Jonathan Edwards will no doubt never be a Longfellow figure in American literary histories, but one senses that at the present moment, at any rate, he is a casualty of the decentering of Puritanism and the devaluing of religious writing signaled by Philip Gura's analysis of the field a decade ago ("Study"). Though the editors of the recent Jonathan Edwards Reader rightly label Edwards "colonial America's greatest theologian and philosopher. . . . the towering figure of an age in which religion predominated" (Smith vii), the study of our early literature now begins in pre-Columbian Native America and ranges from charms to corridos. And, concomitantly, Edwards' presence in a widely used literary museum like the Heath Anthology of American Literature has eroded from nine selections over sixty-seven pages to four over thirty-four even from the first edition to the third in the 1990s (Lauter). One likewise senses, however, that, whatever the vagaries of critical whittling, there will never be an American literature without "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It is simply too compelling. And, in my opinion, it has not yet yielded all its secrets. There is still unfinished business for the literary critic.
Edwin H. Cady states what he rightly called "the fundamental question" in the pages of this very journal fifty years ago: "Why, then, was 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' so successful in its mission of reducing previously blasé Enfield, Connecticut, to shuddering terror? Why has it become the classic of hell-fire and brimstone preaching. . . . what made the sermon so very effective? Where lie the springs of its success"? (61) Accounting for the demonstrated efficacy of "Sinners" in the public sphere ultimately involves analysis of the tricky relationship of the text, times, occasion, and the specific audience, but Cady limited his sights, as I do, to the sermon itself. What can we see in the work that triggered its impact? What strategies of Edwards the conscious literary artist can we detect? Frankly, these concerns may seem a bit old-fashionedly formalistic in this era of sophisticated literary theory and cultural studies, but I think they will remain the basic ones that readers, especially new readers, bring to the text. And thus though modern scholars from Edward H. Davidson (1963) to J. Leo Lemay (1993), but especially William J. Scheick and Willis J. Buckingham, have followed Cady and studied "Sinners" in detail, I don't believe their valuable insights yet exhaust meaningful answers to his fundamental question. And so I would like to encourage a fresh look at the anatomy of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by taking up the unfinished business of how it is constructed--by teasing out some of those prior insights and adding new ones.
"Sinners" is synonymous with the Great Awakening, that time in the early 18th century when the spiritual lid blew off New England. This so-called spider sermon was preached most famously to the hard-case congregation of Enfield on July 8, 1741, at what Ola Winslow calls "the height of revival excitement" (Basic 150). Edwards' text "Their foot shall slide in due time" yields the doctrine that "There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God" for the expressed purpose of "awakening to unconverted persons in this congregation" (Smith 89, 90, 95). Edwards wanted his listeners to experience an overwhelming sense of God's sovereignty so that they would act to escape damnation. The means he used was, unabashedly, horror: "Since there is a hell man must be frightened out of it." "Some talk as if it is an unreasonable thing to fright persons to heaven," Edwards wrote, "but I think it is a reasonable thing to endeavor to fright persons away from hell. They stand upon its brink, and are just ready to fall into it, and are senseless of their danger. Is it not a reasonable thing to frighten a person out of a house on fire?" (qtd. in Faust xxii) And so the challenge to understanding the power of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" has always been in discerning the nature of the horror and the ways in which it is generated.
I have several points to make about the generation of horror in "Sinners," but the encompassing one, I think, has to do with the pace of the sermon, with the pulse of the sermon, or what we might call more precisely the pulsation of the sermon. Edwards employs a variety of beats for strategic effect. First, for instance, in the Opening of the biblical text there is the way the nightmare vision of apocalypse thuds against a ledger-like shell worthy of a bookkeeper. On the surface this traditional "opening" is a model of serene logical order and seems to proceed at a calm gait (Smith 89-90). Edwards frames the four implications of the passage from Deuteronomy between a concise lead-in sentence and the crisply stated doctrine. Moreover, he explicitly enumerates them for a sense of mathematical precision, delivers them in units of reasonably similar size, and divides his subject in recognizably organic fashion (points one and two deal with the place and time of the fall, points three and four with reasons for and against the fall). The unpleasant ideas derived from the passage seem neatly and familiarly packaged, seem controlled and tamed by rhetorical housing. Each point starts with and returns to a cold number and a lean topic sentence. The presentation is clinical; the series seems designed to impede the cumulative development of an emotional response.
