According to Jonathan Edwards in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," what is the only reason one of these unsaved men is not currently burning in...

According
toin , the only reason that unsaved men (or anyone else) have not been cast down into hell to
burn eternally is Gods mercy. These people are only saved from damnation by Gods will.

In this sermon, Edwards is trying to emphasize to his listeners that they deserve to be
damned. He tells them over and over that their sins are offensive to God. He reminds them that
God is very disappointed in them and that he has every right to be. He says that all people
have deserved the fiery pit. In one of the most famous passages from this sermon, Edwards
tells the people that

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.  

This is what Edwards thinks of humanity. He
thinks that they (we) all deserve to be cast into hell because we have sinned against God. So
why are we not in hell? The only reason for this is that God has, for some reason, chosen not to
let us fall. It is not because of anything we have done. We cannot really deserve Gods mercy.
God has been good enough to give us that mercy so far, though. As Edwards says,

€˜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 suffered 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.

From this,
we can see that the only reason that unsaved men and women are not in hell is because God has
spared them. God did not have to spare them. People do not deserve to be spared. Instead, it is
simply Gods own mercy, freely given, that has prevented unsaved people from being dropped into
hell.