Jonathan Edwards — Michael Haykin

Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of Revival

That we have just gone through. Tonight we want to think about Jonathan Edwards and the theme that we want to particularly focus on is the whole issue of revival and in the first hour we're going to talk about Jonathan Edwards, in the second hour I was going to talk about his daughter but I'm going to talk about his wife instead, Sarah Edwards, in many, many respects spiritually as striking an individual as Jonathan Edwards.

The theme that we want to think about tonight, while the other themes that we have thought about in this series have been very important, especially that dealing for instance with George Whitefield, justification by faith, but the theme tonight I think has pertinent relevance to our situation in North America at the present time because we should as Christians long to see something different in our current religious climate, our spiritual climate.

While we are thankful that God is still at work in conversion and we see conversions here and there and we hear of them, we should long for something more and Edwards had the privilege and blessing of living through a period of revival, we call it broadly speaking the First Great Awakening and we want to think about his own experience but also his theology of revival and I'm going to focus actually on a period of revival that took place before the First Great Awakening that was located in his town, the town of Northampton, Massachusetts and that spread beyond the borders of that town to about 30 other villages up and down what is known as the Connecticut River Valley, the Connecticut River splitting Massachusetts and Connecticut in half roughly before it flows out into the Atlantic.

Sarah Edwards’s Letter and Jonathan Edwards’s Legacy

I want to begin at the end of Jonathan Edwards' life and I want to begin with some words that his wife Sarah, who we'll look at in the next hour, wrote to their daughter Esther when she received the word that her husband had died.

She was not present at his deathbed, he'd actually, as we will see very quickly, he had gone on ahead to Princeton where he had been appointed the president of the school and she had stayed behind to wrap up affairs in the town in which they were living at that time, Stockbridge, Massachusetts up in the northwest corner of Massachusetts near the New York border and so it was with some shock that she received a letter telling her that her husband had died.

She received that word on March the 22nd, 1758 and promptly wrote her daughter a letter to her daughter Esther Burr and has said this, God has made me adore his goodness that we had him, that is her husband, so long, but my God lives and he has my heart, oh what a legacy my husband and your father has left us, oh what a legacy my husband and your father has left us.

Well that legacy, as I hope you'll see tonight, is more than simply for the family of Edwards, more than simply for the immediate family of Jonathan Edwards or his descendants and there are numerous descendants still alive today, in the hundreds he had as we will see eleven children, all of whom reached adulthood, most of whom had families as large and therefore brought into the world numerous descendants of Jonathan Edwards, but the legacy that we want to talk about tonight is for the Church of God, not simply for the Edwards family.

The writings of Jonathan Edwards I think are of great significance for us in our present day because he is, as once been described, he is the theologian of revival. Those who study Church history often have ways of describing individuals in the history of the Church, Augustine is often called the theologian of grace because of the great emphasis on grace in his writings, John Calvin, interestingly enough, is often called the theologian of the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't think it by the way that sometimes Calvin is remembered, he's often remembered associated with the terms election and predestination, but he actually wrote more and was interested far more in the work of the Holy Spirit than either of those issues and so he's often described as the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

Lloyd-Jones is rightly, rather, it's Lloyd-Jones who describes Edwards' way, Martin Lloyd-Jones describes Jonathan Edwards as the theologian of revival. And that's the theme that we want to think about tonight, Edwards himself was eminently gifted to write on the subject, he personally experienced revival, and I venture to say, I may be wrong in this, that very few churches in North America are experiencing what we call today revival, and you'll see the characteristics as we lay them out, and Edwards had the privilege, as I've already mentioned, of living through and working through two distinct seasons of revival.

Edwards’s Study of the Human Heart

Secondly, Edwards was a man who had a profound understanding of the human heart, he was a man who was able to think about and delineate the intricate workings of the human heart and soul. You get a picture of this very early on in his life, when as a teenager he was deciding as to where his career would actually lie, and for a while he considered becoming a scientist, or actually becoming an academic in a university context, and he wrote a book on spiders, still exists, it's still of value to those who are entomologists, whose specialty is spiders, and the particular subject of the book was the way in which spiders built their webs.

A particular spider, and I forget the exact which one, but this particular spider, Edwards sat down and observed for a significant length of time, watching the spider, how the spider built its web, and then proceeded to write a book on it.

Now the sort of detail and patience that went into the writing of such a book also characterised his pastoral ministry, and his ability to speak with individuals and ask them questions that probe deeply into their souls to see how is it the spirit of God works in the life and the heart of human beings, and then to write about this.

