Exercises commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover theological seminary, October 4 and 5, 1903

Preface

As the oldest Congregational school of theology in America, Andover Seminary esteemed it a duty, while she also counted it an honor, to celebrate the bicentenary of America's foremost theologian. Within her lecturerooms the system of Jonathan Edwards has been diligently studied and sympathetically expounded. Her first professor of sacred theology. Dr. Leonard Woods, is commonly represented as a mediator between the two divisions of orthodox Congregationalism in his day, yet in substance he was a vigorous advocate of the Edwardean system, and his successor, Professor Park, was even more widely known as its interpreter. If Edwardeanism no longer controls the doctrinal instruction at Andover, the fact is due to no lack of reverence, on the part of her teachers, for the power of philosophical analysis and logical construction which has made Edwards famous for all time, or for the fundamental truths which he strove in thought to apprehend, but rather to causes whose operation no philosophical or theological system of the past is able permanently to withstand.

The aim of the bicentennial celebration was not merely to honor the memory of a great Christian leader, but also to attempt a discriminating estimate of the enduring value of his work, — an attempt which the lapse of time and the subsidence of dogmatic strife have at last brought within the range of possibility. Accordingly, in addition to representatives of her own faculty, the Seminary invited scholars of widely different antecedents, from outside of New England, to participate in the proceedings. The reader of the papers here published will observe differences in point of view which will at least relieve the record of monotony, and, it is hoped, will not detract from its value.

PREFACE

The celebration began on Sunday, October fourth, with public worship in the Chapel, where a large congregation gathered to listen to the commemorative sermon by the Reverend William R. Richards, D.D., an alumnus of the Seminary, now pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York. For the public exercises on Monday afternoon a distinguished audience was assembled, including a large number of alumni and other ministers from neighboring towns, together with professors from Harvard and from Boston University. The church had been handsomely decorated for the occasion, and portraits of President and Mrs. Edwards, loaned by Miss Park, stood on either side of the pulpit. Professor Day presided, and on behalf of the Seminary extended a welcome to the guests. By way of introduction to the more formal papers, Professor Platner sketched in outline the religious conditions of New England in the time of Edwards, after which Professor Woodbridge, of Columbia University, presented a critical analysis of Edwards's work as a philosopher. At the close of this session the invited guests adjourned to Bartlet Chapel, where a reception was held and supper was served. Many took advantage of this opportunity to examine the loan exhibition, consisting of the principal editions of Edwards's works, unpublished manuscripts and letters, and other objects of historical interest.^

Another large audience assembled for the evening exercises, at which Professor Hincks presided. The first address was a sympathetic presentation of the salient features of Edwards's theology by Professor Smyth, who was a life-long student of the subject. A poem, entitled " A Witness to the Truth," was read by its author, an Andover alumnus, the Reverend Samuel V. Cole, D.D.,

' A list of the most important objects exhibited will be found in Appendix II.

PREFACE

President of Wheaton Seminary. It elicited much favorable comment. An interesting feature of the program was the reading of a congratulatory message^ from the Senate of the United Free Church College, Glasgow, which formed a suitable introduction to the closing address of the day, by Professor James Orr, D.D., of Glasgow, who spoke upon " The Influence of Edwards." The exercises concluded with a piece of ancient psalmody, sung by the congregation to the tune of St. Martins.

The memorial sermon, the poem, and the addresses of Professors Smyth and Woodbridge are here printed practically without change. Professor Orr's address is slightly enlarged. Professor Platner's address, which was not read from manuscript, will be found to vary somewhat from the form in which it was delivered. In Appendix I are printed extracts from hitherto unpublished notes by Edwards, collected by Professor Smyth in illustration of statements made in his address.

Thanks are due to Dr. Owen II. Gates for aid in correcting the proof sheets, and to Miss Mary W. Dwight for completing Professor Smyth's copy and for a careful revision of the proofs.

The sudden death of Professor Smyth lends a peculiar interest to the publication of this little book, for it contains the final labors of his pen. He had taken the deepest interest in the Edwards celebration from the beginning, and was earnestly desirous that the printed record should be not unworthy of its subject. It is fitting that the volume should forever be closely associated with Dr. Smyth, to whose memory it is affectionately dedicated. J. W. P.

