Introduction

On November 28th, 1751, Jonathan Edwards took up his pen and wrote two letters: one to Sir William Pepperrell (1696-1759), and a second to Lady Mary Pepperrell (1703-1789). During a prior visit to their home, Lady Mary requested that, should Edwards write to her husband, he should include a letter to her as well.¹ In writing to Sir William, Edwards was after the approval of one of the most prestigious men in all the British Colonies: the war hero of Louisburg.² Edwards sought to gain the Baron’s support for his philosophy of childhood education.³ However, in writing to Lady Mary, Edwards sought to address a more sensitive issue. The circumstance that served as the basis for this letter was an occasion of dark and difficult providence. On March 1st of that same year, Sir William and Mary Pepperrell lost their one and only son Andrew (1726-1751) from a “nervous fever” following a 10-day illness.⁴ In a letter to a colleague dated June 20th, 1751, Sir William described his son as having been a “healthy, hale, promising young man.”⁵ In another letter, dated July 23rd, 1751, Sir William described his fatherly anguish: “[the] death of my dear & only son – a promising, healthy young man – has taken me off from doing my duty.”⁶

As for Lady Mary, a clear theme appears from the sources surrounding that tragic period: heavy sorrow. In his letter on July 23rd, Sir William prayed that his “poor, sinking Mrs. Pepperrell” would be “supported under this heavy bereavement.”⁷ In Andrew’s funeral sermon, preached by Benjamin Stevens (1721-1791) of the Kittery Lower Parish, Stevens described friends and family as “mourning under a most heavy bereavement.”⁸ Edwards acknowledged the same reality when he addressed the Baroness. The question he asked himself was what would be the “most proper subject of contemplation…and sufficient source of consolation,” for one under such “heavy affliction”?⁹ The answer that Edwards gave is simple, yet it is profound and provides insight into his pastoral heart and the practical application of his affectionate theology. Confronted with the heaviness of “deep sorrow under the awful frowns of heaven,” Edwards was convinced that only one subject could provide a “proper and sufficient source of consolation” for the Baroness: the amiableness of Jesus Christ and his “great and unparalleled love.”¹⁰ In a word, Edwards felt that the only subject sufficient to address the deep anguish of parental bereavement was a meditation on the loveliness of Christ. As Edward’s argued elsewhere, “Christ gives himself to his people to be all things to them that they need.”¹¹ This article will consider Edward’s Christocentric approach to Lady Pepperrell’s suffering and the lasting significance of his letter.

An Introduction to Lady Pepperrell

Lady Mary Hirst Pepperrell was the wife of Sir William Pepperrell, an affluent merchant who became the first English citizen from the British Colonies to be made a Baronet following his military success in King George’s War.¹² Born Mary Hirst, she was the daughter of Grove Hirst (himself a successful Boston merchant) and Elizabeth Sewall, which made her the granddaughter of the notorious Judge Samuel Sewall.¹³ Married to William Pepperrell on March 16th, 1723, the couple would have four children.¹⁴ Andrew’s untimely death was not the first loss that Lady Mary had endured. Only two of her four children would reach adulthood.¹⁵ Acquainted with Edwards, Charles Chauncy (her brother-in-law), and George Whitefield (who she and William hosted in 1740), she appears to have been a woman of tried and tested faith.¹⁶ Prompted by the death of one of her younger children, Lady Mary wrote the poem, A Lamentation &c. On the Death of a Child. Her lines capture the joys of motherhood and the sorrows of unexpected death: “A Pretty Bird did lately please my sight, / Ravish’d my Heart, and fill’d me with delight. / …Alas, when I least dreamt of its decay, / The pleasant Bird by Death was snatch’d away.”¹⁷ Still, she resigned to the sovereignty and goodness of God: “Snatch’d, did I say, no, I recall the Word, / ‘Twas sent for home by its most rightful Lord.” In November 1789, thirty years after the death of her husband, Lady Mary was commended in a letter to President George Washington written by Joseph Buckminster to accompany Sir Williams’s funeral sermon, delivered to the President at her behest.¹⁸ She died later the same year at the age of 86.

The Loveliness of Christ

Benjamin Stevens, in his funeral sermon for Andrew Pepperrell, described the death of an only son as “one of the greatest occasions of sorrow.”¹⁹ To console Lady Mary, Edwards avoids the pleasantries typical of that time.²⁰ Notably, Edwards does not call her attention to general Scriptural principles – such as the good purposes of God in times of adversity – but rather, he calls her to look, with the mind’s eye of faith, to the Savior’s person:

Let us think, dear Madam, a little of the loveliness of our blessed Redeemer and his worthiness, that our whole soul should be swallowed up with love to him and delight in him, and that we should salve our hearts in him, rest in him, have sweet complacence and satisfaction of soul in his excellency and beauty, whatever else we are deprived of.²¹

This represents the first of two points that Edwards will address. If the loss of an only son is one of the greatest sorrows one can experience in this life, only the greatest soul-medicine will suffice as a suitable consolation. For Edward’s, this was the loveliness of Christ. His theory, as expressed above, is that the “sweet complacence and satisfaction of soul” to be found in knowing, loving, and delighting in Christ is sufficient, “whatever else we are deprived of.”²² Here we see the affectionate theology of Jonathan Edwards applied to the harsh realities of suffering. He believed nothing short of “looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,” (Heb 12:2) could provide a sufficient source of consolation for the suffering saint.

