LIFE OF CHARLES G. FINNEY

By A. M. HILLS

President of Texas Holiness University.

Author of

Life and Labors of Mary A. Woodbridge, Holiness and Power, Pentecostal Light, Food For Lambs,

The Whosoever Gospel

Office of God's Revivalist

Mount of Blessings

Cincinnati, Ohio

Copyrighted by

Mrs. M. W. Knapp, 1902

DEDICATION

To my precious son, Charles Finney Hills, whom I named after the blessed servant of Christ, whose life and labors are described in this book, in the fond parental hope that the great soul's loyalty to Jesus and large usefulness might, in a measure, be reproduced in the child, and to all who are seeking a deeper and more conscious acquaintance with our Lord and the enduement of power to serve him more effectively, -- this book is prayerfully dedicated by

The Author.

PREFACE

Our sainted publisher, Martin Wells Knapp, three years ago felt impressed to give to the world a "Life of Charles G. Finney," less voluminous than his "Autobiography," less costly than Professor Wright's "Life of Finney," and written by one acquainted with him from the standpoint of holiness. He fixed upon me to be the author, and I accepted the joyful task. Soon after, a still higher Hand thrust upon me the arduous labors of bringing into existence Texas Holiness University, which, for the time, pushed aside all other labors. At the earnest solicitation of the precious brother, I took up the work three months ago, putting into it the few fragments of my spare time. Of course, I have made free use of Finney's "Memoirs" and Professor Wright's "Life" and "Reminiscences," to which I am greatly indebted. I have, however, given an independent picture of the great man's life and work, one not heretofore given.

There were some things which the public ought to know about Finney, which he would never say of himself. There were some things which ought to be said about Finney's work, which none would say who was not in full sympathy with his deep desire to attain to and to teach sanctification. God has granted to the author at least that one qualification. There is enough in this book quoted from Finney himself to teach any one, desirous of learning, how to be a successful fisher of men, and how to receive the baptism with the Holy Ghost.

It lessens not a little the joy of having written the book that we can not place it in the hands of him who asked it of us.

Texas Holiness University,

Greenville, Texas, January 21, 1902

CONTENTS

I. Sent of God

II. His Conversion

III. Studying Theology

IV. Beginning His Ministry

V. Revivals at Antwerp, "Sodom," Gouverneur, and Dekalb

VI. Revivals at Western, Rome, Utica, Auburn, Troy, and New Lebanon

VII. Ministerial Opposition and the New Lebanon Convention

VIII. Revivals at Stephentown, Wilmington,

Philadelphia, and Reading -- 1827-1830

IX. Revivals in Columbia, New York City, Rochester, Auburn, Buffalo, Providence, and Boston -- 1830-1832

X. Labors in New York City -- 1832-1835 -- Trip to Italy -- Revival Lectures -- Oberlin

XI. Early Labors in Oberlin

XII. Revivals in Boston -- Providence -- Rochester, Again in Boston -- 1842-1844,

Renewed Baptism with the Holy Ghost -- Loss of His Wife

XIII. First Visit to England -- Revivals in Hartford, Western, Syracuse, and Rochester

XIV. Revivals in Boston -- England -- Scotland, and Oberlin -- Close of His Life

XV. Finney on Preachers and Preaching

XVI. Finney on Free Masonry

XVII. The Estimate of Finney Made by Others -- Finney as a Theologian

XVIII. Finney on Sanctification and Its Results in Oberlin College History -- Closing Pictures

Chapter I.

SENT OF GOD

Some nineteen hundred years ago, as the greatest Book tells us, "there was a man sent from God, whose name was John." He had a priestly line of ancestors, reaching back fifteen hundred years. His immediate parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, were remarkably devout; for the record says, "They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless;" and, furthermore, they were both "filled with the Holy Ghost." An angel was sent to foretell the birth of their child, and to give to him the name of John. The angel also declared that the child too "should be filled with the Holy Ghost from birth," and should "be great in the sight of the Lord." It is a wonderful story, and yet is natural, after all, and quite the thing to be expected. Such parents ought to have had a remarkable child; for blood and ancestry will tell.

But here is a more wonderful story still, illustrating in a more striking way God's ample resources to produce great men. About eighteen hundred years later, August 29, 1792, in Warren, Litchfield County, Connecticut, there was another man sent from God. No angel foretold his birth, nor named him; for he was called "Charles Grandison" Finney, after a character in a novel written by Richardson, with which his parents were better acquainted than with their Bible. But this man, also, was destined to be "filled with the Holy Ghost," and to become "the great preacher of righteousness."

To be sure, one of his ancestors, seven generations back, came over in the Mayflower, which makes an illustrious pedigree in Massachusetts; but, to speak as men usually speak, he had no priestly or famous ancestry, none lifted above the common level of humanity. Moreover, his immediate parents, so far from being "righteous" and "blameless" and "filled with the Holy Ghost," were utterly godless. When Finney was twenty-nine years old, he had never heard a word of prayer in his father's house! Evidently no Christian lullabies nor psalms of David ever greeted his childish ears, or soothed to infant slumbers; for he tells us he had never owned a Bible till he bought one to hunt up the passages referred to in his law books. Strange origin this for "the prince of evangelists!" One of God's great surprises -- like Martin Luther, the famous Reformer, coming from a peasant-miner's home; and Abraham Lincoln, the greatest President of the world's greatest Republic, coming from a pioneer's log-cabin! Evidently when God wants a really great man, He knows how to produce him and where to find him.

Nor, viewed from a religious standpoint, were his surroundings any more propitious than his home. When Charles was but two years old, his parents moved into the wilderness of Central New York in Oneida County. "There," he says, "I seldom heard a sermon, unless from some traveling minister, or some miserable holding forth of an ignorant preacher. I remember well how the people would return from meeting, and spend a considerable time in irrepressible laughter at the strange mistakes made and the absurdities which had been advanced."

When Charles reached the age of sixteen, a meeting-house was erected in his neighborhood; but his parents, as if afraid of a sanctuary and Christian civilization, took their family, and made another plunge into the wilderness, going to the extreme eastern end of Lake Ontario, and far to the north, approaching the line of Canada. Here again his life was unblessed by religious privileges.

But the New England emigrants, true to their native instincts, planted their common schools even in the wilderness; and these the boy Charles attended until he was himself able to teach a country school. When he was twenty years old, he returned to Connecticut. He then went to New Jersey, to teach in a German community, returning twice to his native State to continue his studies under a graduate of Yale. He thus taught and studied for six years as best he could, until his teacher informed him that in two years more of private study he could complete the course of study then pursued at Yale.

