Jonathan Edwards was on one of his daily nature walks. Suddenly, he stopped. He said a prayer and, as he took in the nature around him, a big smile came across his face. He smelled the trees and took in their every detail. He listened to the gentle sounds of insects that flew by. God’s creation was perfect and beautiful.
Edwards was raised in colonial America and entered Yale at the age of 13. Upon graduation, he started studying all things related to science and nature because he found the glory of God present in the natural world.
He grew up having a strong faith, and in 1727 Edwards was ordained a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts.
As a religious leader, Edwards noticed that the society around him had started to change, and he constantly worked on ways to save the new colonists from falling into the temptations of evil. In the 1730s, Edwards gave a number of sermons that made him popular in religious circles.
The Sermon
In 1741, Edwards preached his most famous sermon that would make his name remembered well after his death. He first gave this sermon, entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” to his Northampton congregation. The sermon was so well received that he preached it again on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut.For this sermon, Edwards drew attention for employing what Britannica calls “preaching of terror.” The sermon is now considered a classic example of “fire and brimstone” preaching.
People responded to his vivid depictions of Hell, and more and more people chose Christianity to avoid facing the wrath of God.
“The cadence, imagery, sentence structure, ideas, and thrust all spoke of Edwards’ time, beliefs, and aim,” the Forest Baptist Church said of Edwards’s famous sermon. “The power was not in the delivery, but in the content. As he spoke, men and women began openly weeping in the church. They shouted. Some screamed in horror. They interrupted him, yelling back at Edwards, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Some, it was said, white-knuckled the pillars and grabbed the pews fearing that, at any moment, they might tumble into the abyss.”
When most think of “fire and brimstone,” they think of preachers shouting at their congregation to get their point across. Edwards’s style, though, was quite different. As author George Marsden explained in his book, “Jonathan Edwards: A Life,” Edwards did not raise his voice or yell. When he preached, he often used a quiet voice filled with vivid emotion.
His most famous sermon would go on to be used heavily in religious circles for the next 200 years. The sermon is still read and studied by Christians and historians to this day.
And some say that Edwards’s influence went even further. He was elected the third president of Princeton University and is also known as being a major contributor to the “American Enlightenment” era. Also called the “Age of Reason,” this period, from around 1680 to 1820, saw a change of thought and religious views.
According to Harvard University, “Enlightenment ideals of rationalism and intellectual and religious freedom pervaded the American colonial religious landscape, and these values were instrumental in the American Revolution and the creation of a nation without an established religion.”
