Edwards Sermon Quotes

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.

How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here?

Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul.

When indeed it is in God we live, and move, and have our being. We cannot draw a breath without his help.

When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction.

None that will come to Christ, let his condition be what it will, need to fear but that Christ will provide a place suitable for him in heaven.

We can’t be saved without being good, but ’tis not because our goodness is sufficient, or can do anything of itself. But ’tis because all whose hearts come to Christ will be good, and if men ben’t good, their hearts never will come to Christ.

Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty.

It would be a serious mistake to think of Billy Graham or any other television revivalist as a latter-day Jonathan Edwards or Charles Finney. Edwards was one of the most brilliant and creative minds ever produced by America. His contribution to aesthetic theory was almost as important as his contribution to theology. His interests were mostly academic; he spent long hours each day in his study. He did not speak to his audiences extemporaneously. He read his sermons, which were tightly knit and closely reasoned expositions of theological doctrine

To treat fiction as if it were a religious or moral sermon is about as far from the actuality of literature as it is possible to get and indeed it is, in my opinion, the purest form of intellectual barbarism.

The more spiritual successes that Edwards experienced, the more he seemed to intentionally infuse his sermons with language deemed to move a person’s emotional center—their souls—to spiritually and physically respond.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a sermon with the following outline:342 Our bad things will turn out for good (Rom 8:28), Our good things can never be taken away from us (Ps 4:6–7), and The best things are yet to come (1 Cor 2:9). If,

God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another; but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in any thing else whatsoever that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.

It has been said that D. M. Lloyd-Jones wasn’t always excited by people taking notes on his sermons. He felt that that was more appropriate to a lecture. The job of the preacher, he believed, was to make the knowledge live. Lloyd-Jones and Edwards believed preaching should aim to make an impression on the listener, and that impression is more important than “information takeaways.” I would say that it’s fine if listeners are taking notes in the first part of the sermon, but if they are doing so at the end, you are probably not reaching their affections.

A people are not made for rulers, but rulers for a people.

grace of God in bestowing this gift is most free. It was what God was under no obligation to bestow: he might have rejected fallen man, as he did the fallen angels. It

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.

The Sermon on the Mount proves that sin is a condition of our inmost being; although our sinful nature is atoned for in the cross and our failures freely forgiven, we must never willingly cultivate habits that Scripture condemns.

Sharpe had owned forty-three enslaved Black folks, but had caught religion during a sermon by a Great Awakening minister. After hearing the sermon, Edward Sharpe had decided he was against slavery. But instead of freeing the Black folks he owned and giving them a plot of land to work, he’d sold them for a profit, and bought land and started a university with the proceeds.

So that in this verse is shown our dependence on each person in the Trinity for all our good. We are dependent on Christ the Son of God, as he is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. We are dependent on the Father, who has given us Christ, and made him to be these things to us. We are dependent on the Holy Ghost, for ’tis of him that we are in Christ Jesus; ’tis the Spirit of God that gives faith in him, whereby we receive him and close with him.   DOCTRINE

These days, shame is emerging from the shadows and beginning to have its own identity. For example, if you talk about guilt to people under thirty, you often get blank stares. But if you talk about “worthless,” “failure,” or “shame,” they feel as if you have deciphered the core of their being. For them, shame is arguably the human problem. If the next generation is talking about it, that’s a good sign, in the sense that shame may soon receive the attention it deserves. Meanwhile, you won’t hear about it on the national news nor even in many Sunday sermons. It’s hard to know how to speak about the unspeakable. You don’t mention shameful things in polite conversation.

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God.” Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If you do come to Christ he will appear as a lion, in his glorious power and dominion, to defend you. All those excellencies of his in which he appears as a lion, shall be yours, and shall be employed for you, in your defense, for your safety, and to promote your glory; he will be as a lion to fight against your enemies: he that touches you, or offends you, will provoke his wrath, as he that stirs up a lion. Unless your enemies can conquer this lion, they shall not be able to destroy or hurt you; unless they are stronger than he, they shall not be able to hinder your happiness. Is. 31:4, “For thus hath the Lord spoken unto me, like as the lion, and the young lion, roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them; so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for Mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard—in the tradition of Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln’s Kentucky explained it, “Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever.” Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they “out-Calvined Calvin.

