He cre- ates because of the plenitude of His Being, as a full fountain overflows. His glory is to give. He creates to communicate, — to give Himself, to be the creature's good.^ Edwards taught nothing new in presenting the glory of God as the End of the Creation, but he greatly enriched its interpretation. He smote the rock, and the living waters flowed. With the bless- ing of God he made the truth productive of noblest service, in our churches at home and on many a mission field, from men who lived to glorify God. And into what simplicity, purity, disinterestedness of motive, and inward tranquility, and liberation of energies of consecrated service, they came in the divine communion into which their spirits were brought. Life under the sternest skies, on the stormiest seas, in the farthest wildernesses, was under ' See Appendix I. C. 91 SMYTH the care and guidance of a Power known in their own reason and deepest experience to be supreme. The Universe was their Friend, sustaining them, moving them ever onward, as, by a returning voyager, his ship beneath his feet is felt, with a thrill of joy, to be bearing him, with the whole mo- mentum of its mighty mass, homeward. Homeward to God, whose we are and from whom we came — this is the innermost meaning and the climax of Edwards's Theology. We may get a better doctrine of the Will than he maintained, though never without him, for he has made forever secure in thought the doctrine of mo- tive. We may widen our conceptions beyond his ken in respect to the methods of divine grace, — its approaches, and the opportunities of receiving it, but well will it be with us if we come as fully as he under the constraining power of such love, and drink as deeply at its celestial springs, I had intended to say something on Edwards's views of Divine Sovereignty, on his Determinism, perhaps on his severities, — but it is impossible. The problem of Liberty and Necessity, like that of Realism and Idealism, is not merely one of Psy- chology. It must be solved, if at all, in the realm of Philosophy. Edwards rises to this higher level. It is his native air. His conception of Perfect Being contains the Trinity, his thought of personal freedom merges in the Liberty of the sons of God. We have broken with him, and shall do so again and 92 THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARDS again, but anon shall look and see him on some higher range, above our clouds. The deepest phil- osophical and religious thought of our time, on most important lines, if I mistake not, is moving upward on the way which led him in thought to God. Homeward to God — this is indeed the sum of Edwards's Theology ; yet I should be unjust to one who saw all divinity comprised in a History of Re- demption, if I did not add. Homeward by Him who came to seek and to save the lost, Christ and Him crucified. Edwards summons us to know God by Reason, — yet by Faith. Would he not say : See Him, know Him, and yourself, and all besides, through the eyes that opened in the manger, turned with compassion to the multitude, looked on Peter in his sin, and closed on the cross to open again upon a world redeemed. 93 roem A WITNESS TO THE TRUTH BY SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE. D.D. President of Wheaton Seminary A WITNESS TO THE TRUTH I. God's truth has many voices ; sun and star And mountain and the deep that rolls afar, Speak the great language ; and, of mightier worth, The lips and lives of Godlike men on earth. For truth wrought out in human life has power Which no truth else has — since man's natal hour. What were the world without the long, strong chain Of faithful witnesses, whose heart and brain Have throbbed with truth God gave them ? without these Who, as with hands that link together, stand Reaching across the years to that dear Hand Which touched blind eyes to sight, wrote on the sand. And lifted Peter from the drowning seas .-• Who, better than through book or hymn or creed, Draw down their living line the fire we need Of life from Him who is the Life indeed ? II. A good man's work is of his time and place Where Duty lifts the fulness of her face ; Translate it elsewhere and you do him wrong ; His life, his spirit — what of great and fair And true was in him — O, that doth belong To all the ages and dwells everywhere ! 97 COLE And there he stands, this nobly-moulded man ; You can not miss him if you turn and scan The land's horizon ; howsoe'er men talk, He still is of us ; no mere name ; a rock The floods may beat upon nor wash away ; Foregatherer of the times ; his loftier height Flushed with the gleams of sweetness and of light That wait their fulness till some later day ; An eagle spirit soaring in the sky And mingling with the things that can not die. How full of fire he was, and how sincere, Soldier of faith and conscience without fear ! And humble as the little springtime flower Opening its heart out to the Heavenly Power ; Poet, and dreamer of the things to be ; A man of Godly vision ; — such was he, This Dante of New England, who descried The dread Inferno of man's sin and pride ; The Purgatorio where his eyes might trace The workings out and upward of God's grace ; And yet who clomb with happier step the slope Of man's aspiring and undying hope Toward Paradiso, there to find his goal