In the eighth year after he settled in Northampton, Jonathan Edwards witnessed the first period of revival under his own ministry.¹ 'Then it was,' he wrote, 'in the latter part of December (1734), that the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in, and wonderfully to work amongst us' (1:348).² The revival at the end of 1734 and first six months of 1735 brought 'great awakenings' (1:348) to many. 'The work of conversion was carried on in the most astonishing manner', Edwards wrote (1:xliii). There was a striking, visible difference in the town: old quarrels were ended, the tavern was left empty, 'public assemblies were then beautiful' (1:348). Edwards summed it up: 'God has evidently made us a new people' (1:364). Later, however, there came 'a very lamentable decay of religious affections', noted Edwards, although 'many societies for prayer and social worship' continued to meet (1:Ivii).

In February 1740 Edwards wrote to George Whitefield, inviting him to Northampton, and stating that he hoped, if God spared his life, 'to see something of that salvation of God in New England which he has now begun in a benighted, wicked and miserable world and age and in the most guilty of all nations'. Soon Northampton and the surrounding towns experienced 'another outpouring of the Spirit'. The revival was at its height in the summer and autumn of 1741. 'Great numbers, I think we have reason to hope, were brought savingly home to Christ', Edwards wrote.³ The revival continued throughout the year 1741 and then faded.

But Edwards's hope did not fade; he expected other revivals to come. In fact, he looked forward to the conversion of the world as the direct consequence of a mighty revival throughout the whole church, which would lead to unprecedented missionary advance in every nation.

Despite recent scholarly opinion that 'the Great Awakening' is an 'invention' applied by over-zealous preachers to the local revivals of the eighteenth century (or in retrospect by later preachers of the next century), there is good reason to describe the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s in America as the Great Awakening. The revivals ended, but the results can be traced through the next two centuries in evangelical advance in Britain and America and in worldwide missions.

Jonathan Edwards defined revival as those 'special seasons of mercy' during which God pours out his Spirit in producing greater sanctification among Christians and in the conversion of the lost. According to Edwards, revivals have a central place in the revealed purposes of God. He wrote that:

from the fall of man, to our day, the work of redemption in its effect has mainly been carried on by remarkable communications of the Spirit of God. Though there be a more constant influence of God's Spirit always in some degree attending his ordinances; yet the way in which the greatest things have been done towards carrying on this work, always have been by remarkable effusions, at special seasons of mercy. 1:539

Revival, for Edwards, did not represent the usual mode of God's working in the church, but rather those 'remarkable effusions' of God's Spirit 'at special seasons of mercy'. Another way Edwards described these special times was by the word 'extraordinary'. Revivals are extraordinary, but they are not surprising. There have been many revivals in biblical history and in the history of the church, and Edwards believed that they would continue until the end. It is true that Edwards's early account of the first Northampton revival has the title A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundreds in Northampton (1737). This title was created, however, by Edwards' English editors. A better title would have been A Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of God.

Revivals are extraordinary times of blessing that are sovereignly sent and controlled. Revivals cannot be humanly created or manipulated (although, as we will see, they are humanly distorted and corrupted). Edwards wrote in 1742 that those who attempt to explain revival by the human instruments or means err; rather they should seek the cause solely in God. 'It appears to me that the great God has wrought like himself, in the manner of his carrying on this work; so as very much to show his own glory, exalt his own sovereignty, power and all-sufficiency' (1:366). An illustration of the sovereignty of God in revivals is Edwards's famous sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'. He preached that sermon twice: first in his own congregation in Northampton, in June 1741, with little effect, and again on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, with dramatically different results (illustrating Edwards's contention that the Spirit of God blows when and where he wills).

God sends revival when he chooses, Edwards asserted, and he works in human hearts in times of revival as he pleases. There is no common or stereotypical pattern. Edwards stated that in the conversion of sinners, 'there is a vast variety, perhaps as manifold as the subjects of the operation; but yet in many things there is a great analogy in all' (1:350). We must not limit God 'where he has not limited himself', Edwards wrote (1:369). In 'the progress of the work of redemption,' stated Edwards, 'it has all along been God's manner to open new scenes, and to bring forth to view things new and wonderful ... to the astonishment of heaven and earth' (1:369).

The fact that revivals are not humanly produced could lead to the conclusion that Christians, then, are to wait patiently and passively for the next work of God. Nothing could be further from Edwards' mind. Revivals are to be eagerly sought and worked for.

Edwards explained that,

in efficacious grace we are not merely passive, nor yet does God do some, and we do the rest. But God does all, and we do all. God produces all, and we act all. For that is what he produces, viz., our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors. We are, in different respects, wholly passive and wholly active.2:557

What we do in working for revival, Edwards held, is to be faithful in the ordinary means of grace: especially in fervent, biblical preaching and in earnest praying.

Above all, Edwards was a preacher. In season and out of season, in ordinary times, and in extraordinary times, he was in the pulpit in Northampton, Stockbridge, and sometimes elsewhere, faithfully preaching God's Word – its great messages of love, mercy, heaven, judgment, damnation, and hell.⁴

For Edwards, doctrinal orthodoxy was essential; it is only through Bible truth that the Holy Spirit brings revival. But, for Edwards, revival was not merely, or even primarily, a restoring of orthodoxy. It was essentially a restoring of religion. He wrote that:

An increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light, and have no heat ... Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching which has the greatest tendency to do this. 1:391

Edwards defended strong preaching. 'If preachers 'terrify' people by 'holding forth more light to them, and giving them to understand more of the truth of their case, they are altogether to be justified', he wrote. 'To say anything to those who have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, to represent their case any otherwise than exceeding terrible, is not to preach the word of God to them; for the word of God reveals nothing but truth; but this is to delude them' (1:392). The aim of Edwards's famous sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' was to get the attention of the careless and indifferent, who (to use Edwards's expression) had shown themselves 'sermon-proof'.

