Digital New Lights 2: New England’s Hidden Histories

Historians of religion in early America ought to be shouting “Huzzah!” for the Congregational Library these days. Since 2011, Jeff Cooper and a team of scholars at this important research archive on Boston’s Beacon Hill have been gathering at-risk Congregational church records from basements, bank vaults, and private homes. The goal of the library’s New England’s Hidden Histories project is stunningly ambitious: to preserve, digitize, and transcribe tens of thousands of pages of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century church records.

I’ve been fortunate to serve on the steering committee for the program, which is led by Cooper and the Congregational Library’s executive director, Peggy Bendroth. Many of the key manuscript collections cited in Darkness Falls on the Land of Light are now available online through the NEHH portal, while many others are coming soon.

Testimony of Hannah Corey, April 5, 1749, Sturbridge, Mass., Separatist Congregational Church Records, 1745–1762, Congregational Library, Boston (available online at NEHH)

Highlights from the NEHH collection (so far) include:

• More than 500 church admission relations from Haverhill, Middleborough, and Essex, Massachusetts—all in full, glorious color!
• Church records from the “praying Indian” church at Natick;
• Ministerial association record books from nearly every county in Connecticut;
• Lists of men and women admitted to the First Church of Ipswich, Massachusetts, site of one of the largest religious revivals of eighteenth-century North America;
• Minutes from the Grafton, Massachusetts, church record book, with transcription, detailing the troubled pastorate of the ardent revivalist clergyman Solomon Prentice and his separatist wife, Sarah;
• Disciplinary records resulting from the bitter New Light church schisms in Newbury and Sturbridge, Massachusetts;
• Miscellaneous church papers from Granville, Massachusetts, featuring letters by the celebrated African American preacher Lemuel Haynes;
• And a wide range of sermons, theological notebooks, and personal papers by eighteenth-century Congregational clergymen, including luminaries Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Samuel Hopkins.

Cooper and Bendroth have forged partnerships with New England’s leading history institutions, including the American Antiquarian Society and Peabody Essex Museum. And they have digitized An Inventory of the Records of the Particular (Congregational) Churches of Massachusetts Gathered 1620–1805, the indispensable guide compiled by Bendroth’s predecessor, Harold Field Worthley.

For teachers eager to show their students what seventeenth- and eighteenth-century history is made of; for undergraduate and graduate students seeking primary texts for papers; for genealogists searching for baptismal records of long-lost ancestors; for scholars engaged in major book projects—NEHH is now the go-to hub for online research on the history of New England puritanism and the Congregational tradition.

As with all digital history initiatives, NEHH is a work in progress. They’re always looking for volunteers to support their crowd-sourced transcription projects. It’s a great opportunity to involve students in the production of new historical knowledge. For more information, contact Jeff Cooper or Helen Gelinas, director of transcription.

Thanks to a second $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bendroth, Cooper and their colleagues at the Congregational Library will be churning out high quality digital images and transcriptions of rare Congregational manuscript church records for years to come. Congratulations, CLA! Huzzah!

To read more about the NEH grant, check out this article from the Christian Science Monitor.

Edwards at Enfield (July 1741)

Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God ranks among the most frequently studied and anthologized sermons in American history. But how successful was his storied performance at Enfield, Massachusetts (now Connecticut), on July 8, 1741?

Stephen Williams, the Congregational minister in the neighboring parish of Longmeadow, famously noted in his diary that Sinners elicited a dramatic outpouring of emotions and bodily exercises among the Enfield assembly. Edwards’s fiery imagery and vertiginous metaphors—especially the “loathsome” spider dangling over the flames of hell—ignited a wailing din of screaming and sobbing that filled the Enfield meetinghouse. The deafening noise was so “piercing & Amazing,” Williams remarked, that the Northampton evangelist was “obliged to desist.” Edwards never finished his “most awakening Sermon.”

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Detail from Thomas Jeffrys, A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England ([London], 1755). Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (available online).

And we also know that Sinners was part of a coordinated effort among the ministers of the Connecticut Valley to engineer what Williams called “the revivle.” Edwards spent nearly a week in the surrounding towns before preaching at Enfield. A few days earlier, he had celebrated the sacrament across the river in Suffield, where he delivered several equally potent sermons and admitted 95 men and women to full communion. Meanwhile, Joseph Meacham of Coventry, Benjamin Pomeroy of Hebron, and, especially, Eleazar Wheelock of the “Crank” parish of Lebanon (now Columbia), Connecticut, worked their way up and down both sides of the river north of Hartford. Everywhere they went during the first week of July, their powerful revival sermons on the necessity of conversion provoked “considerable crying among the people,” “shakeing & trembling,” and “Screaching in the streets.”