His teacher invited the earnest young student to go with him to some Southern State and open an academy. He was inclined to accept the proposal; but his parents, hearing of it, immediately came after him and persuaded him to go home with them to Jefferson County, New York. This was in 1818, when Finney was twenty-six. After making his parents a visit, he concluded to enter, as a student, the law office of Mr. Wright, in the town of Adams, of that county.

He afterward wrote: "Up to this time I had never enjoyed what might be called religious privileges. I had never lived in a praying community, except during the periods when I was attending the high school in New England; and the religion in that place was of a type not at all calculated to arrest my attention. The preaching was by an aged clergyman, an excellent man, and greatly beloved and venerated by his people; but he read his sermons, written probably many years before, in a manner that left no impression on my mind. His reading was altogether unimpassioned and monotonous; and, although the people attended very closely and reverentially to his reading, it seemed to be always a matter of curiosity what he was aiming at, especially if there was anything more in his sermon than a dry discussion of doctrine. Any one can judge whether such preaching was calculated to instruct or interest a young man who neither knew nor cared anything about religion.

"When I was in New Jersey, the preaching in the neighborhood was chiefly in German. I do not think I heard half a dozen sermons in English during my whole stay in New Jersey, which was about three years. Thus, when I went to Adams to study law, I was almost as ignorant of religion as a heathen. I had been brought up mostly in the woods. I had very little regard for the Sabbath, and had no definite knowledge of religious truth. At Adams, for the first time, I sat statedly for a length of time under an educated ministry... I had never, until this time, lived where I could attend a stated prayer-meeting. As one was held by the Church near our office every week, I used to attend and listen to the prayers as often as I could be excused from business at that hour."

He found the old authors in his law books frequently quoting from the Scriptures. This excited his curiosity so much that he purchased a Bible, the first that he had ever owned, and hunted up every passage referred to. This led to careful reading and much meditation upon the Sacred Word. Here follow two facts that are profoundly important to all Churches and Christians, and especially to all who would ever be successful soul-winners. His pastor's name was Rev. George W. Gale, a graduate of Princeton College and Theological Seminary. His theology was hyper-Calvinistic -- the genuine Calvinism taught at that time in Princeton, and, we might add, so much of the time since. He believed that man's nature was so totally sinful that he was utterly incapable of any good; the will was incapable of a right choice: the soul was utterly passive in regeneration; "there was no adaptation in the gospel to change his nature, and consequently no connection in religion between means and ends."

"This Brother Gale sternly held; and consequently, in his preaching, he never seemed to expect, nor did he even aim at converting anybody by any sermon that I ever heard him preach. And yet he was an able preacher, as preaching was then estimated. The fact is, these dogmas were a perfect strait-jacket to him. If he preached repentance, he must be sure, before he sat down, to leave the impression on his people that they could not repent. If he called them to believe, he must be sure to inform them that, until their nature was changed by the Holy Spirit, faith was impossible to them. And so his orthodoxy was a perfect snare to himself and to his hearers." (Memoirs of C. G. Finney, pp. 59, 60.)

The pastor was in the habit of dropping into the young lawyer's office to see what impression his sermons had made on the lawyer's mind. Finney was at this time leader of his choir, and of course their relations were familiar. With the keen, subtle, intellectual acumen which characterized him and a frankness bordering on impolite bluntness, and probably with a touch of cynical irreverence, the lawyer satisfied the minister's curiosity completely; for fifty years afterward he wrote: "I now think that I criticized his sermons unmercifully... Indeed, I found it impossible to attach any meaning to the terms which he used with great formality and frequency. What did he mean by repentance? Was it a mere feeling of sorrow for sin? Was it altogether a passive state of mind, or did it involve a voluntary element? If it was a change of mind, in what sense was it a change of mind? What did he mean by the term 'regeneration?' What did such language mean when applied to a spiritual change? What did he mean by faith? Was it merely an intellectual state? Was it merely a conviction or persuasion that the things stated in the gospel were true? What did he mean by sanctification? Did it involve any physical change in the subject, or any physical influence on the part of God? I could not tell; neither did he seem to know himself. I sometimes told him that he seemed to begin in the middle of his discourse, and to assume many things which, to my mind, needed to be proved. I must say, I was rather perplexed than edified by his preaching. (Memoirs, pp. 7, 8.)

As one reads such words, one can not help wondering how many ministers now are as vague and misty as was Rev. Gale, and how many multitudes are still sitting in the pews and wondering what the ministers are talking about. Neither can one help reflecting that, with such a theology prevailing, it is little wonder that infidelity was widespread at the beginning of the century, and revivals were few, with seldom a conversion, and that only one in fourteen of the population of this country was even a professor of religion! Everybody was told that they were absolutely helpless, and could do nothing to secure their own repentance or conversion; and they generally believed it. With one accord they were idly waiting, in imaginary helplessness, for a sovereign God to enable them to repent and believe; and thus whole generations were sweeping into hell. What appalling results can flow from a false theology!

The other striking fact was this: Finney read a great deal in his Bible about prayer and answers to prayer and prayer promises; and yet he continually heard people pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and as often confess that they did not receive what they asked for. He heard them exhort each other to wake up and be engaged and pray earnestly for a revival of religion, professing that, if they were in earnest, they would have a revival, and the impenitent would be converted; but they would as continually bemoan their coldness and complain that they were making no progress. He says: "This inconsistency, the fact that they prayed so much and were not answered, was a sad stumbling-block to me." "On one occasion, when I was in one of the prayer-meetings, I was asked if I did not desire that they should pray for me. I told them, 'No,' because I did not see that God answered their prayers. I said: 'I suppose that I need to be prayed for -- for I am conscious that I am a sinner -- but I do not see that it will do any good for you to pray for me; for you are continually asking, but do not receive. You have been praying for a revival of religion ever since I have been in Adams [three years], and yet you have it not. You have prayed enough since I have attended these meetings to have prayed the devil out of Adams, if there is any virtue in your prayers. But here you are, praying on and complaining still.'" (Memoirs, p. 10.)

