professional scholarly organization—to which the author has the honor to belong—assigned to him, without his knowledge or consent, the duty of preparing an essay upon Jonathan Edwards for the May meeting of 1898. The study then begun led to a search for the facts regarding his family, and when it came to light that one of Jonathan Edwards' descendants presided over the New York Prison Commission when it employed Mr. Dugdale to make a study of the Jukes, the appropriateness of the contrast was more than ever apparent.

In this study the sources of information are the various genealogies of families in which the descendants of Mr. Edwards play a part, various town histories and church and college publications, but chiefly the biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias in which the records of the men of the family are chronicled. It would be impossible to follow out the positions occupied by the various members but for the pride they all feel in recording the fact that they are descendants of Jonathan Edwards. A good illustration of this may be had in the current announcements of the marvelously popular novel, "Richard Carvel," in which it is always emphasized that Mr. Winston Churchill, the author, is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.

Only two Americans established a considerable and permanent reputation in the world of European thought prior to the present century,—Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736, Dr. Isaac Watts published in England Mr. Edwards' account of the beginning of the great awakening in the Connecticut valley. Here more than a century and a half ago, when the colonies were small, their future unsuspected and the ability of their leaders unrecognized, Jonathan Edwards "erected the standard of Orthodoxy for enlightened Protestant Europe." Who can estimate the eloquence of that simple fact? Almost everything of his which was published in the colonies was speedily republished in England. Of what other American philosopher and theologian has this been true? Here are a few of the tributes to Mr. Edwards:

Daniel Webster: "The Freedom of the Will" by Mr. Edwards is the greatest achievement of the human intellect.

Dr. Chalmers: The greatest of theologians.

Robert Hall: He was the greatest of the sons of men.

Dugald Stewart: Edwards on the Will never was answered and never will be answered.

Encyclopaedia: One of the greatest metaphysicians of his age.

Edinburgh Review: One of the acutest and most powerful of reasoners.

London Quarterly Review: His gigantic specimen of theological argument is as near to perfection as we may expect any human composition to approach. He unites the sharpness of the scimetar and the strength of the battle-axe.

Westminster Review: From the days of Plato there has been no life of more simple and imposing grandeur than that of Jonathan Edwards.

President McCosh, of Princeton: The greatest thinker that America has produced.

Lyman Beecher: A prince among preachers. In our day there is no man who comes within a thousand miles of him.

Griswold's Prose Writers: The first man of the world during the second quarter of the eighteenth century.

Hollister's History of Connecticut: The most gifted man of the eighteenth century, perhaps the most profound thinker in the world.

Moses Coit Tyler: The most original and acute thinker yet produced in America.

This is the man whose intellectual life has thrilled in the mental activity of more than 1,400 men and women of the past century and a half, and which has not lost its virtue or its power in all these years.

England and Scotland are not wont to sit at our feet even in this day, and yet they sat at the feet of Jonathan Edwards as in the presence of a master when he was a mere home missionary, living among the Indians, to whom he preached every Lord's day.

The birth of fame is always an interesting study. It is easy to play the part of a rocket if one can sizzle, and flash, and rise suddenly in darkness, but to take one's place among luminaries and shine with permanent brilliancy is so rare an experience as to present a fascinating study.

Jonathan Edwards was twenty-eight years of age, had been the pastor of a church on the frontier, as Northampton was, for four years without any notable experience, when he was invited to preach the annual sermon before the association of ministers at Boston. Never since that day have Boston and Harvard been more thoroughly the seat of culture and of intellectual power than then. It was a remarkable event for a young man of twenty-eight to be invited to come from the Western limit of civilization and preach the annual sermon before the philosophical, theological, and scholastic masters of the East. This sermon was so powerful that the association published it. This was his first appearance in print. So profoundly moved by this effort were the churches of New England that the clergymen generally gave public thanks to the Head of the Church for raising up so great a teacher and preacher. Thus was born the fame of Jonathan Edwards.

It is nearly 170 years since then. Science and invention, enterprise and ambition have done great things for America and for Americans. We have mighty universities, libraries, and laboratories, but we have no man who thinks more clearly, writes more logically, speaks more vigorously than did Jonathan Edwards, and we have never had such a combination of spirit and power in any other American. This mastery is revealing itself in various ways in hundreds of his descendants to-day, and it has never ceased to do it since his blood gave tonic to the thought and character of his children and his children's children.

CHAPTER III

THE INHERITANCE AND TRAINING OF MR. EDWARDS

No man can have the intellectual power, nobility of character, and personal grandeur of Jonathan Edwards and transmit it to his children's children for a century and a half who has not himself had a great inheritance. The whole teaching of the culture of animals and plants leaves no room to question the persistency of character, and this is so grandly exemplified in the descendants of Mr. Edwards that it is interesting to see what inheritances were focused in him.

It is not surprising to find that the ancestors of Mr. Edwards were cradled in the intellectual literary activities of the days of Queen Elizabeth. The family is of Welsh origin and can be traced as far as 1282, when Edward, the conquerer, appeared. His great-great-grandfather, Richard Edwards, who went from Wales to London about 1580, was a clergyman in the Elizabethan period. Those were days which provided tonic for the keenest spirits and brightest minds and professional men profited most from the influence of Spencer, Bacon, and Shakespeare.

Among the first men to come to the new colonies in New England was William, a son of this clergyman, born about 1620, who came to Hartford, where his son Richard, born 1647, the grandfather of Jonathan, was an eminently prosperous merchant. Richard was an only son. The father of Jonathan, Timothy Edwards, was an only son in a family of seven. Aristocracy was at its height in the household of the merchants of Hartford in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Harvard was America's only college, and it was a great event for a young man to go from Hartford to Harvard, but this Timothy Edwards did, and he took all attainable honors, graduating in 1661, taking the degrees of A.B. and A.M. the same day, "an uncommon mark of respect paid extraordinary proficiency in learning." This brilliant graduate of Harvard was soon settled over the church at East Windsor, Conn., where he remained sixty-five years as pastor.

Who can estimate the inheritance which comes to a child of such a pastor who had been born in a merchant's home. In the four generations which stood behind Jonathan Edwards were two merchants