While completing his preparation for the ministry, Jonathan Edwards wrote seventy resolutions that guided him throughout his life. About twenty years later he wrote a letter to young Deborah Hatheway, a new convert in a nearby town, advising her concerning the Christian life. These two writings, often reprinted during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, overflow with straightforward and biblically sound advice. This advice is as current today as it was in the 1700s, and it far surpasses the "how to" books now overrunning bookstores.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) served the Northampton Congregational Church in Massachusetts for twenty-three years, then missionary outpost to the Mohawk and Mohican tribes. In 1758 he became president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), only to die a few months later due to an adverse reaction to a vaccination.