But logical order is just the surface, and, simultaneously, emotional turbulence is brewing underneath. In a phrase literally appropriate to this sermon, something within threatens to flame out, threatens to consume the container. For this section is also designed, in another phrase literally appropriate to this sermon, to feel a bit like slowly walking a plank blindfolded: each step is already bad enough in itself; each additional step, even if made safely, only lengthens the distance from security; and any step may shorten the distance to eternity. The four implications from Deuteronomy build one on another, step following step, marching linearly toward an inexorable doom that is sensed but shielded to the last moment. First, the Israelites were always exposed to destruction. That's bad enough, but there's more: they were always exposed to sudden and unexpected destruction. That's worse, but there's still more: they were always exposed to sudden and unexpected destruction by their own weight. That's even worse, but there's yet a step further: the Israelites were always exposed to sudden and unexpected destruction by their own weight and they were certain to fall! There is no headlong rush to oblivion here (Edwards employs a similar technique in stretching the grim text of Psalm 73 over points two and three), for that would precisely put the Israelites and Enfielders out of their misery. Quite the contrary. Edwards' strategy is to fix the gaze on misery. And that is horrifying.
In fact, the placid rhetorical surface starts to buckle from the slow incremental pulsation of horrifying content. Edwards' sentence structure in the Opening is clear and taut till the end of the last sentence in point four, where the syntax itself literally starts to fall, to slide. The bumpy sounding "as he that stands in such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit that he can't stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost" (Smith 90) could, of course, have been more smoothly written "as he that stands alone in such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit immediately falls and is lost when let go." But Edwards is creating an appropriate rhetorical wobble for his listeners. Sound matches sense. In this section of the sermon balance is restored and order rescued with the appearance of the clearly crystallized Doctrine drawn from the text that immediately follows the fourth point, but the pulsation is a clear menace to complacency, a taste of what's to come. Edwards tries to approximate for his audience the fright of what we might term a "close call" with destruction.
We see a similar strategy with meaningful variation in the beat of the Reasons section that follows the Opening of the text and the statement of doctrine (Smith 90-95). The 10-pack of reasons that Edwards provides is so well knit that Rosemary Hearn can scoop off the topic sentences of each section to illustrate her essay on form as argument in "Sinners" (455). Hearn's extracted list of reasons enables us to see at a glance that one builds on another in the same incremental fashion that characterizes the Opening. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell. Not only is there no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell, they already deserve it. Not only is there no want of power in God to cast wicked, deserving men into hell, they are already under sentence. And so forth. But this time Edwards tries to approximate for his audience the fright of a crash itself. We can see this most easily by examining the frame in which Edwards sets the reasons, that is, by comparing the form of the initial statement of the doctrine with its restatement in the concluding paragraph of the Reasons section.
Above I described the movement of points in the Opening as linear, as walking a plank. Here in the Reasons the movement is ultimately circular. The section ends where it begins. We are at the same place but constituted differently. The substance endures, but the voice is completely transformed, and thus the effect is completely transformed. The decorous mask drops, revealing the fanged monster behind. But to be explicit: the scholarly "There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God" (Smith 90) morphs into the savage "In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of, all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted unobliged forebearance of an incensed God" (Smith 95). This time, then, the "something within" does not just threaten to flame out as in the Opening. This time a fall occurs. The neat stack of reasons has its toes held to the fire and turns molten. The ten reasons are recapitulated in the breathless swirl of one long penultimate sentence whose tumescence is worlds away from the tidy succinctness with which the section begins and which is threaded through the topic sentence of each reason:
So that thus it is, that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; [2] they have deserved the fiery pit, [3] and are already sentenced to it; [4] and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold 'em up one moment; [5] the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; [6] the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; [10] and they have no interest in any mediator, [7-9] there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. (Smith 95)
Moreover, the gratuitously pounding alliteration of "uncovenanted unobliged forebearance of an incensed God" running past comma stops ensures that in the concluding sentence balance is neither restored nor order rescued.