Andover, May 12, 1904.

' This message, with reply, is printed in Appendix II.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Preface 5

Programme of the Celebration . . . .11

II Reception And Collation

BARTLET CHAPEL, 5.30 O'CLOCK

(For invited guests)

Exhibition of autograph and published writings of President Edwards and other objects of historical interest, loaned for the occasion.

EVENING SESSION

7.00 o'clock

Professor Edward Young Hincks, D.D., presiding.

HYMN, No. 299. " Come, we who love the Lord."

PRAYER.

ADDRESS : The Theology of Edwards.

Professor Egbert Coffin Smyth, D.D., LL.D.

HYMN, No. 14. " Before Jehovah's awful throne."

POEM. - President Samuel Valentine Cole, D.D.

Wheaton Seminary

CONGRATULATORY MESSAGE, from the Senate of the United Free Church College, Glasgow.

ADDRESS : The Influence of Edwards.

Professor James Orr, D.D., Glasgow.

HYMN, No. 663. " Let children hear the mighty deeds." BENEDICTION.

SERMON

The Rev. WILLIAM ROGERS RICHARDS, D.D.

PASTOR OF

The Brick Presbyterian Church

NEW YORK CITY

SERMON

JEREMIAH 33: 17 — " For thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel."

The words are a prophecy of Christ and his eternal Kingdom, but the people who were first comforted by them had no clear expectation of that coming Kingdom. When they were told that David should never want a man, what they could first understand, — and no doubt did understand, — was this, that the breed of men of the old Davidtype was never to run out in Israel ; that in every time of emergency and peril, when hearts were failing and knees trembling, — as in the old Philistine wars, when some Goliath was striding up and down between the camps insolently challenging any champion to appear for Israel, — in such dark days the right champion would appear ; so the prophet says, the good cause would never be left to fall to the ground for lack of him. The Lord pledges his word to this. The thing is as sure as that covenant of the day and night which cannot fail while the world stands. And really that was the best promise that could be made to a people. For the gift of such a man as David was worth more to a nation than any other kind of gift that the Providence of God has ever bestowed. All the gold of India, and all the things that gold could buy, would not compare in value with this gift of a man.

IS

What a poor little kingdom Israel was, judged by our common standards of wealth and power. There were richer nations on every side, better armed nations, more populous nations. But Israel had the man ; no other of these nations, not all of them together, could show in those days a man like David, a man fit to sit on David's throne, a man with David's love for God, and trust in God, and earnest longing for God : and now those other nations, Babylon and Nineveh and Tyre and Egypt, with all their wealth and power, are mostly buried and forgotten as if they had never been ; but David, this king of Israel ! why, more people are singing his songs today, a hundred times over, than he ever ruled when he was alive. This influence is still increasing in the world. Such a man as that was the best gift that God could make to a nation. Now the promise was that so long as the nation of Israel continued, God would continue to bless them periodically with this gift of men. Of course there were some periods of great degeneracy when such men seemed very scarce, but the supply never quite ran out. Even in the worst times, when all things were falling into chaos, always just at the crisis would appear some Elijah, or John Baptist, or other like man, firm enough to stand, if need be, alone against the world, and pull the world his way, God's way. The man was never wanting in the old days in Israel.

And the man never shall be wanting. The

i6 promise still stands in our Bible, only it has been freed from its old restriction to the nation of Israel. We have been taught to take all these promises more generously, but the promise has not been revoked. God is pledged to the world to keep up the breed of men. They may not always be Jews now ; they may not always be Greeks, or Romans, or Englishmen, or even Americans ; but there shall be such men ; the race is not to run out. Whatever the pessimists may say, the final outcome of this great world-experiment is not to be the hopeless degeneracy of manhood. Today, tomorrow, next year, — so long as the old world stands, if ever old David should come back to it again, the promise is that he shall find somewhere the man fit to sit upon his throne. We may not always see this man, for we do not know where to look for him. In times of quiet when the world is moving on its way smoothly and easily, we may often doubt his existence ; but when once more the storm breaks upon us, such times as try men's souls, there he stands, your Savonarola, Luther, Cromwell, Washington ; all down through the ages, David has not lacked his man yet.

