Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758: A Biography. 133401a Elizab,:th Winslow. (Macmillan. r6s.)
Tim jacket of this book may disturb the prudent reader with its description of this new life of Jonathan Edwards as a " brisk portrayal." But the description does a good deal less than justice to Miss Winslow's careful, fair and scholarly account of the greatest of American theologians. This is not one of the modem biographies making up by anecdote and lavish local colour for the absence of thought and scholarship. The interest of the bio- graphy (which is great) comes from the revelation of the personal life of a man of strong faculties and deep religious feeling. Miss Winslow accepts as decided the case against Edwards' modified Calvinism; she suggests with force and ingenuity that the abso- lute sovereignity of God and the authority of King George III were being attacked by the same spirit of the age. That is highly probable, and it is also highly probable, as is suggested here, that many of Jonathan Edwards' troubles, culminating with his dismissal from the church of Northampton, came from the clash between his aristocratic and theocratic view of his ministerial function and the rising democratic spirit of the age. - It is true that this book will prove most interesting to those who have a spontaneous interest in American religious and intellectual development and to those to whom the names Hollis, Dwight, Pierrepont, the thought of pre-Gothic Yale and of the landscape of the upper Connecticut River are a source of re- freshment in these dark days. But a story so intrinsically inter- esting and so well told will, or should, find many readers who start from Gallio's position.
D. W. BROGAN.
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