But thirdly, Edwards is of great significance in this whole area of revival because he had a heart that was devoted to the glory of God, and if there's anything that resonates through Edwards' writings, there is this passion and hunger for God, for the almost palpable experience of God.

Edwards’s Vision of God’s Glory

And a number of years ago, a man named Joseph Haroutonian, back in the 1940s, writing about Edwards, gave as an illustration of this point the following passage, it comes from a sermon that Edwards preached in 1735, in the middle of the revival actually we're going to talk about, and it's on that passage in the book of Ruth, Ruth chapter 1, where Ruth tells Naomi, her mother-in-law, that she is prepared to commit herself to Naomi's God, the God of Israel, and leave behind her all of her culture, her family, and her experience in Moab, and that where Naomi goes, she will go.

And Edwards asks the question at the beginning of his sermon, who is this God that Ruth is committing herself to? And he says this, this is the way he answers it, that this God is a glorious God, there is none like him, who is infinite in glory and excellency, he is the most high God, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.

His name is excellent in all the earth, and his glory is above the heavens. Among the gods there is none like unto him, there is none in heaven to be compared to him, nor are there any among the sons of the mighty that can be likened unto him.

God is the fountain of all good, an inexhaustible fountain. He is an all-sufficient God, able to protect and defend and do all things. He is the King of glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

He is a strong rock and a high tower. He is a God who has all things in his hands and does whatsoever he pleases. He killeth and maketh alive, he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up, he maketh poor and maketh rich, the pillars of the earth are the Lord's.

God is an infinitely holy God, there is none holy as the Lord, and he is infinitely good and merciful. Many that others worship and serve as gods are cruel beings, spirits that seek the ruin of souls, but this is a God that delighteth in mercy.

His grace is infinite and endures forever. He is love itself, an infinite fountain and ocean of it. And you get a sense there, and that's not an untypical passage from Edward's sermons, you get a sense there of a man who has spent an enormous amount of time meditating on God and the attributes of God.

Who is the God that he calls men and women under his pastoral ministry to serve and follow as Ruth follows. Well let me go back to the beginning then of Edward's life and get something of his early years and then look at this revival that takes place in 1734, 1735 in Northampton, and then very briefly look at the end of Edward's ministry.

Edwards’s Early Life in New England

First though his early years, he's born in 1703 in a place called East Windsor Connecticut. East Windsor, like Northampton, is on the Connecticut River. Now the Connecticut River, as I've already said, cutting almost in half both of the states of Connecticut and then below it Massachusetts before the Connecticut River flows out into the Atlantic.

He is born in a place that is far from the censors of power and influence, whether it be religious power and influence. He's born on the outposts of what is called the First British Empire. The British had, as you're well aware, been expanding through the world and they had carved out for themselves a significant portion of the eastern seaboard of North America running roughly from New England down to South Carolina, Florida at this period of time still being owned by the Spanish, and obviously what we now call Canada being in the hands of the French.

And this is the First British Empire. They would eventually lose, as you well know, the American colonies and would have to carve out another empire, but he's born on the edge of that. It's hard for us to think in these days of New England as being a wilderness, but that's the way it was, at least from the point of view of Europeans.

Not from the point of view of First Peoples, North American natives living there, but from the point of view of Europeans that it was a wilderness. And they were on the edge of European British society.

And Edwards was born far from the centers of influence. Now, the town where he lived in East Windsor, Connecticut, had been planted about 70 or so years, 80 or so years by the time that he was born, being planted in the low 1640s or so.

His father was the pastor of the church in the town, Timothy Edwards. The church was a Congregationalist church. Congregationalists, Edwards would be a Congregationalist all his life. Congregationalists basically believed in the autonomy of the local church.

They believed in infrabaptism, but that each church was an independent body unto itself. It could call its pastor, elders and leaders in the church, and dismiss them and so on. His mother, Esther, was the daughter of a very powerful man, a man whose name has long been forgotten, Solomon Stoddard.

In his days, indicative of his power, he used to be known as the Pope of the Connecticut Valley, which gives you some idea of the influence of the particular man. Not that he had Roman Catholic sympathies, but he was a powerful figure.

And he was pastor of his church in Massachusetts, Northampton, Massachusetts, where Edwards would go to be his assistant. He was pastor of that church for 60 years. Edwards' father was pastor of the East Windsor Church for 63 years.

That was typical of the day. When a pastor was called, he stayed for his life. In fact, it was almost, in the calling of the pastor, often a kind of a marriage contract. That's the way it was thought.