First, Edwards grounded the loveliness of Christ in the reality of his incarnation as the ultimate revelation of the Godhead. He is at once a man, who “came into the world in our nature,” and God, one “truly possessed of all the fullness of that infinite glory of the Godhead.”²³ In the incarnation, Edwards saw a glorious revelation of the Deity. “Infinite wisdom,” he wrote, “has contrived that we should behold the glory of the Deity in the face of Jesus Christ to the greatest advantage and in such a manner as should be most adapted to the capacity of poor feeble worms.”²⁴ In other words, had it not been for the incarnation of Christ, man would never know the “eternal and immutable happiness” shared by the “society of the persons of the Trinity.”²⁵ Christ alone provides a window to these realities that “allure our hearts and give us the most full and perfect acquiescence and delight.”²⁶

Yet, Edwards anticipated a reasonable concern. If Christ is indeed so majestic and so infinite in all his perfections – if, in a word, he is God – does this not demand our absolute “reverence and adoration”? It does, but it does so in such a way that “there is nothing in it that needs to terrify us.”²⁷ This was Edwards’ second observation on the loveliness of Christ. If Christ is so great, might he also be terrifying? If this were the case, all the beauty of his divinity would be shut up from lowly men and women, and as a result, would be the occasion of great fear and sorrow rather than infinite joy. “No,” said Edwards, “For his infinite majesty is joined with as it were infinite meekness, sweet condescension, and humility. So that in the whole there is nothing terrifying or forbidding.”²⁸ Christ is at once able to call forth the “utmost possible reverence” and draw hearts “sweetly and powerfully to the most free access.”²⁹

Where the infinite majesty and infinite meekness of Christ meet is where Edwards made a third observation about the loveliness of Christ, which will serve as the basis for his second major subject: the love of Christ. Edwards argued that Christ epitomizes this union of majesty and meekness in his incarnation. This makes him especially fit to “support the healing and reviving of the afflicted.”³⁰ As the writer of Hebrews argued, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses…let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4:15-16). Likewise, Christ’s majesty is “infinitely softened” to make him perfectly suitable to helping his people “cut down by the scythe of adversity.”³¹

The Love of Christ

In no greater way is Christ’s majesty “sweetened” than by “his love, his unparalleled, dying love.”³² This is the second major point Edwards put forward as the grounds for Lady Mary’s consolation. Not only is Christ infinitely lovely by merit of his infinite majesty and infinite meekness, but he is also made most lovely by the greatest expression of his condescension: his sacrificial love. The redemptive work of Christ was, for Edwards, a far more glorious reality than all the work of Creation.³³ He considered Christ “the most wonderful instance of love there ever was.”³⁴ “All the virtues of Christ,” Edwards argued, “both divine and human, have their greatest manifestation in that marvelous act of his love, his offering himself up as a sacrifice for us under those extreme sufferings.”³⁵

Edwards observed that this love is not only expressed in Christ’s act of sacrifice, but in his bringing us into communion with him. “His love has brought him into such a relation to us as our friend, our elder brother, our Lord,” and as Edwards argued, “into so strict an union with him that our souls are his beloved bride.”³⁶ In other words, Christ’s love not only means that his people belong to him, but that he belongs, by his own free choice, to his people. This union with him affords his people two series of “suitable provisions,” that God has made “for our consolation.” First, it affords his people a present comfort under their afflictions. Edwards’ provided several examples: “He suffered that we might be delivered.… His heart was overwhelmed in a flood of sorrow and anguish, that our hearts might be filled and overwhelmed with a flood of eternal joy.”³⁷ Second, it affords his people a sure and certain hope. “We have this friend,” Edwards wrote, “this mighty Redeemer, to go to under all affliction.”³⁸ This is a relationship that, “if we are vitally united to him,” can never be broken; “it will remain when we die and when heaven and earth are dissolved.”³⁹ In sum, Edwards presented Christ to Lady Mary as one to whom she could turn under any affliction. His loveliness, coupled with his love, preserves both his transcendence and his immanence. He is at once so lofty to draw man’s gaze to heavenly things, and yet so immanent that weary men “may go to him who is as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”⁴⁰ “If we are united to him,” Edwards concluded, “our soul will be like a tree planted by a river that never dieth.”⁴¹ Therefore, God’s people have every reason to hope in Christ until that day when “there shall be no interposing cloud, no veil on his face or on our hearts, but the Lord shall be our everlasting light and Redeemer, our glory.”⁴²

Conclusion

It was Edward’s sincere hope that this brief meditation on the loveliness and love of Christ would encourage Lady Mary as she lamented the painful loss of her beloved son. Job’s friends, confronted with the immensity of his suffering, wisely sat with him in silence. When the time to speak does eventually come, Edwards demonstrates that there is no better source of consolation than Christ. Edwards’ example here is remarkably instructive. As he observed, “Christ told his disciples that in the world [they] should have trouble, but says he, ‘In me ye shall have peace.’”⁴³ Is Edward’s approach idealistic? Was he out of touch? Are meditations like this sufficient medicine for the aching soul? Arguably, the only reason Edwards’ approach might seem idealistic today is that pragmatism now dominates the way God’s people minister to one another. Like Job’s friends, who foolishly sought to unravel the mysteries of dark providence, Christians are often tempted to speak and to act where they should remain silent. Edwards serves to remind God’s people that the beauty of Christ is a sufficient language for times of praise and times of lament alike. The lasting significance of this letter might be summed up this way: Lady Mary Pepperrell confronts the reader with the harsh reality of affliction and suffering – suffering that often exceeds the expression of language – but, there is a Word sufficient to address the deepest hurt, and with Edwards as a guide and instructor, the reader learns that the discipline of looking to Christ is a sufficient consolation for every season of life.

Footnotes