The Life and Services of Professor B B Edwards A Discourse Delivered in the Chapel of Andover Theological Seminary, June 25, 1852 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Life and Services of Professor B. B. Edwards: A Discourse Delivered in the Chapel of Andover Theological Seminary, June 25, 1852

Spiritually born under the instruction of the President, he loved to consider himself as a son of that great man. He removed to Southampton in middle age, and remained deacon of the church in that town, until he died, an old disciple. Not long after the death of Samuel, his son Elisha Edwards, the father of our friend, was chosen deacon of the church, and he continued faithful in that office forty years. He was a vigorous, sedate, discreet man; a firm, well-informed, energetic, self-distrusting Christian. His wife, Ann Bates, was perhaps as highly esteemed as her husband, for a saintlike life, but was more versatile and sprightly. She died when her son, near whose fresh grave we are now convened, was in his twenty-fourth year. Those who saw him bending under this affliction, said one to another: Behold how he loved her. He felt a pious joy in looking forward to his college vacations, when he might place some greener sods upon her grave. In his thirty-first year, while called on official business to a great distance from Southampton, he heard of his fathers ill health. He resolved to visit, at once, the scene where he feared that he was to be again bereaved. One of the parties interested in the official business, advised him to wait until he had completed all his engagements. "You do not know what a father I have to lose," was the filial reply of the mourner, who hastened to his desolate homestead. His household ties alone were strong enough to hold him back from many a youthful folly.

The childhood of our friend was a marked one. His baptism was a kind of epoch in that Abrahamic household. The rite was performed by Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of Hadley, Massachusetts. The parents, especially the mother, dedicated their infant to God with an unaccountable, indefinable impression, that they were offering a peculiarly rich gift, and that signal blessings would attend the young child's life. The child grew, and won the general love by that sweetness of temper, which, as it cheered those who surrounded his cradle, afterwards soothed those who stood at his dying couch. He was not a forward nor a brilliant lad; he was modest and retiring; but he was often pointed at, as a model of conscientiousness and propriety to the other children of the neighborhood. His passion for books was developed early. He would read when other children played. Their gambols did not interrupt him, as he sat or lay upon the floor, with his eyes fastened upon the instructive page. Often, he did not hear the voice which summoned him from his volume of history to his fieldwork or to his meals.

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