Then I read the sermon. The shocker hit when I realized that Edwards’s audience was the church! He spoke not from the street corner but from the pulpit. Not to the passersby outside but to the parishioners inside. The sinners in the hands of an angry God were the people who bore his name! This was judgment for God’s people, directed at a church filled with idolatry, apathy, and sin. I began to realize that God’s coming judgment is not so much an evangelistic tool used to frighten outsiders into the kingdom as it is a housecleaning tool used to weed out hypocrisy and call insiders back to the faith they proclaim. It starts at home. I love Edwards’s sermon now. There are a few parts I disagree with, that conflict with aspects of the biblical story we’ve observed in this book (though brilliant as all get out, he couldn’t be right all the time).4 But in the bigger picture, Edwards’s sermon is a reminder to me that I cannot slide by on the coattails of calling myself a Christian.

But, should the period ever arrive, when luxury and intemperance shall corrupt our towns, while ignorance and vice pervade the country; when the press shall become the common sewer of falsehood and slander; when talents and integrity shall be no recommendation, and open dereliction of all principle no obstacle to preferment; when we shall entrust our liberties to men with whom we should not dare to trust our property; when the chief seats of honor and responsibility in our government shall be filled by characters of whom the most malicious ingenuity can invent nothing worse than the truth; when we shall see the members of our national councils, in defiance of the laws of God and their country, throwing away their lives in defence of reputations, which, if they ever existed, had long been lost; when the slanderers of Washington and the blasphemers of our God shall be thought useful laborers in our political vineyard; when, in fine, we shall see our legislators sacrificing their senses, their reason, their oaths, and their consciences at the altar of party;—then we may say, that virtue has departed, and that the end of our liberty draweth nigh." p37

The significant thing about Edwards is the way he enters into the tradition, infuses it with his personality and makes it live. The vitality of his thought gives to its product the value of unique creation. Two qualities in him especially contribute to this result, large constructive imagination and a marvelously acute power of abstract reasoning. With the vision of the seer he looks steadily upon his world, which is the world of all time and space and existence, and sees it as a whole; God and souls are in it the great realities, and the transactions between them the great business in which all its movement is concerned.

In the conclusion of his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon, Johnathan Edwards says, "The axe is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees, that every tree that brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down, and cast into the fire." And I say "Amen." I thank God that the theological tree that produced the bitter fruit of belief in an angry, violent, and retributive God has at last been hewn down and cast into the fire. In my life the poisonous tree of angry God theology is now gone. In its place grows the tree of Life, a tree whose leaves bring healing. It's a tree that looks like it once may have been an ugly cross, but it is now beautiful and verdant, producing the fruit of eternal life. Planted by the Father himself, this tree is an everlasting reminder that I am a forgiven sinner in the hands of a loving God.

Edwards was one of the most brilliant and creative minds ever produced by America. His contribution to aesthetic theory was almost as important as his contribution to theology. His interests were mostly academic; he spent long hours each day in his study. He did not speak to his audiences extemporaneously. He read his sermons, which were tightly knit and closely reasoned expositions of theological doctrine12 Audiences may have been moved emotionally by Edwards’ language, but they were, first and foremost, required to understand it. Indeed Edwards’ fame was largely a result of a book,

How can we be persuaded to go on preaching, and learn to do so effectively? The essential secret is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions. In other words, theology is more important than methodology.1

Some have a mansion prepared for them in heaven from the foundation [of the world]; others are sent away as cursed into everlasting burnings prepared for the [devil and his angels]. Consider how miserable those must be that shall have their habitation with devils to all eternity. Devils are foul spirits; God’s great enemies. Their habitation is the blackness of darkness; a place of the utmost filthiness, abomination, darkness, disgrace and torment. O, how would you rather ten thousand times have no place of abode at all, have no being, than to have a place [with devils]! (3)

