revival which stirred into activity every church in Massachusetts, every
church in the colonies, and most of the Protestant churches of Great
Britain and Europe.

After this long and eminently successful pastorate, Mr. Edwards
preached a sermon about the reading and conversation of young people
upon subjects of questionable propriety, which led to such local
excitement that upon the recommendation of an ecclesiastical council
he was dismissed by a vote of 200 to 20, and the town voted that he
be not permitted on any occasion to preach or lecture in the church.
Mr. Edwards was wholly unprepared financially for this unusual
ecclesiastical and civic action. He had no other means of earning a
living, so that, until donations began to come in from far and near,
Mrs. Edwards, at the age of forty, the mother of eleven children with
the youngest less than a year old, was obliged to take in work for the
support of the family. After a little time Mr. Edwards secured a small
mission charge in an Indian village where there were twelve white and
150 Indian families. Here he remained eight years in quiet until, a few
weeks before his death, he was called to the presidency and pastorate of
Princeton, then a young and small college.

The last four years of their life at Northampton were indescribably
trying to the children. Human nature was the same then as now, and
everyone knows how heavily the public dislike of a prominent man bears
upon his children. The conventionalities which keep adults within bound
in speech and action are unknown to children, and what the parents say
behind a clergyman's back, children say to his children's face. This
period of childhood social horror ended only by removal to a missionary
parsonage among the Stockbridge Indians, where they lived for eight
years. Their playmates were Indian children and youth. Half the children