LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Student Presentation on Reading Selections 2005

7 Feb. 2005: Karen Locklear on Jonathan Edwards
Sermons such as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God express the side of spirituality focusing primarily on the wrath of God as opposed to the forgiving God. This sermon based upon Deuteronomy 32:35 (“Their foot shall slide in due time.”), presents an expectation of sin or failure in the eyes of God. There are other references to other Old Testament texts such as “ . . .thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction” (Psalms 73:18), showing a vengeful omniscient being. This is an expression of the dark or gothic side of romanticism, as Edwards further presents this tone when saying:

So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire bent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God. (212)

However, in Edward’s Personal Narrative, his tone is extremely different. Edwards discusses the positive element of Christianity, as opposed to the vengeance of an angry being. The text refers back to New Testament passages, which are more salvation based as opposed to punishment based:

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. An inward, sweet sense of these things, 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, on the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words Cant. 2:1, used to be abundantly with me, I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lilly of the valleys. (185)

            Thus, the more positive or lighter side of romanticism is presented; the focus is on the relationship, not eternal damnation. The two pieces are an interesting dichotomy of Romanticism; one focusing on the sublime, wrathful, “pit of Hell”, the other looking at the benefits of a relationship with God.