Edwards
uses vivid descriptive language so that his listeners will carry images of eternityor more
specifically, hellwith them long after his sermon has ended.
"Eternity" is an abstract word: what, after all, does "eternity"
look or feel like? It is easy not to think about something so amorphous (not concrete or visual)
while going about our day-to-day lives.
But Edwards wants his listeners to
have a strong image of eternity they can't easily shake out of their minds.
Therefore, he paints a picture of the present day lives of non-Christian people lead as similar
to walking across a rickety bridge with rotting planks that you could easily fall through
at any moment into a never-ending pit of fire. This is a frightening visual
people can understand and relate to. As Edwards puts it:
Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are
innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these
places are not seen.
Edwards does this...
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