Although the Enfield Congregational church records have not survived, evidence from nearby parishes suggests that the collective efforts of Edwards, Wheelock, and their colleagues were extraordinarily successful. Hundreds of lay men and women joined Congregational churches throughout the region during the summer of 1741. And these young coverts were only the tip of the iceberg; perhaps three times as many existing church members began questioning their past spiritual lives. A little over a month after the Connecticut Valley revivals blazed to life, Edwards’s father reported to Wheelock that “Religion hath been very much revived and has greatly flourished" in his East Windsor parish. "There are above seventy, that very lately…have been savingly converted in this society, and still there is a great stir among us.”

What was his son’s contribution to this extraordinary harvest of souls? How many people claimed to have experienced conversion after hearing Edwards's performance of Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God? Misfiled for more than a century and published below for the first time , a letter written by Wheelock three days after the “Great Assembly At Enfield” provides the definitive answer. Given Edwards’s exploits at Suffield, Stephen Williams’s extraordinary diary entries, and his father’s glowing report the following month, Wheelock's figure seems oddly underwhelming: “ten or twelve Converted.”

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Eleazar Wheelock’s undated letter to his parishioners in the North (or “Crank”) Parish of Lebanon may be found among the Eleazar Wheelock Papers, no 743900.1, Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H. The missive bears a notation on the verso side in a later hand that reads “to his people at Lebanon 1743”; but the details indicate that he composed it two years earlier, on July 11, 1741.

For a detailed analysis of Edwards’s itinerant activities in the Connecticut Valley during the summer of 1741, see Douglas L. Winiarski, “Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley.” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 74 (2005): 683–739 (click here to download from JSTOR); and Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2017), 222–225.

The definitive edition of Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God (Boston, 1741) appears in Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742, vol. 22, Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch with Kyle P. Farley (New Haven, Conn., 2003), 400–435. A typescript edition of Stephen Williams’s diary produced during the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration is available online at the Richard Salter Storrs Library, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (see volume 3, pages 375–379, for his famous description of Sinners and subsequent events in Longmeadow and Springfield described in Wheelock's letter). The extract from Timothy Edwards’s letter to Wheelock quoted above was published in William Allen, “Memoir of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, D. D.,” American Quarterly Register 10:1 (August 1837): 12.

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To the Church and People of God in Lebanon North Parish

Dearly Beloved,

I Came here to Winsor yesterday with a Design to Come to you this Day. The Lord Bowed the heavens and Came Down upon the assembly the Last night. The house seamd to be filled with his Great Power, a very Great Number Crying out under a sence of the wrath of God and the weight of their Guilt, 13 or 14 we Beleive Converted. My Dear Brother Pomeroy Came to me this morning from Mr. Mash’s Parish where the work was allso Great the Last night. We were Just setting out to Come home but a Number of people were met together and the Distress among them soon arose to such an heighth that we think we have a Call of Providence to Continue here over the Sabbath. Several have been Converted already this morning. There is now work Enough for 10 Ministers in this town & there is a very Glorious Work att Suffield And it was very marvellous in a Great assembly At Enfield Last Wednesday, ten or twelve Converted there. Much of his power was Seen at Longmeadow on Thursday, 6 or 7 Converted there and a Great Number wounded. There was Considerable Seen at Springfield old town on Thursday Night and much of it again yesterday Morning at Longmeadow. People Everywhere throng together to hear the word and I do verily beleive these are the beginning of the Glorious things that are Spoken Concerning the City of our God in the Latter day. I am much Concernd for Some that Remain yet Stupid and Blind. Among my Dear flock I Desire your Continual Remembrance of me your poor pastor in your prayers to God that I may be Strengthned in the inward & outward man to all that the Lord shall Call me to. I hope to be with you at the beginning of next week.

I am Your souls Friend & servant for Christ,

Eleazar Wheelock

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Eleazar Wheelock to the North Parish Church, July 11, 1741. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

Exercised Bodies (Concord, Mass., 1742)

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I recently discussed this intriguing manuscript (see transcription at end of post) during a public talk at the Congregational Library in Boston. Written by an unknown layman to an unspecified minister, the short missive provides a detailed description of religious events in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, in March 1742. The letter is noteworthy for its commentary on the somatic manifestations that attended the Whitefieldian revivals in New England.

