Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-09
heralded through these northern provinces

heralded through these northern provinces. | He appeared in Boston, preached to thou sands in the churches and on the Common. l Came to Northampton, passed on as a flaming meteor through Hartford, New Haven and other towns to, New York and New Jersey. The smoul- dering embers of Edwards first work were again famed into flame and new fires were kindled in one hundred aroused, the people were stirred, every where interest in religion was awakened.
 Good was accomplished, but as is so often
 the case with movements inaugurated and
 conducted through human agencies, the
 good was mixed with the bad. The zeal of Whitfield was an untempered zeal. He aroused the feelings of men and blinded their judgments. He drew around him and after him men who were less prudent than himself. Emotions drowned reason. The sensibilities overpowered sense. Peo- pie were seized with delusions and illu- sions. False standards of conversion were instituted, ssbodily effects' of the
 most appalling character multiplied. Party lines were drawn. The unconverted among both laymen and ministers were
 pointed out. The converted and the uncon-
 verted were put into separate classes. Churches and ministers, as well as the
 people, began to take sides either for against the revival. The "new lights" and the "old lights" appeared in the hori-
 zon of the religious world. Laymen began to preach and to exhort without authority
 either from churches or associations. Min
 isters abandoned their parishes and fol- lowed the original Whitfield or started out as new Whitfelds into towns and parishes of the established order. The thew ights'' seemed more brilliant than the ''old lights;" they kindled fires that glowed when they were present and smoked when they had departed.
 Edwards was in the midst of this awakening and was the staunch friend of the revival, though the foe of the extrav- agances that followed in it's wake "Over- doing, says Baxter, is the devils way of undoing." Edwards opposed the overdo- ing, sought to control the larger work as he had controlled in measure the mar rower work at Northampton aud defended the movement against the combined as- saults of many ministers and churches. It was in his own parish at Northampton that he encountered the greatest opposition and experienced the bitterest disappo1nt- ment. He was opposed to the practice of the church in admitting unconverted persons force change. He also denounced an obscene book that had been freely circu 1 lated in the parish and his de- nunciations fell upon "almost every | family in the church of any considera- ! tion." The people became indignant and l demanded his dismissal. A council was
 called and by majority of one the rela-
 tion was dissolved. The town meeting
 voted that he "should not again be per 1 mitted to enter the pulpit of the church ! in Northampton" He was "turned adrift
 at the end of twenty three years of service,
 and at the age of forty seven with large
 family of children and no means of sup
 port" He went forth, not knowing
 whither to turn, the same strong, truth
 ful, digni6ed man he had been through
 the whole controversy. The following
 year, 1751, he accepted the position of
 missionary to the Indians and was located
 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he
 remained for six years, devoting much ot
 his time to literary work. It was in the
 forced seclusion of this frontier Indian
 town that he wrote his great work on
 s'The Freedom of the Will' and other
 books of an apologetic and controversial character by which he is best known 1T
 the world of letters.
 From Stockbridge he removed in Janu
 ary, 1758, to New Jersey to assume tht duties of president of Princeton college
 where he died on the 22d of March, in tn,
 same year, at the age of ffty-fve. Thu
 ended the earthly career of man whos' Influence in New England can never b.
 justly measured. Dr. Robert Hall spok' of him "as the greatest of the sons O. men," To many this praise seems unwar ranted, yet when we regard him in tn :, light of his sincere, candid, earnest, cul : tured, self-controlled, triumphant man hood the praise is well-merited. His in terest in religion was intense; his conduc in the midst of most exciting controversie was beyond reproach. His theology wa 5 hard, his distinctions subtle, his languag
 positive. We may censure his methods tism, but if we know the man and under
 stand his work in behalf of evangelica : Christianity we cannot withhold the mos - profound admiration. He is the founde 5 of school of divines that shaped the Ne1
 England theology of a later day, and h , made impossible the continuance of Il state church in Connecticut.