is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

This is a pretty terrifying image, painting a mental picture of being suspended on a thin layer of earth above a lake of brimstone—a "wide, gaping mouth" ready to capture and eternally torment each congregational member who has not chosen to truly follow God. Edwards also allows for another ending here: God currently saves each one of them from Hell and allows them time to choose a different path to a different eternity.

Edwards's tone achieved its intended effect. Reportedly, before he even finished his sermon, members of the congregation begged for salvation and fell into the floor, crying and screaming in terror. This was especially significant because this sermon was delivered in a town where there seemed to be a little pocket of "thoughtless and vain" holdouts in the Great Awakening revival which was sweeping the area. Yet the tone achieved quite an impact at the church where Edwards delivered it in Enfield and is still studied and remembered nearly 300 years later.

There is a notable shift in tone during the last three paragraphs of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” For most of the sermon, Edwards unleashes a veritable hailstorm of hellfire and brimstone upon his audience, scaring them many of them and, according to historical reports, even causing some of them to faint in terror.

But Edwards doesn't just want to scare his audience; he wants them to change their ways, to turn their backs on a life of sin and walk upon the path of righteousness. And he knows that they are unlikely to do this if they have no hope.

Thus in the final few paragraphs of his otherwise fiery sermon, Edwards proceeds to hold out the possibility of redemption for the wicked sinners before him. He wants them to understand that despite everything he has said about their being sinners in the hands of an angry God, prone to being consigned to hell at any moment, they can still turn their lives around and turn their backs on sin.

Readers can see this dramatic change of tone expressed in the very last line of the sermon, when Edwards urges his audience to escape for their lives from Sodom, the biblical city full of sinners, and take to the mountains to avoid being consumed by the wrath of God.

Tone can be defined as the author or speaker's attitude toward a subject or an audience, and the choice of words generally indicates the tone of the piece.

Jonathan Edwards's tone is unapologetic in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." He is honest with his audience about the wrath of God and how awful humanity's sinful nature is to God. Edwards uses fantastic imagery to drive home his point. When he describes humanity as a loathsome spider that should be dropped into a fire, Edwards's tone can be described as a mixture of truthful and harsh.

An important aspect of Edwards's tone is the momentum and rhythm he creates. He is fervent about his topic, and he repeatedly gives his audience image after image of how God might view his human creation. That fervent harshness Edwards employs is effective despite—and perhaps even because of—how discomforting the tone of his sermon is. Edwards is trying to get congregants to realize the extent of their sin and repent. Indeed, reports can be found that audience members fell to the floor and begged for salvation even before he was done speaking.

It is worth noting that Edwards's tone remains forceful and emotional throughout the sermon, but there is a shift in the final passages from dour to hopeful as he offers his audience the possibility of repenting their sins and accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Having laid out in vivid imagery the danger of hellfire every person faces at every moment if they do not repent and turn to Christ, Edwards ends on a note of hope and urgency. In the penultimate paragraph, he writes:

God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the bigger part of adult persons that ever shall be saved will be brought in now in a little time.

In the final paragraph, he reiterates this theme, telling his listeners to "fly from the wrath to come."

This may sound to our more cynical ears very much like a hard sell sales pitch being brought to completion. The ending of the sermon shows that Edwards wasn't just painting a picture of humans walking unconcerned over fire and brimstone of a rickety wooden bridge missing slats that they could fall through simply to scare them. He now wants to close the sale and get people—here and now, this minute—to repent their sins and turn their lives over to Christ. Therefore, he speaks with urgency of a very small window of opportunity for those who "buy now" to achieve salvation. Edwards is telling people to hurry—run, don't walk—this sale won't last forever, and when the store of salvation closes, those who didn't buy the ticket out will be very sorry.

Edwards knows that, having softened his audience up with his frightening sermon, now is the best possible moment to get them to convert. If they go home and start getting caught up in other matters, the effects of the sermon will fade, and there is far less likelihood that they will be saved.

Edwards can sound like the worst kind of huckster, but his heart is in the right place—he truly believes that people will suffer if they don't turn to God.

After the Salem Witchcraft Trials, Puritanism waned significantly; therefore, revivalist preachers sought to re-engage Puritans by addressing their intellects and emotions both in order to convince their listeners of the gravity of their sins, and in order to prompt them to seek salvation and escape the punishment that a righteous God would wreak upon them.

When a rather recalcitrant congregation in Enfield, Conneticut, seemed untouched by the revivalist preachers, Jonathan Edwards, the greatest of the Revivalists, was therefore invited to preach before this congregation. He delivered his fire-and-brimstone sermon on July 8, 1741, at the height of what has been called the Great Awakening.

This sermon is in three parts, thematically based upon Deuteronomy 32:35: "Their foot shall slide in due time," a line from a long passage enunciating the wrath of God over the unfaithfulness and perversity of the Israelites. In the first part, Edwards speaks of the terrifying power of God, illustrating this with forceful metaphor and frightening imagery. In the second part, Edwards stresses that only a person's faith in God will hold them from the fiery pits of hell. 

Then, in the third part, the tone changes as Edwards directly addresses the congregation of Enfield before him, switching from third person to second person:

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ....

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf...and your own care and prudence, and...all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock....

In this address rife with frightening images and powerful metaphors, Edwards speaks to those who have convinced themselves that because of their religiosity, their moral behavior, and their church attendance they are saved, informing them that they are yet in danger. Their vain rationalization will not save them; only the grace of God can do this. "Now God stands ready to pity you....“hearken to the loud calls of God’s word and providence” he urges. 

For the majority of Edwards's sermon, the tone is indeed vexed. He uses shocking imagery to try to convince his audience to turn from their sinful ways and follow Christ. One of the most vivid images in the sermon is this one:

The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours....and yet 'tis nothing but his Hand that holds you from falling into the Fire every Moment: 'Tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to Hell the last Night; that you was suffer'd to awake again in this World, after you closed your Eyes to sleep: and there is no other Reason to be given why you have not dropped into Hell since you arose in the Morning, but that God's Hand has held you up.

Edwards tries to lead his listeners to Salvation by forcing them to consider the dangers of Hell; he wants them to recognize the omniscient powers of God and realize that their lives could end at any moment. Edwards's ultimate goal is to shock his audience into seeing the truth of their precarious lives and to save them from eternal damnation. His tone is harsh, but he considers the implications of failing to get this message across worthy of the shock and vexation.

However, Edwards doesn't fill the audience with fear and then dismiss them. Right at the end, he approaches them with a message of hope, bringing the love of God to fill the places of fear. He tells them that they "have now an extraordinary Opportunity" to repent and follow Christ and that they can "become the holy and happy Children of the King of Kings." He ends with one final image of hope:

Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come.

Though Edwards does not deviate from his core proposition that God's wrath will fall on sinners, he does provide a contrasting image of flying into freedom and eternal love with the decision to accept Christ. Providing his audience with images of hope makes the sermon not simply a condemnation but allows for a relatable path into a loving relationship with God.