_Lyman Beecher_: A prince among preachers. In our day there is no man
who comes within a thousand miles of him.

_Griswold's Prose Writers_: The first man of the world during the
second quarter of the eighteenth century.

_Hollister's History of Connecticut_: The most gifted man of the
eighteenth century, perhaps the most profound thinker in the world.

_Moses Coit Tyler_: The most original and acute thinker yet produced in
America.

This is the man whose intellectual life has thrilled in the mental
activity of more than 1,400 men and women of the past century and a
half, and which has not lost its virtue or its power in all these years.

England and Scotland are not wont to sit at our feet even in this day,
and yet they sat at the feet of Jonathan Edwards as in the presence of a
master when he was a mere home missionary, living among the Indians, to
whom he preached every Lord's day.

The birth of fame is always an interesting study. It is easy to play the
part of a rocket if one can sizzle, and flash, and rise suddenly in
darkness, but to take one's place among luminaries and shine with
permanent brilliancy is so rare an experience as to present a
fascinating study.

Jonathan Edwards was twenty-eight years of age, had been the pastor
of a church on the frontier, as Northampton was, for four years without