That is the promise ; and, friends, how good a promise it is. For this manhood is God's most precious commodity : of all the things he has made this has cost the most to make, and is worth the most when made. We Christians always get some hint of the infinite costliness of manhood when we read in this book the price of our redemption, the precious blood of Jesus Christ. But even the older records of the rocks could tell a like story, for they show how lavishly the Creator has been using up whole races of his creatures in making way for man. If you are speaking of the expenditure of creative energy involved, I suppose a great mountain range is a very cheap product compared with one little child who is playing at the base of it. The whole land of Canaan had not cost so much in the making as that one man David.

And as this gift of manhood has cost more than all others, so it is worth more. Any great crisis proves it. Watch those tremendous forces of the French Revolution running out into horrible disaster, because, as Carlyle says, no Cromwell had appeared in France, no man able to control these forces. There were certain dark days in the earlier part of our own civil war, when, as someone has said, a man able to lead the army of the Potomac would have been worth to the national government in hard cash not less than a million dollars a day. For lack of such a leader the war was dragging on at that awful expenditure of wealth.

Our own age is one of great material progress, and there may be the more need to remind ourselves of this superlative value of manhood. Man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth, said the Master ; but man is always in danger of thinking that it does consist in those

i8 things, when they are over-abundant. If he had little, — poor Peter, for instance, with his one little fishing boat, — he might make up his mind to throw that little away ; but the young ruler who had great possessions was in danger of throwing himself away instead. And so, in the bewildering abundance of good things which the Creator has now granted to have and enjoy, there is always danger that we men and women may lose a proper self-respect. We ought to remember that a nation might be enriched with all such gifts beyond the dreams of avarice, and yet not be worth a single day's visit from a man like David, if there was no hope of his finding in it a man to sit upon his throne.

We must remember this in connection with all the different departments of our national life.

When a foreigner comes to visit our country and asks what we have to show him worth seeing, many of us would point with peculiar pride to our schools and colleges, and that is well. But what if it should appear that what we really meant by a school was simply the fine building that houses it, or the many books in its library, or the costly apparatus in its laboratory, or the great size of its endowment ; the material things that it possesseth .-• That would prove that we had not yet learned what a school really is. Money is not the school.

You will read of some great capitalist who has turned his pocket inside out and established a great university in our newer west ; an excellent thing for him to do. His gift creates an opportunity for the teacher, if only you can find the teacher ; it sets up a throne, if only you can find the king. But that is all that money can do. All the wealth in Wall Street could not do for a college what Dr. Arnold did for Rugby ; or what Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes, and the other members of that extraordinary literary circle, have done for Harvard ; or what General Armstrong did for Hampton. The best promise possible for an institution of learning would not be that it shall never want money, but rather that it shall never want a man. We have never been told much about the endowments and buildings of the old Academy in Athens, or of the Lyceum ; but the world will never forget the men — Plato and Aristotle. We do not hear of any endowments in that little college which grew up more than eighteen centuries ago by the shores of the Sea of Galilee ; but the world will never forget the words that fell from the lips of its head Master, the Son of Man.

It is the man who makes the college, and on the other hand the one great work of the college ought to be the making of men. And I thank God for the old schools and colleges of New England, which, whatever their faults, have cherished faithfully the traditions of a worthy manhood.

So it is also in other departments of our national life, in the active professions, and in business. It might seem at first sight, that here the amount of capital was the essential thing, the quality of manhood only a secondary consideration ; but it is not so. The life even of the business world consisteth not in the abundance of the things that it possesseth, but in the character of the men who are using the things. Given the right sort of men, and sooner or later there will be capital enough. But given the capital, you cannot be so sure that you will always find the right sort of men. The world has more capital now than it quite knows what to do with. Even at the low rate of four per cent., your savings bank sets a limit to the amount it is willing to receive from you. No lack of capital : it is waiting all about us for some one to use it. The lack is of the man who is strong enough to use it royally ; and when once he appears, the man fit to sit on the throne of a great railroad corporation, or insurance company, or mining trust, and command it and make it go, — you know how such a man is prized, how much they will give him, — ^10,000 a year, 1^25,000, $50,000. If he is man enough, he can almost name his own price.

It has been said lately that civilization is one long anxious search for the man who can carry a message to Garcia : and, we might add, for some other man who has a message worth sending to Garcia. The man is the great want in the business world.

