When reading Jonathan Edwards's personal narrative, one would undoubtedly find that Edwards' descriptions and expressions of His insurmountable love for God (and for all things in relation to the Christian faith) are extremely rare compared to those of the ordinary believer. It is therefore legitimate to identify one of the themes of Personal Narrative as intense emotion towards religion or, to be more precise, towards one's Puritan faith. In addition to examining aspects of his work as they relate to this theme, this essay will also compare the personal narrative to a section of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself; section 48, because this part of Whitman's historic and influential poem details his own strong and divergent views on religion and God. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay As a child, Edwards initially found the doctrine of God's sovereignty to be horrible and hateful. He was once repelled by the idea that God chooses “whom he wills for eternal life and rejects whom he wills.” However, his view was completely changed at one point, which he describes as a "wonderful change", and from that point on he continued to have very few, if any, doubts and objections to the with regard to this doctrine. In fact, the absolute sovereignty of God is what his mind was so assured of and often appeared to him as “exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet.” He then began to have great desires for God and holiness – finding everything about his faith to be extremely “sweet” and full of “delight.” His passionate love for God thus led him to feel “an ardent desire to be a complete Christian in everything”. This belief, however, meant that he pushed away all notions of pleasure on Earth so that he could focus all of his attention, love and energy on being with Christ in the afterlife. He therefore made “a solemn dedication to God” in which he declared: “…surrendering myself and all that I had to God; to be in no way mine for the future; to act like someone who had no rights over himself in any respect.” It is this extreme devotion to God that underlines his emotionality, to the point that he places himself in such a humble position, especially since he has sworn not to consider anything else as a part of his own happiness, believing that he had no right to feel pleasure in earthly affairs. This is proven when Edwards declares that he swore to "fight with all [his] might against the world, the flesh, and the devil." From his words, one can discern that Edwards' love and commitment to God and his Puritan faith made him a strong supporter of the orthodox Christian ideologies of that era, whereby the soul is seen as an eternal creation and transcendental and therefore superior to the temporal human body. This belief was a catalyst in the formation of Edwards' view that he sharply divided the soul and body by opposing all pleasures of the flesh and focusing only on anything that would benefit the soul, especially for the afterlife. His determination to "fight...against the world, the flesh and the devil" illustrates his attitude towards the body and the Earth as being creations linked to sin, and therefore should not be accorded the slightest pity. These ideals contrast greatly with those of Walt Whitman, which can be inferred from section 48 of his famous poem: Song of Myself. In this small part of Whitman's long song, the poet openly dictates his views on God and spirituality. Thanks to this segment, Whitman had become.