Mr. Edwards and his Spider

[ricardienne]

From a bathroom stall in the library: "There was a fish in the percolator." Wouldn't that be a good first sentence for a novel?



Once upon a time, my college was an Episcopal Seminary: probably the only respect in which the library is good is in its collection of (largely 19th century) theology and theological biography, which I pass whenever I go to get a Greek lexicon from the reference section. (Four ancient biographies of Pusey?). Today I was reading, not so much of Jonathan Edwards as about him. He went to Yale, you know, took over from his grandfather as the minister in Northampton, and got kicked out by his congregation after he changed church policy to only admit professed Christians; after a number of years as a missionary, he was president of Princeton University for about six months, until he died from the side affects of a small-pox inoculation.

I did read his Personal Narrative, tonight; he may be affectionately known as "the American Augustine" (and it isn't as though I can't see why), but his rhetoric is more emotional and less -- I don't want to say 'less rational,' but it is less dependent on reason and abstraction. As a result, I have a much harder time connecting with Edwards. He's fascinating, but I don't get that bit of personal connection and understanding that I think I find in Augustine.

There is also something very mystical about Edwards' style:

From my childhood up, my mind had been wont to be full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give an account, how, or by what means, I was thus convinced; not in the least imagining, in the time of it, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's Spirit in it: but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections, that I had till then abode with me, all the preceding part of my life. And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against God's sovereignty, in the most absolute sense, in showing mercy on whom he will show mercy, and hardening and eternally damning whom he will. God's absolute sovereignty, and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes; at least it is so at times. But I have oftentimes since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God's sovereignty, than I had then. I have often since, not only had a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine of God's sovereignty has very often appeared, an exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet doctrine to me: and absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not with this.


The first that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I Tim. 1:17. ""Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen." As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapped up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought, that there was anything spiritual, or of a saving nature in this.


From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in him.

To me, admittedly not religious, I keep coming up against a glass wall, reading this. There is something there that I can look at, but I can't even get close to. I can see it, and I can imagine what I think it might be like to be closer, to touch it, but I have no point of contact with it.

On the other hand, here's a really nice poem by Robert Lowell about Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God:


Mr. Edwards and the Spider


  I saw the spiders marching through the air,
  Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day
    In latter August when the hay
    Came creaking to the barn. But where
      The wind is westerly,
  Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly
  Into the apparitions of the sky,
  They purpose nothing but their ease and die
Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;


  What are we in the hands of the great God?
  It was in vain you set up thorn and briar
    In battle array against the fire
    And treason crackling in your blood;
      For the wild thorns grow tame
  And will do nothing to oppose the flame;
  Your lacerations tell the losing game
  You play against a sickness past your cure.
How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?


  A very little thing, a little worm,
  Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said,
    Can kill a tiger. Will the dead
    Hold up his mirror and affirm
      To the four winds the smell
  And flash of his authority? It's well
  If God who holds you to the pit of hell,
  Much as one holds a spider, will destroy,
Baffle and dissipate your soul. As a small boy


  On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die
  When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire:
    There's no long struggle, no desire
    To get up on its feet and fly---
      It stretches out its feet
  And dies. This is the sinner's last retreat;
  Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat
  The sinews the abolished will, when sick
And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick.


  But who can plumb the sinking of that soul?
  Josiah Hawley, picture yourself cast
    Into a brick-kiln where the blast
    Fans your quick vitals to a coal---
     If measured by a glass,
  How long would it sem burning! Let there pass
  A minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blaze
  Is infinite, eternal:: this is death,
To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.

I do wonder whether they have black widows in New England, but it is a very nice image: the hourglass against eternity; the spider as the death that you could meet at any moment, but also the spider that can actually die once and for all.

Comments

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

You need to write a novel specifically so that you can use that line.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

But what kind of novel would it be?

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...

Well, one's gotta admit that it sounds like something from a Dirk Gently novel, doesn't it? It seems pretty multi-purpose, though, so long as it's more than a little absurd.