Some young people proposed to pray for Finney, among them the noble young woman who afterward became his wife. But the hopeless pastor remarked that it would do no good; he did not believe that Finney would ever be converted, since he had already sinned against so much light that his heart was hopelessly hardened! And what was the more, the choir was so much under Finney's influence that it was doubtful if they would ever be converted while their leader remained in Adams. Fortunately for the kingdom of God, someone had more faith than the pastor, and laid hold of God for Finney's conversion. To use his own words, he became "very restless." A little reflection showed him that he was by no means in a state of mind to go to heaven, if he should die. He began to feel that there was something in religion of infinite importance, and that, if the soul was immortal, he needed a great change to be prepared for happiness in heaven. The great soul was approaching his Bethel: he was standing face to face with God, and confronting the decisive question whether he would accept Christ as presented in the gospel, or pursue a worldly course of life. Prayers were being answered at last; for God had his hook in Finney's jaw, and was pulling with the mighty cord of Infinite Love.

Chapter II.

HIS CONVERSION

On a Sabbath evening in early October, 1821, when Finney was past twenty-nine years old, he deliberately made up his mind that he would settle the question of his soul's salvation at once, and, if it were possible, would make his peace with God. On Monday and Tuesday he was not much occupied, and read his Bible, and engaged in prayer most of the time. But when he began to seek God in real earnest, it developed that he was very proud without knowing it. He became ashamed to let any one know of his seriousness. He stopped up the keyholes of his room and office, and only whispered his prayer, ashamed to have it said of him, as of Saul, "Behold, he prayeth!" Before that time his Bible had laid openly on the table in his office among his law books; now, from wicked shame, he hid it from the sight of others. Like other convicted sinners, he resorted to the familiar device of hiding away from his pastor and all others who might have the slightest concern in his salvation. The wicked cowardice of a guilty sinner! Tuesday night the conviction was so great that he thought he should die; and he knew, if he did, that he would sink down to hell. Wednesday morning an inward voice seemed to say to him: "What are you waiting for? Did you not promise to give your heart to God? And what are you trying to do? Are you endeavoring to work out a righteousness of your own?"

He had started for his office, and was in the street, when the voice spoke to him. "Just at this point," he says, "the whole plan of salvation opened to my mind in a most wonderful manner. I saw the atonement of Christ was a finished work as clearly as I ever saw it in my life. Gospel salvation seemed to me to be the offer of something to be accepted, and that it was full and complete, and that all that was necessary on my part was to get my own consent to give up my sins and accept Christ." "I had stopped in the street, where the inward voice seemed to arrest me. How long I remained in that position, I can not say; but, after this distinct revelation had stood for some time before my mind, the question was put, 'Will you accept it now, today?' I replied, 'I will accept it today, or I will die in the attempt.'" He started for the woods to pray; but again his pride appeared, and he found himself skulking along under the fence, for fear some one might see him. As he entered the woods, he said, "I will give my heart to God, or I will never come down from there."

A quarter of a mile in the woods he crept into a covert where great trees had fallen across each other, making a closet for him. He thought that he could be alone where he might pray freely and not be overheard! But lo! when he came to try, he was dumb; he had nothing to say to God! He found himself fast verging to despair, and he cried, "My heart is dead to God, and will not pray!"

He thought several times he heard a noise, and he stopped to listen and see if any one was overhearing him. Then and there the senseless, wicked pride of his heart was revealed to him. "An overwhelming sense of the wickedness of being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees before God took powerful possession of me. The sin appeared awful, infinite! 'What!' I said, 'such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees, confessing my sins to a great and holy God, and ashamed to have any human being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees, endeavoring to make my peace with an offended God!' It broke me down before the Lord. I cried at the top of my voice that I would not leave that place if all the men on earth and all the devils in hell surrounded me." Then his heart was melted, and his tongue was loosed, and he could pray.

The Spirit brought a promise to his mind: "Then shall ye go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you. Then shall ye seek Me and find Me when ye shall search for me with all your heart." He seized upon the heavenly promise with the grasp of a drowning man, and cried, "Lord, I take Thee at Thy word!"

He continued thus to pray and appropriate promises for a long time, until he found himself tripping through the bushes on the way to the road, and saying, "If ever I am converted, I will preach the gospel." In his ignorance he did not realize that peace with God had come, and he was already converted.

He reached the village, and found that it was noon. He had spent the whole forenoon with God. Such a wonderful quiet and peace had come to his soul; all sense of sin and all consciousness of guilt had so completely departed, and his repose of mind was so unspeakably great that he thought he must have grieved the Holy Spirit entirely away. But no burden came back. And when, after dinner, he took down his bass-viol and began to sing a sacred hymn, his whole heart melted before God, and he began to weep.

And now began the spiritual wonders of this wonderful life. Night came on. Squire Wright bade him good-night, and went home. He built a fire in the front room of his office, and went to the back room to pray. He says:

"There was neither light nor fire in the room; nevertheless it suddenly appeared perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seems as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me at the time, nor for some time afterward, that it was wholly a mental state. I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me a reality that He stood before me, and I fell down at His feet, and poured out my soul to Him. I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance. It seemed to me that I bathed His feet with my tears. I must have continued in that state a good while, absorbed with the interview. I returned to the front office, and found that the fire that I had made of large wood was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism with the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love. It seemed like the very breath of God.

"No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me and over me and over me, until I cried out: 'I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me. Lord, I can not bear any more!"

The next morning these marvelous experiences were repeated, till he was overwhelmed with the baptism, with the Spirit, and with the resulting emotions. He wept aloud, and poured out his soul to God.

I question if there is a parallel to this in all the literature of the saints -- a man receiving such a baptism with the Spirit so soon after conversion, without asking for it or expecting it, and when he was too utterly ignorant of the whole subject to even think about it. In this instance God seems to have stepped beyond the bounds of His ordinary method of conferring the great gift. Finney was the instrument God wanted, and He used His sovereign right to deal with him spiritually after an unusual manner, and equip him at once for a matchless service.