The prophet Jeremiah (chap. xxv. 3), puts the people in mind how long he had labored among them in the work of the ministry: “From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, even unto this day, that is the three and twentieth year, the word of the Lord came unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking.” I am not about to compare myself with the prophet Jeremiah; but in this respect I can say as he did, that “I have spoken the word of God to you unto the three and twentieth year, rising early and speaking.” It was three and twenty years, the 15th day of last February, since I have labored in the work of the ministry, in the relation of a pastor to this church and congregation.

I can appeal to you as the apostle does to his bearers, Gal. iv. 13, “Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you.” I have spent the prime of my life and strength in labors for your eternal welfare. You are my witnesses, that what strength I have had I have not neglected in idleness, nor laid out in prosecuting worldly schemes and managing temporal affairs, for the advancement of my outward estate, and aggrandizing myself and family; but have given myself wholly to the work of the ministry, laboring in it night and day, rising early and applying myself to this great business to which Christ appointed me.

Take heed that it be not with any of you as with Eli of old, who reproved his children but restrained them not; and that, by this means, you don’t bring the like curse on your families as he did on his. And let children obey their parents, and yield to their instructions, and submit to their orders, as they would inherit a blessing and not a curse. For we have reason to think, from many things in the word of God, that nothing has a greater tendency to bring a curse on persons in this world, and on all their temporal concerns, than an undutiful, unsubmissive, disorderly behavior in children towards their parents. 2.

But their meeting at the day of judgment will be exceeding diverse, in its manner and circumstance, from any such meetings and interviews as they have one with another in the present state.

Now they meet together in a preparatory mutable state, but then in an unchangeable state. Now sinners in the congregation meet their minister in a state wherein they are capable of a saving change, capable of being turned, through God’s blessing on the ministrations and labors of their pastor, from the power of Satan unto God; and being brought out of a state of guilt, condemnation and wrath, to a state of peace and favor with God, to the enjoyment of the privileges of his children, and a title to their eternal inheritance.

But when they shall meet together at the day of judgment, it will be far otherwise. They will not then meet in order to the use of means for the bringing to effect any such changes; for they will all meet in an unchangeable state. Sinners will be in an unchangeable state: they who then shall be under the guilt and power of sin, and have the wrath of God abiding on them, shall be beyond all remedy or possibility of change, and shall meet their ministers without any hopes of relief or remedy, or getting any good by their means. And as for the saints, they will be already perfectly delivered from all their before remaining corruption, temptation, and calamities of every kind, and set forever out of their reach; and no deliverance, no happy alteration, will remain to be accomplished in the way of the use of means of grace, under the administrations of ministers.

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They don’t only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell: John iii. 18, “He that believeth not is condemned already.

There are many mansions in God’s house because heaven is intended for various degrees of honor and blessedness. Some are designed to sit in higher places there than others; some are designed to be advanced to higher degrees of honor and glory than others are; and, therefore, there are various mansions, and some more honorable mansions and seats, in heaven than others.

But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning. Those of you that finally continue in a natural condition, that shall keep out of hell longest, will be there in a little time!

But here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor, damned, hopeless souls give for one day’s such opportunity as you now enjoy!

Our cleaving to them, and having their God for our God and their people for our people, depends on our resolution and choice; and that in two respects. 1. The firmness of resolution in using means in order to it, is the way to have means effectual. There are means appointed in order to our becoming some of the true Israel and having their God for our God; and the thorough use of these means is the way to have success; but not a slack or slighty use of them.

A choosing of their God and their people, with a full determination and with the whole soul, is the condition of an union with them. God gives every man his choice in this matter: as Orpah and Ruth had their choice, whether they would go with Naomi into the land of Israel, or stay in the land of Moab.

