Utumishi Blog

Jonathan Edwards was born to Timothy & Esther Edwards in 1703 and died aged 54 in 1758. Timothy (his father) was a pastor in East Windsor, Connecticut (then a British colony).

Edwards was converted while in college in 1721. He writes in his ‘Personal Narrative’ of how he felt a new sense of things especially after reading the words of 1 Tim. 1:17 “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour & glory for ever and ever, Amen.”

“From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him… The appearance of every thing was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything… Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart had vent.”

After college in August of 1722, Edwards began a regular preaching ministry in New York. He loved writing since his school days and his writing would cover a variety of topics with titles such as ‘Of Rainbows’ ‘Of Insects’ ‘Of Atoms’ e.t.c. to which he gave very close attention. But for the next 12 months, his interests changed. This was evident when he wrote his ‘Resolutions’ where he first acknowledges that he’s unable to do anything without God’s help. But one notable resolution was ‘I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, That I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to an old age.’ He also writes of how there was this growing desire for holiness.

Later on, in 1724, Edwards took up tutorship at Yale. His subject of interest was natural sciences, an interest that had been stimulated by Isaac Newton and William Whiston. Edwards also worked in the library, and from his religious catalogue, the names that predominated it are those of old authors of Reformed & Puritan persuasion more than his contemporaries. They included Calvin, Perkins, Van Mastricht, Sibbes, Manton, Flavel, Owen and Charnnock.

In August 1726, the church of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at Northampton, New England, invited him to come with a view to his appointment of assistant minister. Preaching was to be his life-work and for next twenty-three years he was to be ‘Mr. Edwards of Northampton’.

After arriving in Northampton, Edwards later wrote

“The gospel has seemed to me the richest treasure; the treasure that I have most desired, and longed that it might dwell richly in me.”

His convictions grew and developed as a result of his heartfelt awareness of the power and desert of sin. Men must be saved by sovereign mercy or not at all, and the more he saw of this way of salvation – God giving grace to those who had no claim or right – the more was his own dependence on it. His convictions would later be heard beyond Northampton when at the age of 28, he was invited to give a Public Lecture in Boston on July 8, 1731.

In the later part of December 1734, using Edwards’ words:

“the Spirit begun extraordinarily to set in and there were a number conversions. There was a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world in all parts of the town and among persons of all degrees and all ages.”

This was the beginning of the revival. In preaching, there was a new degree of earnestness. Their understanding of what was required of a preacher was different, they knew their purpose was not to induce regeneration in the hearts of the hearers. The work of giving new life to the spiritually dead is solely the act of the Spirit of God. None can enter the kingdom of God without first being born from above.

But they also believed that it was God’s usual way & manner, in bestowing grace, to work in sinners prior to their regeneration in order to reveal their false security and to bring them to conscious emptiness and need.

In the words of Robert Bolton:

“A sinner must feel himself misery, before he will go about to find remedy; be sick before he will seek a physician; be in prison before he will seek a pardon. He must be cast down, confounded, condemned, a cast away, and lost in himself, before he will look about for a Saviour.”

The preacher’s work then comes in: thoughtless, worldly hearers have to be addressed as Paul addressed Felix (Acts 24:25):

“The pastor’s work is not only to exhort men to a voluntary examination of themselves, but also by the sword of the Spirit, he must labour to open the apostums (festering sores or abscesses) of proud sinners, discovering unto them as occasion serves, their wickedness, and denouncing the wrath of God against them, if possibly the Lord shall give them repentance, as he did to the hearers of Peter, Acts 2:37.” (Edwards, quoted by Murray p. 129)

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