A member of the choir came into the office late that Wednesday evening, after the Spirit came, and he found Finney weeping aloud, and said: "Mr. Finney, what ails you? Are you in pain?" "No, but so happy that I can not live." He hurried out, and brought in an elder of the Church, to whom Finney began to tell his experience. Another man, who was fitting for college, stepped into the office, and was listening, when, suddenly, he fell to the floor, and cried out in the greatest agony of mind, "Do pray for me and he was soon converted. The next morning, when Squire Wright came into the office, Finney said a few words to him about his soul. He dropped his head, stood in silence a moment, and left the office. The words of the young convert, Spirit-filled, had pierced him like a sword, and he did not get over it until he was converted. Finney sallied out to talk with anybody he chanced to meet. He entered the shop of a pious shoemaker, and found there a young man, son of an elder of the Church, defending Universalism. The Lord at once gave Finney an answer to his arguments. He rose up in silence, left the shop, and broke for the woods, and there gave himself to God. He spoke to many others that day, and the Spirit drove the message home, and every one was converted. In the evening he sat down to the tea-table, and was requested to ask the blessing. There were present at the table with the Christians an unconverted young woman and a young man who was a professed Universalist and a whisky-distiller. He had scarcely begun when their spiritual condition so excited his compassion that he began to weep. They sat in silence a moment, when the young distiller rushed from the table, and locked himself in his room; and he was not seen again until he came out a Christian the next morning. He afterward became an able minister of the gospel. That evening the people, who had heard about Finney's conversion, went without appointment, but by common consent, to the church. It seems that Finney had been a leaning-post for the stout sinners of the town. A Mr. C____ had repeatedly said to his pious wife: "If religion is true, why don't you convert Finney? If you Christians can convert Finney, I will believe in religion." Old lawyer M____, when he heard that Finney was converted, said: "It's all a hoax, He is simply trying to see what he can make Christian people believe." Both of these men were in the church that night, and the house was packed.

The minister was there also; but neither he nor any one else ventured to lead the meeting. Finney went in, saw the situation, and went forward, and, like a convert of the first century, began to give his testimony. Not more preaching, but more experience and more testimony is probably the need of the hour. What the Lord enabled Finney to say was so used of the Lord that C____ rose up, pressed his way through the crowd, and went home, in his excitement leaving his hat. Old lawyer M____ also left, and went home, saying: "Finney is in earnest; there is no mistake; but he is clearly deranged."

The cultured pastor, who had discouraged the people from praying for Finney, arose and made a humble confession. He then called upon Finney to lead the meeting in prayer, who then and there offered the first public prayer of his life.

I pause in this thrilling story to call attention to the fact that this cultured pastor, with all his college and seminary training, long after this confessed that he had never knowingly led a soul to Christ; while this young man, not college-bred, within twenty-four hours after he was baptized with the Spirit, and thirty-six hours after his conversion, had seen many converts, and had been used by God to launch a full-fledged revival upon a whole town -- a revival, as we shall see, that did not stop until it had swept through nearly the entire county.

I am writing these lines in a large university town, and almost under the shadow of a theological seminary (Oberlin). I saw a baker's dozen of their theological graduates this afternoon. I was told by one of the seminary students this morning that nothing was made here of the power of the Holy Ghost. If this is true, it will account for the fact that four weeks of revival effort this season, as I have been frequently told, was a most humiliating failure. Several ministers, an evangelist, a college Faculty, two great Churches, hundreds of Christian students, and a theological seminary -- all of them together unequal to a revival!

I believe it is a truth well-nigh, if not absolutely, universal, that, whenever a revival effort is abortive, something is wrong in Zion. Whenever sinners are not being saved and believers sanctified, there is a lack of Holy Spirit power. When will our theological professors and our ministers learn the all-important lesson so illustrated in the Acts of the Apostles and so verified by all the ages, that the chief factor in ministerial success is the Pentecostal experience, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the being "filled with the Spirit?"

Finney held a meeting each evening, and gave himself to the work of saving souls, especially turning his attention to the young people, in whose way he had stood. Soon all but one of the young people with whom he associated were converted. He afterward visited his parents. His father met him at the gate, and said, "How do you do, Charles?" The instant reply was: "I am well, father, body and soul. But, father, you are an old man. All of your children have grown up, and have left your house; and I never heard a prayer in my father's house." The father dropped his head, burst into tears, and replied: "I know it, Charles. Come in and pray yourself." The father and mother were greatly moved, and were soon converted.

Finney remained in the town two or three days, talking with everybody he met about the one great theme. Within a week a meeting was called in that town, and the Spirit of God was poured out so mightily that the people, having knelt to pray, could not rise from their knees. "The work spread in every direction all over that town. And thus it spread at that time, from Adams as a center, throughout nearly all the towns in the county."

During the winter that followed, a daily morning prayer-meeting before the dawn of day was held. The zeal of the Lord's house fairly consumed Finney to such a degree that he lost desire for food or sleep. He had also frequent visions, when the glory of the Lord shone round about him in a manner that was marvelous, like the brightness of the sun. He was amazed that others did not see what he saw, and feel as he felt. He tried to tell others; but he soon found that he could make none understand, and that it would not do to tell the brethren what was passing between the Lord and his soul.

The business of law also, which had formerly been most attractive, soon appeared "odious and offensive" to him. The Christlike passion for souls was aroused in him, which swallowed up all other pursuits, sand remained dominant through life.

He also learned, during that first winter of Christian experience, what most of us never learn, -- what it is to have travail of soul in prayer. He was sometimes loaded down with agony, until he felt as if he would stagger under the burden that was on his mind, and he could only pray in groans and tears. This made him an Israel, a prevailing prince with God in prayer.

Chapter III.

STUDYING THEOLOGY

Moses was called of God to lead Israel out of bondage; then he was led into the wilderness, to be trained and fitted. by God. In like manner Saul of Tarsus was first converted, and then led out into the Arabian desert to "Brush College," of which Moses was an alumnus, there, like him, to be taught of God. Finney had a somewhat similar experience. Says one of his biographers (G. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL. D.): "About as much mystery hangs over the first year and a half of Finney's life, subsequent to his conversion, as that which shrouds the corresponding period of the renewed life of the apostle Paul." We have already briefly noticed about all he has recorded of those days; viz.: daily morning and evening meetings, much fasting and prayer, visions of God too sacred to make public, a visit to his parents, and a revival that covered much of the county. What particular part he had in it is recorded in heaven and well-known there, but not on earth.

"It was not till the 25th of June, 1823, that he was formally taken under the care of the Presbytery with reference to entering the ministry." But even here the hand of God was leading him in a way almost as wonderful as in the matter of the baptism with the Holy Ghost. He was being kept and fitted for an exceptional work, and was preserved from intellectual and spiritual detriment by an unseen hand. He tells it in his own peculiar way, as follows:

"Some of the ministers urged me to go to Princeton to study theology; but I declined, When they asked me why I would not go to Princeton, I told them that my pecuniary circumstances forbade it. This was true; but they said they would see that my expenses were paid. Still I refused to go; and, when urged to give my reasons, I plainly told them that I would not put myself under such an influence as they had been under; that I was confident they had been wrongly educated, and they were not ministers that met my ideal of what a minister of Christ should be. I told them this reluctantly, but I could not honestly 25th it. They appointed my pastor to superintend my studies. He offered me the use of his library, and said he would give what attention I needed to my theological studies."

