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At age 14, Jonathan Edwards, already a student at Yale University, read philosopher John Locke with more delight “than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered treasure.”

He also treasured spiritual qualities. At age 17, after a period of distress, he said holiness was revealed to him as a ravishing, divine beauty. His heart panted “to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child.”

This rare blend of spiritual passion and searching intellect, in fact, characterized Edwards throughout his Connecticut childhood, his marriage (to Sarah Pierpont in 1727), and his ministry.

By 1729, he had become sole preacher of a Northampton, Massachusetts, parish. Five years later his preaching on justification by faith sparked an awakening.

It was not due to theatrics. One observer wrote, “He scarcely gestured or even moved; and he made no attempt by the elegance of his style, or the beauty of his pictures, to gratify the taste, and fascinate the imagination.” Instead, he convinced “with overwhelming weight of argument, and with such intenseness of feeling."

In December 1734, there were six sudden conversions. By spring, there were about thirty a week. The revival spread throughout Connecticut. Wrote Edwards in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), “It was no longer the tavern, but the minister’s house that was thronged.”

Edwards was sought out by Whitefield during Whitefield’s 1740 pass through New England. Edwards invited Whitefield to preach and reported, “The congregation was extraordinarily melted … almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of the time.” “The whole assembly” included Edwards himself.

During the 1740s, Edwards preached his most well-known sermon (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God) and defended the emotional nature of the Great Awakening, especially in A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections (1746), a masterpiece of psychological and spiritual discernment.

Later, Edwards reversed the tradition in his parish and insisted only converted persons could receive Communion, so his church ousted him. He became missionary pastor to native Americans in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1751, and wrote, among other theological treatises, Freedom of the Will (1754), a brilliant defense of divine sovereignty. Such were the fruits of his lifelong habit of rising at 4:00 and studying 13 hours a day.

The College of New Jersey (later Princeton) called him as president in 1758. To its great loss and that of the American church, Edwards died of the new smallpox vaccination soon after his arrival. He was 55. Some consider him to be the finest theologian America has produced.

When her husband died, Lady Huntingdon, age 39, sought advice from leading preacher Howell Harris: “She consulted me about which was it best, to live retired and give up all, or fill her place, and I said the latter I thought was right.” Thus began four decades of strongwilled and generous leadership in the evangelical movement.

Born into English aristocracy, Selina married Theophilus Hastings, ninth earl of Huntingdon, in 1728. Though a devout Anglican, after a period of intense spiritual struggle she converted to the methodist cause in 1739. Her aristocratic friends were dismayed and asked Lord Huntingdon to interfere. He arranged for a bishop to talk with her, but to no avail.

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