Students of American religious history have long been familiar with the so-called “bodily exercises” of the Second Great Awakening—the fits of falling, laughing, barking, and jerking that dominated accounts of frontier camp meetings and sacramental festivals during the first decade of the nineteenth century. I’ve been tracking the most notorious of these innovative practices—the jerks—in my current research. But what about the Whitefieldian revivals of the mid-eighteenth century? What role did exercised bodies play during this earlier period?

The Congregational Library letter provides crucial evidence. According to the author, more than 300 people “were suddenly struck, & drop’d down like persons in fits” during a series of protracted revival meetings led by itinerant preacher Samuel Buell and town minister Daniel Bliss. Lasting deep into the night, these gatherings featured a welter of noise and unseemly actions. Buell and Bliss welcomed the chaos. “They esteem’d those truly converted, who had these Joys,” the anonymous author noted with scorn. Many lay men and women agreed, for “those Under concern, imagined that the louder they screem’d the sooner they should be converted.”

Samuel Buell (1716–1798), the central figure in the letter, is one of the least understood, but perhaps most influential figures of New England’s era of great awakenings. Born in Coventry, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale College and was licensed to preach by the East Fairfield ministerial association in 1741. Never as popular as George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards, Buell was neither as controversial as Gilbert Tennent or James Davenport nor as skilled in polemics as Andrew Croswell. And unlike other prominent Whitefieldarians, including Daniel Rogers and Eleazar Wheelock, Buell did not chronicle his extensive itinerant labors in a journal.

But during the peak months of the New England revivals, the “famous Mr. Buell” ranked among the foremost evangelists of his generation. The meetings in Concord were part of a nine-month itinerant tour that carried the young firebrand more than 300 miles from Connecticut to Maine. Buell’s barnstorming circuit began in Northampton, Massachusetts, in March 1742, where his potent sermons famously propelled Sarah Edwards to heights of mystical ecstasy. From there, he set off through the sparsely settled villages of central Massachusetts, preaching daily with “great power.” After pausing for a fortnight in Concord, he journeyed to Charlestown and Boston, where he teamed up with fellow itinerants Andrew Croswell and Daniel Rogers. By mid-summer, he had reached Falmouth, Maine.

Inciting bodily exercises appears to have been a planned strategy. Everywhere he went, Buell attempted to raise the passions of his audience “to the highest pitch.” Yale classmate Samuel Hopkins, who accompanied Buell through central Massachusetts, described whole congregations “struck” and “bowed down” by the evangelist’s sermons. To him, somatic fits of falling, shaking, and crying signaled the descent of God’s Holy Spirit. But to others, including the anonymous Concord correspondent and diarist Nathan Bowen, such unseemly displays were a “Disgrace to the Christian Scheme!”

Abraham G. D. Tuthill, Reverend Samuel Buell, 1798, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York.

Following his return to Connecticut during the fall of 1742, Buell was ordained as an itinerant preacher with no settled pastorate—the second such figure in the history of New England Congregationalism. While traveling to preach in Virginia several years later, he was called to the pulpit of Easthampton, New York. Buell remained on Long Island for the next three decades. He achieved enduring fame during a powerful revival that struck the region in 1764 and emerged as a stalwart supporter of the Mohegan Indian minister, Samson Occom.

The anonymous letter reproduced below may be found in Jonas Bowen Clarke’s Collection of Papers, 1742, at the Congregational Library in Boston and is reproduced by permission. For a brief biography of Samuel Buell, see Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College: With Annals of the College History, 6 vols. (New York, 1885–1912), 1:664–669. Additional accounts of Buell’s 1742 itinerant tour of New England include Sue Lane McCulley and Dorothy Z. Baker, ed., The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill (Knoxville, Tenn., 2005), 4–8, 11, 14–15; Samuel Hopkins, journal, 1741–1744, 27–34, box 322, Simon Gratz Autograph Collections, 1518–1925, Collection 250B, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (1842; Edinburgh, 1976), 206; Boston Weekly Post-Boy, April 5, 1742; “Extracts from the Interleaved Almanacs of Nathan Bowen, 1742–1799,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 91 (1955): 167–171; Daniel Rogers, diary, 1740–175[3], April 1–April 29, 1742, Rogers Family Papers, 1614–1950, Ser. II, box 5B, New-York Historical Society; William Kidder, [ed.], “The Diary of Nicholas Gilman” (M.A. thesis, University of New Hampshire, 1972), 279–281; and William Willis, Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith, and the Rev. Samuel Deane (Portland, Maine, 1849), 103. I discuss the Buell’s itinerant career in Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, 220–230; see also Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, Conn., 2007), 134–137, 267–287. On the bodily exercises of the Great Revival during the early nineteenth century, see, especially, Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2001), xi–xxviii.

