The two or three last years of his life were a fitting close to his extraordinary career. Though suffering at times much physical pain, he lived in comfortable retirement, in the midst of his grandchildren and the company of friends. He retained his faculties to the last; and that genial humor, which characterized his life, never deserted him. His manners were easy and obliging; and his large benevolence diffused about him an atmosphere of unrestrained freedom and satisfaction. He looked forward to his approaching end with philosophic composure. "Death I shall submit to," he said, "with the less regret as, having seen during a long life a good deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other; and can cheerfully, with filial confidence, resign my spirit to the conduct of that great and good Parent of mankind who has so graciously protected and prospered me from my birth to the present hour. The end came the 17th of April, 1790, at the age of eighty-four years; and his body, followed by an immense throng of people, was laid to rest by that of his wife in the yard of Christ Church.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

IN considering a man's life, we should take into considera tion its historic environment. We should judge it, not by the standards of our day, but by the standards then prevailing. Only for moral obliquity must there be small allowance; for whatever may be the laxity of the times, every man has in his breast a monitor against vice.

If we study Jonathan Edwards with proper sympathy, we must pronounce his life a great life. Though his character was colored by Puritan austerity, and his religious experience involved what many believe to have been morbid emotions, there is no questioning the fact of his masterful intellect and his stainless integrity. He certainly was not, what a ferocious critic has styled him, a theological "monomaniac." There is much less reason to dissent from the judgment of another reviewer who says of him: "Remarkable for the beauty of his face and person, lordly in the easy sweep and grasp of his intellect, wonderful in his purity of soul and in his simple devotion to the truth, the world has seldom seen in finer combination all the great qualities of a godlike manhood."1

Jonathan Edwards, who was born at East Windsor, Conn., Oct. 5, 1703, was of excellent Puritan stock. His father, the Rev. Timothy Edwards, was for sixty-four years the honored pastor of the Congregational church of East Windsor; and his mother was the daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, who was pastor at Northampton, Mass., for more than fifty years, and one of the most eminent ministers of his day. From his mother, who was a woman of superior ability and excellent education, he inherited not only his delicate features and gentle 1 Bibliotheca Sacra, xxvi., 255.

disposition, but also a large measure of his intellectual force. His father, who was distinguished as a Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholar, was accustomed for many years, in addition to his regular ministerial duties, to prepare young men for college. With no mediæval prejudice against the higher education of woman, he instructed his daughters (there were no fewer than ten of them) in the same studies pursued by the young men. It was in this cultivated and studious home, under the refining influence and instruction of his older sisters, that young Edwards received his preparatory training.

In his childhood he exhibited extraordinary precocity. He was not, as sometimes happens, so absorbed in his books as to lose taste for the observation of nature. For an English correspondent of his father's, he wrote at the age of twelve years an elaborate paper upon spiders, which shows remarkable powers of observation. It is said actually to have enlarged the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Had the young author given himself to natural science, there can be no doubt that he would have stood in the foremost rank.

In 1716, when in his thirteenth year, young Edwards entered Yale College. It was the day of small things with the institution; and the president residing at a distance of forty miles, the government and discipline were chiefly in the hands of tutors. The result was, as might be expected, a good deal of idleness and disorder among the students. But such was young Edwards's thirst for knowledge that he not only refrained from the insubordination of his fellow-students, but by his scholarship and integrity retained their respect and confidence.

At the age of fourteen he read Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding;" and though it can hardly be classed as juvenile literature, he declared that in the perusal of it he enjoyed a far higher pleasure "than the most greedy miser finds, when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treasure." While proficient in every department of study, he excelled especially in mental science. He had been trained by his father to make much use of the pen in studying;