Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God
In the sermon “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards expresses his strong urge for the people of his congregation to desperately wake up and realize that there really is a hell, and most people are probably going to hell because of their sin. Even though this was a sermon spoken out loud, he uses many different elements of style. Throughout his sermon, he speaks in second person, uses multiple similes, diverse sentence structure, includes a happy ending, and he has a very narrow-minded view in his opinions. The speaker Jonathan Edwards speaks in second person using words like “you,” throughout his entire sermon, which allows him to directly speak to his congregation. By using direct words like “you,” everything Edwards says makes it seem like it’s directed to each individual person, and not the congregation as a whole. In the podcast, the use of second person also includes the usage of the word “you” and helps it seem like the topic of bullying is directly aimed toward each individual that is guilty of bullying others. To allow the points he was trying to get across to be more visual to the listeners, Edwards uses similes to describe many of his points. For example, he used the simile; “The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present…” to describe God. This allows the listeners to get a better image of what Edwards is really trying to say and what he himself has in his own mind as he shares his sermon. In the podcast, the simile “they can be like the white pigeon stuck in a crowd of black crows, and yet you still don’t have any right to bully them,” to describe the difference in people. This simile helps describe that some people are can be as different as a white bird that sticks out in a crowd of black crows, the opposite colored birds. A variety of sentence structures were also used throughout his sermons. He especially included very long structured sentences that were multiple lines long. This can help the