EDWARDS, HENRY SUTHERLAND An English jourimlist and author, horn in Lon don, and educated in that city and in France. Ile was correspondent of the London Times at the coronation of Alexander II. of Russia (1S56) in the camp of the insurgents at Warsaw I 4'0;2 63) ; at Luxembourg (1S67) and at German army headquarters during the Franeo•Prussian War. Ile is as a journalist. po litical writer, dramatic historian, and novelist.
publientions include: The Vussiail, at and the Russians Abroad (2(1 ed. 1H791; Pri vate History of a Poli.sh Insurrection ( I s6 : The Germans in Franco (1874) : The Prim', Donn': Her History Um/ Surroundings from the Seventeenth to the Century (2 vols., ISSS); ilabioa, a novel (3 vols, Uubfim1 Daughters: A Talc of London Life, a novel ; and Personal Recollections (1900). EDWARDS, JONATHAN (the elder) (1703 5S). The most celebrated early American divine and metaphysician. Ile was born at East Wind sor, Conn.. I Is-tuber 5. 1703. He was a precocious child, and at thirteen was ready for college, and entered Yale. Here hi- mind turned most readily to the profounde• studies, and when lie graduated, in 1720. he had already arrived at those great leading principle, \\mid) formed the staple of his later thinking and constitute his chief contribution to the thought of his age. Ile Was deeply read in Locke, and probably in Leibnitz. Malebranche, Cumberland. and Iliadic son, possibly also in Berkeley. After gradua tion he was for a time tutor in his college. In 1727 he was ordained and installed colleague with his grandfather. Rev. Solomon Stoddard. in Northampton, Ma's., where he continued till dismissed in 1750. In 1734 he preached a course of sermons upon justification by faith, in which he advocated Calvinistic views in a community that had fallen largely under the influence of Arminianisin. The result was a revival in his parish, the prelude to the 'Great Awakening' of 1740 And the following years. in which Edwards was a leader. The town of Northampton was transformed, but in the country at large the value and genuineness of the revival was much questioned. and Edwards was therefore led into an elaborate defense of it in his treatise Faithful Aarrative, etc. (1736). Other works of this
period are directly or indirectly connected with the revival: Distinguishing Marks of u Work of the Spirit of God (1741); Thoughts on the Re vival of Religion (1742) and The Religious Af fections (1746), his chief work in experimental religion. He had now become a power through out New England and had acquired a well founded fame even in England.
But the regular progress of his life was to be rudely interrupted. It had been the custom under his predecessor to admit persons not of ,eandalous life. but not professing conversion, to the Lord's Table as a means of grace. Ed •ards became convinced by the experiences of the revival that this practice. ,o contrary to the original theory and practice of New England, was mischievous, and that no one ought to be admitted to membership in the church or to the communion who was not by personal profession and in 'the judgment of a rational charity' a true believer in Jesus Christ. As this position involved an appli•ation of an ecclesiastical dis cipline to which the pa•ish had long been un ac•ustomed, and as it affected personally in dividuals of great prominence and influence in the town, the position which Edwards took aroused the most violent opposition. Ile was not even allowed to explain his position in the pulpit, and was obliged to print his defense (Qualifications for Full Communion), which was read by few. In 1750 ht• was by cowl His prospects were thus apparently ruined: but in fact the period of his greatest activity, in which lie laid the fotindatiot of his enduring fame, was thus ushered in. Ile obtained an appointment as missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, which he held for the following eight years. In the quiet of this secluded spot he wrote his Freedom of the Will; his Nature of I blue; and his Original ,din. llere he wrought a work for the the traces of which are discernible to this day. And here lie continued his acquaintance with the first and principal in the line of his successors, and of the members of his 'school,' Samuel Hopkins. In 175S he reluctantly accepted the presidency of Princeton College, but after a few weeks of service was removed by death, ...March 22, 175S.