I just finished reading George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards last night. I’ll admit, at some points it was pretty tough sledding (down a fairly long hill, too….it’s a thick book) but I am so thankful to have read it. Marsden does a masterful job of interpreting Edwards’ life in Edwards’ own terms. I found it to be very encouraging. My admiration of Edwards - shortcomings and all - is even greater than before.

Toward the end of the book, Marsden relates a study published in 1900 which compared the descendants of Edwards with the offspring of one of his corrupt contemporaries:

“The work, published in 1900, contrasted the character and intelligence of 1,200 descendants of one of his [Edwards'] most dissolute contemporaries to those of 1,400 of Edwards’ heirs. The descendants of Max Jukes, a New York Dutchman whose name the researchers changed to protect the guilty, left a legacy that included more than three hundred ‘professional paupers,’ fifty women of ill repute, seven murderers, sixty habitual thieves, and one hundred and thirty other convicted criminals.

The Edwards family, by contrast, produced scores of clergyman, thirteen presidents of institutions of higher learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of notable achievements” (pg. 501).

I think this contrast embraces something of what it means for God to visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children (Exodus 34:7) and to bless the generation of the upright (Psalm 112:2). This is not to say that there are no exceptions. After all, Edwards’ grandson, Aaron Burr, Jr., was the famed bad apple who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Nor is it to say that God cannot raise up children for Abraham from the stones of a wicked ancestry.

Rather, what we ought to hear in a report like this is that we should so pray, so study, so delight in Jesus that, should God be pleased, we will breed a herd of holiness for generations to come.