The Portland daily press., 1889-11-06


critic. Meanwhile, Summer HOLIDAYS nav
Justly De called pleasant and readable
Dook. New York: Harper g. Brothers.
Portland: Loring, Short & Harmony
oonathan Edwards. BY Alexander V. q
Alien ID. D.; Professor in the Episcopai
Theological School, Cambridge. Mass. 1t
may appear a curious phrase of criticism
w say that the most notable trait of this
oiosraphy OF the terrible and sweet theo-
ioglan, Edwards, is its Imagination. That
is TO say, DR.. Allen has used Imagination in
It's noblest office. that of putting his own
mind so far as possible, in sympathy with
tnat OF his subject, in order to understand
and therefore pardon the horrible errors of
Edwards theology, unjust alike to God and
to man. This Christian and courteous atti-
tude of DR.. Allen is carefully taken, but the
marvel is to see him preserve it in face of the
recorded utterances of Jonathan Edwards.
steadily holding to a judicious and not I'm.
loving estimate of the character of this re-
markable genius. Edwards appears like
medieval mind astray in later century and
new continent. Early in his career, he
planned to write book which should treat
OF all movable things--a favorite task with
philosophers before the horizon of knowledge
was discovered TO be an imaginary line, ever
receding before the progress of the mind.
His denunciatory discourses abounded In
pictures of death and condemnation which
shocked every physical sense; pictures crude
or cruel as those which frightened the hearers
of monkish sermons in the Middle Ages. Yet
with these frightful utterances Is sometimes
mingled an eDraptured sweetness which may
be likened TO the tender touches that illumine
the Inferno of Dante. Strangely enough,
Jonathan Edwards was not pessimist; he
believed existence itself 10 be the highest
good and the foundation of moral excelience.
lie had no desire for the non-i,aentity and
utter rest Of Nirvana; he -ss'oke of nothing
as that which the sleeping rocks do dream
off, The t,,ought Of humiliation filed him
Wit horror; his heaven and hell were alike
the abodes of immense vitality for pleasure
or pain. The contrasts between the bright
and the dark side of Edwards thought seem
almost irreconcilable; some of his medta-
tions upon Divine excellence and love, and
the extraordinary letter in which he described
the young girl who later became his wife,
have subtle lyric sweetness which sends us
to Dante's Vita Nuoud for a comparison.
This beautiful early life was soon to grow
stern in testimony against the times. Those
were the days of Salem witchcraft, and the
church founded by the Puritan fathers
wandered in darkened desert--a selra selraq-
gid of confusion ald superstition. Then it
was that Jonathan Edwards arose to declare
In the strongest terms the omnipotence Of
God and the fraity of man-and distorted
the message so strangely that propaganda
of devil-worship would have been little diff
ferent in its conceptions. His imprecatory
sermons were dreadful, doing violence to
every instinct of the human heart. The
dismal mind of the people of New England
moved in a treadmill of mystic and insoluble
questioning; the marvel is that any remained
sane or were able to bear the gloom of life or
of DEATH 1t is not possible in the limits Of
short notice to follow the biography of
Jonathan Edwards it must suffice to call
attention to the individuality of this extraodi-
nary genius of whom il may be said that he
was the embodiment of the spirit of New
England in his times; and to give due recog
milton to DR.. Aliens liberal, thorough and
scholarly treatment Of his subject. Boston:
Houghton, Mffiin & Co; Portland: Loring.
Short 81 Harmon; Price S1.25)