In all human probability Finney would have been spoiled as an evangelist and utterly ruined as a great preacher of righteousness had he been educated at Princeton. Equally fatal would it have been to have accepted the opinions and views of the pastor (Rev. Mr. Gale), to whose instruction the Presbytery committed him. He says:

"My studies, so far as he was concerned as my teacher, were little else than controversy. He held to the Old School doctrine of original sin, or that the human constitution was morally depraved. He held, also, that men. were utterly unable to comply with the terms of the gospel, to repent, to believe, or to do anything that God required them to do; that while they were free to do all evil, in the sense of being able to commit any amount of sin, yet they were not free to perform any good; that God had condemned men for their sinful nature; and for this, as well as for their transgressions, they deserved eternal death.

"He held, also, that the influences of the Spirit of God on the minds of men were physical, acting directly upon the substance of the soul; that men were passive in regeneration; and, in short, he held all those doctrines that logically flow from the fact of a nature sinful in itself.

"These doctrines I could not receive. I could not accept his views on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines, But of these views he was quite tenacious; and he seemed sometimes not a little impatient because I did not receive them without a question.

"He held that Jesus suffered for the elect the literal penalty of the Divine law; that He suffered just what was due to each of the elect on the score of retributive justice. I objected that this was absurd; as in that case He suffered the equivalent of endless misery multiplied by the whole number of the elect. He insisted that this was true. He affirmed that Jesus literally paid the debt of the elect and fully satisfied retributive justice. On the contrary, it seemed to me that Jesus only satisfied public justice, and that this was all that the government of God could require.

"I was, however, but a child in theology, and a novice in religion and in Biblical learning; but I thought he did not sustain his views from the .Bible, and told him so, He was alarmed, I dare say, at what appeared to him to be my obstinacy. I thought that my Bible clearly taught that the atonement was made for all men. He limited it to a part. I could not accept his view, for I could not see that he fairly proved it from the Bible. His rules of interpretation did not meet my views, They were much less definite and intelligible than those to which I had been accustomed in my law studies. To the objections which I urged he could make no satisfactory reply. I asked him if the Bible did not require all who hear the gospel to repent, believe the gospel, and be saved. He admitted that it did require all to believe and be saved; but how could they believe and accept a salvation that was not provided for them? I could not receive that theological fiction of imputation. I will state, as nearly as I can, the exact ground that he maintained and insisted upon:

"First. He maintained that the guilt of Adam's first transgression is literally imputed to all his posterity; so that they are justly sentenced and exposed to eternal damnation for Adam's Sin.

"Secondly. He maintained that we received from Adam, by natural generation, a nature wholly sinful and morally corrupt in every faculty of soul and body; so that we are totally unable to perform any act acceptable to God, and are necessitated by our sinful nature to transgress His law in every action of our lives. And this, he insisted, is the estate into which all men fell by the first sin of Adam. For this sinful nature, thus received from Adam by natural generation, all mankind are also sentenced to, and are deserving of eternal damnation.

"Thirdly. Then, in addition to this, he maintained that we are all justly condemned and sentenced to eternal damnation for our own unavoidable transgression of the law. Thus he held that all humanity were justly subject to a triple eternal damnation.

"Then the second branch of this wonderful imputation theory is as follows: The sin of all the elect, both original and actual -- that is, the guilt of Adam's sin, together with the guilt of their sinful nature, and also the guilt of their personal transgressions -- are all literally imputed to Christ; and therefore the Divine government regarded Him as an embodiment of all the sins and guilt of the elect, and treated Him accordingly; that is, the Father, punished the Son precisely as much as all the elect deserved. Hence, their debt being fully discharged by the punishment of Christ, they are saved upon principles of 'exact justice.'

"The third branch of this wonderful theological fiction is as follows:

"First. The obedience of Christ to the Divine law is literally imputed to the elect; so that in Him they are regarded as having always perfectly obeyed the law.

"Secondly. His death for them is also imputed to the elect; so that in Him they are regarded as having fully suffered all that they deserve on account of the guilt of Adam's sin imputed to them, and on account of their sinful nature, and also on account of all their personal transgressions.

"Thirdly. Thus by their surety the elect have first perfectly obeyed the law; and then they have in Him suffered the full penalty of the law, They have suffered in Him as if they had not obeyed in Him. Then, after the law has been doubly satisfied, the elect are required to repent and believe as if no satisfaction had been rendered; and then, payment. in full having been rendered twice over, the discharge of the elect is claimed to be an act of infinite grace. Thus the elect are saved by grace on principles of justice, so that there is strictly no grace or mercy in our forgiveness. It follows that the elect may demand their discharge on the score of strict justice. They need not pray for pardon or forgiveness; it is all a mistake to do so. This inference is my own; but it follows irresistibly, from what the 'Confession of Faith' itself asserts, that the elect are saved on principles of exact and perfect justice.

"I could not but regard and treat this whole question of imputation as a theological fiction. As soon as I learned what were the unambiguous teachings of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith upon these points, I did not hesitate on all suitable occasions to declare my dissent from them. I repudiated and exposed them.

"I found it impossible to agree with Mr. Gale on these points. He did not pretend that they were rational, or that they would bear reasoning upon. Hence he insisted that my reasoning would lead me into infidelity. But I insisted that our reason was given us for the very purpose of enabling us to justify the ways of God, and that no such fiction of imputation could by any possibility be true." (Memoirs, pp. 46, 50, 56-59.)

Is it any wonder that the healthy mind of Finney, so rich in common sense and so "filled with the Spirit," and so entirely void of any theological bias or preconceived opinions, should revolt at this mass of theological rubbish and inconsistency? God mercifully and providentially saved him from accepting a theology that would have made his great usefulness utterly impossible. He was destined to "reason with men" of "sin, righteousness, and judgment." He could not have done it without a theology which commended itself to the right reason of men, and with which he could charge home on the conscience.

"I had been used," he says, "to the close and logical reasonings of the judges, as I found them reported in our law books; but when I went to Mr. Gale's Old School library, I found almost nothing proved to my satisfaction. I am sure it was not because I was opposed to the truth; but I was dissatisfied because the positions of these theological authors were unsound and not satisfactorily sustained. They often seemed to state one thing and prove another, and often to fall short of proving anything.

