Mr. Edwards was twenty-three years of age when he was ordained at Northampton as associate pastor with his grandfather Stoddard, then in his 84th year, and the 54th year of his pastorate. Soon after this Mr. Stoddard died and Mr. Edwards became pastor in full charge and remained for twenty-five years. He was a great student and thinker. He rose at four o'clock and spent thirteen hours a day in his study. It is worth while to follow the personal intellectual habits of the man whose descendants we are to study. When he was ready for the consideration of a great subject he would set apart a week for it and mounting his horse early Monday morning would start off for the hills and forests. When he had thought himself up to a satisfactory intensity he would alight, fasten his horse, go off into the woods and think himself through that particular stage of the argument, then he would pin a bit of paper on some particular place on his coat as a reminder of the conclusion he had reached. He would then ride on some miles further and repeat the experience. Not infrequently he would be gone the entire week on a thinking expedition, returning with the front of his coat covered with the scalps of intellectual victories. Without stopping for any domestic salutations he would go at once to his study and taking off these bits of paper in the same order in which he had put them on would carefully write out his argument. In nothing did Jonathan Edwards stand out so clearly as boy, youth and man as in his sacrifice of every other feature of his life for the attainment of power as a thinker.
Mr. Edwards has gone into history as a theologian of the most stalwart character. It is undeniable that he preached the most terrific doctrine ever uttered by an American leader, but this was only the logical result of the intellectual projection of his effort to make sacrifices in order to benefit humanity. As a child he sacrificed everything for health and virtue that he might have influence, and as a man he knew no other plan or purpose in life. His masterpiece is upon the "will" which he developed to the full in himself.
The greatest religious awakening that the Western world has ever known was started in his church at Northampton, not over ecclesiastical differences, or theological discussion but over a question of morality among the young people of the town. It had to do with the impropriety of the young ladies entertaining their gentlemen friends on Sunday evenings and especially of their allowing them to remain to such unreasonable hours. And the issue which ultimately drove him from his pastorate, after twenty-five years of service, by an almost unanimous vote was not one of ecclesiasticism or theology, but of morals among the young people. He insisted upon vigorous action in relation to the loose and as he thought immoral reading of the youth of the town. As this involved some prominent families he had to retire from the pastorate.
The views of Mr. Edwards on pastoral work reveal the singleness of purpose of the man as a student and thinker. He never made pastoral calls. He had no criticism to make of those pastors who had talent for entertaining people by occasional calls, but as he had no gifts in that direction he regarded it advisable to use his time in cultivating such talents as he had. Whoever wished to talk with him about personal, moral or religious conditions found in him a profitable counsellor. In his preaching, which was equal to anything America has ever known, he made no attempt to win his hearers by tricks of oratory or by emotional appeals, though he had a most fascinating personality. He was six feet in height, slender in form, with a high, broad forehead, eyes piercing and luminous and a serene countenance. In the pulpit he was graceful, easy, natural and earnest, though he had little action. He rested his left elbow on the pulpit and held his manuscript in his left hand while with his right he turned the leaves. In him were combined the intellectual and moral vigor which are calculated to make the progenitor of a great family.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE
The eleven children of Jonathan Edwards had an unenviable start in life so far as their environment was concerned. The oldest was still in her teens when serious trouble arose in the parish at Northampton. Mr. Edwards was pastor at Northampton for twenty-five years, and a more fruitful pastorate or a more glorious ministerial career for a quarter of a century no man could ask. He made that church on the frontier the largest Protestant church in the world, and it was the most influential as well as the best known. There began the greatest religious awakening of modern times. In his church, resulting from his preaching, began a revival which stirred into activity every church in Massachusetts, every church in the colonies, and most of the Protestant churches of Great Britain and Europe.
After this long and eminently successful pastorate, Mr. Edwards preached a sermon about the reading and conversation of young people upon subjects of questionable propriety, which led to such local excitement that upon the recommendation of an ecclesiastical council he was dismissed by a vote of 200 to 20, and the town voted that he be not permitted on any occasion to preach or lecture in the church. Mr. Edwards was wholly unprepared financially for this unusual ecclesiastical and civic action. He had no other means of earning a living, so that, until donations began to come in from far and near, Mrs. Edwards, at the age of forty, the mother of eleven children with the youngest less than a year old, was obliged to take in work for the support of the family. After a little time Mr. Edwards secured a small mission charge in an Indian village where there were twelve white and 150 Indian families. Here he remained eight years in quiet until, a few weeks before his death, he was called to the presidency and pastorate of Princeton, then a young and small college.
The last four years of their life at Northampton were indescribably trying to the children. Human nature was the same then as now, and everyone knows how heavily the public dislike of a prominent man bears upon his children. The conventionalities which keep adults within bound in speech and action are unknown to children, and what the parents say behind a clergyman's back, children say to his children's face. This period of childhood social horror ended only by removal to a missionary parsonage among the Stockbridge Indians, where they lived for eight years. Their playmates were Indian children and youth. Half the children of the family talked the Indian language as well and almost as much as they did the English language.