and the doctrine of eternal damnation. His mind, acute as it was, yet worked entirely in the groove provided for it. The revolting consequences to which he was led by not running away from his premisses, never for an instant suggested to him that the premisses might conceivably be false. He accepts a belief in hell-fire, interpreted after the popular fashion, without a murmur, and deduces from it all those consequences which most theologians have evaded or covered with a judicious veil. Edwards was luckily not an eloquent man, for his sermons would in that case have been amongst the most terrible of human compositions. But if ever he warms into something like eloquence, it is when he is endeavouring to force upon the imaginations of his hearers the horrors of their position. Perhaps the best specimen of his powers in this department is a sermon which we are told produced a great effect at the time of revivals, and to which, we may as well remember, Phebe Bartlet may probably have listened. Read that sermon (vol. vii., sermon xv.) and endeavour to picture the scene of its original delivery. Imagine the congregation of rigid Calvinists, prepared by previous scenes of frenzy and convulsion, and longing for the fierce excitement which was the only break in the monotony of their laborious lives. And then imagine Edwards ascending the pulpit, with his flaccid solids and vapid fluids, and the pale drawn face, in which we can trace an equal resemblance to the stern Puritan forefathers and to the keen sallow New Englander of modern times. He gives out as his text, 'Sinners shall slide in due time,' and the title of his sermon is, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' For a full hour he dwells with unusual vehemence on the wrath of the Creator and the sufferings of the creature. His sentences, generally languid and complex, condense themselves into short, almost gasping asseverations. God is angry with the wicked; as angry with the living wicked as 'with many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell.' The devil is waiting: the fire is ready; the furnace is hot; the 'glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth to receive them.' The unconverted are walking on a rotten covering, where there are innumerable weak places, and those places not distinguishable. The flames are 'gathering and lashing about' the sinner, and all that preserves him for a moment is 'the mere arbitrary will and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.' But does not God love sinners? Hardly in a comforting sense. 'The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some other loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire;... you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.' The comparison of