An excerpt from Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God preached by Jonathan Edwards July 8, 1741:
"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 more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night, that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep."
In other words, God hates you, you filthy maggots, you!
The revival you remarked on was a small part of the "Great Awakening" sparked by the preaching of the English minister George Whitefield who toured the American colonies beginning in 1740. From what I've read there was in Edward's church a period of frenzied fearful interest in preparing for the afterlife followed by a long lull of inactivity. From 1744 to 1748, there were no candidates for membership to his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. The suicide of a prominent church member awakened his congregation from whatever fascination with his brand of hellfire that still remained. Edwards attempted to rebuke the rebellious congregants from the pulpit - a Puritan tradition. He was unsuccessful and the same congregation which had "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" preached at them in 1741 dismissed him in 1750. He didn't find another pulpit and became a missionary to Indians at Stockbridge in western Massachusetts. He spent most of his time there engaged in scholarly writing which helped him get an appointment as president of what eventually became Princeton University. He died in 1758. |
