It was a study in contrasts as the frail-looking preacher stood before the congregation. Weak, thin and suffering from failing eyesight, he held his manuscript close to his face and spoke calmly, seemingly without emotion. Yet the sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," caused a virtual eruption within the congregation; Edwards at one point had to ask for quiet so that he could be heard.

Perhaps the most famous sermon ever preached, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was not typical of this great colonial thinker who has been called America's finest theologian and philosopher. To the contrary, the majority of his sermons were pastoral or doctrinal in nature; only a handful emphasized human depravity and the horrors of hell.

Born in 1703 the son of a Congregational clergyman, Edwards received his early education from his father, including study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. At age 12 he entered Yale College, where he graduated with highest honors at age 17. That same year he underwent a significant religious experience which brought him to strong Calvinist convictions at a time when New England was abandoning those religious roots.

He served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in New York and a tutor at Yale before becoming co-pastor in 1727 of the Congregational church at Northampton, Massachusetts. For two years he served alongside his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, and when the elder pastor died Edwards continued to serve the church as its only pastor.

While at Northampton Edwards participated in the First Great Awakening, a religious movement which shook New England after years of spiritual decline. As requirements for membership had been liberalized, the churches had come to be filled with persons making no claim to any religious experience. In fact, it was Edwards' refusal to administer the sacraments to a single church member for four years that contributed to his dismissal from the church in 1750.

The following year Edwards began work at Stockbridge as a missionary to Indians and a handful of white settlers. It was during these years that the Puritan preacher completed his most significant philosophical works. On February 16, 1758, Edwards was inaugurated as the third president of Princeton University, then New Jersey College. That March he was innoculated because of a smallbox epidemic, but complications led to his death only a week later, at the age of 54.

Though his delivery was marked by the dryness typical of the era, Edwards' sermons are models of careful treatment of Biblical texts. Though many of his sermons dealt with doctrinal or philosophical themes, he also preached on ethical topics, especially the exploitation and mistreatment of the Indians.

One of America's greatest thinkers, Jonathan Edwards also made a significant impact on the history of American preaching. Selected excerpts from Edwards' sermons follow:

From "God Glorified in Man's Dependence"

It was of mere grace that God gave us his only begotten Son. The grace is great in proportion to the dignity and excellency of what is given: the gift was infinitely precious, because it was a person infinitely worthy, a person of infinite glory; and also because it was a person infinitely near and dear to God. The grace is great in proportion to the benefit we have given us in him: the benefit is doubly infinite, in that in him we have deliverance from an infinite, because an eternal misery; and do also receive eternal joy and glory.