Don’t do as Orpah did, who, though at first she made as though she would follow Naomi, yet when she had the difficulty of it set before her went back: but say as Ruth, “I will not leave thee; but where thou goest, I will go: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Say as she said, and do as she did. Consider the excellency of their God and their Saviour, and the happiness of their people, the blessed state that they are in, and the doleful state that you are in. You

at New Haven with the valedictory. In his Sophomore year he made the acquaintance of Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding—a work which left a permanent impress on his thinking. He read it, he says, with a far higher pleasure “than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly-discovered treasure.

Of his seventy Resolutions, all written before he was twenty, the following may be taken as a specimen: it is the language of a mind as truly original as religious, and is eminently characteristic. “On the supposition that there never was to be but one individual in the world, at any one time, who was properly a complete Christian, in all respects of a right stamp, having Christianity always shining in its true lustre, and appearing excellent and lovely, from whatever part and under whatever character viewed, Resolved: To act just as I would do, if I strove with all my might to be that one, who should live in my time.” And he did so act; these resolutions were not empty, they really determined his life. Edwards

The estrangement between Edwards and his people began in 1744, in connection with a case of discipline in which a large number of the youth belonging to the leading families of the town were brought under suspicion of reading and circulating immoral books.

Finally, on June 22, 1750, the Council, convened to advise on the matter, recommended, by a vote of 10 to 9, the minority protesting, that the pastoral relations should be dissolved. The concurrent sentiment of the church was expressed by the overwhelming vote of about 200 to 20 of the male members. The next Sunday but one Edwards preached his Farewell Sermon.

and about the same time an invitation from the Commissioners in Boston of the “Society in London for Propagating the Gospel in New England and the parts adjacent” to become their missionary to the Indians, who then formed a large part of the Stockbridge settlement. After acquainting himself by a residence of several months in Stockbridge with the conditions of the work, and after receiving satisfactory assurances, in a personal interview with the Governor, with regard to the conduct of the Indian mission, he accepted both of these proposals. He had scarcely done so when he received a call, with the promise of generous support, from a church in Virginia. The

The opposition which had driven him from Northampton followed him to Stockbridge. For several years a persistent effort was made to obstruct his work, particularly his work among the Indians, and even to secure his removal. But he successfully met this opposition, won the confidence of the Indians, and greatly endeared himself to the “English.” Here, too, in the wilderness he found time and opportunity for the writing of those great treatises on the Freedom of the Will, on the End for which God created the World, on the Nature of True Virtue, and on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin, which are the principal foundation of his theological reputation. Meanwhile

Our having all of God shows the fulness of his power and grace: our having all through him shows the fulness of his merit and worthiness; and our having all in him demonstrates his fulness of beauty, love and happiness. And

So much the more men exalt themselves, so much the less will they surely be disposed to exalt God. ’Tis certainly a thing that God aims at in the disposition of things in the affair of redemption (if we allow the Scriptures to be a revelation of God’s mind), that God should appear full, and man in himself empty, that God should appear all, and man nothing.

Peter had declared his assured faith, that he was the Son of God. Now it was natural to observe, how it was not flesh and blood that had revealed it to him, but God: for if this knowledge were dependent on natural causes or means, how came it to pass that they, a company of poor fishermen, illiterate men, and persons of low education, attained to the knowledge of the truth; while the Scribes and Pharisees, men of vastly higher advantages, and greater knowledge and sagacity in other matters, remained in ignorance?

Natural men may have lively impressions on their imaginations; and we can’t determine but that the devil, who transforms himself into an angel of light, may cause imaginations of an outward beauty, or visible glory, and of sounds and speeches and other such things;

And it may be thus described: a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them thence arising. This

There arises from this sense of divine excellency of things contained in the word of God a conviction of the truth and reality of them; and that either indirectly or directly. First,

Hence was the different effect that Christ’s miracles had to convince the disciples from what they had to convince the Scribes and Pharisees. Not that they had a stronger reason, or had their reason more improved; but their reason was sanctified, and those blinding prejudices, that the Scribes and Pharisees were under, were removed by the sense they had of the excellency of Christ and his doctrine. 2.

