Jonathan Edwards’ Ministry and Lifestyle
// April 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Affection, Life
An excerpt from The Private Life of a Modern Evangelical, by John Piper (1997):
During his pastorate at Northampton, Edwards delivered the usual two two-hour messages each week, catechized the children, and counseled people in his study. He did not visit from house to house except when called. This meant that he could spend thirteen or fourteen hours a day in his study. He said, “I think Christ has commended rising early in the morning by his rising from the grave very early.” So he rose between 4:00 and 5:00 to study, always with pen in hand, thinking out every flash of insight to its full and recording it in his notebooks. Even on his travels he would pin pieces of paper to his coat to remind himself at home of an insight he had had on the way. In the evening he would spend an hour with his family after dinner before retiring to his study. None of his children rebelled or went astray, but held their father in highest regard all his life.
Edwards’ six-foot-one frame was not robust and his health was always precarious. He could maintain the rigor of his study schedule only with strict attention to diet and exercise. Everything was calculated to optimizing his efficiency and power in study. He abstained from every quantity and kind of food that made him sick or sleepy. His exercise in the winter was to chop firewood half an hour each day, and in the summer he would ride into the fields and walk alone in meditation. In other words, for all his rationalism, Edwards had a healthy dose of the romantic and mystic in him. He wrote in his diary: “Sometimes on fair days I find myself more particularly disposed to regard the glories of the world than to betake myself to the study of serious religion.” Edwards describes one of these field trips as follows:
Once as I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love and meek, gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency, great enough to swallow up all thought and conception – which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud.