"I finally said to Mr. Gale, 'If there is nothing better than I find in your library to sustain the great doctrines taught by our Church, I must be an infidel;' and I have always believed that, had not the Lord led me to see the fallacy of those arguments, and to see the real truth as presented in the Scriptures, especially had He not so revealed Himself to me personally that I could not doubt the truth of the Christian religion, I should have been forced to be an infidel." (Page 53.)

"I often said to Mr. Gale, 'Your positions are not proved; they are unsusceptible of proof.' But he would insist upon it that I ought to defer to the opinions of the great and good men who, after much consultation and deliberation, had come to those conclusions; that is was unbecoming in me, a young man bred to the profession of law, and having no theological education, to oppose my views to those of the great men and profound theologians whose opinions I found in his library. He urged that, if I persisted in having my intelligence satisfied on those points with arguments, I should become an infidel. He believed that the decisions of the Church ought to be respected by a young man like myself, and that I should surrender my own judgment to that of others of superior wisdom." (Pages 53-54.)

This was the old, old argument that has been hurled at the head of every young man through all the ages who dared to think for himself, -- "You are young and foolish; how dare you reject the opinion of the learned, and disagree with the holy fathers ?" What a hard time God has to find a man who will get out of the ruts of thought, and be honest in mind, willing to be taught by Him! And how long and wearily a suffering world must wait for a Copernicus, a Bacon, a Luther, an Arminius, a Wesley, a Finney! What an array of learned names can be marshaled in support of every damnable error that was ever advanced in theology! And how men hide behind them! May God give to the young men of America a fresh vision of truth!

Finney paid his respects to the Presbyterian Confession -- that document that has been such a check on the progress and such a hindrance to the best thought and piety of that great Church -- in the following words: "When I came to read the Confession of Faith, and saw the passages that were quoted to sustain their peculiar positions, I was absolutely ashamed of it. I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as those, sustained, for the most part, by passages of Scripture that were totally irrelevant, and not in a single instance sustained by passages which, in a court of law, would have been considered at all conclusive." (Page do.)

It is easy to see that this must have been a period of great and peculiar trial to Mr. Finney, He was a thoughtful man, more than ordinarily sensitive and humble. He had that teachable modesty and humility that a baptism with the Holy Ghost brings to the heart. Moreover, no great soul can break with the past without serious misgivings and struggles. Luther went through Gethsemanes of anguish before he could bring himself to the point of forsaking and opposing his Church mother. All the great men who have marked out new paths for others have had their hours of anguish. Finney was no exception. He says: "I would often come from Mr. Gale's study greatly depressed and discouraged, saying to myself: 'I can not embrace these views, come what will. I can not believe they are taught in the Bible.' Several times I was on the point of giving up the study for the ministry altogether."

There were two things that kept him both from despair and a fatal theology. "Often," he says, "when I left Mr. Gale, I would go to my room and spend a long time on my knees over my Bible. Indeed, I read my Bible a great deal on my knees during those days of conflict, beseeching the Lord to teach me His own mind on those points. I had nowhere to go but directly to the Bible and to the philosophy of the working of my own mind, as revealed in consciousness." (Page 54.)

And God sent him a human helper. "There was," he writes, "but one member of the Church to whom I opened my mind freely on this subject; and that was Elder H____, a very godly, praying man. He had been educated in Princeton views, and held pretty strongly the higher doctrines of Calvinism. Nevertheless, as we had frequent and protracted conversations, he became satisfied that I was right; and he would call on me frequently to have some seasons of prayer with me, to strengthen me in my studies, and in my discussions with Mr. Gale, and to decide me more and more firmly that, come what would, I would preach the gospel. Sometimes we would continue till a late hour at night crying to God for light and strength, and for faith to accept and do His perfect will. He lived more than three miles from the village, and frequently he has staid with me until ten or eleven o'clock at night, and then walked home. The dear old man! I have reason to believe that he prayed for me daily as long as he lived.

"After I got into the ministry, and great opposition was raised to my preaching, he said to me, 'O, my soul is so burdened that I pray for you day and night! But I am sure that God will help you. Go on, go on, Brother Finney; the Lord will give you deliverance.'"

The Lord sent an angel to comfort his Son in his hour of anguish; He sent this dear saint to gird Finney with courage and strength. So he rose above discouragement, and was made superior to depression, and Victorious over unwise criticism and Worse instruction. He got a theology forged on the anvil of prayer, drawn from the Bible, the fountain of truth, with the Holy Ghost for his theological Instructor, as he knelt above the sacred page before God. There never was, and there never will be, a better way to study theology. It made Finney an independent, reverent, Spirit-taught, Bible-filled giant in theology. It prepared a mailed warrior for the pulpit, able to hew down the Agags and Anaks of sin, and to slay right and left the enemies of God.

Equally unwise and impractical was Mr. Gale's homiletical instruction to Mr. Finney. He prophesied, with respect to his views, every kind of evil. He assured him that the Spirit of God would not approve and co-operate with his labors; that if he addressed men, as he told him he intended to, they would not hear him; that if they came for a short time, they would soon become offended, and his congregation would all fall off; and that, unless he wrote his sermons, he would immediately become stale and uninteresting, and could not satisfy the people; and that he would divide and scatter instead of building up the congregation, wherever he preached. "Indeed," says Finney, "I found his views to be almost the reverse of those which I entertained on all such practical questions relating to my duty as a minister."

"I do not wonder, and did not at the time, that he was shocked at my views and purposes with regard to preaching the gospel. With his education it could not be otherwise. He followed out his views with very little practical result. I pursued mine, and, by the blessing of God, the results were the opposite of those which he predicted. When this fact came out clearly, it completely upset his theological and practical ideas as a minister, and for. a time annihilated his hope as a Christian, and finally made him quite another man, as a minister." (Page 55.)

Here, in his Memoirs, Mr. Finney makes another comment on Mr. Gale's deficiency, and pauses also to make a general observation which it would be an infinite blessing to the Church of Christ for theological professors and ministers to heed.

"There was another defect in Brother Gale's education which I regarded as fundamental. He had failed to receive that Divine anointing of the Holy Ghost that would make him a power in the pulpit and in society for the conversion of souls. He had fallen short of receiving the baptism with the Holy Ghost which is indispensable to ministerial success. When Christ commissioned His apostles to go and preach, He told them to abide at Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high. This was an indispensable qualification for success in their ministry. The baptism was a Divine purifying, an anointing, bestowing on them a Divine illumination, filling them with faith and love, with peace and power, so that their words were made sharp in the hearts of God's enemies, quick and powerful, like a two-edged sword. This is an indispensable qualification of a successful ministry; and I have often been surprised and pained that, to this day, so little stress is laid upon this qualification for preaching Christ to a sinful world. Without the direct teaching of the Holy Spirit, a man will never make much progress in preaching the gospel.