What if we look inside the frame of the Reasons section? What is the "something within" the individual reasons that flames out, causing such increase in rhetorical turmoil? If we can be a bit playfully tautological for a moment to make a point, we expect the Reasons section to appeal to Reason. The "textbook" Puritan minister would know it is proper form to convince the Understanding before appealing to the emotions (Miller, New 239-362). But, the concatenation of taut topic sentences notwithstanding, the Reasons section does not just appeal to Reason. While Hearn's argument illuminates, it also misses something, for each reason is substantially developed in ways that have little to do with an appeal to reason. The reasons tend to "take off," to become rhetorically top-heavy. All move to a boundary, to an edge, far removed in intensity if not in space from where they began. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the reasons often end without completion, in suspension--totally negating the serene mode of presentation (the first reason ends with an unanswered question, the fourth on the brink of an open maw, the sixth anticipating spontaneous combustion, the seventh with arrows of death flying, and so forth). Pointedly, the reasons tend to end in imaginary confrontations, imaginary conditions, imaginary crises, imaginary consummations, imaginary correspondences, and imaginary conversations--all fraught with dire consequence. The ongoing pulsation of the centrifugal movement of the emotional content against the centripetal purpose of the logical structure puts more pressure on the skeleton of the section than it can bear. And it crashes. The unimaginable becomes real. The forces of destruction triumph.
To use yet another phrase literally appropriate to this sermon, Edwards suffers from no want of means in the Reasons section to create these destructive pulsations. A ferocious but unacknowledged biblical reference (Nahum 1.1-6) conjures crushing defeat in a confrontation with an Old Testament Lord Almightily rebuking the earth [1], whereas a simple direct reference from Ecclesiastes yokes wise man and fool at the moment of unexpected death [8]. The sword of divine justice hangs over natural men [2], whereas hell's mouth opens under them [5]. Edwards finds stark one-liners like "every unconverted man properly belongs to hell" [3] and "the arrows of death fly unseen at noonday" [7] equally suited to his purpose as a frenzied series of choppy phrases that replicates raging flames of hell [4]. There's the catchy poetry of "the heart is now a sink of sin" [6] and the utilitarian prose that all human activity is worthless without the presence of Christ [10]. But surely Edwards is at his most audacious in the creation of the voice from hell, alter-ego for the hard-case Enfielders, testifying that crooning "peace and safety" did nothing to charm away the machinery of destruction [9]. After this testimony what complacency can there be? Who can put Humpty-Dumpty seamlessly back together again?
Perhaps there is one more thing to say about the Reasons section. Perhaps there is one more kind of pulsation, though, since it is not susceptible to textual proof, perhaps it is only a useful fantasy on my part. I said above that the movement of reasons is ultimately circular. To be at once more specific and metaphorical, I have always felt that this section feels like the hammering of nails around a coffin. My fantasy is that I hear the ten reasons in antiphonal dialogue with an invisible, rationalizing self. I see the reasons as answers to specific excuses presented by the unconverted not to convert now:
I have power to resist.
There is no want of power in God to defeat rebels.
I deserve mercy not hell.
Divine justice never stands in the way.
I'm legally free.
You are already bound over to hell.
I'm physically free.
The glittering sword is whet, hell's mouth open.
I'm not in imminent danger.
The devils await like greedy, hungry lions.
Hell is far off.
Hell is within you already.
I'm alive.
The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday.
I 'm wise.
The wise man dies like the fool.
I plan.
Listen to a planner in hell.
I have God.
No covenant, no obligation.
The end result of this pulsating, implied "antiphony" for me is a kind of claustrophobia, a suffocation. I have always felt that Edwards is trying to approximate here what is arguably the greatest human horror, premature burial. Edwards gradually entombs the excuse-making faculty. He knows how the unconverted think; he replicates, offstage, their chain of reasoning and then matches it. Edwards' listeners get to sense what it's like to be prematurely interred, to find themselves in a narrow space, fully conscious and fully powerless. There is no exit. Contemplating one's doom is one's sole occupation. Horror of horrors. "This is death," Robert Lowell says in his spider poem, "To die and know it" (59).
