History Book: Living for eternity

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, March 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Today, the inspiring life and untimely death of a beloved American pastor whose legacy still echoes today. WORLD’s Caleb Welde tells the story.

CALEB WELDE: At 26 years old Jonathan Edwards becomes pastor of Northampton Congregational Church in Massachusetts. It’s one of the largest, and most prestigious churches in the American colonies.

MURRY: Northampton was a town of about 200 houses, about 1000 or more people, men, women, children.

Edwards biographer Iian Murry at a 2003 pastor’s conference.

MURRY: Of course, there was only one church in the town, and everybody in Northampton literally went to church.

At 37, Edwards preaches powerfully during what will become known as the Great Awakening.

MURRY: One historian says, like a sudden bolt out of a clear blue sky, there came the Great Awakening… concern, spiritual hunger.

His preaching and writing earn him an international reputation as one of the foremost pastors and theologians of his time. He was at the pinnacle of his pastoral ministry when, in 1750, his congregation dismissed him due to a theological disagreement over communion.

Edwards argued that only professing Christians were eligible his church believed it was open to anyone.

Edwards loses his pulpit and platform. He moves with his family to the frontier town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts— about a hundred miles from the Atlantic coast.

He continues to write while leading a small mission church quietly ministering to Native Americans and frontier families.

MURRY: He was by temperament, retiring, reserved. Took exercise, horse riding, wood chopping in winter.

But then in January 1758 all of that changes.

Edwards receives a letter. It’s an invitation to serve as president of Princeton University. An even larger platform than he had in Northampton. Edwards is not interested.

NICHOLS: Everything within him wanted to say no.

Stephen Nichols is author of “Jonathan Edwards: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought.”

NICHOLS: He was very much enjoying his pastoral ministry at Stockbridge…

Audio from Ligonier Ministries.

NICHOLS: He had some book ideas he wanted to write…

Edwards decides to ask a group of fellow ministers how they think he should reply to Princeton.

NICHOLS: They say he should go.

Princeton’s mission is to train ministers. When Edwards gets the news…

NICHOLS: He literally wept in his home at Stockbridge.

But he takes it as a call from God. He and his wife make a plan for her and the rest of the family to join him in Princeton later that spring.

MURRY: And one of his daughters says that as he went out of the house and stood on the road, he turned round and he said, I commit you to God.

When Edwards gets to Princeton, he settles into an upstairs room in the president's house. Smallpox is the talk of the town and the college. Doctors say the best thing to do is to get inoculated.

NICHOLS: Edwards took it to show the students that they had nothing to fear…

But then he reacts to it. Badly. His daughter Esther who is recently widowed also becomes very sick. His throat begins swelling shut. He calls his daughter Lucy to his bedside. Later she writes down what he says.

MURRY: It seems to be the will of God that I must shortly leave you. Therefore give my kindest love to my dear wife, and as to my children you are now like to be left fatherless, which I hope will be an inducement to you to seek a father that will never fail you.

Jonathan Edwards dies on March 22nd, 1758.

His death is barely noticed.

MURRY: It’s said when he died, most of the American papers only gave him one sentence.

He’d requested a simple funeral and almost no details have survived.

MURRY: Many of his books weren't read. He left a great church for a tiny church in a corner of New England.

When Jonathan Edwards was nineteen, he wrote a number of resolutions about how he intended to live in light of God’s grace.

These included, “Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying and of the common circumstances which attend death.” He also wrote, “Resolved, that I will live as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.”

MURRY: The Bible says, What is man? And the answer it gives is this. I give it to you in Edward's words, he says, ‘Man is a leaf, a leaf driven by the wind, poor dust, a shadow and nothing. And of himself he says, he was an empty, helpless creature of small account and needing God's help in everything.

MURRY: You know, if you take eternity out of Edward's life, you could read it as a story of little success, a lot of disappointment.

NICHOLS: We shouldn't say this, but it's still something to speak of as an untimely death of Jonathan Edwards. He left a lot of things unfinished that I wish he had finished. Edwards didn't have a charmed life. Like you, his life was also touched by challenges and difficulties, but there was a theological truth he was able to hold on to. Redemption. God's salvation.

MURRY: Was it a failure? No. Edward says, I acted against all influence of worldly interest, because I greatly feared to offend God. In other words, he was living for eternity.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Caleb Welde.

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