As in the English Puritan and Scottish Presbyterian traditions, Edwards commonly divided his sermons into three parts: textual introduction, doctrine, and application. (However, there is much truth in John Duncan's comment that Jonathan Edwards's 'doctrine is all application, and his application, all doctrine.'⁵ On average, almost half of his sermons were taken up with application. His applications were direct (he used the word 'you' often), graphic (so that his hearers would feel as well as hear the truth), forceful (he commanded sinners to repent), earnest (he pled with deep compassion and a sense of urgency for the lost), and urgent (he pressed sinners to seek to repent immediately – the time was short and the opportunity limited).

There was also intensity and earnestness in the style of Edwards' preaching. The common idea that he read his sermons in a monotone voice without looking at the congregation is surely mistaken. Edwards preached extemporaneously, although not completely without notes. If he was not as adept in this manner of preaching as was George Whitefield, he worked hard to be as effective a preacher as he possibly could be.

Edwards not only stressed the importance of strong, biblical preaching, but he also emphasized earnest prayer. 'Seeing we have such a prayer-hearing God...' he wrote, 'let us all be much employed in the duty of prayer: ... let us live prayerful lives, continuing instant in prayer' (2:118). 'Extraordinary prayer' will precede 'extraordinary' outpourings of God's mercy in revival. It is God's will, asserted Edwards, that 'through his wonderful grace ... the prayers of his saints should be one great and principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ's kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for his church, it is his will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of his people...' (1:426).

The year 1742 was the last year of the great revival, both in Northampton and in most parts of New England. But Edwards did not despair; he thanked God for what he had done and prayed for God to do something even greater. To support a plan by some Scottish ministers to begin a 'concert' of united prayer by Christians at special times for the conversion of the world, Edwards wrote A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion (1747). 'If we look through the whole Bible, and observe all the examples of prayer that we find there recorded,' Edwards stated, 'we shall not find so many prayers for any other mercy, as for the deliverance, restoration, and prosperity of the church, and the advancement of God's glory and kingdom of grace in the world' (2:291).

Edwards sought to vindicate the divine origins of the revival and to set forth criteria for separating the true from the false in some notable books on the theology of revival: The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). Revival is a real and glorious work of God, Edwards contended, but actual revivals are distorted and disfigured by human sins – pride, delusions, unbalance, censorious speech, extravagant forms of action. Edwards wrote:

It is a difficult thing to be a hearty zealous friend of what has been good and glorious in the late extraordinary appearances, and to rejoice much in it; and, at the same time, to see the evil and pernicious tendency of what has been bad, and earnestly to oppose that.1:234

Revival revealed a spiritual struggle, Edwards believed, in which every advance involved severe conflict with fallen human nature and the powers of darkness. 'When (Satan) finds that he can keep men quiet and secure no longer, then he drives them to excesses and extravagances' (1:397). Richard Lovelace sums up Edwards's thinking in these words, 'Since the work of revival involves the displacement of the world, the flesh and the devil, periods of renewal are times of great spiritual agitation in which troop movements on both sides are dimly visible in the background. As the sun shining on a swamp produces mist, the rising of the countenance of God among his people may result initially in disorders and confusion.'⁶

Edwards defended the propriety (and even the rationality) of strong 'affections', as he called them – attitudes and expressions of love for God, hatred of sin and deep sorrow for it, gratitude to God – and 'strong desires' after God. 'God, in his Word, greatly insists upon it,' Edwards wrote, 'that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion' (1:237).

Strong feelings, and manifestations of strong feelings, even physical manifestations, are not to be discountenanced during times of revival, Edwards argued. 'Some, instead of making the Scriptures their only rule to judge of this work,' Edwards suggested, 'make their own experience the rule, and reject such and such things as are now professed and experienced, because they themselves never felt them' (1:371). But neither do strong feelings or outward manifestations prove the legitimacy of revival. Affections are essential to true Christian faith, but, Edwards insisted, they must be tested. In his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections Edwards sought to distinguish between affections, 'approving some and rejecting others; separating between the wheat and the chaff, the gold and the dross, the precious and the vile' (1:244). Religious affections may be the product of the work of the Spirit of God; but they may also come from other sources. The true 'distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God', stated Edwards in preaching on 1 John 4:1, are these:

1. Greater esteem for Jesus;
2. Greater opposition to Satan;
3. Greater regard for the Bible;
4. Greater love for people and for God. 2:257-77

When these four marks are present, we may be sure that God is at work reviving and extending his church.

It is appropriate to conclude this essay on Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening with a prayer, based on Edwards's Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer, for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth (2:278-312):

Our Father, in this time of need, we pray for a fresh outpouring of your Spirit upon us. Vital piety has long been in decay, and error and wickedness prevail, not only in the world, but also in the church. We pray, our heavenly Father, that you would come in power and in mercy and revive your people so that we would not be weak, dull, and lifeless, but in good earnest, fervent in spirit, with our hearts and our lives vigorously engaged in loving and serving you and our neighbours. And we pray, O Father, that you would convert the lost, so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. We pray this for your glory alone and in the excellent name of Jesus. Amen.