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Morgan Edwards
By Robert A. Baker, 1965 *When the history bug bites a person, watch out! This virus will make a man see history in everything he touches. A good example is Morgan Edwards, probably the first historian of Baptists in America. Edwards and Isaac Backus were contemporaries, but evidently the former should receive honor as being the first to publish historical materials.
Morgan Edwards was born in Wales on May 9, 1722, and began preaching at the age of sixteen. After being seasoned by pastorates in England and Ireland for seventeen years, he accepted the invitation of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia in the American colony of Pennsylvania to become their pastor. He joined their fellowship on June 1, 1762, and began a significant ministry at this church. He had not assumed an easy task. The distinguished John Gano, who supplied the church during the year before Edwards came, remarked that the Philadelphia church had been "so particular in the requisite qualifications for a minister that it has given offense to the preachers; so that they were entirely destitute." Whatever "requisite qualifications" they demanded, the church could be well satisfied with Morgan Edwards. He had had splendid acedemic training at Bristol Baptist College. One of his contemporaries remarked that the constant companion of Edwards was the Greek New Testament, which he had mastered thoroughly; that he was a good Hebrew scholar, and could preach fluently in Welch and, of course, English. He was careful in his preparation of sermons, writing each one out completely, but insisting that a sermon not be read from the pulpit. Many knotty problems,including church discipline, faced him as he began his work.
The care of this church, however, did not exhaust Edwards' activities. It was his suggestion in 1762 that led to the establishment of what became Brown University, the first such institution by American Baptists. He was active in the work of this college and was a member of its first Board of Fellows, a position which he held until 1789. The school conferred an honorary M.A. on him in 1769, his second such degree in America.
Furthermore, he was busy in denominational work through the Philadelphia Association. From 1762 until the Revolution he is prominently mentioned in the Minutes of almost every annual meeting. He preached the introductory sermons in 1763 and 1773; he was clerk of the Association from 1769 to 1771, and again in 1773. He took an active part in arranging the meetings of the Association, he represened the Association in other associational gatherings on several occasions, and in 1775 he was specifically referred to as being present, along with two other distinguished men, in a request for "their company and assistance."
In addition to all of this, Edwards always writing. He published a number of scholarly addresses between 1761 and 1788 (listed in Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, VI, p. 84), together with forty-two volumes of sermons (twelve sermons to each volume).
These activities are briefly sketched simply to show that Morgan Edwards was a busy man in his work, both pastoral and denominational, to say nothing of the demands of his family life. Yet, here was a man whom the history bug had bitten. Every place that he served was made to contribute to his historical interests. As pastor of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, he gathered valuable information about the history of that church. At the first meeting of the Philadelphia Association after his arrival, although he was a newcomer and stranger to many, Morgan Edwards was appointed to take charge of the Book of Records. In the Minutes for that year (1761), for the first time is shown a table of statistics of the churches, which Edwards had collected and arranged partly from letters to the Association but partly from "private information" which he had gathered in the few months that he had been in America. Year after year Edwards continued this table of churches while he was active in the denominational work. In 1794, a few months before his death, he was present for the last time at the meeting of the Association, when he presented to the Association their Minutes from the beginning until 1793, bound together. The hearty thanks of the Association were simply a recognition of the invaluable service of their greatest historian.
On July 8, 1771, Edwards resigned as pastor of the Philadelphia church, remarking that "... the interest does not thrive under my ministration as it was wont to do in years past, but is rather declining. This has given me trouble, and trouble that I am less able to bear of any other trouble whatsoever." It may have been of some comfort to him if he noticed that the church made no continuous spectacular gains during the following decades under his successors. Even this resignation, however, fell out to the forwarding of the historical pursuits of Morgan Edwards, for on October 16, when the Association next met, he was appointed as a traveling evangelist by that body. In connection with this service, he assiduously devoted hinself to the collection of materials for American Baptist history, securing trustworthy and detailed data on churches from New Hampshire to Georgia. He meticulously searched for church records and when these were not available, interrogated church members in the various states to determine brethren the origins and condition of the Baptist work. His detailed material is remarkably accurate accurate and constitutes an invaluable source for any American Baptist church historian. Cathcart called it the most valuable Baptist material in our country (I, 362).
The American Revolution provided a severe trial for Edwards, for his own son by his first wife was an officer in the British army. Who could blame him for an occasional sentence in this historical material that identifies him with Tory sympathies? Despite this different opinion from practically all of his American Baptist ministerial brethren, he behaved himself in a seemly fashion and after the war as good an American as the rest.
He died at Pencader, Delaware, on January 28, 1795. His extensive contributors to Baptist churches, educational institutions, and the denomination as a whole were recited by Dr. William Rogers of the Philadelphia church on the occasion of his funeral. His memory is kept fresh constantly to this day, as Baptist historians eagerly seek his material (in some cases the only information about a particular area) and pause to call him blessed.
_________________________________ [*Dr. Baker was professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Document from Baptist History and Heritage Journal, vol. 1, No. 1., pp. 5, 6 & 26. Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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