Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758) Biography

Though he also wrote extensively, Jonathan Edwards is remembered mainly as one of the most powerful and persuasive Puritan preachers in all of colonial New England.

Born in East Windsor, Connecticut, Edwards grew up in a very religious atmosphere. As one of eleven children there was never any doubt what he would be when he grew up. As a young boy, he is said to have preached sermons to playmates from a makeshift pulpit he built behind his home. At the age of eleven he wrote a short paper entitled "Of Insects." In it he recorded his observations of spiders as they sailed from tree to tree, and from their behavior he drew the conclusion that everything in God's universe exists for a purpose. By twelve he had learned four different languages and wrote several other papers and scientific essays.He entered Yale College at the age of thirteen and graduated four years later as the class valedictorian. He went on to earn a master's degree in theology.

In 1727 Edwards became the assistant to his grandfather who was pastor of the chuch at Northampton, Massachusetts, one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the Puritan world. In two years Edwards became the church pastor when his grandfather died and he also began preaching as a visiting minister throughout New England. Strongly desiring a return to the simplicity and orthodoxy of the Puritan past, Edwards became one of the leaders of the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the New World in the 1730's and 1740's. In July of 1741, Edwards reach his peak with his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

The Great Awakening did not last long, however, and in 1750 Edwards was dismissed from his position after many members of the congregation had become displeased with his beliefs. Edwards then moved to Sockbridge, Massachusetts, where he converted Native Americans and wrote theological essays. In 1757 Edwards became the president of the College of new Jersey (now Princeton University), but he died shortly after taking office.

Edwards' writings remained popular even after he faded from the public. His method of reading nature as a representative of spiritual truth, for instance, survives today. His ideas survive partly because his writing style is seemingly simple yet express a complex truth and vision of human life.

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