of kings. Opposed to this, Arminianism might be called the faith of the people claiming the right to rule themselves. From royal absolutism came the doctrine of human depravity; with the rise of democracy came the doctrine of man's moral capacity.

Jonathan Edwards invested the deity with diabolical regal attributes in the execution of "divine justice." He made the Devil the agent of God, seducer of the children of Adam on earth and jailer of their hell forever after. Though he called the Devil "one of the greatest blockheads and fools in the world," he assigned him a rôle second only to that of God Himself from the disruption of Eden to the peopling of America with the purpose of "luring men and women away from the Gospel." And thus to him Satan was the original Pilgrim Father, the true pilot of the Mayflower.

For five years Edwards pleaded in vain against the perversity of his generation, which, while groping toward the democratic ideal, had fallen into moral laxity, economic confusion and religious indifference. To him it was the work of the Devil, who even boldly "invaded God's house and had prevailed against two revivals." And to him it was a manifestation of Arminianism which "about this time made a great noise in this part of the country.'

But the condition of affairs needed no theological definition. It was there. It was real. The Faith of the Fathers had almost lost its hold. Yonder in Boston Increase Mather in bitterness of spirit had cried: "O New England, thy glory is departing!"

Into the last days of 1734 that darkness deepened as it will before the dawn. Then Jonathan Edwards took his stand. For then it was that the young preacher of Northampton heard the challenge: "Watchman, what of the

night?" and gave answer, saying: "The morning cometh!"

And the first light was the glare of the fires of hell, rekindled round the pulpit of Jonathan Edwards and burning brightly in the skies above Northampton. It was the beacon that signalled the Great Awakening, the first all-American revival.

CHAPTER III

THE EDWARDEAN HELL

Depth of mercy, can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God His wrath forbear,—
Me the chief of sinners spare?

CHARLES WESLEY, 1708-1788.

ONATHAN EDWARDS did not ask his people, and the countless others to whom his words were

J

carried as the "message" spread, if they were saved; he sternly told them and grimly convinced them that they were not. He burned into the souls of men, women and even children the fear and horror of everlasting punishment and he justified it to them. He spoke little of heaven, he cared nothing for this world, but he certainly knew his hell.

Northampton was compelled to contemplate a boundless, plumbless sea of fire, undiminished yet unconsuming throughout eternity. Every feelingful fiber of the sinful human frame, in an unabated state of living combustion, was doomed to fry forever. This was the just desert of the "bulk of mankind," part of the divine plan to satisfy divine justice, the inescapable penalty of being born upon a planet fashioned in six days for a race whose progenitor manifested their unanimous ingratitude and rebellion in his own.

Not for one moment did Edwards spare these "sinners

in the hands of an angry God." All their ritual, all their prayer, all their charity could not take from them the predestined fate of the "bulk of mankind" inheriting the corruption and condemnation of Adam. The posterity of the gardener of Eden, that all-inclusive "public person" with whom Jehova dealt so explicitly regarding one tree in earth's first orchard, had sinned with him, had fallen with him and must share his hell.

"God aims at satisfying justice in the eternal damnation of sinners," Edwards dinned into believing ears.

"You have never loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely, and why then is God under any obligations to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper?

"Seeing you thus disregard so great a God, is it a heinous thing for God to slight you, a little, wretched, despicable creature; a worm, a mere nothing and less than nothing; a vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the Majesty of heaven and earth?

"The glory of God will be of greater consequence than the welfare of millions of souls!"

Children-some of whom went home from the services shrieking through the streets of the town by night and one of whom at the tender age of four years is written down as having been converted-children were not exempt from the great damnation.

"As innocent as children seem to be to us," Edwards said, "yet, if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, but are young vipers and are infinitely more hateful than vipers and are in a most miserable condition, as well as grown persons; and they are naturally very senseless and stupid, being born as the wild ass's colt, and need much to awaken them."