And in the social life of every community, how we depend on the men and women of the royal type. It is they who make any society worth living in, and whose absence would make any society not worth living in. They make good society.

Money cannot make society, though it might easily destroy it. When the people had little, and lived near the natural realities ; the backwoodsman with his ax and gun and paddle ; the sailors who go down to the sea in ships and see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep ; the farmer with his horses and cattle, and first-hand knowledge of the crops and how they fare in all sorts of weather — you know what good company such people are. Their range may be narrow, but within it they are perpetually interesting.

But give these same people what we call the advantages of wealth ; let them shut themselves off from the real world by a multitude of man-made conventionalities and artifices ; unless you are careful, you will find, as Tolstoi affirms with so much passion, that you have destroyed all their living human interest. The wealth that ought to have lifted and broadened them, has really cramped and stifled them ; and all the usages of such a social world grow weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, till one might be tempted to repeat the remark of the witty French woman, that the more she saw of men the more highly she thought of dogs. That is what society often degenerates into. Oh, what need there is to remind ourselves in this age of the world that man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth ! The man himself is always what is wanted.

Now our text brings a promise from God that this perpetual want shall be perpetually supplied. If only you knew where to look for him, the man is somewhere to be found. If not in a palace up in Jerusalem, the Prince will be in a manger down in Bethlehem. God's promise shall not fail ; David shall not want a man to sit upon the throne.

I have hoped that this old scripture text might be appropriate to the theme which will make tomorrow a memorable day here, and in so many of our older institutions of learning. In the New England of two hundred years ago God had his people, a peculiar people ; and they found him still faithful to his promise, for among those early New Englanders there were never wanting men. From the very beginning the English Puritan movement had been distinguished for the honor it did to simple manhood. To a Puritan, rank and office and wealth, and all other outward accessories, sank into insignificance as compared with the human personality. Everyone knows Macaulay's description of those people, how they could look down with contempt on the great men of the earth in church and state, " being themselves noble by right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand." These were the English Puritans. Now send off a ship-load of such people into any remote and desolate portion of the earth, and you may rest assured that they will be carrying with them, in the hull of their little ship, all the constituent elements of a great and prosperous commonwealth : for the reason that they themselves are men, and fit to sit on thrones.

Let me quote the words spoken last spring in the Congregational House in Boston, concerning the library there, with its treasure of old New England books. " For those who look upon these New England fields and hills," Dr. Gordon said, " as invested for more than two hundred years with the heroic humanity of their ancestors, who see the image of kingly men and queenly women burning in the sun that lights the world today, who hear in the murmur of the brook and the sigh of the river the voices that once made glad the holy places of the Most High, and who carry into the depth of nature, and into the contemporary world of man the sense of that pathetic, heroic, majestic past, these dead books will live again."

Yes, they were kingly men and queenly women, the writers of these books, and the other founders of New England ; but among them all, or their descendants, there has not yet appeared a more kingly character than that great New Englander whose memory we shall celebrate tomorrow.

It is not for me at this service to attempt any analysis of Edwards's contributions to philosophy, or theology, or education, or the revival of the churches. Others fitter for the task will treat of these themes tomorrow. But I shall command your assent when I affirm that greater than all the wise things that

Jonathan Edwards may ever have said, and all the fine things that he may have done, was the man himself. What made that day two hundred years ago memorable was that then another man was born into the world. That was evident from the time when he began to resolve those strange youthful resolutions of his. Let me read you one or two of them : —

" Resolved so to live at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of the Gospel and of another world."

Matthew Arnold was not the first to discover that

" Tasks in hours of insight willed May be through hours of gloom fulfilled."

Again : " Resolved never to give over, nor in the least slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be."

Ah, another man had appeared !

And now after these long two hundred years, our American thought and life cannot escape the impress of that mighty personality. This celebration does not mean that all of us could profess ourselves his disciples in philosophy and theology. His teachings on the operations of human will, or of the divine justice, may seem to some of us quite as remote from our customary thought as the Ptolemaic system, or Plato's ideas. But we do all of us honor and celebrate the man. Whatever Edwards had to say, he spoke always with the royal accent : whatever he had to do, it was with the royal bearing. Watch him in the great crisis of his life, those days of bitterness and trial, when his people at Northampton turned against him, and drove him from the church and from the town ; see his patience and magnanimity and courage. You see him every inch a king.

