Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/331

was placed in command by that officer. The latter also offered him the provost-marshal-generalship of the middle military division, but he declined it, preferring a direct command. In the final as- sault on Petersburg, Gen. Edwards's brigade cap- tured the guns in front of three of the enemy's brigades, and he received the surrender of the city from the hands of its mayor, 3 April, 1865. At the battle of Sailor's Creek, on 6 April. Gen. Edwards, with the 3d brigade of the 1st division, captured Gen. Custis Lee and staff, with his entire bri- gade. Lieut.-Gen. Ewell and staff', and many others. He was' mustered out of the army on 16 Jan., 1866, and has been since engaged in mercantile pur- suits, both in this country and in England. He invented the Florence oil-stove.

EDWARDS, Timothy, clergyman, b. in Hart- ford, Conn., 14 May, 1669 ; d. in East Windsor, Conn., 27 Jan., 1758. The Edwards family is of Welsh origin, the earliest known ancestor being the Rev. Richard Edwards, who, it is supposed, left Wales in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and settled in Oxford, or London, as a clergyman of the estab- lished church. His son, William, accompanied his mother to this country, she having been left a widow and married again, and took up his residence in Hartfoi-d, Conn. Richard, a wealthy merchant, son of William, was the father of Timothy. The latter was graduated at Harvard in 1691, receiving both his deg.'-ees the same day — one in the morning, the other in the afternoon, " an uncommon mark of respect," say the East Windsor records, " paid to his extraordinary proficiency in learning." After pursuing the usual theological course, he was licensed to preach, and ordained pastor over the church in East Windsor in 1694, where — with the exception of a few weeks' absence in 1711, when appointed chaplain to the Connecticut troops in a military expedition to Canada — he remained nearly sixty-four years. When he was eighty-six years of age an assistant was given him, at his request. PI is wife, a daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stod- dard, of Northampton, Mass., a woman of strong intellect and much cultivation, died in her ninety- ninth year. Mr. Edwards always preached ex- temporaneously, and, until he was over seventy, without noting down the heads of his discourse. He is only known to have written out one sermon, that delivered on the occasion of the general elec- tion of 1732. He lived until within a few months of his son's decease, and the latter often visited him, and was heard in his father's pulpit. Com- paring the two, it is said to have been customary for the parishioners to remark that, " although Mr. Edwards was, perhaps, the more learned man, and more animated in his manner, yet • Mr. Jonathan ' was the deeper preacher." — His son, Jonathan, theologian, b. in East Windsor, Conn., 5 Oct., 1703; d. in Princeton, N. J., 22 March, 1758, was the fifth of eleven children and the only son. At a very early age his uncommon genius began to discover" itself. At ten he wrote a paper ridiculing the idea that the soul is material, and at twelve he sent to a Eu- ropean correspondent of his father an account of " The Wondrous Way of the Working of the Spi- der." He was prepared for college by his father and sister, and in September, 1716, when only twelve years of age, entered Yale, and was gradu- ated in 1720. While in college his "character was marked with sobriety and improvement in learn- ing." The book which at this time " inexpressibly entertained and pleased him " was Locke's " Essay on the Human Understanding." Though he showed proficiency in all the studies of the college course, including natural philosophy, which he cultivated to the end of his life, moral philosophy and divin- ity were his favorite subjects. Brought up in a household and community that were eminently re- ligious, he had from his childhood "a variety of concerns and ex- ercises about his soul," but found a painful stum- bling-block to his spiritual progress in " the doctrine of God's sover- eignty," which appeared to him "a horrible doc- trine." At length, while in college, how or by what means he could never tell, his dif- ficulties vanished, and he had no more doubts of "God's absolute

sovereignty and

justice with respect to salvation and damnation."

of condition was attended with "an inward sweet delight in God." His sense of divine things would often suddenly kindle up " a sweet burning in his heart." Having conversed with his father, he be- came satisfied of his " good state," united with the church, and accepted the Christian ministry as his true calling. With the purpose of his life now made plain, he remained at college two years after his graduation as a student of divinity. In Au- gust, 1722, he was selected to preach in a Presby- terian church in the city of New York, whei'e, on account of the smallness of the society and some special difficulties, he remained only eight months. While in New York he made a new and solemn dedication of himself to God, vowing " for the fu- ture to be in no respect his own, but to act as one who had no right to himself in any respect." He " used frequently to retire into a solitary place on the banks of Hudson's river, at some distance from the city, for contemplation on divine things and secret converse with God." In April. 1723, he re- turned to his father's house in East Windsor, where he spent the summer in close study. Here he finished a series of seventy resolutions remarkable for the spirit of pure, lofty, and practical piety that they em- body. They definitely outline a theory and plan of life which can only be objected to as perhaps unat- tainably exalted. They constitute a manual of devotion which has been very effective in quicken- ing the piety of succeeding generations. In Sep- tember, 1723, Mr. Edwards was invited by several congregations to become their minister, but he de- clined all these calls, as well as a i-equest to return to New York, preferring to accepc the position of tutor in Yale college, at that time offered him. Here he continued for two years. In the summer of 1726 he was invited to become the colleague of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in the pastor- ate of the church at Northampton, Mass. He ac- cepted this call, resigned his tutorship in Septem- ber, 1726, and w^as ordained to his office in Febru- ary, 1727, in the twenty-fourth year of his age. On 28 July of the same year he married Sarah Pierrepont, daughter of a minister at New Haven. In 1729 the senior pastor died, leaving the young minister alone. For about seventeen years his set- tlement at Northampton was happy and eminently useful. His fame as a preacher grew rapidly and