You were entering into almost like a marriage with the congregation. If you had a good pastor, that would be great. The opposite, as you can well imagine, would be terrible. So Edwards was raised then in a pastor's home.

On both sides, godly forebears, because both of them went back to some of the early Puritans. In fact, on his mother's side, Esther's side, there were a number of very leading Puritans who had first settled in New England.

Among them, the man named Thomas Hooker, one of the great Puritan leaders who was one of the first generation Puritans, and that was on his mother's side. Edwards was the only boy of 11 children, 10 girls and one son.

And Edwards was the fourth in line. All children survived into adulthood. Again, this is very unusual. They must have been a hardy family. His children would display the same. This is a period, I believe I've already mentioned this on one occasion, Cotton Nader, great Puritan leader in Boston, an older contemporary of Edwards, had 15 children.

He buried 13 before the age of 2. And so it's quite remarkable that the Edwards family, both Edwards' own siblings and his children, all of them survived into adulthood. His older sisters helped in the schooling of Jonathan.

His father, Timothy, had what we would describe today as advanced ideas on education. The 18th century was a period in which women were not educated. The argument being, women do not need to be educated.

They're going to spend their time in the home as wives and managers of the home, and maybe managing a small industry in the home, kind of a cottage industry, but there was no emphasis at all. There were no vehicles for educational women.

In fact, there would be no vehicles in that regard until into the 19th century. But Edwards' father didn't buy those ideas. And so he educated his daughters as much as he educated his son. And so they became skilled in all the areas that he could educate them in.

Basic mathematics and things like that, certainly reading, theology, history. He taught them Latin. They helped educate young Jonathan in Latin. This is fairly unheard of. It's not completely unheard of, but it's fairly unheard of.

They became very independent women in many respects. At the height of the revival, when Jonathan is a leading figure in it in the 1740s, his older sister Mary doesn't agree with him at all. She thinks he's crazy.

Writes him a long letter that almost amounts to a small book, in which he basically criticizes his theological views and his defense of the revival. And she does so fairly handily, knowing theology and scripture herself.

Edwards’s Conversion and Early Ministry

Now Jonathan, then, is raised in a very godly environment. From the time he could speak and understand language, he was given to realize the most important thing in life is to know God, and to know him personally, and to have a heartful relationship to God.

Outwardly, young Jonathan was a model child. From all that we have, the evidence we have, there is no indication that he ever went through a period, as many teens do, of rebellion. No indication that he ever caused his parents any problems.

There are children like that. And no indication that he was a model child. But inwardly, he was a raging inferno. Because he knew what was expected of him, he knew what he should have, but did not have it.

He knew that he should have this relationship to God, through Christ, but he did not have it. And thus, he found himself in greater and greater despair as he got older. He graduated from his class, he was eventually sent to Yale in 1716.

Yale, at this time, was giving what we would describe today as a high school education, as well as further education beyond that. And so he went there when he was 13 years old, after he had been what we would describe today as homeschooled.

He graduated in 1720, at the head of his class, academically well-recognized, with great honors, but not converted. And thus, in great inner turmoil. When his conversion took place, we don't know. Edwards was never interested in dating it.

It was probably in 1721. And the date that I'm reliant on there is from the most recent biographer, Ian Murray. And if you want a biography of Edwards, that is fabulous. It doesn't cover everything of Edwards.

But it focuses on his theological experience and thought. Edwards, the churchman, the pastor. It's Ian Murray's Jonathan Edwards, published in the late 80s. I distinctly remember reading it late into the night.

It's one of those books I couldn't put down. I think I consumed it by staying up late, I mean late, like 3 or 4 in the morning, a number of nights. It's a fabulous biography. Anyway, Ian Murray dates Edwards' conversion in 1721.

It came upon reading 1 Timothy 1 .17. 1 Timothy 1 .17. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, the honor and glory, forever and ever. Amen. Edwards later wrote, about 18 years later, he said that, upon reading this verse, there came into my soul, and was, as it were, diffused through my soul a sense of the glory of the divine being.

A new sense, quite different from anything I have experienced before. Never did any words of scripture seem to me as these words did. I thought with myself how excellent a being that was, how happy I should be if I might enjoy God and be wrapped up to him in heaven, and be, as it were, swallowed up in him forever.

From about this time I began to have new ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation. An inward sweet sense of these things came into my soul. That little phrase there, an inward sweet sense of these things, came into my heart and soul.