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Reverend Sir,

Mr. Beuel came to Concord March the 20. They had a publick exercise every day, & for nine nights Successively (which was the time, he continued, there). Great numbers, of the people, tarried the greatest part of the night, in the Meeting-house, & Mr. Beuel with them, sometimes, til two a-clock in the Morning.

The effects, Upon the Minds, or rather, bodies of the people, Were, sighing, groaning, crying out, fainting, falling down, praying, exhorting, singing, laughing, congratulation, (or wishing each other Joy as they expres’d it) by shaking hands together, & by imbraceing each other, which was practic’d by different sexes, as well as others; & these all at the same time. And by the fifth day of his being there, about 300 were thus visibly affected, so that the noise, & confusion in the meeting-house was inexpressibly great, And Amidst such disorder, & a vast croud of people, it was impossible to make a just observation upon all that hap’ned. But yet I evidently found:

1. That all these disorders were encouraged by Mr. Beuel, & the Reverend Pastor of the town, for they endeavoured to raise these different passions, to the highest pitch.

2. That they esteem’d those truly converted, who had these Joys, & that the others were in a damnable state. This appear’d by all their addresses to them.

3. That the greatest part, could give No rational Account, of their distresses, or Joys.

4. That many were suddenly struck, & drop’d down like persons in fits.

5. That those Under concern, imagined that the louder they screem’d the sooner they should be converted, and that these expressions of sorrow & Joy were generally affected, or voluntary. This appear’d by several instances, where there was the greatest probability of the contrary; for the persons were immediately silent, Upon Mr. Beuels speaking to them for that perpose, As he was several times forc’d to do, that he Might be heard himself.

6. That ye persons were generally Women, & children.

7. That they were indifferently affected, whatever their past conduct had been.

8. That ye continuance of their distress, was various, some remain’d under it for days, others only a few hours, or minutes.

9. That these effects Never happen’d, to any considerable degree, til the darkness of the night came on.

These are the principle facts that, fell within My observation, & I think you May depend Upon the certainty of every one of them, & in Making what Use of them, you see fit, you will not disoblige

Your very humble servant

[Mss torn]

[Mss torn] 1, 1742

Fayerweather Family Prayer Bills (Boston, 1770s)

I discovered this interesting group eighteenth-century religious manuscripts shortly after Darkness Falls on the Land of Light went to press. They are excellent examples of what New England Congregationalists called prayer bills or prayer notes—small slips of paper bearing prayers to be read by ministers during Sabbath worship exercises. Unlike the few surviving prayer bills, nearly all of which are scattered among the papers of prominent clergymen such as Cotton Mather or Jonathan Edwards, this collection remained in the family of the prosperous Boston and Cambridge merchant, Thomas Fayerweather, and were passed down to his posterity along with his voluminous business correspondence and account books.

As with most prayer bills, the Fayerweather notes fall into one of two major classes. The Boston merchant composed petitionary prayers beseeching God for protection and healing in the face of impending life crises, such as his wife’s pregnancies or the illnesses of family members. During the ensuing weeks, Fayerweather penned prayers of thanksgiving or sanctification in which he sought to demonstrate his family’s resignation to the will of God. The form of each prayer request, moreover, closely followed the standard conventions of the genre, which remained relatively unchanged from the late seventeenth century through the early 1800s. That Fayerweather preserved these ephemeral manuscripts suggests that he may have envisioned the notes as a record of God’s dealings with his family in much the same way that puritan diarists often used their devotional journals to mark remarkable or providential events in their lives.

Robert Feke, Thomas Fayerweather (1724–1805), ca. 1740–1760, Accession Number 1993.141.1, Historic New England. Bequest of Miss Eleanor Fayerweather.

Baptized as an infant in Boston’s Old South Church, Thomas Fayerweather (1724–1805) was raised in one of New England's wealthiest families. At a young age, he learned the merchant’s trade from his father and spent several years with relatives in Philadelphia and Maryland. Returning to Boston, Thomas married Sarah Hubbard (1730–1804), daughter of the treasurer of Harvard College, in 1754; they had four children between 1757 and 1769. Over time, Fayerweather expanded his business enterprises, trading a wide range of foodstuffs, commodities, and enslaved Africans from Maritime Canada to the West Indies, New York to London, and in ports in Central America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. It is not clear whether Thomas or Sarah ever affiliated with the Old South Church, although they presented their children for baptism in a regular order at the venerable Boston meetinghouse. (His older brother Samuel, by contrast, joined in full communion at the peak of the Whitefieldian revivals in 1741, after he experienced a wrenching conversion and was beset by dramatic visions of Satan.) In later years, Fayerweather moved his family to an impressive mansion on “Tory Row” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As with many of the “Genteel Folks” of the Revolutionary era, as the future president John Adams described Fayerweather’s elite social circle, he purchased pews in both the local Congregational meetinghouse and the Episcopal church. At the time of his death in 1805, Fayerweather’s estate was valued at more than 64,000 dollars.

