Faith: A Kinder and Gentler Jonathan Edwards

When you hear the name Jonathan Edwards, what do you think of?

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

The other day I was web surfing and came across the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.

Apparently, Yale has become the repository of the written materials of Jonathan Edwards.

One very interesting part of the web site is an online exhibit of Billy Graham preaching a variation on Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God during the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade.

One wonders could a sermon like that be preached today and how different would it sound and read?

As you might expect the web site also has information about Edwards beyond his religious writings.

Perhaps most moving was his reflections about his wife in On Sarah Pierpont.

Excerpt:

She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind; especially after those times in which this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about, singing sweetly, from place to [place]; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, and to wander in the fields and on the mountains, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.