at you do not think highly of yourself just
because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high
opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask
again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as
the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. 282). That
is a characteristic bit of subtilising, and it indicates the danger of
all this excessive introspection. Edwards would not have accepted the
moral that the best plan is to think about yourself as little as
possible; for from his point of view this constant cross-examination of
all your feelings, this dissection of emotion down to its finest and
most intricate convolutions, was of the very essence of religion. No
one, however, can read his account of his own feelings, even when he
runs into the accustomed phraseology, without perceiving the ring of
genuine feeling. He is morbid, it may be, but he is not insincere; and
even his strained hyperboles are scarcely unintelligible when considered
as the expression of the sentiment produced by the effort of a human
being to live constantly in presence of the absolute and the infinite.

The event which most powerfully influenced Edwards' mind during his life
at Northampton was one of those strange spiritual storms which then, as
now, swept periodically across the Churches. Protestants generally call
them revivals; in Catholic countries they impel pilgrims to some
devotional shrine; Edwards and his contemporaries described such a
phenomenon as 'a remarkable outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.' He has
carefully described the symptoms of one such commotion, in which he was
a main agent; and two or three later treatises, discussing some of the
problems suggested by the scenes he witnessed, testify to the
profoundness of the impression upon his mind. In fact, as we shall
presently see, Edwards' whole philosophical system was being put to a
practical test by these events. Was the excitement, as modern observers
would say, due to a mere moral epidemic, or was it actually produced by
the direct interposition in human affairs of the Almighty Ruler?
Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom
crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by
the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause
assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the
waters, one would expect rather to see oceans