At last, — the Blessed Vision of the Soul ! HI. All this he was, whatever be the name He goes by in the roll of earthly fame. 98 A WITNESS TO THE TRUTH We judge him as we would ourselves alway Be judged ; as Christ will judge the world one day ; Not by things done, however great they be, But by those longings which immortally Outrun achievement since the world began ; Yea, by the spirit in him ; that's the man. What though the vain world scoffed and paths grew dim, He had one Master and he followed Him. He wielded truth to meet the age's stress Of circumstance, nor made it truth the less. Truth is a sword that flashes, now this way, Now that, the single purpose to obey. Nay, truth is large ; no man hath seen the whole ; Larger than words ; it brooks not the control Of argument and of distinctions nice ; No age or creed can hold it, no device Of speech or language ; ay, no syllogism : Truth is the sun, and reasoning is the prism You lift before it ; whence the light is thrown In various colors ; each man takes his own. If this man takes the red, as you the blue. Is yours the whole ? and is his truth not true ? Spirit is truth, howe'er the colors fall ; The fact comes back to spirit after all. IV. Secure, invincible, the man who dare Obey his vision — mark what courage there ! — 99 COLE Dare take the sword of his belief in hand, Whole-hearted face the world with it, and stand. And mind not sacrifice, and count fame dross. For truth's dear sake, and life and all things loss. And never dream of failure, never doubt What issue when the stars of God come out ! And would that we had power like him to rise Clear of the thraldom of all compromise. Like him whose feet on this foundation stood, — That God is sovereign and that God is good. Is such a creed outworn ? And tell me, pray, Have we no use for it ? Alas the day, Amid the things that savor of the sod. If men forget the sovereign rights of God ! The true life's master-word is still. Obey. The man of power rejoicing cries, " I can ; " " I may," the man of pleasure ; but we trust, And all the world trusts with us, still the man Hearing a different voice, who says, '* I must." O Conscience, Conscience, how we need thee now ! Wind, fire, and earthquake pass ; the time abounds In these great voices ; but, O, where art thou ? Is thy voice lost amid life's grosser sounds ? A WITNESS TO THE TRUTH Or art thou fled across the golden bars Of evening with thy purer light to shine Somewhere far off, beyond the quiet stars, Far off, and leave us without guide or sign ? Not so ; earth's towers and battlements decay ; Thrones tremble and fall ; old sceptres lose control ; But, as God lives, thou livest ; thou wilt stay, O Conscience, God's vicegerent in the soul. We are thy bondmen and thy ways are good ; Thou art what makes us greater than the dust We came from ; and still, howsoe'er we would. Thy law is ever on us and we must. VI. The man who takes " an inward sweet delight In God," shines like a candle in the night ; The world's black shadow of care and doubt and sin Is beaten backward by that power within ; He walks in freedom ; neither time nor place Can fetter such a spirit ; in his face A light, not of this earth, forever clings ; For, when he will, strong spiritual wings Bear him aloft, till silent grows all strife, Silent the tumult and the toil of life ; The homes of men, far off, like grains of sand Lie scattered along the wrinkles of the land, All silent ; not a sound or breath may rise lOI COLE To mar the eternal harmony of those skies Through which he goes, still higher, toward the line Where sun and moon have no more need to shine ; And there, where sordid feet have never trod. He walks in joy the table-lands of God. VII. How much he hath to teach us even yet, Lest life should kill us with its toil and fret ! Things of the earth men seek to have and hold ; They build and waste again their mounds of gold. O me ! the din of life, the bell that peals. The traffic, and the roaring of the wheels ! Work glows and grows and satisfies us not ; Weary we are of what our hands have wrought. Weary of action with no time for thought. The much we do — how little it must count Without some pattern showed us in the mount ! Who seeks and loves the company of great Ideals, and moves among them, soon or late Will learn their ways and language, unaware Take on their likeness, ay, and some day share Their immortality, as this man now Before whose life we reverently bow, VIII. So shines the lamp of Edwards ; still it sends One golden beam down the long track of years. A WITNESS TO THE TRUTH This resolute truth which neither yields nor spends, — That life, true life, is not of what appears. Not of the things the world piles wide and high ; 'Tis of the spirit and will never die. His life was noble ; wherefore let the day White with his memory shine beside the way — Adding its comfort to our human need — Like some fair tablet whereon men may read : " Lo, here and there, great witnesses appear, — The meek, the wise, the fearless, the sincere ; They live their lives and witness to the word ; No time so evil but their voice is heard ; Nor sword nor flame can stop them ; though they die They grow not silent ; they must cry their cry ; Time's many a wave breaks dying on the shore ; They cry forever and