"Mr. Gale was a sincere and good man; but he was sadly defective in his education, theologically, philosophically, and practically. I have said what I have of him because I think it applicable to many of the ministers even of the present day. I think that their practical views of preaching the gospel, whatever their theological views may be, are very defective indeed, and that their want of unction, and of the power of the Holy Ghost, is a radical defect in their preparation for the ministry. This is a fact which has long been settled in my mind, and over which I have long had occasion to mourn; and as I have become more and more acquainted with the ministry in this and other countries, I am persuaded that, with all their training and discipline and education, there is a lack in practical views of the best way of presenting the gospel to men, and especially in their want of the power of the Holy Ghost." (Pages 55, 56.)

At length this strange theological course, consisting of opposing continually the human teacher, and sitting humbly at the feet of the Divine, was ended. Finney came before the Presbytery, and was licensed to preach by a unanimous vote. Doubtless, as his biographer Wright asserts, the Presbytery was actuated by no love of his doctrines, but rather from "general considerations of policy, and from fear of being found fighting against God," or one whom God so wondrously used.

According to the prescribed custom, he presented to the Presbytery two written sermons, which probably, with a single exception, were the only ones he ever prepared. The third he wrote to put down a criticism that he was unequal to writing a creditable sermon. But he was hampered in the delivery of it, and shoved his manuscript under the pulpit, and then launched forth with his. accustomed freedom in extemporaneous address. Mr. Finney was a licensed preacher at last.

The next Sabbath he preached for Mr. Gale, and when he came out of the pulpit his teacher said to him, "Mr. Finney, I shall be very much ashamed to have it known, wherever you go, that you studied theology with me." It was one more shaft from Satan to discourage Finney from preaching his mighty, soulwinning gospel.

Be it said to Mr. Gale's credit that he afterward blessed the Lord that, in all his discussions with his great pupil, and in all he had said to him, he had not had the least influence to change his views. He frankly confessed his error in the manner of dealing with him, and admitted that, if Finney had listened to him, he would have been ruined as a minister. O, what multitudes of preachers have no such happy escape from bad theology and impractical training! What vast numbers have had the fire of enthusiasm and oratory extinguished by the criticism of the schools, and go to their work loaded down with what the mother of the Wesleys called "useless knowledge," while utterly unfitted for practical work by theories and notions that will cramp their energies and hinder their usefulness while they live!

It only remains to mention some of the personal characteristics of Finney which enhanced his usefulness. First, God gave him one of the most valuable physical qualifications of a great orator -- a majestic and commanding presence. He was six feet in stature, with a stately and imposing frame, a piercing, eagle eye, and a most kingly mien. "He had a voice of rare clearness, compass, and flexibility," which he used in a most natural and forcible way. "He was entirely free from mannerism; his intonation and emphasis were perfect;" and his voice and face and action were always in harmony with whatever great thought or feeling he was aiming to express. His grace of movement was always manifest, and his unstudied gestures were the perfection of grace. One might have supposed that he had Spent years with the masters of elocution and with the leaders of dramatic art. His mind was subtle and keen, and the great Dr. Charles Hodge called his logic "relentless." He had that rare balance of faculties, great reasoning powers with a quick and ready imagination, a stern loyalty to duty and obligation, and a divine compassion for the erring. He could thunder the terrors of the law with appalling power, and then turn and offer the mercy of the gospel with the tenderness. and tears of Jeremiah or Christ. His command of language was ready, his vocabulary copious, and his diction fine, He was scrupulously neat in his person, and gentlemanly in all his instincts. After thirty years of life on the platform in many States, and meeting and mingling with men of wide fame as preachers and orators, our mind goes back to the college days when we heard Finney, and felt again and again the thrill of his overpowering eloquence. We thought him then to be the prince of preachers and evangelists; a judgment we have never reversed. He was, like Elijah and John Baptist, a man of nature and of the desert, unspoiled by society, -- and untrammeled by the opinions and regulations of the schools, but taught of God and filled with the Holy Ghost. God had his giant at last.

Chapter 4

BEGINNING HIS MINISTRY

"Probably no minister ever went into his work with less expectation of dazzling success and fame than Finney had. He wrote: "Having had no regular training for the ministry, I did not expect or desire to labor In large towns or cities, or minister to cultivated congregations. I intended to go into the new settlements, and preach in schoolhouses and barns and groves, as best I could. Accordingly, soon after being licensed to preach, I took a commission for six months from a female missionary society located in Oneida County. I went into Jefferson County, and began my labors at Evans' Mills."

The people were much interested, and thronged the place to hear him preach. They extolled his pulpits efforts, and the little Congregational Church, that had no preacher, became very hopeful that they should be built up with a revival. More or less convictions occurred under every sermon for some weeks; but there were no conversions, and no general conviction seized the public mind. Then, with that keen discernment of conditions and wise means that always characterized his work to the very close of his life, he put forth a master stroke that precipitated results, He told his audience one evening that they highly complimented his preaching; but that he did not come there to please them, but to bring them to repentance; that it mattered not to him how well they were pleased with his preaching, if, after all, they rejected his Master; that they were getting no good from his work, and he could not spend his time with them unless they were going to receive the gospel. He then quoted the words of Abraham's servant, "Now will ye deal kindly and truly with my Master? If you will, tell me; and if not, tell me, that I may turn to the right hand or to the left." He turned this question over, and pressed it upon them until they understood it. He then said to them: "Now I must know your minds, and I want all of you who will give your pledge to make your peace with God immediately, to rise up; but all of you who are resolved not to become Christians; and wish me to understand so, and Christ to understand so, remain sitting."

"They looked at one another and at me, and all sat still, just as I expected. After looking around upon them for a few moments, I said: 'Then you are committed. You have taken your stand. You have rejected Christ and His gospel; and ye are witnesses one against another, and God is witness against you all. You may remember as long as you live that you have thus publicly committed yourselves against the Savior, and said, "We will not have this man, Christ Jesus, to reign over us." They were filled with anger, and started en masse for the door." He said to them: "I am sorry for you, and will preach to you once more."