As for instance, that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless immediately the work of the Holy Spirit.—I

The Scripture also speaks plainly of such a knowledge of the word of God as has been described, as the immediate gift of God, Psal. cxix. 18: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” What could the Psalmist mean when he begged of God to open his eyes?

Christ condemns the Jews, that they did not know that he was the Messiah, and that his doctrine was true, from an inward distinguishing taste and relish of what was divine, in Luke xii. 56, 57. He having there blamed the Jews, that though they could discern the face of the sky and of the earth, and signs of the weather, that yet they could not discern those times—or, as ’tis expressed in Matthew, the signs of those times—he adds, yea, and why even of your own selves judge ye not what is right? i.e., without extrinsic signs.

The Apostle Peter mentions it as what gave them (the apostles) good and well grounded assurance of the truth of the gospel, that they had seen the divine glory of Christ, 2 Pet. i. 16: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” The apostle has respect to that visible glory of Christ which they saw in his transfiguration: that glory was so divine, having such an ineffable appearance and semblance of divine holiness, majesty and grace, that it evidently denoted him to be a divine person.

It need not seem at all strange that sin should so blind the mind, seeing that men’s particular natural tempers and dispositions will so much blind them in secular matters; as when men’s natural temper is melancholy, jealous, fearful, proud, or the like. 3.

This is the most excellent and divine wisdom that any creature is capable of. ’Tis more excellent than any human learning; ’tis far more excellent than all the knowledge of the greatest philosophers or statesmen. Yea, the least glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ doth more exalt and ennoble the soul than all the knowledge of those that have the greatest speculative understanding in divinity without grace.

This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience.

Government is necessary to defend communities from miseries from within themselves; from the prevalence of intestine discord, mutual injustice and violence; the members of the society continually making a prey one of another, without any defence one from another.

Christ did once commit the care of your souls to me as your minister; and you know, dear children, how I have instructed you, and warned you from time to time; you know how I have often called you together for that end; and some of you, sometimes, have seemed to be affected with what I have said to you. But I am afraid it has had no saving effects as to many of you; but that you remain still in an unconverted condition, without any real saving work wrought in your souls, convincing you thoroughly of your sin and misery, causing you to see the great evil of sin, and to mourn for it, and hate it above all things, and giving you a sense of the excellency of the Lord Jesus Christ, bringing you with all your hearts to cleave to him as your Saviour, weaning your hearts from the world, and causing you to love God above all, and to delight in holiness more than in all the pleasant things of this earth; and so that I now leave you in a miserable condition, having no interest in Christ, and so under the awful displeasure and anger of God, and in danger of going down to the pit of eternal misery. But

The hope he had of seeing the blessed fruit of his labors and sufferings in the ministry, in their happiness and glory, in that great day of accounts. 4. That, in his ministry among the Corinthians, he had approved himself to his Judge, who would approve and reward his faithfulness in that day. These

There is room in heaven for a vast multitude, yea, room enough for all mankind that are or ever shall be; Luke xiv. 22, “Lord it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.” It is not with the heavenly temple as it often is with houses of public worship in this world, that they fill up and become too small and scanty for those that would meet in them, so that there is not convenient room for all. There is room enough in our heavenly Father’s house. This is partly what Christ intended in the words of the text, as is evident from the occasion of his speaking them.

And those who have well received and entertained them shall be gloriously rewarded: Matt. x. 40, 41, “He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.

but are in danger of going to hell and having their place of eternal abode fixed there. You may be encouraged by what has been said, earnestly to seek heaven; for there are many mansions there. There is room enough there. Let your case be what it will, there is suitable provision there for you; and if you come to Christ, you need not fear but that he will prepare a place for you; he’ll see to it that you shall be well accommodated in heaven. But

As they have the public society under their care and power, so they have advantage to promote the public interest every way; and if they are such rulers as have been spoken of, they are some of the greatest blessings to the public. Their influence has a tendency to promote their wealth and cause their temporal possessions and blessings to abound: and to promote virtue amongst them, and so to unite them one to another in peace and mutual benevolence, and make them happy in society, each one the instrument of his neighbor’s quietness, comfort and prosperity; and by these means to advance their reputation and honor in the world; and which is much more, to promote their spiritual and eternal happiness.

Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief of the means of grace.

Prop. I. Heaven is God’s house. An house of public worship is an house where God’s people meet from time to time to attend on God’s ordinances, and that is set apart for that and is called God’s house.

When God is worshipped in them in spirit and truth, they become the outworks of heaven and as it were its gates. As in houses of public worship here there are assemblies of Christians meeting to worship God, so in heaven there is a glorious assembly, or Church, continually worshipping God: Heb. xii. 22, 23, “But ye are come unto mount Sion, [and unto] the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, that are written in heaven.” Heaven

Ministers and their people, while their relation continues, often meet together in this world. They are wont to meet from Sabbath to Sabbath, and at other times, for the public worship of God, and administration of ordinances, and the solemn services of God’s house. And besides these meetings, they have also occasions to meet for the determining and managing their ecclesiastical affairs, for the exercise of church discipline, and the settling and adjusting those things which concern the purity and good order of public administrations.

1 Cor. iv. 5, “Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.” Then none shall be deceived concerning his own state, nor shall be any more in doubt about it. There shall be an eternal end to all the ill conceit and vain hopes of deluded hypocrites, and all the doubts and fears of sincere Christians.

All wicked men’s pains and contrivance they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, don’t secure ’em from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security, he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes won’t fail.

The wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible than theirs, as his majesty is greater. Luke xii. 4, 5, “And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” 2.

So Isaiah lxvi. 15, “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.” And so in many other places. So we read of God’s fierceness, Rev. xix. 15. There we read of “the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” The words are exceeding terrible: if it had only been said, “the wrath of God,” the words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful: but ’tis not only said so, but “the fierceness and wrath of God.

It is of vast consequence how ministers discharge their office, and conduct themselves towards their people in the work of the ministry, and in affairs appertaining to it. ’Tis also a matter of vast importance, how a people receive and entertain a faithful minister of Christ, and what improvement they make of his ministry.

If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. The

If you die unconverted, you will have the worse place in hell for having had a seat or place in God’s house in this world. As there are many mansions, places of different degrees of honor in heaven, so there are various abodes and places or degrees of torment and misery in hell; and those will have the worst place there that [dying unconverted, have had the best place in God’s house here].

And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the Kingdom of God.

As government, and strong rods for the exercise of it, are necessary to preserve public societies from dreadful and fatal calamities arising from among themselves; so no less requisite are they to defend the community from foreign enemies. As they are like the pillars of a building, so they are also like the walls and bulwarks of a city: they are under God the main strength of a people in a time of war and the chief instruments of their preservation, safety and rest.

If you should happen to settle a minister who knows nothing truly of Christ and the way of salvation by him, nothing experimentally of the nature of vital religion; alas, how will you be exposed as sheep without a shepherd!

Prop. II. There are many mansions in the house of God. By many mansions is meant many seats or places of abode.

1. That he had approved himself to his own conscience, verse 12: “For our own rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.” 2.

And nothing is more common than for men to be mistaken concerning their own state: many that are abominable to God, and the children of his wrath, think highly of themselves, as his precious saints and dear children. Yea, there is reason to think that often some that are most bold in their confidence of their safe and happy state, and think themselves not only true saints, but the most eminent saints in the congregation, are in a peculiar manner a smoke in God’s nose.

But they that evil entreat Christ’s faithful ministers, especially in that wherein they are faithful, shall be severely punished: Matt. x. 14, 15, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Tis very little worth the while for us to pursue after honor in this world, where the greatest honor is but a bubble and will soon vanish away, and death will level all. Some have more stately houses than others, and some are in higher office than others, and some are richer than others and have higher seats in the meeting-house than others; but all graves are upon a level.