Much of the purpose of the first half of "Sinners" that we have been examining so far is destructive. The purpose of the pulsations has been to subvert order, to rattle the status quo, to break down complacency in order to clear away a space in which conversion, or at least heightened consciousness, can occur. Much of the Application and Exhortation, on the other hand, is constructive--Edwards trying to create vision in and for his listeners (though it tortures our modern sense a bit to consider visions of man's sorry state "constructive"). Up to this point, Edwards has deferred almost totally to the charade of detachment, making only one reference to "many that are now in this congregation" (Smith 91), but in the second half of the sermon Edwards turns aggressively toward his listeners. "O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in," he characteristically exclaims at one point (Smith 98). And so the Application is broken down into two main parts (Smith 95-98, 98-103), each with a different strategy aimed at stirring different visions in the unawakened members of the congregation.
Both parts of the Application make good use of incantation, that is, the repetition of words, phrases, and parallel constructions for rhetorical spell-making. The alternation of "that"/ "there" and "you" in the first paragraph of the Application, for instance, helps to literally call up a vision of hell and its proximity to the unconverted ("you" are rhythmically induced to SEE hell "there"), especially because of the reappearance of shocking descriptive phrases drawn from the numbered reasons as noted below:
That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you [6]. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God [4]; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open [5]; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of [7]: there is nothing between you and hell but the air; 'tis only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. (Smith 95; my italics)
But the core of the first part of the Application (Smith 95-98) is a
series of six separate images: wickedness heavy as lead, earth ready to
spew out the sinner, the black clouds of God's wrath, the damned waters
of God's wrath, the bent bow of God's wrath, and the infamous sinner-as-spider
held by God over the fire (Smith 96-97).
Now, certainly there is an appropriateness to each
of the images and coherence among them. It can be said, in fact,
that they are unified, all dealing as they do with magnifying for the sinner
the imminence of destruction. But I've been focusing on the beat
of "Sinners," and, especially in contrast to the metronomically numbered
sections that try to grip the first half of the sermon, here the felt reality
is a kind of randomness. The second half of the sermon begins with
a quite different kind of "opening," then, for there is no particular reason
why one image follows another, and the first three very different images
are even strung together in one paragraph, in one speaking and reading
unit. Moreover, the images are "original," by which I mean they have
a fresh flavor because they are not explicitly tied to any specific, acknowledged
biblical source like many are in the first part of the sermon and virtually
all are later in the second part of the Application. All this means
that here at the very center of the sermon we are for a time in a sort
of creative free-fire zone. Edwards is creating not copying.
Anything might happen. That feeling is tonic because on some level
it is terrifying. The lack of order makes the future fearful.
The images are not developing toward a recognizable climax. Danger
and uncertainty stimulate sleepy minds and imaginations. Indeed,
the "anything" does happen, for the riveting, climactic spider image is
designed precisely--in yet one more phrase literally appropriate to this
sermon--to overtake you completely unawares.
After finishing the fifth image of the bent bow with the vivid picture of the arrow "drunk with your blood" (Smith 97), for instance, Edwards launches into a long, prosy passage that feels like a coda bringing the series of images to a close. But the passage is just the pause that deceives. Edwards is playing with the beat to gather dramatic effect. Then, Pow! as if out of nowhere (for a spider does quietly appear twice before) comes the giant pulsation of the astoundingly brutal spider image. The angry god has been mediated in the previous images by dark clouds, damned waters, a bow. But this time the listeners SEE him explicitly for the first time as the naked aggressor:
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet 'tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. (Smith 97-98)
Edwards unveils for all to SEE the angry God personally preparing to perpetrate their perdition. And not only that. On the heels of this revealing come two incantatory passages that sweep the first part of the Application to its conclusion with hypnotically pulsating rhythm.