Though that's a very important phrase. It emphasizes that for Edwards, conversion is not simply intellectually embracing the Christian worldview, but it is tasting, to use a metaphor, it is tasting the goodness of God.

It is knowing personally in the heart, not only knowing intellectually with the mind that God is a glorious God, and that Christ is a great Savior. Edwards goes on to pastor, briefly, in New York. He pastored a small work in New York City, a very different New York City in the 1720s than what New York looks like today.

He talks about going out to the Hudson River, hardly thinkable today, at least in the area around New York, and meditating in the fields on God. If you know that area of New York, at least initially it wouldn't lend itself to that.

In 1724 -1726 he goes back to Yale in New Haven, and is thinking, as I mentioned earlier, of becoming an academic, a professor, teaching there. He takes the MA there, finishes his MA, but he's in great turmoil.

His turmoil is caused by two things. One is his doubts about what he should do in life. Secondly, by meeting a woman. Her name, and we'll talk about her in the next hour, is Sarah Pierre-Ponce. Hardly a woman at this point.

She was 13 when he first meets her. He met her in 1724. He would marry her four years later. Even in those days, you might think, well, they married younger in those days. Actually, they did not. In the 1700s, women generally married in their early 20s.

Recent studies of marriage and dates of marriage have confirmed, beyond a shadow of a fact, at least in New England, and England, it might be different in other parts of the Western world, that marriage for women was delayed until the early 20s.

For men, sometimes until the later 20s. It's very interesting. It goes against what we generally think of that earlier period. So, in that period, it was somewhat young, but we'll talk about that in the next hour.

Some of his inner turmoil was caused by meeting Sarah. She was the exact opposite of Jonathan. Jonathan was bookish. Some might even say, to use a contemporary word, a bit nerdish today. He was very shy, in many respects.

Sarah was the exact opposite. Very outgoing. Made friends easily, and did so joyfully. And so, they would compliment each other in many, many respects, as we will see. In 1727, the year of his marriage, he is called to become the assistant of the church of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddart.

And finally, the decision as to what to do in his life is made up for him. He accepts the call, and goes to this church in Northampton, Massachusetts, where from 1727, he will be part of the pastoral staff until 1750.

After his grandfather's death in 1729, he will be the senior pastor. But for the first two years, he is an assistant pastor. Not a youth pastor, no such thing as those in that period of time, but he is an assistant pastor.

He didn't appear to have much preaching opportunities. His preaching begins, really, when his grandfather dies. The church he goes to is a church that is spiritually plateaued. It's not moving ahead. It's spiritually stagnant.

It had known great blessing in the past. The church was about 60 years old when he got there. His grandfather, Solomon, had been the third pastor. The first two had been there for very brief periods of time.

And Solomon had known great blessing at periods in his ministry. He had also introduced something, though, that Jonathan disagreed with radically. Solomon, back in the... let me go back now. This is very important to understand the story of Jonathan Edwards.

The Halfway Covenant and Church Membership

Let me go back to the 1620s and 30s. In the 1620s and 30s was when the first settlers, European settlers, British settlers, came from the Old World to the New World and came via, most of them, Holland.

And most of those men and women, as they planted churches in New England, were believers. And they planted churches that were made up of believing members. And membership was open only to believers. Others could be in the church, but they could not be members unless they could confirm publicly that Christ was their Lord and Savior.

The emphasis being on the there. In other words, the emphasis on the personal heart relationship. In the 1660s, though, a number of the children of these men and women asked the following question. Here we are, they said.

We embrace the idea that Christianity is true. It is the truth. We embrace the idea that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, but we have yet to experience conversion. In other words, they affirmed, yes, Christianity is the worldview of Christianity is true.

We embrace the idea of Christian morality, but we've not yet experienced conversion. Can we participate in the membership of the church? And there was a great division among those early Puritans in New England.

Cotton Mathers family, the Mathers of Boston, disagreed radically. They said, no, church membership is for those who are born again individuals. It may be the case that some of them are not genuinely saved.

As far as that is left up to God. As far as we're concerned, though, church membership has to be based on professional faith. Excuse me, as our forebears, Congregationalist forebears believed. Solomon Stoddard, though, disagreed radically.

He argued, if a man or a woman can come and say, we would like to be members of this church, and we affirm the truth of Christianity, we affirm the morality of Christianity, and we all strive to live that way, even though we cannot affirm that Jesus has yet become our savior, then he said we should admit them to a halfway membership.

This is known as the halfway covenant in the 1660s in New England. And it would prove, ultimately, to be disastrous spiritually for the churches that embraced it. Because by the time you get Jonathan coming along, it's been at least two or three generations.

