Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was a colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian"[1]. He is known as one of the greatest and most profound of American theologians and revivalists. His work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Calvinist theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. His famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," emphasized the just wrath of God against sin and contrasted it with the provision of God for salvation; the intensity of his preaching sometimes resulted in members of the audience fainting, swooning, and other more obtrusive reactions. The swooning and other behaviors in his audience caught him up in a controversy over "bodily effects" of the Holy Spirit's presence.

In his ministry Edwards was blessed by having the lovely Sarah Pierrepont for a wife. Sarah saw it her spiritual duty to keep her home peaceful and pleasant so Jonathan could devote the maximum amount of time to his studies. That she was able to do this with eleven children is certainly a testimony to Sarah's qualities. Often, at the end of a day's studies, Jonathan and Sarah would ride horseback through the nearby woods and fields; Jonathan could freely share with Sarah all the spiritual riches he had mined in his studies that day.

When the evangelist George Whitefield was in the Edwards’ home, he was impressed by their obvious happiness and wrote: "Felt great satisfaction in being at the house of Mr. Edwards. A sweeter couple I have not yet seen. Their children were not dressed in silks and satins, but plain, as become the children of those who, in all things, ought to be examples of Christian simplicity. Mrs. Edwards is adorned with a meek and quiet spirit; she talked solidly of the things of God, and seemed to be such a helpmeet of her husband, that she caused me to renew those prayers, which, for some months, I have put to God, that He would be pleased to send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife."

Jonathan and Sarah were married 31 years. When Jonathan died in 1758, Sarah was still in Stockbridge preparing for the move to New Jersey. Edwards' last words were, "Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever."

In 1900, A. E. Winship studied what happened to 1,400 descendants of Jonathan and Sarah by the year 1900. He found they included 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 295 college graduates, 100 lawyers and a dean of a law school, 30 judges, 66 physicians and a dean of a medical school, and 80 holders of public office, including three US Senators, mayors of three large cities, governors of three states, a Vice-President of the United States (Aaron Burr), and a controller of the United States Treasury, 75 army and navy officers, 100 preachers and missionaries with others on mission boards, and 60 authors of prominence whom had written over 135 books and edited eighteen journals and periodicals. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards were also ancestors of the First Lady Edith Roosevelt, the writer O. Henry, the publisher Frank Nelson Doubleday and the writer Robert Lowell.

'The memory of the just is blessed' (Prov. 10:7)."