Religion & Philosophy Holiday 2022 - 92 - Jonathan Edwards’ Faithful Narrative, Describing The Beginnings Of The Renowned “Great Awakening” Religious Revival In America, 1738 First American Edition 89. EDWARDS, Jonathan. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and in the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of Hampshire, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay of New-England. BOUND WITH: Discourses on Various Important Subjects. Boston, 1738. Small octavo (4-1/2 by 7-3/4 inches), contemporary full brown sheep. $15,000. First American edition of this important account of the beginning of “The Great Awakening” by the creator of “the first great religious revival of modern times” (ANB). Bound with Edwards’ Discourses on Various Important Subjects, a collection of five sermons. Edwards’ Faithful Narrative describes Christian conversion in his congregations in Northampton, Massachusetts, during the Great Awakening. “Edwards was apparently a stranger to Northampton in 1726, and his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737) describes both the utopian community he had heard attributed to Stoddard’s dominion and the less happy reality he found for himself… The Faithful Narrative describes how in the winter of 1734–1735, first the young people, and then their elders, responded to Edwards’s preaching with a renewed spiritual energy and a newly virtuous repertoire of public and private behavior” (ANB). “Third Edition” stated on title page, though this is the first edition published in the American colonies; preceded by the 1737 first English edition, and possibly by the 1738 Edinburgh edition. The second work in this volume, Edwards’ Discourses on Various Important Subjects, has been bound in without the title page; the Faithful Narrative is complete. Evans 4239, 4240. Bookplate. Short closed tear to a3 and I3 in Faithful Narrative, some foxing and faint dampstaining throughout volume. A very good copy in nicely restored contemporary calf. “Some speak much of the exquisite sweetness, and rest of soul, that is to be found in the exercise of a spirit of resignation to God, and humble submission to His will.”
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