The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-09-21
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY


thIy, speaking of the theology prevalent
in New England in the days of Hopkins
and Edwards, says
"The preaching of those times was an
mated by an unhinching consistency
which never shrank from carrying an
idea to its remotest logical verge. The
sufferincs of the lost were not kept from
view, but proclaimed with terrible power.
DIR. Hol kius DO dly asserts, that "all the
use which God will have for them is TO
suffer; this is all the end they can answer;
therefore all their faculties, and their whole
capacities, will be employed and used for
this end. 49,.
The body can by omnipotence be made
capable of suffering the greatest imagin-
able pain, without producing dissolution,
or abating the least degree oflife or sensi-
bility. :. One way in which God will
show his power in the punishment of the
wicked will be in Strengthening and up
holding their bodies and souls in torments
which otherwise would be intolorable."
The sermons preached by President
Edwards on this subject are SO terrific in
their refined poetry of torture, that very
few persons of quick sensibility could
read them through without agony; and it
is related, that, when, in those calm and
tender tones which never rose to passion
ate enunciation, he read these discourses,
the house was often filled with shr!eks
and wailings, and that a brother minister
once laid hold of his skirts, exclaiming,
in an involuntary agony, ooh! Mr.. Ed
wards! Mr.. Edwards is 10. God q God
of mercv?"
If we add to this statement the fact,
that it was always proposed to every in
curing soul, as an evidence of regenera-
ton, that it should truly and heartily ac-
cept all the ways of God thus declared
right and lovely, and from the heart sub
nit to Him as the only just and good, it
will be seen what materials of tremond-
Gus internal conflict and agitation were
sill the while working in every BOSOM
Almost all the histories ofrelIgious expo
rience of those days relate times Of oppo-
sition to God and fierce rebellion, express
ed in language that appals the very soul,
followed at length by mysterious ele-
vations of faith and reactions of confding
love, the result of divine interposition
which carried the soul far above the rcgi-
on of the intellect, into that Of direct spir-
itual intuition.
The piety which grew up under such a
system was, of necessity, energetic, it
was the uprousing of the whole energy Of
the human soul, pierced and wrenched
and probed from her lowest depths TO her
topmost heights with every awful life
force possible to existence. He whose
faith in God came clelr through these
terrible tests would be sure never to know
greater ones. He might certainly cha
lenge earth or heaven, things present OF
things to come, to swerve him from this
grand allegiance.
But it is to be conceded, that these sys
TENS, so admirable in relation to the ener
oy, earnestness, and acuteness of theil
authors, when received as absolute truth
and as basis of actual life, had, on minds
of certain class, the effect Of slow poi
son, produc mr. life-habits of morbid &C
ton very different from any which eve1
followed the simple reading of the Bible
They differ from the New Testament a
the living embrace of friend does from
his lifeless body, mapped out under th'
knife of the anatomical dcmonstrator;-
every nerve and muscle is there, but to I
sensitive spirit there is the very chill 0
death in the analysis.
All systems that deal with the infnit'
are, besides, exposed to dagger from
small, unsupported admixtures Of human
error, which become deadly when carried
to such vast results. The smallest specl
of earth's dust, in the focus of an infinite
lens. appears magnified among the heav
enly orbs as frightful monster.
THIS it happened, that while strong
spirits walked, palm-crowned with victo
rious hymns, along these sublime paths
feebler and more sensitive ones lay along
the track, bleeding away in lifelong de
spair. Fearful to them were the shadows
that lay over the cradle and tbs grave
The mother clasped her babe to her DO
som, and looked with shuddering to tn
awful coming trial of free agency, will
lis terrible responsibilities and risks, anC