Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards

It is a collection of seven of Jonathan Edwards's major sermons, ranging from 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence' (1731) to his 'Farewell Sermon' (1750) — and including the most famous sermon in American history, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' Together they show the range and power of the preaching of one of America's greatest theologians.

Jonathan Edwards was an eighteenth-century New England pastor, theologian, and a leader of the Great Awakening, widely regarded as the greatest philosophical and theological mind in American history. Author of works like Religious Affections and Freedom of the Will, he was also a powerful preacher, and these sermons preserve that side of his ministry.

It is Edwards's best-known sermon, preached in 1741, warning the unconverted of their peril before a holy God and pressing them to flee to Christ. Famous for its vivid imagery of danger and its solemn urgency, it became the most celebrated sermon in American history — though it is only one facet of a preacher whose range these selected sermons display more fully.

No — and this collection helps correct that impression. Alongside the famous warning sermon stand messages like 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence,' on the glory of grace, and his tender 'Farewell Sermon' to his congregation. Edwards preached the beauty and glory of God and the sweetness of grace as earnestly as he preached judgement, and the range here shows it.

The absolute sovereignty and glory of God, humanity's total dependence on grace, the beauty of holiness, the reality of the soul's eternal destiny, and the necessity of a genuinely changed heart. Edwards preached to awaken and to affect the heart, not merely to inform the mind, pressing his hearers toward real conversion and true religious affection.

It is the sermon Edwards preached in 1750 after his own congregation at Northampton dismissed him following a dispute over church membership. Addressing the people who had removed him, and looking to the day they would all meet at Christ's judgement seat, it is a moving and dignified close to a painful chapter, and reveals the pastor's heart behind the theologian's mind.

Anyone wanting to encounter Edwards as a preacher, not only as a theologian, and any reader interested in the Great Awakening or in powerful, God-centred preaching. The collection is a fine introduction to Edwards's spirituality, showing both his solemn warnings and his exalted vision of the glory and grace of God.

With whichever sermon draws them — each stands on its own — though reading them in the order given traces Edwards's ministry across two decades. Many begin with 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' for its fame, but pairing it with 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence' and the 'Farewell Sermon' gives a truer and fuller sense of Edwards the preacher.