THE WOOING OF ESTHER SPEC EDWARDS PECULATIONS as to the difference in history which might have resulted from a woman's acceptance of one lover instead of another are always of interest. Particularly is this true when the child of the woman in question turns out to be so curious, so fascinating, and so enigmatic a character as Aaron Burr. Heredity certainly played strange tricks on itself in the history of the family from which Aaron Burr sprang. We have seen in the story of Elizabeth Whitman that Pierrepont Edwards, son of Jonathan Edwards, the theologian, and Sarah Pierre pont, the heavenly-minded one, was very far indeed from being a child of grace. And the moral lapses of Aaron Burr, born of a high-minded father and a singularly spiritual mother, are too well-known to need more than a passing mention here. The only conclusion to be reached, as one surveys the life of Hamilton's slayer, is that his sad and early bereavement (he was an orphan from childhood) left him so young without a parent's loving direction that one should always pity and never condemn him. Burr's grandfather Jonathan Edwards, renowned to this day as the first American author to achieve a European reputation as well as because he is a great theologian offers to those interested in biography one of the most charming of subjects. It is a source of regret that there is not more to be known of the man himself. The few things that we do know, however, are full of beauty and poetic charm. Born in East Windsor, Connecticut, just two hundred years ago (October 5, 1703), the only son of the pastor of the Congregational Church of that place, Jonathan entered Yale College when only thirteen years of age. After graduation he spent two years in his theological studies, and in 1722, when but nineteen years old, was licensed to preach. For a few months he presided over a small Presbyterian church in New York City, but things were not favourable in the New York of that day to the faith of a Jonathan Edwards, so he soon returned to New Haven to complete his studies. Then there came into the man's life that affection which has caused him to be so often likened to Dante. For he gained the love of Sarah Pierrepont, of whom, when she was a young girl of thirteen, he wrote this exquisite description: "They say that there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him; that she expects after awhile to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him and be ravished with His love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness THE WOOING OF ESTHER EDWARDS PECULATIONS as to the differ SPEC ence in history which might have resulted from a woman's acceptance of one lover instead of another are always of interest. Particularly is this true when the child of the woman in question turns out to be so curious, so fascinating, and so enigmatic a character as Aaron Burr. Heredity certainly played strange tricks on itself in the history of the family from which Aaron Burr sprang. We have seen in the story of Elizabeth Whitman that Pierrepont Edwards, son of Jonathan Edwards, the theologian, and Sarah Pierre |