[Eighteenth century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards'] most famous composition, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741)…is stunning: it recalls a then-current style of sermons preached to condemned criminals just before their execution, during which the minister would stress their imminent encounter with God and exhort them to repent. Such sermons were often published, so most would have recognized the genre.

In a shocking move, Edwards applied this form to his hearers in Enfield, emphasizing the sinfulness of even respectable church folk. As he hammered home the instability of their position before God, whose hand alone held them from immediate death and the judgment that followed, he was in effect comparing them to condemned murderers.

The form of the sermon echoes and reinforces its content in a magnificent way. But that is not the source of its power, or at least not the only source. We can know this because, a few weeks before preaching at Enfield to the accompaniment of the screams of convicted sinners and the joyful weeping of new converts, Edwards had preached virtually the same sermon (we have his manuscript and can see how few amendments were made) to his own flock in Northampton. But his flock responded only, as far as we know, by shaking his hand and saying "fine word, pastor" as they went home to lunch.

All of this reinforces Edwards's own analysis of the revivals: the word is the occasion for awakening, and a necessary one, but the Spirit of God does the work, and he "blows where he wills." His passing could be seen in lasting changes: People made humble, faithful, prayerful, holy. Churches made earnest in worship and hungry for the word. Towns where, to quote Charles Simeon, a century later, "goodness" became "fashionable."

Screams, faintings and other such spectacular phenomena were nothing either way: they did not demonstrate the Spirit's presence, and they did not preclude it either. Such was Edwards's final analysis of the revivals in The Religious Affections (1746).