The first incantatory passage replicates the experience of moving down into hell. Edwards substitutes parallelism for the simple repetitions of "there" and "you" we saw in the incantation above and--perfectly consonant with a text that affirms their foot shall slide in due time--makes the inexorable march of time the operative factor.
'tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to
hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this
world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other
reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you
arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up.
There is no other reason to be given why you han't gone to hell,
since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure
eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea,
there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you don't
this very moment drop down into hell. (Smith 98; my italics).
No reason . . . you . . . last night / no reason . . . you .
. . this morning / no reason . . . you . . . at the beginning of
the service / no reason . . . you . . . right now! For Edwards'
listeners the climax of the movement of time in this incantatory sequence
could literally be the end of their time. In another turn of the
screw, the second passage materializes the "slender thread" on which the
spider game hangs through an incantatory string of negatives:
You have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. (Smith 98; my italics)
You . . . nothing / you . . . nothing / you . . . nothing. The horror rhythmically simulated here is that you who are unconverted have no means to prevent the doom an angry God has no thought of preventing. The climactic vision of the first part of the Application is certain destruction, keenly felt through the pulse of language.
In the second part of the Application (Smith 98-103), Edwards provides what, in effect, is a personality profile as part of a continued effort to enable his listeners to see God. Ironically, though, after the significant rhetorical flourish designed to leave the unconverted in complete disarray at the end of the first part of the Application, the second part resumes the form of a numbered sequence that has characterized most of "Sinners" so far. The beat changes. It looks like Edwards is restoring a semblance of logical order. But not so. The rhetorical solace is illusory. We have here the exact same sort of destructive play of content against form that we saw previously in the Opening and in the Reasons. To be brutally blunt, the personality profile demonstrates that God is a killer, and if earlier the numbered points could not contain such mundane ideas as a God more powerful than earthly rulers, they have obviously absolutely no hope of containing the enormous internal combustion generated by a profane vision of such magnitude.
Once again, then, Edwards walks his listeners out on a plank (though this time each point is, in general, more fully developed), savoring each gruesome individual step, not giving everything away at once, not indicating where he will end. Once again, within the pseudo-composure of an orderly numbered list and understated topic sentences (as little as three words for point four: "'Tis everlasting wrath" [Smith 102]), Edwards ignites a sequence of detonations. "Consider here more particularly," he coolly addresses his audience, the wrath directed against you (Smith 98). It is the wrath of the Infinite God. It is the fierceness of the wrath of the Infinite God. It is the fierceness and wrath of an Infinite God who is Almighty. It is the fierceness and wrath of an Infinite, Almighty God who has no pity. It is the fierceness and wrath of an Infinite, Almighty, pitiless God who feeds on the pain of the pitiless. It is the fierceness and wrath of an Infinite, Almighty, pitiless, sadistic God who likes to display his trophies. It is the fierceness and wrath of an Infinite, Almighty, pitiless, sadistic, exhibitionist God that will last forever! This is, indeed, a lot to consider!
Once again the numbered points tend to expand dramatically. The first buds into a twin of an increased order of magnitude: the wrath of an earthly king is to be feared, but (and the section literally pivots on the beat of a "but") the wrath of the king of kings makes it "nothing, and less than nothing" (Smith 99). The second triangulates: the picture of the inconceivable misery of the damned is followed by another of Edwards' own incantatory strings of negatives depicting God's disregard, which is then followed by the vision of the divine dance on your soul-- the sacred stomp on sinners--told in "the words of the great God" himself through Isaiah (Smith 100). The third point shows that there are four acts to the play that we might call Damnation at the Celestial Theater. You will not only suffer, isolated, the agony of God's wrath, indicates Edwards, but you will suffer in the presence of successive audiences composed of holy angels, the Lamb, and then the "glorious inhabitants of heaven" (Smith 101). The pain, then, is exquisitely psychological as well as excruciatingly physical. The fourth in the list, the shortest of the series, as if to reflect the idea that all you have rhetorically suffered so far is but "a point to what remains," contains several sentences that appropriately stretch out the sinews of syntax: for instance, "you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all" (Smith 102).
