Mr. Edwards and the Spider

In “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” Lowell alludes to three prose works by the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, “Of Insects and Spiders,” “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and “The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and the Intolerable.” Of the three, the imagery and ideas in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and “The Future Punishment of the Wicked” are the most well-known and commonly associated with Jonathan Edwards, who wrote these sermons when he was an adult. These two works dominate “Mr. Edwards and the Spider.”

But a third prose excerpt, “Of Insects and Spiders,” is also included, a piece radically different in tone from the other two excerpts. Edwards wrote “Of Insects and Spiders” as a teenager, and it explores Edwards’s curiosity and wonder as he marvels at the tiny spider and its seeming ability to fly: “Of all insects, no one is more wonderful than the spider, especially with respect to their sagacity and admirable way of working” (Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Yale UP, 2004, p 64). “Of Insects and Spiders” shows a very different side to Edwards, one much less commonly known, an Edwards beholds the spider with delight and believes that the spiders’ movements reflect the glory and intellect of God’s creation.