Millers Falls is in the west of Massachusetts, north of the town of Northampton. In church history terms, the most famous person associated with it was Jonathan Edwards, said to be America’s first philosopher/theologian. He went to Yale College (now Yale University, which had been founded by Elihu Yale, who is buried at Wrexham) at the age of 13. He later joined his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, who was pastor of the congregational church in Northampton. On Stoddard’s death he became pastor. He saw revival in the mid-1730s, and then a flood tide in the early 1740s, with the arrival of George Whitefield and what became known as the Great Awakening. It was during this period that he preached his most famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. When preached at Enfield, such was the effect that people were clinging to pews, trees, anything, as they feared they were being pulled into hell. It is still read today in American schools—but to show what a harsh and cruel man Edwards was. Total rubbish, of course. Edwards cared so much for people that he didn’t want them to go to hell and so warned them to flee the wrath to come.

After some unwise pastoral work (rebuking children for sniggering over a mid-wifery book), Edwards had to deal with the problem of the Half-Way Covenant (allowing baptized unconverted grown up children of believing parents to have some church membership rights) and refused unbelievers communion. This led to him being ejected by the congregation by a large majority.

He went off into what must have seemed like exile at the far west of Massachusetts, in Stockbridge. From there he was called to be president of Princeton College in New Jersey. After less than a year there was a smallpox outbreak. To protect him from this he was given a vaccination, and it was this that killed him. He was buried in the President’s Plot at Princeton which we’d already visited.

Bob first took us to Solomon Stoddard’s house, which is up on the hill overlooking the town. We then parked the car and called at the Congregational Church. The building is the fifth on the site. We were welcomed by Joan, who was in the middle of printing the church magazine. She wasn’t going to let us in (not more visitors, she thought!), but when she saw Marianne, she changed her mind. So Marianne gave her a consultation about her medication and we were given great opportunity to see around the building. The plaque above is inside the sanctuary on the right hand wall (as you face the pulpit).

We drove down the road to the Northampton cemetery. Here we found a large plot for the Edwards family and the Dwight family. One of Edwards’s grandsons was (if I remember correctly) Timothy Dwight who edited the first collected edition of Edwards’s works. Also here was the grave of David Brainerd, next to the grave of one of Edwards’s daughters.

Pressing on we drove to East Windsor, Connecticut, where Edwards was born and where his parents are buried. Also nearby at the rear of what was Hartford Theological Seminary, was a graveyard where Asahel Nettleton and his biographer Bennet Tyler were buried. Anyone who wants to understand revivals really should read Tyler’s Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton.

We then followed Edwards ejection out to Stockbridge, almost at the border with New York state. Edwards house is gone, but the first missionary house still stands, and outside the present Congregational Church building there is a tower marking the spot of the first chapel. We arrived at the chapel as they were having auditions for the local Bach choir, so we only had a quick look round.

And then we headed back to Millers Falls after a long day.