What do you do then? You've got the original founders who are all, all the original members of these churches are all professing Christians. And then you have men and women who embrace the Christian worldview.

These are their children, some of them. They embrace Christian morality, but they're not yet, they cannot say that they're actually born-again individuals. You admit them to a halfway membership. What about then their children and their children?

And soon the doors were opened to admit men and women who did well profess that Christ was their savior. They professed the truth of Christianity. They strove to live a moral lives. Solomon started to argue that if we turn them away, if we say they can't be members, they won't come to our churches.

And we want to establish here in the new world a Christian commonwealth. And therefore we need to open our doors to them. In fact, Solomon started to go even further and he argued that they should all be allowed to partake of the Lord's table.

And he was convinced the Lord's supper was a means of converting men and women. He himself had experienced in the 1650s, early 1660s, he had had an experience where the partaking of the Lord's table on one occasion had been a means of assuring him of his salvation.

It hadn't been a means of conversion. It had already been converted, but it had doubts about it. And the Lord's table had assured him of his salvation. And so he opened it even further. When Jonathan comes, he is radically in disagreement with that.

He believes the stance of the earliest Puritans who came to New England. However, it'll be nearly 20 years before he can publicly tackle the issue in his church. And we'll see what happens when he does.

Northampton’s Spiritual Decline

When he comes then, you've got a number of generations of men and women. They go to church. Formally, they're halfway members. They're even enjoying the Lord's table. The only thing they cannot do is vote for the minister.

But you've got the same minister in place. He's been there 50, he's been there 60 years at this point in time. So really, the only thing that they have, they're not enjoying that issue hasn't been exercised for all those decades.

And so it is then, you've got these men and women. Outwardly, they're upstanding citizens. Outwardly, they go to church. Church has become for them a part of a moral obligation to be there. But their heart's commitment is elsewhere.

And we'll see, I'm going to read a text in a second. What they actually, their lives revolved around was either getting the land that certain other people in the town had or keeping it. When the first settlers came to New England, they used the rivers as a way to go back into the farther reaches of New England, back into the hinterland.

And the rivers were their highways. And when they came to the area of Northampton, the first settlers, they planted the town closest to the river. And those who were first there had to build, they got huge amounts of acreage.

And they built their houses and farms back from the river. And for the earlier settlers, it was arduous, arduous work. As it was for the first settlers here in Ontario. If you ever read or have read any of the accounts of settling here in Ontario in the early 1800s, as you try to establish farms with crop rotation as they did in Europe, you had to clear the land, the boulders had to be taken out of the way, trees had to be felled, you had to pull up the tree stumps.

It was an arduous task. But after two or three generations, those, the descendants of those early settlers were wealthy. They had inherited the land that their grandparents and great-grandparents had cleared.

And they were now selling off the land to later settlers. And those later settlers had to buy the land often at exorbitant prices. And so there came to be in the town of Wilframton, like many New England towns, two groups of people.

The wealthy, who had power, financial, political power, and often church power. And those who had none of those things. The haves and the have nots. And so it grew up then that all of them went to church.

Outwardly, they all appeared to be Christians. All fine, upstanding citizens. But inwardly, in their hearts and in their homes, in the privacy of their homes, the truth about their lives was revealed for many of them.

What they were really concerned about was not the kingdom of God and the advance of that kingdom. What they were really concerned about was keeping land, keeping power, or getting land and getting power.

And not surprisingly, many of the children in New England of such parents saw through their parents' hypocrisy. Family government began to break down. And you found the children, I'm going to read a text that Edwards will describe, the children are into a variety of things that are very common to today.

Sexual immorality and drinking. One writer has said if these children had access to drugs, they would have been into them as well. Because then they looked at their parents' lives, what they saw was hypocrisy.

They didn't see men and women. They saw men and women outwardly orthodox, but their passion was not God. This is Edwards. Just after my grandfather's death, he died in 1729, two years after Edwards came, it seemed to be a time of extraordinary dullness in religion.

And for Edwards, religion is always a good term. Licentiousness for some years prevailed among the youth of the town. Many of them were addicted to night walking. They were up until all hours of the morning.

Frequenting the tavern. There was one tavern in the town. It was the back room of a house. Somebody had opened up. He got his own still in the backyard. He was making liquor and selling it over the counter in this back room of his town.

Frequenting the tavern and lewd practices were in some, by their example, exceedingly corrupted others. It was their manner very frequently to get together in conventions of both sexes for mercantility.