forevermore ; For, in and through such men as these men are, God lives and works, and it were easier far To dry the seas and roll the mountains flat, Than banish God ; we build our hopes on that." 103 Address THE INFLUENCE OF EDWARDS JAMES ORR, D.D. Professor of Theology, United Free Church College Glasgow THE INFLUENCE OF EDWARDS To speak of Jonathan Edwards to a company of New Englanders, still more to speak of him within the walls of an institution built in a manner to enshrine his memory and perpetuate his influence, is an adventurous task for one whose home is in another continent, and whose religious associations are different from those by which you are encircled. Yet there may be a fitness in one from another land being present at this interesting celebration, to bear to you greeting, and to testify that we in Scotland are not unmindful of the mighty debt we owe to New England — which in truth all Christendom owes — for the gift of a consecrated genius of such rare power and enduring influence as his whom you today commemorate. The name of Jonathan Ed- wards is one which entwines itself with the oldest recollections of many of us. We met with it in biography, in the literature of religion, in text-books and prelections in philosophy, in divinity systems, in allusions to the influence of Edwards on the thought and lives of other men ; and, though one's ideas were sometimes vague enough of the man himself and of his actual surroundings and struggles at a time when, politically and religiously, everything in New England was yet in the making, the impression made upon us was always one of veneration for his character, admiration for his extraordinary genius, 107 ORR and awe at the searching spiritual power of his words. If I may indulge in reminiscence, it is forty years and more since I first made my own serious acquaintance with Edwards in poring over his treatise on The Freedom of the Will (I think it was as holiday reading : I have a dim memory connect- ing it with a gooseberry garden in Kilmarnock ! ), and I have no doubt that the trains of thought then set in motion have continued to vibrate in my con- scious or subliminal self till the present hour. It is to myself a singular satisfaction to be on the very soil from which he sprang, amidst the scenes and the people among whom, generations ago, he lived his laborious and devoted life, and to stand tonight in this honourable gathering, surrounded by me- mentos of his influence, where the one object is to do him honour. How could one contract any other sentiment than that of reverence for Jonathan Edwards, when his name was never mentioned by any distinguished writer except with highest eulogy of his intellectual and moral eminence .'' That theologians like An- drew Fuller, Robert Hall, and Thomas Chalmers — all of whom acknowledge their indebtedness to him, and in all of whom his influence is distinctly to be traced — should place him on this high pedestal is perhaps not to be wondered at ; but when writers in pure philosophy, in no way enamoured of his special doctrines, — as, e. g., Sir James Mackintosh, 1 08 THE INFLUENCE OF EDWARDS Dugald Stewart, F. D. Maurice, and even the Ger- man Fichte, — speak of his metaphysical genius in praise and astonishment, it is difficult to resist the conviction that here is a phenomenon in the history of mind worth turning aside to see. You, in your own New England theology, prolonged through so many phases, yet dominated throughout by the in- fluence of Edwards, furnish a measure of the range and profundity of that influence which suffices of itself to show how many-sided, forceful, and germ- inal it has been. And in this connection, as I have named F. D. Maurice, I may be permitted, before going further, to quote a sentence or two of his, which, coming from so impartial a mind, may be felt to be apposite to the present occasion : " In his own country," Mr. Maurice says, " he (Edwards) retains, and must always retain a great power. We should imagine that all American theology and philosophy, whatever changes it may undergo, and with whatever foreign elements it may be associated, must be cast in his mould. New Englanders who try to substitute Berkeley, or Butler, or Malebranche, or Condillac, or Kant, or Hegel, for Edwards, and to form their minds upon any of them, must be forcing themselves into an unnatural position, and must suffer in the effort. On the contrary, if they accept the starting-point of their native teacher, and seriously consider what is necessary to make that teacher consistent with him- self — what is necessary that the divine foundation 109 ORR upon which he wished to build may not be too weak and narrow for any human or social life to rest upon it — we should expect great and fruitful results from these inquiries to the land which they care for most, and therefore to mankind." {Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, II. 472.) I shall now, with your permission, come to closer quarters, and shall try to state briefly for myself the impression I have been led to form of this great thinker's genius and influence. It is customary to place the supremacy of Edwards in his unrivalled metaphysical acuteness ; and even so appreciative a critic as Henry Rogers resolves his greatness almost exclusively