lege at the age of twelve
and graduated at the age of seventeen. His father was a clergyman, and
the boy had been brought up in a household and community intensely
religious, so that he very early began to have "a variety of concerns
and exercises about his soul." It was inevitable, of course, that he
should become a minister, and, at the age of nineteen, was ordained and
began to preach at a small church in New York City. Edwards seems to
have been afflicted from the first with what is in these days
irreverently called an in-growing conscience, and early formulated for
himself a set of seventy resolutions of the most exalted nature, which,
however praiseworthy in themselves, were too high and good for human
nature's daily food, and must have made him a most uncomfortable person
to live with. He developed, however, into a powerful preacher, and his
services were much sought, especially at revivals. One of his sermons,
called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is said to have created a
profound impression wherever delivered.

A difference with his congregation at Northampton caused him to resign
his pastorate there, and, declining a number of calls to established
parishes, he went as a missionary to the Housatonick Indians, at so
small an income that his wife and daughters were forced to labor with
the needle to support the family. It was while engaged in this work,
that an unexpected call came to him to take the presidency of Princeton.
He accepted and was installed as president early in 1758. At once he
began a series of reforms in the college administration, but an epidemic
of small-pox broke out in the neighborhood, and Edwards, exposing
himself to it fearlessly, contracted the disease and died thirty-four
days after his installation.

Jonathan Edwards probably came as near to the old idea of a saint as
America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and
intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded
with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be
doubted, and his sermons are still read, where those of his
contemporaries have long since been forgotten.

Much more important to Princeton, was John Witherspoon, who came to the
presidency in 1768, after a distinguished career in Scotland, one of the
incidents of which was being taken a prisoner while incautiously
watching the battle of Falkirk. He never wholly recovered from the
effects of the impri