BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS.
The dead prophets are noted for having very respectable sepulchres, which are generally erected by the descendants of those who stoned them. It is much easier to honor a dead prophet than to stand by a living one. Few names are more revered in New England than that of Jonathan Edwards, but it was not so once; and indeed it might not be so again if he were to revisit this world. Mr. Joseph Cook, in one of his lectures, while speaking of “the Half-way Covenant” of olden times,—a contrivance by which the State church, which at that time ruled Massachusetts, and which allowed none but church members to vote and hold office, permitted persons of decent moral character, who had been baptized in infancy, to become church members, and so have the right to vote in civil elections,—gave the following account of the trials endured by Jonathan Edwards, in his conscientious endeavor to establish the rule that evidence of conversion should be an indispensable prerequisite to church membership:— “I know where in Massachusetts I can put my hand on little irregular scraps of brown paper, stitched together as note-books, and closely covered all over with Jonathan Edwards’ handwriting. Why did he use such coarse material in his studies? Why was he within sight of starvation? Because he had opposed the half-way covenant. Why did that man need to accept from Scotland funds with which to maintain his family? Because he opposed the half-way covenant. Why did his wife and daughters make fans and sell them to buy bread? Because he opposed the half-way covenant—because he defended with vigor, as Whitefield did, the idea that a man should not be a minister unless converted, nor a church member unless converted, and so set himself against the whole trend of this huge, turbid, hungry, haughty wave of secularization that had been rising since 1631.” “Of course, he was abandoned by the fashionable. Of course, his life was in some sense a martyrdom. His note-books were made from the refuse of brown paper left from the fans. There is nothing Massachusetts so little likes to be fanned with as those fans Jonathan Edwards’ wife and daughters made and sold for bread. Yes, you starved him; but Scotland fed him, thank God. When Edwards was dismissed, it was proposed that there be a council of ten pastors, and he, of course, claimed the right of choosing five; but he was obliged to go beyond the broad bounds of old Hampshire county in order to find five who agreed with him in opposing the half-way covenant.” When a man is dead and buried, people begin to find out what an eminent saint he is, and then they send half round the world to find marble white enough to bear the name that was once despised and cast out as evil.—Exchange. And it is a fact that this infant-baptismal half-way covenant system is yet filling some of the churches with half-way Christians, “having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof,” to the great reproach of the Christian faith.