Edwards

“ Edwards sighed heavily. 'Ah, yes, Ales, true it is; but a good servant need never seek good service. We may seek far for a good farm.'
'You don't be turned off this yet. And it's my firm belief you will be keeping the farm in spite of old Pryse. God's finger is stronger than man's arm. You wait and be patient. I've not been dreaming of Evan night after night for nothing. ”

“ We will consider that matter closed and we will both forget all about it."
"Thank you, sir," replied Steve gratefully.
"But, Edwards, this seems to me a good time to tell you that—er—that your attitude toward—er—your work and toward those in authority has not been satisfactory. You have—er—impressed me as a boy with, to use a vulgar expression, a grouch. Now, get that out of your system, Edwards. No one is trying to impose on you. ”

“ The professor gazed about him. "How was it you used to say good-night, Edward? Old customs are good. It is not possible that the violin has been lost." He smiled and Edward got his instrument and played. He knew the old man's favorites; the little folk-melodies of the Rhine country, bits of love songs, mostly, around which the loving players of Germany have woven so many beautiful fancies. And in the playing Edward himself was quieted.
The light from the hall downstairs streamed out along the gravel walk, and in the glare was a man standing with arms folded and head bent forward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Edwards looks for liberty, and he finds it, not in the will, but in the motions of the body, which is universally admitted to be passive to the action of the will. He looks for liberty, and he finds it, where, by universal consent, an absolute necessity reigns; thus seeking and finding the living among the dead. It is no wonder, that he could reconcile such a liberty with the scheme of necessity. ”

“ Edwards has gone into history as a theologian of the most stalwart character. It is undeniable that he preached the most terrific doctrine ever uttered by an American leader, but this was only the logical result of the intellectual projection of his effort to make sacrifices in order to benefit humanity. As a child he sacrificed everything for health and virtue that he might have influence, and as a man he knew no other plan or purpose in life. ”

“ I expected that he would address me in the lingo which these gentlemen call French,—but he didn’t.
‘You are Mr Atherton?’
‘And you are Mr—Who?—how did you come here? Where’s my servant?’
The fellow held up his hand. As he did so, as if in accordance with a pre-arranged signal, Edwards came into the room looking excessively startled. I turned to him. ”

“ How could Edwards have been more particular? He has repeatedly and most explicitly informed us, that liberty consists in a power, or opportunity, to do as we choose; without considering how we come by our choice. If we can only do as we choose, though our choice should be produced by the most absolute and irresistible power in the universe, yet are we perfectly free in the highest conceivable sense of the word. ”

“ He laid his hand upon Edward's shoulder and fixed a penetrating gaze upon him. "Young man, my affairs can wait, but yours cannot. I have no questions to ask of yourself; you came among us and earned our gratitude. In time of trouble I stood by you. It was upon my vouching personally for your gentility that your challenge was accepted. We went upon the field together; your cause became mine. Now this; I have yet a daughter, the young woman whom you love—not a word now—she is the pride and idol of two old men. ”

“ Edwards should return home with the rest of the women, and leave the search to them. 'You will be best at home, look you! Women have no business here!' said they, unnerved by her white face and stifled sobbing. ”

“ Edwards entrained for New York, Edwards pinning his hopes to Harte & Perkins. He had less than $100 to his name when he and his wife reached the metropolis.
One hundred dollars will not carry a man and his wife very far in New York, even when both are in good health and the man can work. Ambition alone kept Edwards alive and gave him hope for the future. ”

“ By 1647, Edwards proceeds to say, he had become ‘an arch-heretique and fearfull apostate, an old wolf, and a subtile man, who goes about corrupting and venting his errors; he is often in Westminster-Hall and in the Exchange,’ making it ‘his businesse to plunder men of their faith ”

“ With the hope of becoming familiar with the leading men of the great world, he became a frequenter of the principal coffee-rooms. At one of these, he shortly became acquainted with a Captain Edwards, who, as Mr. Donaldson affirmed, was intimate with all the world, and bowed to and was known by every nobleman they met. Edwards was one of those creatures who live—heaven knows how—who are without estates and without fortune, but who appear in the resorts of fashion as its very mirrors. ”

“ If President Edwards be right, it is no wonder that the younger Edwards should so often assert, that it is no more absurd to say, that volition may be caused, than it is to say, that feeling or emotion may be caused. ”

“ Edwards saw the absurdity of saying that a thing is determined by itself; but he does not seem to have seen how insignificant is the proposition, that a thing is always as it is, and not otherwise; and hence this is the form in which he has chosen to present the great leading idea of his work on the will. And henceforth we are to understand, that the preference of the mind is always as that which appears most agreeable to the mind; or, in other words, that the preference or choice of the mind is always as the choice of the mind. ”

“ Edwards do be in the house, sir,' said the young woman, as a hint that his inquisitorial observation was unpleasant; and, after a sneer at what he called 'experimental farming,' the hint had been taken.
He had already been on to the moorlands to inspect [Pg 106] sheep and goats, and put the shepherd through the fine sieve, and had come back over newly-sown crops, or springing shoots of green ones, heedless where the hoofs of his horse might fall. Had he been lord of the land in full possession, he could scarcely have been more indifferent ”

“ For who that will closely and steadily reflect upon an action of the mind, does not perceive that it is different, in nature and in kind, from a passive impression made upon the mind from without? I do not say action, which President Edwards seems to think does not signify any thing positive, such as an action, when it is set in opposition to passion; but I say that an action itself is opposite in its nature to passion, to a produced effect. ”

