The kind, however, was by no means exceptional in Edwards's preaching, particularly at this period. Believing as he did that the decisions of men in this life were fraught with the most momentous issues to all eternity, he held it his bounden duty to present these issues before them in the liveliest manner possible.[16] The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners; The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable; The Eternity of Hell Torments; When the Wicked shall have filled up the Measure of their Sin, Wrath will come upon them to the Uttermost; The End of the Wicked contemplated by the Righteous; or, The Torments of the Wicked in Hell, no occasion of grief to the Saints in Heaven; Wicked Men useful in their Destruction only,--these are among the titles of his sermons. Moreover, there is reason to believe that this very sermon, or its like, was used on other occasions besides the one to which it is explicitly ascribed. There is a tradition[17] that Edwards preached it once when Whitfield had disappointed an audience by not appearing, and that he produced a great effect by it. The manuscript is dated _June_, 1741, which suggests that it may have been preached in Northampton, or elsewhere, the month before it was attended with such remarkable impressions on the hearers in Enfield. But still more significant is the existence of an undated second sermon from the same text. In this, which was undoubtedly of earlier origin, the thought is somewhat differently worked out: it is less lurid, less fully elaborated, less terrific; but it contains many of the ideas, for example, on the uncertainty of life, the suddenness with which destruction may overtake the sinner, etc., that are found in the Enfield sermon. Edwards was evidently fascinated by the theme; he works it out with the sure touch of a great artist, with the intellectual force of the skilled dialectician. And he proclaims his message with the intensity of conviction of an Old Testament prophet. No wonder his hearers were moved. The effect would certainly have been less great had there been any note or personal vindictiveness in the preaching. But there is nothing of this; it is not in this sense that the sermon can be called "imprecatory." On the contrary, so far as Edwards's personal attitude is concerned, it is not difficult to detect in it the pathos and the pity of the gentlest of men weeping over the senseless folly of those who, blind to impending destruction, refuse repeated invitations of safety (cf. Matt. xxiii. 37). For the rest, he is quite impersonal, detached; the truth he preaches is sure, awful, but objective. On the modern reader the sermon is likely to produce a very painful impression, unless he, for his part, reads it in the same impersonal, detached way. It is not only the realism of the presentation, but the harshness of the doctrine, which offends. Edwards, for instance, frequently speaks of the reason why