into the possession, in unsurpassed de- gree, of the ratiocinative faculty — of Reason. "/« this respect, at least," he says, "he well deserves the emphatic admiration which Robert Hall expressed when he somewhat extravagantly said that Edwards was ' the greatest of the sons of men.' " But this is at least one-sided. I shall not dwell, as I should wish to do, on the singularly powerful influence which Edwards has exercised, in his personality and published writings, through the simple force of his pure and intense godliness, but shall content myself with saying that it will be difficult, in the long list of saints and mystics, to point to one in whom the pure light of intellect was more intimately united with the pure glow of love to God in the heart — with habitual, sustained, all-pervading, spiritual affection. One has only to study the fragmentary THE INFLUENCE OF EDWARDS records of his early resolutions and private exper- iences, and the parts of his writings which deal with experimental religion, to see how entirely in him the white light is one with white heat. I name the state of his soul godliness ; for while his mind was filled, as few have been, with a realization of the beauty and excellence of Christ, and with the sense of obligation to Christ in redemption, it is still, ultimately, God's love from which salvation is always viewed as flowing, and to God, as the supreme object of affection, that everything in salvation is regarded as leading back ; while love to God, contemplation of his excellence, and assimilation to his holiness, are the supreme elements in the soul's blessedness. The intellectual and spiritual or mystical powers in Edwards, therefore, exist in inseparable union, and even his speculative insight — which is, despite Mr. Rogers, far more than mere logical or ratiocina- tive acuteness — cannot rightly be understood, if divorced from the spiritual perception from which a large part of its light arises. There is at the same time nothing mystical, in the wrong sense of the word, in Edwards's spirituality, for it is never cut away from the historical ; neither is there anything about it fanatical and visionary, for it has its root in humility, is checked by the most vigorous self- analysis, and is in essence a pure aspiration after God and holiness. Listen only to this, relating to the years after his conversion : " My longings after God and holiness were much ORR increased. Pure and humble, holy and heavenly, Christianity appeared exceedingly amiable to me. I felt a burning desire to be, in everything, a complete Christian ; and conformed to the blessed image of Christ ; and that I might live in all things, according to the pure, sweet, and blessed rules of the Gospel. I had an eager thirsting after progress in these things ; which put me upon pursuing and pressing after them .... I remember the thoughts I used then to have of holiness ; and said sometimes to myself, ' I do certainly know that I love holiness, such as the Gospel prescribes.' It appeared to me there was nothing in it but what was ravishingly lovely ; the highest beauty and amiableness — a divine beauty ; far purer here upon earth ; and that everything else was like mire and defilement in comparison with it." Nature itself was transfigured to this man of spiritual vision ; its objects and glories became as it were a pure transparency, through which was visible only the Divine excellency. Can anyone wonder at the strange spiritual fascination of such a book as that on the Religious Affections, coming from a soul so penetrated with love to God ? We think of Fenelon and Madame Guyon, but Edwards's piety burned with as pure a flame as theirs, while it was largely free from the morbid and quietistic elements which marred their sainthood. Having, however, premised these things, I am pre- pared to go as far as any — perhaps farther than THE INFLUENCE OF EDWARDS most — in my appreciation of the supreme meta- physical faculty of Edwards, and of the influence he has exercised on subsequent thought through that. I have already said that it is not correct to speak of Edwards's intellectual superiority as consisting merely in unrivalled ratiocinative ability. Jonathan Edwards has the intuitive gift ; he is a great meta- physical, not less than a great spiritual, idealist. His nature instinctively soars ; the higher the tracts in which his thought moves, the freer its action. David Hume was a precocious speculator, but the few pages of notes and discussions on Mind, penned by Edwards under the impulse of his first study of Locke, in his sixteenth or seventeenth year, seem to me as remarkable in metaphysical subtlety as anything in Hume, while, in the spirit that informs them, they are on a far higher level. The singular thing is that, in keeping with what has been said of his idealistic bent, Edwards, in these notes, and, so far as appears, independently, works out a theory of idealism closely akin to Berkeley's, sustaining it by arguments, and meeting objections with a skill that must evoke the admiration of everyone familiar with the subject. When one reflects that the Berkelean idealism is pretty much the />ons asinorum of the student of philosophy, getting safely over which, he may justly be credited with some degree of philosophical vov