Not only do these four points expand, which, after all, might only mean simple, nonincremental repetition as in the sentence just quoted, but three of the four contain at least one element so startling that it almost assaults listeners. Three of the four, then, literally pack a punch. The conclusion of point one, for instance, counsels sinners to fear him who still has power over you after he has killed you, raising the specter of an insatiable post-mortem God, a serial killer of a different stripe (Smith 99).
The second point teases sinners with the possibility of pastoral sympathy for them. After vigorously delineating what it's like to confront omnipotence enraged, Edwards' voice verges on pity, hints at human consolation as a trace of relief:
Oh! then what will be the consequence! What will become of the poor worm that shall suffer it! Whose hands can be strong? And whose heart endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of this! (Smith 99)
But even this tincture of human commiseration, if it is even meant to be such, is undercut, and what we get in response is not just a simple no pity but another incantation--negation put to music for utmost sensation:
he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much, in any other sense than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires: nothing shall be withheld, because it's so hard for you to bear. (Smith 99-100; my italics)
The only comfort is the mocking one in the next-to-last segment: you will not suffer beyond what you deserve. O, sweet reservation. Was justice ever so succinctly described? But we have reason to believe that Edwards may have intended to mock sinners here when we remember that we are in the section in which a "laugh and mock" is God's own substitute for pity (Smith 100). And there is additional suggestion of Edwards' mockery. The depiction of the divine dance on sinners from Isaiah is so gripping that Edwards launches into a pretty straightforward repetition of it to intensify the effect. But when he ventures to add his own words to the biblical script, he can only snarl, "He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt" (Smith 100; my italics). This sounds like a sick joke or blustery exasperation. It would take surgical precision for a soul in this stomped state to discriminate between the two lordly attitudes, and to my ear hate encompasses contempt rather than is superseded by it, so that the distinction is meaningless and the arrangement of terms in the sentence absurd.
The third point packs two powerful punches. To begin with, Edwards compares the Lord favorably to the "mighty and haughty" monarch Nebuchadnezzar (Smith 101). Now, regardless of the end of the story in Daniel 3, it is not clear that the king of Babylon--captor of Jerusalem, builder of the golden image, and stoker of the fiery furnace--is a traditional or even proper model for divine action. Edwards here reverses the virtual cliché that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Here God is made in the image and likeness of man, a notion he has suggested previously in the first reason and in the spider image when he extrapolates God's attitude toward sinners from man's attitude toward lowly and loathsome insects (Smith 90, 97). Think about it. We are to understand God through man! Through the evil, violent, selfish side of man! It is clear that the rules change depending on your position. It is clear that a new vision is necessary if earth-bound sinners are to truly understand their situation, and we are struck by this truth again in the second arresting facet of this point. The glorious inhabitants of heaven, late of human communities like Enfield, of course, in fact possess that new vision and spontaneously act on it at the display of roasting human carcasses God offers at the Celestial Theater. They do not look on those carcasses with a trace of human fellowship. For them this is not a blood-curdling spectacle at the expense of their bondsmen. They have passed over. They do not see things the same way. Fellow humans are not worth even a consoling glance. Their allegiance is elsewhere now. They immediately "fall down and adore that great power and majesty" (Smith 101). God's sovereignty reigns supreme. At the final curtain human pity is as chimerical as divine.
After the fourth point, the second part of the Application ends with an incantatory flourish like the first part, but it does not end on a similarly negative note. The vision here is different. Once again the beat changes. The long last paragraph of the Application has four separate interlocking sequences that can be visually represented in the following manner and which will be explained in more detail in the next paragraph (Smith 102-3).
1
2
3
4
every
many
many already there
who all
some there this year
some there now < > you here now
some this morning
one
one who
you already there
The incantatory sequences here first separate the congregation into individual "you's," almost suggesting they turn against each other, heightening their sense of vulnerability, and then tug them downward toward hell, but, in a surprising twist, the passage does not end there. Surprisingly, Edwards concludes on a beginning not an end of time, positioning the sermon for the pulsation toward decision-making in the final exhortation.