Robert Feke, Sarah Hubbard Fayerweather (1730–1804), ca. 1740–1760, Accession Number 1993.141.2, Historic New England. Estate of Eleanor Fayerweather.

The seven prayer bill manuscripts presented below are part of the Thomas Fayerweather Papers, 1737–1818 (Mss 80) at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston and are reproduced here by permission. I have organized them in chronological order based on the birth and baptismal dates of Fayerweather’s children and the deaths of Sarah Fayerweather’s sister, Thankful, wife of Boston physician Thomas Leonard (d. December 2, 1772), her father, Thomas Hubbard (d. July 14, 1773), and her mother, Mary Jackson Hubbard (d. February 15, 1774). Written on the back of a list financial transactions with business contacts in central Massachusetts, the sixth document includes copies of prayer requests that Fayerweather submitted to the ministers of the Old South Church.

I discuss prayer bills at greater length in “The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion & Deception in New England’s Era of Great Awakenings.” Massachusetts Historical Review 14 (2012): 53–86; and Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, 67–69 (see also 204–205, 452–454, and 563–565 for the spiritual odyssey of Fayerweather’s radical New Light brother). For edited transcriptions of the largest surviving collection of eighteenth-century prayer notes, see Stephen J. Stein, “‘For Their Spiritual Good’: The Northampton, Massachusetts, Prayer Bids of the 1730s and 1740s,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 37 (1980): 261–285. On the broader religious culture of Boston’s eighteenth-century merchant community, see Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton, N.J., 2010). For genealogical information on the Fayerweather family, see John B. Carney, “In Search of Fayerweather: The Fayerweather Family of Boston,” New England Historic Genealogical Register 145 (1991): 57–66; and Harlan Page Hubbard, One Thousand Years of Hubbard History, 866–1895 (New York, 1895), 92–94. A number of Fayerweather family artifacts, including the portraits by Robert Feke displayed below, may be viewed in the online collections of Historic New England.

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[ca. 1757–1769]

Thomas Fayerweather & Wife returns thanks to God for his great goodness in granting her a safe deliverance in Child birth & ask’g your prayers that begun Mercy may be perfected,

for perfecting mercy,

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. 1757–1769]

Thomas Fayerweather & wife returns thanks to God for his great goodness in raising her from the perils of child birth & giving her an opportunity to wait on him in his house Again.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. December 1772]

Thomas Fayerweather & wife desires prayers, that the dispensation of Gods Providence, in the Death of her Only Sister, may be sanctified to them.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. 1773]

Thomas Fayerweather & Wife, desires prayers for her Father, very week & low, that God would be pleas’d to Bless the means, us’d for his Recovery, or fit & prepair him, & all concern’d, for his Will & pleasure.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. July 1773]

Thomas Fayerweather & Wife desires prayers that the Dispensation of Gods Providence in the Death of her Father may be sanctified to them & to their Children.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. 1774]

First note.

Thomas Fayerweather & Wife desires your prayers for her Mother; very week & low that God would be pleased to Bless the means us’d for her Recovery or fit & prepair her & all concerned for his Will & pleasure.

2d. note second Sabbath morning

Mary Hubbard with her Children desires the continuance of your prayers for her; remaining very week & low, that God would be pleased to support & prepare her, & all concerned for his holy will & pleasure

2 Note if T Fayerweather & Wife had have put up one was as follows, (not sent)

Thomas Fayerweather & wife desires the continuance of your prayers for her Mother Apprehended drawing near her great change that God would be pleased to fit & prepair her & all concern’d for his Soveraign Will.

NB. The note wrote by Madm. G. as follows not sent.

Mary Hubbard remaining very week and low desires Continuance of your Prayers for her, that God would support her and prepare for his Holy Will and pleasure.

(pray’d to God to support them, & comfort them in their afflictions.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

[ca. February 1774]

Thomas Fayerweather & Wife desires prayers, that the Dispensation of God’s Providence, in the Death of her mother may be sanctified to them, & to their Children.

Courtesy New England Historic Genealogical Society.

First Fruits

An early review of Darkness Falls on the Land of Light by Douglas Sweeney,  director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.