"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is Johanthan
Edwards's most famous sermon delivered in a Puritan effort to awaken and persuade those
in the congregation who had not been "born again"; that is, they had not accepted Christ
as their savior. Edwards's sermon had such a powerful effect upon the congregation that
there was much shrieking and swooning. In fact, several times he was forced to ask his
audience for quiet.
This sermon stands as a powerful
example of rhetorical language, employing metaphor, simile, and repetition with very
strong emotional appeal. He begins by telling the congregation that the devil is
waiting for them with hell gaping so that flames can engulf them. Here are other
examples:
emotional
language
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow
made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the
bow, ....
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much
as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, adhors you, and is
dreaduflly provoked; His wrath toward ou burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of
nothing else but to be cast into the fire; ...you are ten thousand times more abominable
in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in
ours.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in:
It is a great furnace of wrath...that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose
wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in
hell....
repetition
There is the
dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there
is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor
anything to take hold of; there is nothing between you and
hell but the air....
There is
frequent use of the phrase "the mere pleasure of God
...."
...and
nothing to lay hold of to save yourself,
nothing to keep off the flames of wrath,
nothing of your own, nothing
that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce
God to spare you one moment....
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