Let the main thing that we prize in God’s house be, not the outward ornaments of it, or a high seat in it, but the word of God and his ordinances in it.

But Mr. Edwards delivered a sermon at New Haven in September, 1741, in which he well distinguished between the marks of a true work of God, and all false appearances of it, which was printed and spread through the nation, and was much esteemed. An anonymous answer to it was soon published at Boston, and many appeared against the work in Massachusetts; but they could not get any law made against it, as they did in Connecticut.

Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter, unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance.

And yet it was principally by means of those sufferings, that he conquered and overthrew his enemies. Christ never so effectually bruised Satan’s head, as when he bruised his heel. The weapon with which Christ warred against the devil, and obtained a most complete victory and glorious triumph over him, was the cross, the instrument and weapon with which he thought he had overthrown Christ, and brought on him shameful destruction.

Thus Christ appeared at the same time, and in the same act, as both a lion and a lamb. He appeared as a lamb in the hands of his cruel enemies; as a lamb in the paws, and between the devouring jaws of a roaring lion; yea, he was a lamb actually slain by this lion: and yet at the same time, as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” he conquers and triumphs over Satan, destroying his own devourer; as Samson did the lion that roared upon him, when he rent him as he would a kid. And in nothing has Christ appeared so much as a lion, in glorious strength destroying his enemies, as when he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter: in his greatest weakness, he was most strong; and when he suffered most from his enemies, he brought the greatest confusion on his enemies. Thus this admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies was manifest in Christ, in his offering up himself to God in his last sufferings.

And thus is the affair of our redemption ordered, that thereby we are brought to an immensely more exalted kind of union with God, and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a more free and full enjoyment of him, than we could have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So again, we being united to a divine person, as his members, can have a more intimate union and intercourse with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise could be. Christ who is a divine person, by taking on him our nature, descends from the infinite distance and height above us, and is brought nigh to us; whereby we have advantage for the full enjoyment of him. And, on the other hand, we, by being in Christ a divine person, do as it were ascend up to God, through the infinite distance, and have hereby advantage for the full enjoyment of him also.

On January 3, 1745, Brainard set aside the entire day for fasting and prayer, pleading for an outpouring of spiritual power. He claimed the promise in John 7: Have faith in me, and you will have life-giving waters flowing from deep inside you.… Then he preached repeatedly from John 7, and the unfolding year proved the most fruitful of his ministry. His interpreter, an alcoholic named Tattamy, was converted. An immediate change seemed to transform Tattamy’s life and his translating of Brainard’s sermons. Scores of Indians were saved and baptized. Brainard grew weaker, and in 1747 he died at age 29 in the home of Jonathan Edwards. But his story moved his generation—Henry Martyn, William Carey, Adoniram Judson—toward missions. His diary became one of the most powerful Christian books in early American history, containing such entries as this one: Here am I, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service and to promote Thy kingdom.

nothing can come at the heart but through the door of the understanding: and there can be no spiritual knowledge of that of which there is not first a rational knowledge. It is impossible that anyone should see the truth or excellency of any doctrine of the gospel, who knows not what that doctrine is. A man cannot see the wonderful excellency and love of Christ in doing such and such things for sinners, unless his understanding be first informed how those things were done. He cannot have a taste of the sweetness and divine excellency of such and such things contained in divinity, unless he first have a notion that there are such and such things.

Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief of the means of grace. If these fail, all other means are like to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be like to prosper and be successful.

11, 1729, Stoddard passed away, leaving the twenty-five-year-old Edwards the sole pastor of a church that boasted nearly seven hundred members. Edwards soon led a revival there that anticipated the Awakening. In 1734, and while still in his early thirties, he began to preach a lengthy sermon series on justification by faith (based on his master’s thesis at Yale), which was by now a major doctrine of the emergent evangelicals. Before he knew it, revival broke out, and hundreds of locals experienced conversion.