not only heartily
willing to condemn man to eternal torment but capable of enjoying the
tortures of the damned, and gloating in strange joy over the writhings
of the condemned. Is it any wonder that in the midst of Jonathan
Edward's sermon, _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_, men and women
sprang to their feet and shrieked in anguish, "What shall we do to be
saved?"

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is
dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks
upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is
of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times as abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and
venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than
ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand
that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed
to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was
suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to
sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped
into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held
you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to
hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure
eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea,
there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not
this very moment drop down into hell."

Under such teachings the girl of colonial New England grew into
womanhood; with such thoughts in mind she saw her children go down into
the grave; with such forebodings she herself passed out into an
uncertain Hereafter. Nor was there any escape from such sermons; for
church attendance was for many years compulsory, and even when not
compulsory, was essential for those who did not wish to be politically
and socially ostracized. The preachers were not, of course, required to
give proof for their declarations; they might well have announced, "Thus
saith the Lord," but they preferred to enter into disquisitions
bristling with arguments and so-called logical deductions. For instance,
note in Edwards' sermon, _Why Saints in Glory will Rejoice to see the
Torments of the Damned_, the chain of reasoning leading to the
conclusion that those enthroned in he