Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703-March 22, 1758) was an American theologian and minister of the Calvinist Puritan tradition. His preaching began the Great Awakening revival which swept the Colonies. This was responsible in part for uniting the Colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. In 1757, he became the third president of Princeton University, formerly the College of New Jersey. His most notable works include Religious Affections, 1746, and The Freedom of the Will, 1754.
In 1727, he married Sarah Pierrepont. Jonathan Edwards married Sarah Pierrepont, and according to A Study in Education and Heredity by A.E. Winship (1900), their descendants included a U.S. Vice-President, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 professors, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers and 100 missionaries.
This same study examined a family known as "Jukes." In 1877, while visiting New York's prisons, Richard Dugdale found inmates with 42 different last names all descending from one man, called "Max." Born around 1720 of Dutch stock, Max was a hard drinker, idle, irreverent and uneducated. His descendants included 310 paupers, who, combined spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, 50 women of debauchery, 400 physically wrecked by indulgent living, 7 murderers, 60 thieves, and 130 other convicts. The "Jukes" descendants cost the state more than $1,250,000.
In his Narrative of Surprising Conversions, Jonathan Edwards wrote:
<And then it was, in the latter part of December, that the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to...work amongst us. There were, very suddenly, one after another, five or six persons who were, to all appearance, savingly converted, and some of them wrought upon in a very remarkable manner.
Particularly I was surprised with the relation of a young woman, who had been one of the greatest company-keepers in the whole town. When she came to me, I had never heard that she was become in any ways serious, but by the conversation I had with her, it appeared to me that what she gave an account of was a glorious work of God's infinite power and sovereign grace, and that God had given her a new heart, truly broken and sanctified....
God made it, I suppose, the greatest occasion of awakening to others, of anything that ever came to pass in the town. I have had abundant opportunity to know the effect it had, by my private conversation with many. The news of it seemed to be almost like a flash of lighting upon the hearts of young people all over the town, and upon many others....
Presently upon this, a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world became universal in all parts of the town and among persons of all degrees and all ages. The noise of the dry bones waxed louder and louder....
Those that were wont to be the vainest and loosest, and those that had been the most disposed to think and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion, were not generally subject to great awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner and increased more and more; souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ....
This work of God, as it was carried on and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town, so that in the spring and summer following, Anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God.
It never was so full of love, nor so full of joy...there were remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on the account of salvation's being brought unto them, parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands.
The goings of God were then seen in His sanctuary, God's day was a delight and His tabernacles were amiable. Our public assembles were then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, everyone earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink the words of the minister as they came from his mouth.
The assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached, some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for their neighbors.
There were many instances of persons that came from abroad, on visits or on business...[that] partook of that shower of divine blessing that God rained down here and went home rejoicing. Till at length the same work began to appear and prevail in several other towns in the country.
In the month of March, the people of South Hadley began to be seized with a deep concern about the things of religion, which very soon became universal...About the same time, it began to break forth in the west part of Suffield...and it soon spread into all parts of the town. It next appeared at Sunderland...
About the same time it began to appear in a part of Deerfield...Hatfield...West Springfield...Long Meadow...Endfield...Westfield...Northfield...In every place, God brought His saving blessings with Him, and His Word, attended with Spirit...returned not void.> 1703JE001
Jonathan Edwards stated:
<There is no leveler like Christianity, but it levels by lifting all who receive it to the lofty table-land of a true character and of undying hope both for this world and the next.> 1703JE002
<Resolved: never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.> 1703JE003
<I have reason to hope that my parents' prayers for me have been, in many things, very powerful and prevalent, that God has...taken me under His care and guidance, provision and direction, in answer to their prayers.> 1703JE004
Jonathan Edwards, in his work, "The Latter-Day Glory Is Probably to Begin in America," proposed the idea that the continents could be classified into two groups, the New World and the Old World. Since the Old World had the honor of hosting Christ's first coming, he reasoned that the New World would be given the honor of preparing the earth for His second coming. Observing the "Sun of Righteousness" travels from east to west, Jonathan Edwards' perspective enkindled the origins of America's "Manifest Destiny":
<When the time comes of the church's deliverance from her enemies, so often typified by the Assyrians, the light will rise in the west, till it shines through the world like the sun in its meridian brightness....
And if we may suppose that this glorious work of God shall begin in any part of America, I think, if we consider the circumstances of the settlement of New England, it must needs appear the most likely, of all American colonies, to be the place whence this work shall principally take its rise.> 1703JE005
Jonathan Edwards wife, Sarah Edwards, wrote to her brother in New Haven documenting the response to George Whitefield's preaching during the first Great Awakening in the Colonies:
<It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible....Our mechanics shut up their shops, and the day laborers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach, and few return unaffected.> 1703JE006
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1703JE001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards, in his Narrative of Surprising Conversions. Marshall Foster, Winning the Battle for the 21st Century (Thousand Oaks, CA: Mayflower Institute, 1993), p. 39.
1703JE002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards. The Works of President Edwards (Isaiah Thomas, editor), Vol. III, pp. 14-19. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and The Glory (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company), pp. 241-243.
1703JE003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards. Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts-A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852; revised and enlarged by C.H. Catrevas, Ralph Emerson Browns and Jonathan Edwards [descendent, along with Tryon, of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), president of Princeton], 1891; The Standard Book Company, 1955, 1963), p. 91.
1703JE004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards. Statement. Perry Tanksley, To Love is to Give (Jackson, Mississippi: Allgood Books, Box 1329; Parthenon Press, 201 8th Ave., South, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972), p. 29. For Mothers (Heartland Samplers, Inc., 5555 W. 78th St. Suite P, Edina, MN, 55439, 1994), 2.24.
1703JE005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon, titled "The Latter-Day Glory Is Probably to Begin in America"; reprinted in Conrad Cherry, God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 55-59. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution-The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, A Mott Media Book, 1987, 6th printing 1993), p. 31.
1703JE006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Jonathan Edwards.. Sarah Edwards, in a letter to her brother. John Pollack, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening (Garden City New Jersey: Doubleday and Co., 1972), p. 164. Peter Marshall & David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, 1991), 12.17.