Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1703. By age 14, he was already a student at Yale and devoured works by philosophers such as John Locke. At age 17, he said that holiness was revealed to him and his heart desired “to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child.” Intellectual and pious were adjectives that described Edwards from this young age to the end of his life.
After receiving his master’s from Yale in 1722, he apprenticed for his grandfather and then became the sole preacher of the Northampton, Massachusetts, parish in 1729. In 1734, his preaching on justification by faith ignited a spiritual revival in his parish. Thirty conversions a week were happening by the spring of 1735. Contrary to some of the other preachers of the day, Edwards was not flashy or theatrical. Rather, it was with his strong arguments that he persuaded people through his messages.
As was common in the day, Edwards kept written accounts of his observations (published in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in 1737) and his most effective sermons (published in Justification by Faith in 1738). His works were widely read in America and England and helped fuel the Great Awakening. Britain’s George Whitefield read Edwards’ books and made it a point to meet with Edwards when he came to America, and Edwards invited Whitefield to preach at his church. In Edwards’ words, “The congregation was extraordinarily melted… almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of the time.”
Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is probably the most famous sermon in American history. Though he preached it as dispassionately as any of his sermons, it has cast him as a judgmental revivalist. Despite his dispassionate preaching, he did believe that religion was rooted in affection rather than reason. He published Treatise on Religious Affection in 1746 and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England. Both of these works defended the emotional outbursts of the Great Awakening. And in an era of psalm-singing, he encouraged the singing of new music: Christian hymns being written by Isaac Watts, such as “Joy to the World,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.”
For Edwards, personal conversion was the most important thing. As such, he only allowed those who had made professions of faith to receive communion. As this was the opposite of the policy his grandfather had instituted, his congregation turned on him and banished him in 1750. Edwards became a missionary pastor to Native Americans in Massachusetts and continued to learn and write. In fact, he had a lifelong habit of waking at 4 a.m. and studying for 13 hours a day!
The College of New Jersey (which would later become Princeton) hired him as their president in 1758, but soon after he began his tenure, he died of the new smallpox vaccination at age 55.