The first incantatory sequence atomizes the congregation by encouraging people to gradually search each other's faces for signs of damnation: every unconverted soul here is in danger; many here will spend eternity in hell; we do not know who all they are; but only one would be awful; especially if we knew the one who it was! The second sequence then pulsates back overlapping terms with the first, starts over, and atomizes the congregation again, this time, however, honing down not on a speculative one "who" but on a definitive "you" for personal impact. And as it does, this sequence incorporates a third, an onward march of time like we saw above in the incantation concluding the first part of the Application, to compound the grim effect. Many will remember this discourse in hell; and some should be there before the year is out; and some should even be there before tomorrow morning; and--and here's the pulsating twist--you have reason to wonder why you are not already there. In the concluding flourish to the first part of the Application, there is no reason to wonder why you do not drop right away into hell (Smith 98). That is frightening. But here there is reason to wonder why you are not already in hell (Smith 103). That is hopeful. Edwards brings the unconverted to the brink, then, but does not quite tear away their foundation. And in the fourth sequence Edwards pulsates back overlapping terms with the second again, and this time isolates a "you" who is still in this world and envied by the damned in hell. The incantatory movement of the fourth sequence, therefore, is not downwardly linear like the rest but laterally contrasting: some whom you knew are now past hope, but you now have an opportunity for salvation. Indeed, there is hope. The vision is not here looking forward at a hell that is irrevocable but there looking back at a hell that is avoidable. There is choice. One can see a way to salvation.
The last six paragraphs of "Sinners" (Smith 103-5), an exhortation to action, continue the rising mood of optimism, opening with a rousing, incantatory splash:
And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God; many are daily coming from the east, west, north and south; many that were lately in the same miserable condition that you are in, and in now a happy state, with their hearts filled with love to him that has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God (Smith 103; my italics).
With mood reversal comes rhetorical reversal. Terms such as "you," "now," and "many" used in negative incantations before are linked with "day" and "daily" throughout the Exhortation to serenade a positive vision for once: to help listeners literally "to see" the awakened in other congregations feasting, rejoicing, and singing (Smith 103). The dissolution of human pity and the atomizing of the congregation we saw in the second part of the Application are now replaced by an invitation to join a vibrant religious community. So, though certain it is that "Sinners" ends with divine ax poised over worthless roots and divine breath hot on fleeing backs (Smith 105), the ending is really less horrifying than it may appear. Robert Lee Stuart, for instance, even sees the final exhortation for the New England Sodomites to flee up a mountain as assurance that there is footing that will not slide down into hell (58). But there is more to say as well.
For instance, for the first time in the sermon Edwards'
strategy includes a cluster of questions to motivate his listeners.
How can you rest one minute howling while others sing? Are not your
souls as precious as those now flocking to Christ? Are not there
many old people who have done nothing but treasure up wrath? Do not
you old people see how you are passed over? Will not you young people
join your peers in renouncing vanity? Don't you unconverted children
know you are going to hell? Don't you want to be holy and happy children
of the king of kings? The presence of this question cluster
implies a final view of mankind as able to see options and to choose between
them. The questions appeal to the rational decision-making faculty
in mankind, which, in the final analysis, is not yet entombed. Mankind's
fate does not seem totally determined by outside causes. And in line
with the notion of motivating listeners to make decisions, the Exhortation
is largely built on pairs rather than the linear sequences we've gotten
used to. It poses dichotomous alternatives. It rocks back and
forth on clear options. It mimics over and over the weighing that
precedes rational decision. There is a day of mercy or an eternity
of justice. This is a day to come in or to be left behind forever.
You can either pine and perish or rejoice and sing. Do you want to
be children of the devil or children of the king of kings? This will
either be a day of great favors or remarkable vengeance. You can
choose this day or curse this day. You can either be cut down or
fly up.
Edwards' division of the congregation for direct
address to different segments is another anti-horror facet of the conclusion.
This part is structured, in effect, in a 1-2-3 sequence like we have seen
before. But this is not another chapter in walking the plank.
