Northampton church. He took up mission work among the Indians in the frontier town of Stockbridge and continued to preach and write. Here he composed his great work on the Freedom of the Will. It was published in 1754, and so profound was its effect at home and abroad, especially in Scotland, where philosophic writing and Calvinistic theology were highly esteemed, that Edwards was at once recognized as one of the great thinkers of his day. After about seven years of seclusion at Stockbridge, he was called to be President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. But his election to the position was but a prelude to his death; for an epidemic of smallpox broke out shortly afterward among the students, and he felt it to be his duty to set them an example by submitting to the then little understood method of treatment by inoculation. Though every known precaution was taken to prevent fatal results, the distinguished patient died from the effects of the inoculation. His marriage. One of the most pleasing chapters of Edwards's life is that pertaining to his courtship and marriage. His own description (written when he was twenty) of the beautiful girl of thirteen, Sarah Pierpont, of New Haven, who was soon to become his bride, is illustrative of the best prose of the colonial period. It admirably shows Edwards's tendency toward mysticism and idealism, and it is clearly suggestive of the highly spiritualized sentiment. which we find so prominent in the later New England school of writers known as transcendentalists. They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of the Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him-that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it, and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her. "The Freedom of the Will." The Freedom of the Will is a masterpiece of subtle reasoning and a recognized classic in philosophical literature. Though it is not so vital to us, inasmuch as the trend of modern thought seems to be adverse to the discussion of such unsolvable theological problems, the apparent contradiction of the doctrine of the freedom of man's will with the doctrine of God's preordained plan and foreknowledge of the progress of the universe was one of profound interest to our Puritan fathers. Edwards assumed the position of the subordination of man's will to the play of circumstance, and argued for the complete ascendency of God's will. Just about a century after the publication of The Freedom of the Will, Oliver Wendell Holmes, as Professor Barrett Wendell has shown, severely satirized the whole system of logic whereby Edwards proved the soundness of his position. In "The Deacon's Masterpiece," Holmes proved that a chaise built of equal strength in all its parts would wear out all at once. The absurdity of the conclusion is evident, and yet the logic is unanswerable if you admit the premises. So it is with Edwards's Calvinistic theology; if you accept his premises, you will be forced to admit the justness of his conclusions. Holmes implies that Edwards's influence lasted just about a hundred years and then suddenly collapsed. The chaise was Calvinism, and Jonathan Edwards was the deacon in the poem. The poet ironically concludes his satire with the couplet, End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. The style of The Freedom of the Will is clear and forceful, even though the abstruseness of the subject-matter sometimes makes the thought hard to grasp. The few readers who are attracted to this philosophical treatise, readily and even enthusiastically affirm their admiration of the logical force of its thought and the clearness of its style. His Sermons: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Much has been written of Edwards's sermons and the peculiar powers of his public delivery. The theme most frequently adverted to by our historians in writing about Edwards as a preacher is that illustrated in the fearful sermon called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It is said that so vivid was the preacher's imagery and so real was the terrible punishment he portrayed, that his auditors trembled and cried out in distress even in the midst of his discourse. He was himself quiet and calm in the reading of his sermons, he almost always spoke with his manuscript before him,- but the clearness and vividness of his portrayals and the terrible sincerity of his utterances wrought his hearers into a frenzy of excitement. Another theme which Edwards occasionally dwelt upon was the goodness, mercy, and tender love of God toward sinful man, and if he excited his hearers to frenzy in his portrayal of the tortures of the doomed sinner, he also wrought them into an ecstasy of delight at the prospect of a spiritual union with a Being of such loving tenderness, marvellous beauty, and infinite mercy. He was, of course, a strict Calvinist in his theology, and he gave all the powers of his great mind to prove by logic the truth of the Calvinistic doctrines; but it must not be forgotten that he was a man of wonderful sweetness, purity, and spiritual power in his private life. In him were concentrated all of the higher ideals of his Puritan ancestors. Though his works are beyond the interest and capacity of most young readers, we may safely assume that his is the profoundest mind that expressed itself in our early literature. LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES Characteristics of the literature of the Middle Colonies. With two notable exceptions, namely, Woolman's Journal and Franklin's Autobiography, the literary productions in the Middle Colonies were rather mediocre. New York was settled by the Dutch, and so played little or no part in the early development of American literature in English, though its early history later furnished Washington Irving with a theme for his delightful burlesque called Knickerbocker's History of New York and also with material for some of his best tales and sketches. Pennsylvania and New Jersey produced a number of fairly good writers, and when Franklin began his successful publishing business, Philadelphia became the rival of Boston as the intellectual center of the colonies. William Penn, the founder of the Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, wrote some letters well worth reading as a revelation of his equable and peace-loving nature. In fact, the whole influence of Penn's colony was toward material comfort, spiritual freedom, and popular education, all of which are conducive to the development of literature and the other arts of peace. Not entirely in contrast with the Quaker spirit was the extreme utilitarian philosophy of Benjamin Franklin; for industry, frugality, prudence in business, and practical honesty are quite as distinctive of the Quaker's character as are purity, simplicity, and spirituality. But undoubtedly the Quaker spirit is |