Jonathan Edwards’ Conversion

Jonathan Edwards was suddenly converted, as by a flash of light, in the moment of reading a single verse of the New Testament. He was at home in his father’s house; some hindrances kept him from going to church one Sunday with the family. A couple of hours with nothing to do sent him listlessly into the library; the sight of a dull volume with no title on the leather back of it evoked curiosity as to what it could be; he opened it at random and found it to be a Bible; and then his eye caught this verse: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen!”

He tells us in his journal that the immediate effect of it was awakening and alarming to his soul, for it brought him a most novel and most extensive thought of the vastness and majesty of the true Sovereign of the universe. Out of this grew the pain of guilt for having resisted such a Monarch so long, and for having served Him so poorly. And whereas he had hitherto had slight notions of his own wickedness and very little poignancy of acute remorse, now he felt the deepest contrition.