His wife was still in Stockbridge when he passed away. "Tell
her," he said to his daughter, "that the uncommon union which has so long
subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and
therefore will continue forever." In September of the same year she came to
lie beside him in the graveyard at Princeton.
In 1900, the church that had dismissed him one hundred and fifty years
before placed on its walls a bronze tablet in his memory, with the noble
inscription from _Malachi_ ii., 6.
As a writer, Jonathan Edwards won fame in three fields. He is (1) America's
greatest metaphysician, (2) her greatest theologian, and (3) a unique
poetic interpreter of the universe as a manifestation of the divine love.
His best known metaphysical work is _The Freedom of the Will_ (1754). The
central point of this work is that the will is determined by the strongest
motive, that it is "repugnant to reason that one act of the will should
come into existence without a cause." He boldly says that God is free to do
only what is right. Edwards emphasizes the higher freedom, gained through
repeated acts of the right kind, until both the inclination and the power
to do wrong disappear.
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