Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards

by Jonathan Edwards

The events and conditions here described are reflected in Edwards’s sermon, especially in what he says of the extent of the “accommodations” in heaven and in his remarks on the “seats of various dignity and different degrees and circumstances of honor and happiness” there, as compared with what we find in houses of worship on earth.

As indicating the size of Edwards’s Northampton congregation, it may be interesting to observe that the seating-plan above referred to contains the names of nearly six hundred persons. And he had his audience all about him. The pulpit, surmounted by a huge sounding board, was in the middle of one of the longer sides of the building, not at the end, as is the custom now. For further particulars, see J. R. Trumbull, History of Northampton, Vol. II, Chap. vi.

This sermon is more fully written out than most of Edwards’s unpublished sermons. In preparing the copy for the present volume, the editor had in mind the general analogy of the other sermons here published. The abbreviations—X (Christ), G. (God), F. H. (Father’s House), etc.—have accordingly been interpreted, and omitted sentences or phrases, indicated in the Ms. by dashes or spaces, have been supplied from the context. All such additions, however, are inserted within square brackets.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

78. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The full title-page of this, Edwards’s most famous sermon, read in the original edition as follows: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. A sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8th 1741. At a time of great Awakenings; and attended with remarkable Impressions on many of the Hearers. By Jonathan Edwards A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. Amos ix. 2, 3.—Though they dig into Hell, thence shall mine Hand take them; though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the Top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my Sight in the Bottom of the Sea, thence will I command the Serpent, and he shall bite them. Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green in Queen Street over against the Prison, 1741.”

Benjamin Trumbull in his History of Connecticut (New Haven, 1818), Vol. II, p. 145, records the circumstances under which this sermon was delivered as told to him by Mr. Wheelock, a minister from Connecticut (Enfield, Conn., was at that time included in Hampshire County, Mass.), who heard it. “While the people in neighboring towns,” writes Trumbull, “were in great distress for their souls, the inhabitants of that town were very secure, loose, and vain. A lecture had been appointed at Enfield, and the neighboring people, the night before, were so affected at the thoughtlessness of the inhabitants, and in such fear that God would, in his righteous judgment, pass them by, while the divine showers were falling all around them, as to be prostrate before him a considerable part of it, supplicating mercy for their souls. When the time appointed for the lecture came, a number of the neighboring ministers attended, and some from a distance. When they went into the meeting-house, the appearance of the assembly was thoughtless and vain. The people hardly conducted themselves with common decency. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, of Northampton, preached, and before the sermon was ended, the assembly appeared deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard. This was the beginning of the same great and prevailing concern in that place, with which the colony in general was visited.” The circumstances, thus, under which this sermon was preached were exceptional; the excitement of the Great Awakening was at its height; the congregation to whom the sermon was addressed were notorious for their apathy; Edwards doubtless felt that an exceptionally strong presentation of their danger was necessary to arouse them. And this sermon is probably the most tremendous of its kind ever delivered by a Christian minister.

The kind, however, was by no means exceptional in Edwards’s preaching, particularly at this period. Believing as he did that the decisions of men in this life were fraught with the most momentous issues to all eternity, he held it his bounden duty to present these issues before them in the liveliest manner possible.[16] The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners; The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable; The Eternity of Hell Torments; When the Wicked shall have filled up the Measure of their Sin, Wrath will come upon them to the Uttermost; The End of the Wicked contemplated by the Righteous; or, The Torments of the Wicked in Hell, no occasion of grief to the Saints in Heaven; Wicked Men useful in their Destruction only,—these are among the titles of his sermons. Moreover, there is reason to believe that this very sermon, or its like, was used on other occasions besides the one to which it is explicitly ascribed. There is a tradition[17] that Edwards preached it once when Whitfield had disappointed an audience by not appearing, and that he produced a great effect by it. The manuscript is dated June, 1741, which suggests that it may have been preached in Northampton, or elsewhere, the month before it was attended with such remarkable impressions on the hearers in Enfield. But still more significant is the existence of an undated second sermon from the same text. In this, which was undoubtedly of earlier origin, the thought is somewhat differently worked out: it is less lurid, less fully elaborated, less terrific; but it contains many of the ideas, for example, on the uncertainty of life, the suddenness with which destruction may overtake the sinner, etc., that are found in the Enfield sermon. Edwards was evidently fascinated by the theme; he works it out with the sure touch of a great artist, with the intellectual force of the skilled dialectician. And he proclaims his message with the intensity of conviction of an Old Testament prophet. No wonder his hearers were moved. The effect would certainly have been less great had there been any note or personal vindictiveness in the preaching. But there is nothing of this; it is not in this sense that the sermon can be called “imprecatory.” On the contrary, so far as Edwards’s personal attitude is concerned, it is not difficult to detect in it the pathos and the pity of the gentlest of men weeping over the senseless folly of those who, blind to impending destruction, refuse repeated invitations of safety (cf. Matt. xxiii. 37). For the rest, he is quite impersonal, detached; the truth he preaches is sure, awful, but objective. On the modern reader the sermon is likely to produce a very painful impression, unless he, for his part, reads it in the same impersonal, detached way. It is not only the realism of the presentation, but the harshness of the doctrine, which offends. Edwards, for instance, frequently speaks of the reason why sinners are not immediately cast into hell; but the reason assigned is not the mercy or goodness or love of God, but His mere power and sovereign pleasure. This is one aspect of the truth of the spiritual universe as Edwards sees it. He is not a sentimentalist; he proclaims the truth as he finds it. As far as Edwards himself is concerned, there is nothing in the whole sermon, or in any of his “imprecatory” sermons, so called, half as revolting as Dante’s attitude towards sinners in hell. Take, for instance, the case of Filippo Argenti in the Lake of Mud (Inferno, Canto viii.): “‘Master, I should much like to see him ducked in this broth before we depart from the lake.’ And he to me, ‘Ere the shore allows thee to see it thou shalt be satisfied; it will be fitting that thou enjoy such a desire.’ After this a little I saw such rending of him by the muddy folk that I still praise God therefor, and thank Him for it. All cried, ‘At Filippo Argenti!’ and the raging Florentine spirit turned upon himself with his teeth.”

89. The God that holds you ... drop down into hell. This is probably the best remembered paragraph in this all too well remembered sermon. Comparison with the original manuscript shows some interesting variants from the printed text, and at the same time gives evidence of the deliberateness with which the sentences were wrought out with reference to their calculated effect. For both reasons the passage is here reproduced as written.

“You are over the pit of hell in Gods hand very much as one holds a spider or some loathsome Insect over the fire & ’tis nothing but for God to let you go & you fall in.” (Here follow four undecipherable lines, which apparently, however, do not belong in this connection. The passage then continues on the next page of the Ms.) “& this G. that thus holds you in his hand is very angry with you & dreadfully provoked. his wrath burns like fire. you are lothsome and hatefull in his eyes & and worthy to be burnt—he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire you are ten thous. times more loathsome in his eyes than the most noisome insect in the eyes of us men & you have offended him a thous. times so much as ever an obstinate rebel did his prince. & yet you are in his hands & tis nothing at all but his mere pleasure that he keeps you from falling into hell every moment there is no other reason to be given why you did not go to hell last night why you did not wake up in hell after you had closed your eyes to sleep & there is no other reason to be given why you have [not] drop’d since you rose in the morning yea since you sit on here in the house of G. Provoking his pure Eyes by your sinfull wicked manner of attending his Holy worship Yea there is nothing else to be given as the Reason why you don’t this very moment drop down into hell.”