Jonathan Edwards, d. 1758

REVEREND JONATHAN EDWARDS b. October 5, 1703 d. March 22, 1758 Sometimes considered to be the best theologian America has yet produced, Jonathan Edwards devoted his life to understanding and promoting the work of God in people and the world. Most people only know the caricature of him as a fire and brimstone preacher because of his famous "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." However, he was more than that. He wrote treatises on philosophical subjects and explored human religious experience and what is now psychology. In 1727 he was called to Northampton to assist his aging grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at the church. When Stoddard died two years later, Edwards assumed full pastoral duties. Through his preaching, there arose a stirring revival in Northampton in 1724-5, which Edwards chronicled in A Faithful Narrative of Surprising Conversions, which became a veritable handbook for revivals throughout New England, and helped to set the stage and charge the atmosphere for the Great Awakening of the early 1740s. Despite his successes in Northampton however, Edwards' relationship with his congregation was tenuous. He was dismissed from his duties in 1750. In 1758, he accepted a position as the second president of the newly founded Princeton University in New Jersey. Edwards arrived in New Jersey during a smallpox epidemic, and because of his scientific curiosity decided to get innoculated, a practice not widely accepted at the time. Complications set in and he died before he could be reunited with his wife. Edwards is buried in New Jersey, but a late 19th century monument in the Bridge Street Cemetery acknowledges and honors his memory.

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