Edwards takes a recognizable whole here, breaks it down, unnumbered, into
its logical parts (and the division of the congregation by time/age is
quite logical given his text), and then puts it back together again.
For instance, he first addresses those who have "lived long in the
world," next the "young men and young women," then "children,"
and finally the congregation as a whole--"everyone" that is yet out of
Christ (Smith 103-4). There is no mystery, no suspense, no uncertainty
about the movement of the passage. In addition, Edwards makes the
path to salvation for each group not only easy but easy on earthly terms.
First, simply go with the flow--simply join with the many from the surrounding
towns who are flocking in. Next, his implicit message to each group
is, in effect, Be Yourself. To the old: just act your age, simply
exercise the wisdom that ripens with years. To the young: conform,
join the crowd of peers, define yourself against the older generation.
And to the children: follow your innate instinct to please parents and
authority figures. For sure, tension does not completely disappear
at the end of the sermon. The day of mercy, after all, is only a
day. The way out of Sodom, after all, was only a grave for Lot's
wife. But now here in the conclusion natural man can at last trust
a natural act. Fleeing the state of sin makes sense. The salutary
effect of horror is to make you hurry.
Evidence for the rhetorical power of this "ne plus ultra of evangelical terror" (Pudaloff 55) has always been readily available. A contemporary witness testifies that the "Shrieks and crys" of the Enfield congregation "were piercing and Amazing" (Medlicott 217). A century later Harriet Beecher Stowe's stepmother ran for cover when husband Lynam began his Edwardsean ventriloquy of "Sinners" (Shea 191). And in our own century Walt Disney borrowed liberally and literally from "Sinners" for the preacher in what from our perspective is the deliciously titled 1960 movie Pollyanna. Critic J. Leo Lemay finds that Edwards' spider sermon "outdoes" the hell-fire sermon in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist (186). Poet Robert Lowell's New England imagination hovers around the nature and consequences of Edwards' New Light imprecation (58-61).
But the question for literary critics has always been the how and the why of its power. Was it just the sensational subject matter that moved contemporary audiences? Or was there something about those audiences that made them ripe for grand emotional release almost regardless of the stimulation? Or was it Edwards' art? The answer is complicated, of course, but Cady's article effectively rendered doubts about Edwards-as- Artist moot, though the exact nature of that artistry has remained compelling but elusive. In fact, since the solemn Edwards was known for what Edward H. Davidson has termed "impassive delivery" (Jonathan 81), there has long been a sense of mystery about Edwards' writing, what Perry Miller has called "an exasperating sense of something hidden" in a corpus like an "immense cryptogram" (Jonathan 50, 51). In the search for the tap root Cady has focused on the imagery, Hearn on the syllogistic form, Miller on the rhetoric of sensation, Scheick and Buckingham on a host of contributing elements, and so forth.
I have focused here on the rhythm, the beat, the
sound of the sermon and tried to identify what I have termed a recurrent
pulsation that comes naturally from within rather than artificially from
the minister's delivery. In doing so, and in incorporating the insights
of others, I have treated "Sinners" as a sermon, as primarily an
auditory experience. The presence of a pulsation--quite interestingly,
Donald Weber notes a theory of historical pulsations operating in Edwards'
History of the Work of Redemption, a sermon sequence constructed
just two years before Enfield (562)--works broadly to destroy old ways
of thought in the first part of the sermon and to construct new visions
in the second. I make no claim to finishing the business of analyzing
Edwards' art in "Sinners" that Cady inaugurated. In fact, I would
invoke Davidson's still valid declaration that "the extraordinary sermon
deserves all the rhetorical and metaphorical analysis one can bring to
it, for it is in its way a true work of art" (Jonathan 79).
I think it unfortunate that recent critical trends have discouraged intense
analysis of individual works, especially those carefully crafted for specific
occasions and audiences like "Sinners." And I would like to see literary
critics take up the yet unfinished business of understanding the internal
dynamics of not only Edwards' "refined poetry of torture" (Stowe 337) but
of his many other writings as well, as we approach the three hundredth
anniversary of his birth in 2003.
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