“ So that when I state that William Edwards and Jonet were sent into their mother's fields to weed, and pick up stones, and scare the birds away from newly-sown lands before the boy was six years old, I cast no reflection on his mother, who had no experience of a different state of things.
Nay, for her time, she was enlightened, and being a woman with good natural feeling, she was careful they were not taxed beyond their strength, as she and her husband had been; but that children should spend their hours in play, when they were old enough to be of use, had never dawned on her imagination. ”

“ Edwards. "Until this morning it was thought to be a light attack, no danger attending it, nor any symptom of delirium. But that has all changed, and this afternoon he is slightly delirious."
"Is there—danger?" cried Blanche.
"Mr. Hill says not, my lady. Not yet, at all events. But—here he is," broke off Mrs. Edwards, as the doctor's step was heard. "He will be able to explain more of the illness to your ladyship than I can." ”

“ A wonderful man was William Edwards, entirely self-made, not only a great engineer, but a successful farmer, and an ordained Independent minister. He was wealthy, of course, but he insisted upon receiving a good income from his church, although he distributed every farthing among the poor of his own neighbourhood, and added, considerably, to the sum he distributed, from his own property. ”

“ Edwards took hold of the table in such a manner as to exert their strength to the best advantage, but found the invisible power, exercised in the opposite direction, to be quite equal to their utmost efforts. ”

“ God have mercy upon him now, when we come face to face!" His manner alarmed the general. He caught him by the arm.
"Easy now, my young friend; the poor woman's fate has unnerved you; not a step further." He led Edward to the wing-room and forced him down to the divan. "Stay until I return!" The summons without had been renewed; the general responded in person and found Marsden Thomas at the door, who gazed in amazement upon the stately form before him, and after a moment's hesitation said, stiffly:
"I have a communication to deliver to Gerald Morgan. Will you kindly summon him, general?" ”

“ Edward said a few words of congratulation and passed outside. The scene was sacred.
Then came days of practice. The eyes so long darkened must be accustomed to the light and not strained. Upon that weak vision, little by little, came back the world, the trees and flowers, the faces of husband and daughter and friends. It was a joyful season at the hall.
A little sadder, a little sterner than usual, but with his fine face flushed in sympathetic feeling, the old general came to add his congratulations. Now nothing remained but to prepare for Paris, and all was bustle. ”

“ Edwards was twenty-three years of age when he was ordained at Northampton as associate pastor with his grandfather Stoddard, then in his 84th year, and the 54th year of his pastorate. Soon after this Mr. Stoddard died and Mr. Edwards became pastor in full charge and remained for twenty-five years. He was a great student and thinker. He rose at four o'clock and spent thirteen hours a day in his study. It is worth while to follow the personal intellectual habits of the man whose descendants we are to study. ”

“ There are many new branches of science and philosophy—you have a quick mind, you are young—why not come with me and put aside the mere details of existence? There are greater truths worth knowing, Edward, than the mere truth of one's ancestry." Edward looked long and sadly into his face and shook his head.
"These mere facts," he said at length, "mean everything with me." He went to his room; there were hours of silence and then Virdow heard in the stillness of the old house the sound of Gerald's violin, for Edward's had been left in Mary's care. ”

“ Fortunately for his children's sake the widow had two rich brothers in the West Indies, and one of them, Zachary Bayly of Jamaica, took the family under his protection. Edwards had been placed at the school of William Foot, a dissenting minister of Bristol, and a good instructor, though forbidden to teach his pupil Latin and Greek; but after his father's death the boy was removed to a French boarding-school in the same city, where he learnt the French language, and, having access to a circulating library, acquired a passion for books. ”

“ She is plying her whip with might and main, and the man on the thoroughbred at her heels looks back over his shoulder into Edward's white face and smiles. Then they disappear into the green wall again and again the world is reborn on the other side.
The pace tells. One by one Edward passes the riders. The old general comes up at last. As Mary goes by, he gives what Edward supposes to be the old rebel yell of history and then they are out of the end of one arm of the Y and heading for the clump of cane. ”

“ But he has had the luck to get into the clutches of a man who keeps him straight; a fellow as good as gold, and earnest enough to make all the Edwardses in the country believe in him.”
“Lucky for Edwards; if he marries a stiffish sort of wife with the same opinions he will live and die a saint. Saurin would have made the other thing of him. ”

“ In the same easy way, President Edwards, as he imagines, demolishes the doctrine of indifference. He supposes that, according to this doctrine, the will does not choose when it does choose; and, having supposed this, he proceeds to demolish it, as if he were contending with a thousand adversaries; and yet, I will venture to affirm, that no man in his senses ever maintained such a position. The most contemptible advocate of free-agency that ever lived, has maintained nothing so absurd as that the mind ever chooses without choosing. ”

“ And Professor Allen justly adds, "He that would understand ... the significance of later New England thought, must make Edwards the first object of his study." Besides these high claims to attention, one more may be made. The greatness of Edwards's character implies a contact of his mind with permanent and the highest truth—a profound knowledge and consciousness of God. Human and therefore imperfect, colored by inherited prepossessions, and run into some perishable molds, his thought is pervaded by a spiritual insight which has an original and undying worth. ”

“ If Edwards understood the import of his own doctrine, when he reduced it to the form that a man does what he pleases when he does what he pleases, it is certainly a truism; and if this is all his famous doctrine amounts to, it can have no bearing whatever upon the question as to the cause of volition; for whether the mind be the cause of its own volitions, or whether the strongest motive always causes them, or whether they have no causes at all, it is equally and unalterably true, that every man does what he pleases when he does what he pleases. ”