THE INDIANS AT STOCKBRIDGE.

279

task for which he had no special fitness. His duty required him, in addition to preaching twice on Sunday to his white congregation, to preach one sermon to the Indians through an interpreter. How he performed this function may be seen in the plan of one of his sermons, prepared expressly for the purpose. It shows an effort at adaptation of statement, but one can hardly think it was successful. The minute divisions and sub-divisions still remind us of the author of the Freedom of the Will. Edwards, however, may have gained the confidence and love of his Indian auditors by his untiring and disinterested labors in their behalf. In this, too, he was assisted by his family, of whom he speaks in one of his letters as being greatly liked by the Indians, and more particularly his wife. The moment when he arrived at Stockbridge was one of great confusion in Indian affairs. There was no lack of money to carry on the work among them, but on the part of some of the white settlers there was a disposition to secure the money for themselves, and leave the Indian to his own devices. The story of Edwards' relations with the Indians reads like an extract from a modern newspaper, detailing the conflict between the enemies and friends of this unfortunate people; private avarice diverting funds from their appointed course, while an honest, incorruptible man refuses to make himself a party to the trans

1 Cf. Grossart, Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Edwards, p. 191.

action. Edwards was an evil genius to those who were using the Indians for their private emolument. Among these was a member of a certain prominent family in the colony, who had done what he could to prevent Edwards' call to Stockbridge. The account of Edwards' connection with this family suggests some bitter feud, which is left unexplained. When Edwards first proposed to preach against Arminianism in 1734, it was from another member of the same family that he met with strenuous opposition to his project. Still other representatives of this family, residing in or near Northampton, had abetted the disaffection which led to his dismissal. In Stockbridge he was again confronted with the same hostility. Edwards' fortunes recall those of Athanasius, who seemed to arouse against himself a certain malignant hostility, and apparently for no other reason than his unflinching integrity.

Edwards would not be called a practical man. But no man of affairs could have been better fitted than he was to detect the avariciousness which crippled the Indian mission, and to follow it through all its disguises. He had not studied in vain the tortuous ways of the Arminians in the field of theology. The man who had devoted a volume to exposing the misrepresentations of Williams, or followed up in elaborate letters the inaccurate statement of Rector Clap, had learned how to deal with any adversary, whether in the sphere of ecclesiastical controversy or of practical

THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

281

life. When it came to showing up the true state of Indian affairs, there was no one who could stand in comparison with him. In this case it was no ecclesiastical council to whom his appeal was carried, but sensible men devoted to a Christian purpose, who only asked for the truth. He was sustained by those to whom his long correspondence was directed. For two years or more he carried on the hard fight, till he was rewarded by seeing the man who was the chief source of the trouble abandon Stockbridge, and leave the field a free one for the friends of truth and righteousness. But in the mean time the Indians had suffered from this struggle over their welfare. Pulled about as they were between contending factions, realizing but little good from the efforts in their behalf, - from this and from other causes, they ceased to regard Stockbridge as their reserve. The peace which had come to Edwards was little more than a deeper solitude.

II.

THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

EDWARDS was now at leisure to take up some larger work than any which he had hitherto attempted. At this time, also, he seems to have reverted to the speculations which had interested him when he was a boy in college writing his Notes

upon the Mind. But the gulf of more than a quarter of a century lay between him and that early dream, so suddenly and strangely relinquished, of interpreting the universe in accordance with the absolute reason. Meantime his thoughts had been running so long in the grooves of a religious controversy which was still unfinished, that he could not escape the fascinations which it offered, the temptation to make some final and permanent effort for the maintenance of the Calvinistic theology. So far as he reverted to his early speculations, it seems to have been mainly for the purpose of laying a deeper basis for the argument against Arminianism.

Hitherto he had assaulted the foe chiefly on religious grounds. But it had long been apparent to him that the hinge of the whole controversy was the speculative issue regarding the freedom of the will. Out of the Arminian doctrine that the will was free, in the sense of possessing a selfdetermining power, grew, as he thought, the arrogant disposition to despise the Calvinistic notions of God's sovereignty and moral government, the contempt for "the doctrines of grace," the dislike to experimental religion, the cultivation of a morality which read out the divine existence from the sphere of human interests. Everything vital was at stake in the doctrine of the human will. So strongly was he convinced of this that in his most impressive manner he declared himself ready to admit, that if the Arminians could demonstrate

A LITERARY SENSATION.

283

the self-determining power of the will, they had an impregnable fortress against every Christian doctrine which he held most dear. To the task, then, of demolishing this stronghold he devoted himself with the momentum of thought, and energy, and indignation which had been gathering for many years. So intense was the spirit with which he labored that in four months he finished the composition of the work on which, more than on any other of his writings, his world-wide reputation has rested, —a work which produced so deep an impression that it still continues to be spoken of as "the one large contribution which America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the world."

The treatise on the Will was published in 1754, and may be regarded as one of the literary sensations of the last century. It was more than that, —it was, to a large part of the religious world, a veritable shock, staggering alike to the reason and the moral sense. The age was accustomed to similar views from infidels and free-thinkers such as Hobbes, and Collins, and Hume were reputed to be. There were others, too, calling themselves Christians, such as Hartley, and Tucker, and Priestley, who denied the freedom of the will, but without awakening the indignation which was caused by Edwards' assertion of the same principle. For here was one who rose up in the name of religion and morality, whose high character was acknowledged by all, whose genius was indisputable, whose