e gap to the practical imagination. A man ought to be shocked
when confronted with this fearfully concrete corollary to his theories.
But the blame should be given where it is due. The Calvinist is not to
blame for the theory of universal law which he shares with the
philosopher, but for the theory of damnation which he shares with the
Arminian. The hideous dogma is the existence of the prison-house, not
the belief that its inmates are sent there by God's inscrutable decree,
instead of being drafted into it by lot. And here we come to the second
fact which must be remembered in Edwards' favour. The living truths in
his theory are chained to dead fancies, and the fancies have an odour as
repulsive as Taylor's 'million of dead dogs.' But on the truths is
founded a religious and moral system which, however erroneous it may
appear to some thinkers, is conspicuous for its vigour and loftiness.
Edwards often shows himself a worthy successor of the great men who led
the moral revolt of the Reformation. Amongst some very questionable
metaphysics and much outworn--sometimes repulsive--superstition, he
grasps the central truths on which all really noble morality must be
based. The mode in which they presented themselves to his mind may be
easily traced. Calvinism, logically developed, leads to Pantheism. The
absolute sovereignty of God, the doctrine to which Edwards constantly
returns, must be extended over all nature as well as over the fate of
the individual human soul. The peculiarity of Edwards' mind was, that
the doctrine had thus expanded along particular lines of thought,
without equally affecting others. He is a kind of Spinoza-Mather; he
combines, that is, the logical keenness of the great metaphysician with
the puerile superstitions of the New England divine; he sees God in all
nature, and yet believes in the degrading supernaturalism of the Salem
witches. The object of his faith, in short, is the 'infinite Jehovah'
(vi. 170), the God to whose all-pervading power none can set a limit,
and who is yet the tutelary deity of a petty clan; and there is
something almost bewildering in the facility with which he passes from
one conception to the other without the smallest consciousness of any
discontinuity. Of his coincidence in the popular theories, and
especially in the doctrine of damnation, I have already given instances.
His utterances derived from a loftier source are given with equal
emphasis. At the age of fifteen or six