Jonathan Edwards was not merely a good man in the ordinary sense. His goodness rose into ideal heights. He had a genius for ethics as well as for religion. He is still a teacher of teachers. But this wonderful man, who must ever have a high place among the leaders and inspirers of mankind, has an equally high place among the torturers of the spirit. To understand the kind of pain which he inflicted we must not be content with the threatenings of torment in sermons like that on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The pictorial imagery which now startles us was common enough in his day. The torments of sinners was an ordinary theme; Edwards added appreciably to the torments of the saints. His vivisection of the human soul was without compunction. In the hearts and desires of the innocent he discovered guilt for which there was no pardon. Every resting-place for natural human affection was torn away, and when at last from the clear heaven the love of God shone down in dazzling splendor, it shone upon a desert.
The cruelty of it all is seen in its effects on minds naturally prone to melancholy. Read the journal of a disciple of Edwards, David Brainerd, and remember that for several generations that journal was esteemed a proper book to put into the hands of youth. The editor of the Journal says, “As an example of a mind tremulously apprehensive of sin, loathing it in every form and for its own sake, avoiding even the appearance of evil, rising above all terrestrial considerations, advancing rapidly in holiness, and finding its only enjoyment in the glory of God, probably no similar work in any language can furnish a parallel.” Poor Brainerd! Every step along the heavenly way cost him a pang. He never could forget for more than a few hours at a time that he was human, and to be human was to be vile. The groans follow one another with monotonous iteration. He loved God, but he felt his guilt in not loving him more. He was not only afraid of hell, but of a heaven of which he was unworthy.
“I seem to be declining with respect to my life and warmth in divine things. I deserve hell every day for not loving my Lord more.... I saw myself very mean and vile, and wondered at those who showed me respect.”
We all feel that way sometimes, but to have the feelings set down day by day for years at a time seems hardly profitable. We are relieved when occasionally the editor summarizes the spiritual conflicts of a week or two without going into details, as in the latter part of December, 1744. “The next twelve days he was for the most part extremely dejected, discouraged and distressed, and was evidently much under the power of melancholy. There are from day to day most bitter complaints of exceeding vileness, ignorance, and corruption; an amazing load of guilt, unworthiness even to creep on God’s earth, everlasting uselessness, fitness for nothing, etc., and sometimes expressions even of horror at the thoughts of ever preaching again. But yet in this time of dejection he speaks of several intervals of divine help and comfort.”
The pitiful thing about it all was that Brainerd’s distress arose not from the consciousness of any particular shortcoming of his own, which after all was finite. He was endeavoring to realize the meaning of that infinite guilt which was his as a child of Adam. That guilt must be infinite because it was a sin against infinite purity and power. When he had repented to the very utmost of his ability, he was conscious that he had not repented enough.
When he went to New Jersey as a missionary to the Indians, it was this abnormal spiritual sensitiveness which he endeavored to impart to the aboriginal mind.
He found it difficult to bring the Indians to that degree of spiritual anguish which, in his view, was necessary to their salvation. He could make them understand the meaning of actual transgression, but they were dull of comprehension when he urged them to repent of original sin.
“Another difficulty,” he says, “which I am now upon, is that it is next to impossible to bring them to a rational conviction that they are sinners by nature, and that their hearts are corrupt and sinful, unless one can charge them with some gross act of immorality such as the light of nature condemns.”
One would suppose that the missionary might have found among his untutored Indians enough actual transgressions to have brought to them a conviction of sin and a desire for a better life. But no, that was not enough, it would have fallen far short of what he had in mind. It would have only convinced them that they were sinners individually considered, and would not have overwhelmed them with the guilt of the race. So he hit upon a device to turn their minds from the incidental trangressions of mature life to the central fact that depravity was innate and universal.
“The method which I take to convince them that we are sinners by nature is to lead them to an observation of their little children: how they will appear in a rage, fight and strike their mothers before they are able to speak or walk, while they are so young that they are incapable of learning such practices.... As children have never learned these things, they must have been in their natures; and consequently they must be allowed to be by nature the children of wrath.”