But had ever a great man a smaller stage for the display of his greatness .■' Through most of his life pastor of a little church in the country village of Northampton ; then, for the few remaining years, a missionary at Stockbridge ministering to a few red sheep out there in the wilderness. To be sure he was called to the presidency of Princeton ; but as if to prove that such a man as he owes nothing to the dignity of office, he died before he had fairly entered upon it. He had a son whom it may be proper to speak of as President Edwards. The father needs no such official title ; Jonathan Edwards is his name, the man himself. It was a time of crisis, and the man was not wanting. God had kept his promise to his people. And so through all the celebrations of tomorrow we do well to cheer our hearts with the assurance that as it has been, so it shall be ; and that to the end of the world, in the time of sorest need there shall never be wanting a man.

" Wanted a man. " It is the great want always. A friend once asked me to preach a sermon on the theme, '• Wanted a Saint. " " Put it at your people," he said, "as an advertisement, as if it stood in the want-column in the newspaper, ' Wanted a Saint.' " It struck me as an attractive form of words ; but when I tried to plan out the sermon, at once I ran up against a difficulty. Such advertisements in our papers, for coachmen, gardeners, cooks, and so forth, are designed to encourage applications from persons who deem themselves qualified to meet the want. But if you say " Wanted a Saint," and a stranger should then appear at your door and begin to rehearse his own saintly qualifications, you would feel like locking the stable and setting a guard on the hat-rack. The real saints are not so fluent about their own saintliness. You could not advertise for a saint, with any hope that the right person would apply.

But if not as an advertisement, you can issue this as a simple statement of the facts, " Wanted a Saint ; " wanted a man of faith and character. Nothing else in this world is wanted so much ; nothing else is worth so much. The community wants him ; the Lord wants him : and the promise of our text is that this want, the world's great want, can always be supplied. By God's grace that very kind of manhood that is wanted from you or me may be had. The man who is wanted shall not be wanting, that is the promise. We must let the Lord fulfill that promise.

We are gathered here in a seat of learning, some of us in the immediate pursuit of an education. But the crown of education, the finest product of any school, is not the mere knowledge accumulated, it is the living personality developed ; it is the man, the king, a man to sit upon the throne. Young Edwards, looking forward into the future, wrote down that long list of resolutions, and then spent his life in keeping them manfully. As we still look forward into the unknown future, any of us might well take example from him and ourselves subscribe a resolution ; and we could not do better than borrow it from this ancient word of Sacred Writ : Whatever the unknown future may be, and wherever in it my lot may be ordered, I hereby resolve that, with God's help, " there shall not be wanting there a man to sit upon the throne."

RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN NEW

ENGLAND IN THE TIME OF

EDWARDS

JOHN WINTHROP PLATNER, D.D.

Professor of History

Andover Theological Seminary

It falls to my lot, by way of introduction to the subject of the day, briefly to set before you the framework in which Edwards is the picture, to sketch the surroundings within which his life was passed, and in particular to describe the state of religion in New England in his time. To have value, this must be done with reference to the life and work of Edwards himself. Consequently I shall make little effort to examine conditions which are unrelated to this central figure, but shall rather fix your attention upon those with which he himself was intimately concerned, either by reason of their influence upon him, or, more important still, by reason of his influence upon them.

It is often asserted that all men, the great included, are the products of their age. The assertion contains no doubt a measure of truth. No man, however self-suflficient, can wholly shake off the influence of those political, social or religious conditions, in the midst of which he may chance to live. But to a certain number in every age it is given to bear the grave responsibility and enjoy the immeasurable opportunity of leadership, — to exemplify in their own persons not product, but process, — to set in order the forces which shall mould the course of history, — yes, to incarnate in themselves those very forces. Such men are in a true sense creative. And as we scrutinize their character, we discover there a quality, undefinable yet unmistakable, which we call detachment, — a certain independence of spirit and action, by virtue of which they rise superior to circumstance, superior to the common limitations of time and place, and take their station among the elect of all the ages. They are not wholly emancipated from their age, but they are released from bondage to it. They are no longer among the ruled, but among the rulers.