legal principle in religion, that Edwards can speak of the doctrine as "unfashionable." The tendency of the age was to find more power in the natural constitution of man than he was willing to allow. Historically, however, it is in just this emphasis on the inner experience of the light and life of God in the heart that Edwards makes the transition from the older Calvinism to the more liberal theology of our own day. The manuscript of this sermon is more than usually full of erasures and insertions, making it almost impossible to read, but suggesting something of the labor and care expended on its composition. It is written on twenty-six pages of the size of the facsimile in this volume, the last page containing only a line and a half. But the printed sermon is more fully elaborated. RUTH'S RESOLUTION 45. =Ruth's Resolution.= This sermon was one of five "Discourses on Various Important Subjects, Nearly concerning the great Affair of the Soul's Eternal Salvation: viz. I. Justification by Faith Alone. II. Pressing into the Kingdom of God. III. Ruth's Resolution. IV. The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners. V. The Excellency of Jesus Christ. Delivered in Northampton, chiefly in the time of the late wonderful pouring out of the Spirit of God there. By Jonathan Edwards A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. Deut. iv. 8 [9]--Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. Boston: Printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green, in Queen Street over against the Prison. MDCCXXXVIII." The first four of these discourses were preached during the revival of 1734-1735 and were selected by the desire of the people as those from which they had derived special benefit; the fifth was selected by Edwards himself at the request of some persons from a neighboring town who heard it, and because he thought that a sermon on the excellency of Christ might appropriately follow the others, which were of an awakening character. They were prefixed to the American reprint of the _Narrative of Surprising Conversions_, which was first published in England. The cost of their publication was defrayed by the congregation,--a clear evidence of their deep interest, as they were at the time heavily burdened by the expenses of the new meeting-house. See Dwight, _Life of Edwards_, pp. 140 f.; cf. n. here following, p. 162.