You need to read through some of the euphemisms, which they called frolics. What they're actually is times of sexual immorality, partying and so on. They would often spend the greater part of the night in them without any regard to order in the families they belonged to.

Indeed, family government did too much fail in the town. And then he goes on to talk about what these young people were like in church. It would become very customary in many of our young people to be indecent in their carriage at meeting.

They were indecent in their behavior in the meeting house. Everybody had to go to church. It was understood. You went to church. The meeting house could hold about twelve to fifteen hundred. There were twelve hundred adults in the town of Northampton in this period of time.

Which doubtless would not have prevailed in such a degree had it not been my grandfather was not able to observe them. During his final years of ministry, Solomon could not see what was going on at the back of the church.

They all sat at the back. They would also long prevailed in the town. Now Edwards turns his attention to the parents. They would also long prevailed in the town a spirit of contention between two parties in which they had for many years been divided, by which they maintained a jealousy one of the other and were prepared to oppose one another in all public affairs.

That's the real problem. In other texts Edwards tells us this had to do with the whole issue of money and finances and there were two groups in the town and they hated each other and they were at each other's throats.

They all had to go to church. Only a few who had no care about what anybody else thought dared not to go to church. Because you'd be a social outcast if you didn't go. It was a culture that was very, very different from the one that we live in at the beginning of the 21st century.

Edwards’s Preaching on Family and Justification

And so Edwards then finds himself, he's got two years basically to observe because he's not doing the preaching, his grandfather is. Finally he's called to be the minister in 1729 and he begins to preach in a number of areas.

He begins to preach on family government, that the parents in the town have a responsibility under God if they claim to embrace the Christian faith, to raise their children in that faith and to maintain some order in the town.

We'll touch on the way he sought to do this in his own family in a minute, or rather in the next hour. Secondly, he begins to preach on that great, great theme which George Whitfield was preaching on at the same time, justification by faith alone.

He goes back to the great theme of the Reformation. He goes back to that great theme which while one might dispute whether it lies at the heart of the New Testament, it certainly is one of the great central themes of the New Testament.

That is this, that when it comes to recommending ourselves to God, we have nothing to recommend ourselves to God. Not who we are in terms of our lineage, who our parents may have been, our grandparents may have been.

Not who we are in terms of our church attendance, or how often we go to church, or how upstanding we are in the community. Certainly not who we are in terms of our achievements in this world. We have nothing.

We are bankrupt. We come to God on the basis of one person alone, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. His person, his life, his merits, his death and his resurrection. It is through Christ alone we come to God.

We come as sinners, as those who are weak and who have nothing. And Edwards thundered home the message, we still have those sermons, thundered home the message that the men and women in that congregation, if they were expecting to be accepted by God on the basis of the fact that their grandparents were godly, puritans, or that they were fine upstanding citizens and they didn't think they really sinned, or that they gave generously to the church, or whatever and so on.

None of those things would amount to anything in that great, tremendous day when all men and women would stand before the living God and have to give an account. There are two other things though that took place.

The Revival at Northampton

Edwards would actually connect the revival intimately to this preaching on justification. There were two other things that took place. One was the death, the sudden death of two young people. One who lived in Northampton, one that lived in a nearby town.

And it sobered many of the young people in that town. They started to realize what is often forgotten by the young. And they often think, well death is something that comes only to the old. They suddenly realized that they too were in danger of going into an eternity without Christ.

And then there was the conversion of a woman. Edwards describes her, using a euphemism, as one of the greatest company keepers in the town. And she was a woman whose morality was quite questionable. A woman who never darkened the doors of that church.

Who, Edwards said, he had no idea that she had any interest in the things of God and then suddenly she was converted. Here's a woman whose moral life had been one of great immorality and suddenly God turns her around and many start to go to her and ask her, what has happened to you?

And these events, Edwards is preaching, the death of these two young people and the conversion of this woman become the means by which God brings revival to the town. Between December of 1734 and June the 1st, and Edwards knows the date exactly because he knows the date on which things start to change.

Between December 1734 and June the 1st, 1735, the Spirit of God has profound dealings with men and women in that town. Out of a town of 1 ,200 adults, there are 300 conversions in the space of six months.

That's a quarter of the town. It doesn't sound like many in the large scope of things. But in terms of many of these towns in New England that are close-knit communities, it is a tremendous upheaval in that town in which men and women are broken as the Spirit of God confronts them in the preaching of the Word and outside the preaching of the Word through the Scriptures.