All the Christians thought the work was ruined, and hung their heads with chagrin, except one Baptist deacon, who came forward and said: "Brother Finney, you have got them. They can not rest under this, and you will see results." He and Finney arranged to spend the next day in fasting and prayer, and they poured out their hearts before God, and got the assurance of victory.

Meanwhile the enraged people were going about, cursing, threatening to ride Finney on a rail, to tar and feather him, etc. They said he had put them under oath, and made them swear they would not serve God, and drew them into a solemn and public pledge to reject Christ and His gospel. But they packed the house the next night, and he preached from the text, "Say ye to the righteous it shall be well with him: woe to the wicked! it shall be ill with him."

He says: "The Spirit of God came upon me with such power that it was like opening a battery upon them. I took it for granted that they were committed against the Lord, and for an hour and a half the Word of God came through me as a fire and a hammer breaking the rock, and a sword piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit."

He dismissed the meeting without giving a call to repent. But the truth had done its world. Some could not hold up their heads. A woman was on the floor speechless and helpless, and remained so for sixteen hours, when she came out with the song of salvation upon her lips. All night, people were sending for Finney to pray for them, such was the agony of their conviction. A hotel-keeper, who was a Deist and the center of a group of Deists and infidels, was soon converted. They were banded together to resist the revival. Finney preached a sermon to meet their needs, and this leader and most of his comrades bowed to Jesus. One of them stoutly held out against God, railing and blaspheming. In the midst of his horrible opposition to Jesus, he fell from a chair stricken with apoplexy. A physician told him he had but a few moments to live, and he stammered out, with dying breath, "Don't let Finney pray over my corpse."

Finney led a dying woman to Christ who had been led into Universalism by her husband. At evening, when her husband came home and learned what had happened, he was greatly enraged, and swore he would kill Finney, To that end he loaded a pistol, and went to the church where Finney was to preach. The house was packed almost to suffocation, In the midst of the sermon the man was so overcome by the Holy Ghost that he fell from his seat, groaned, and shrieked out that he was sinking to hell, In the excitement the preaching was stopped, and the time was spent in praying for him. He spent a miserable, sleepless night, in great anguish of mind, and at early dawn went to a grove and prayed till God came in mercy. He then returned to town, met Finney in the street, lifted him from his feet, and swung him around in a Christian embrace.

Here "Father Nash," who had recently passed through a fit of sickness and had great overhauling in his religious experience, joined himself with Finney. "He was another man altogether from what he had ever been at any former period of his Christian life, He was full of the power of prayer, had a 'praying list' of the persons whom he made subjects of prayer every day, sometimes many times a day. His gift of prayer was wonderful, and his faith almost miraculous." This man, no doubt, was a most efficient helper and co-laborer with Finney. He did not preach, and often did not go to the meetings, but remained in his room or went to the groves and wrestled with God in an agony of prevailing prayer.

A wicked man kept a low tavern in the village, and its bar-room was the resort of all the opposers of the revival -- a place of blasphemy -- and its owner was a railing, abusive man, He would take particular pains to swear and blaspheme whenever he saw a Christian. Father Nash put this man's name upon his praying list.

One night this notorious sinner came to church.. Many people feared and abhorred him, and, supposing he had come in to make a disturbance, retired from the church. Finney says: "I kept my eye on him, and very soon became satisfied that he had not come in to make a disturbance, but was in great anguish of mind. He sat and writhed upon his seat, and was very uneasy. He soon arose, and tremblingly asked if he might say a few words. He proceeded to make one of the most heartbroken confessions I ever heard, telling how he had treated God and Christians and the revival and everything good. It broke up the fallow ground in many hearts, and was the most powerful means that could have been used to give impetus to the work. He abolished the profanity and revelry of his house, and a prayer-meeting was held in his barroom nearly every night." (Memoirs, Chapter 5)

Out in the country not far from this village where Finney was preaching, there was a German settlement and a Church, with the usual amount of piety indicated by a committing of the catechism to memory, accompanied by baptism in childhood and confirmation, but usually with no change of heart.

Members of this Church came to hear Finney preach, and invited him to come out and preach to them. He went, and preached from the text, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." He began by showing what holiness is not. He took everything that they considered to be holiness, and showed that it was not holiness at all, In the second place, he showed what holiness was. Thirdly, he showed what was meant by seeing the Lord; and then, why those that had no holiness could never see the Lord, be admitted into His presence, and be accepted of Him. He then drove home upon them with the power of the Holy Ghost, and slew them right and left.

It was in the midst of harvesting. The people left their harvesting, and packed the house at one o'clock in the afternoon. This put the whole community under conviction. The whole Church found that they had no saving religion, and they were all converted, and nearly the whole community of Germans. Mr. Finney relates two instances, one of a sick woman, who could neither read nor write, but was so hungry for the gospel that she rose from her sickbed and walked three miles to that meeting, was, gloriously converted, and, Mrs. Finney declared, was one of the most remarkable women in prayer she ever heard pray. Another woman testified that she had given her heart to God, and that the Lord had taught her to read since she had learned how to pray. She had never known her letters, and was greatly distressed that she could not read God's Word. She asked Jesus if He would please teach her to read it. After prayer, she thought she could read; and she took the Testament of her children, went over to the school ma'am, and read to her correctly. This remarkable testimony was confirmed to Mr. Finney by many witnesses. It was only another miracle of grace. Out of this revival there came such gracious and abiding results to the Churches that two commodious stone meeting-houses were built.

Here Mr. Finney tells what he preached: "I insisted upon the voluntary total moral depravity of the unregenerate and the unalterable necessity of a radical change of heart by the Holy Ghost, and by means of the truth. I laid great stress upon prayer as an indispensable condition of promoting the revival. The atonement of Jesus Christ, His Divinity, His Divine mission, His perfect life, His vicarious death, His resurrection, repentance, faith; justification by faith, and all kindred doctrines, were pressed home, and were manifestly made efficacious by the power of the Holy Ghost.."

The means used were simply preaching, prayer, and Conference meetings, much private prayer, much personal conversation, and meetings for the instruction of earnest inquirers. No other means were used. There was no appearance of fanaticism, no bad spirit, no divisions, no heresies, no schisms.

"I should add that I was obliged to take much pains in giving instruction to inquirers. The practice had been, I believe, universal, to set anxious sinners to praying for a new heart and to using means for their own conversion. This implied that they were willing to be Christians, and were taking pains to persuade God to convert them. I tried to make them understand that God was using the means with them, and not they with Him; that God was willing, and they were unwilling; that God was ready, and they were not ready. In short, I tried to shut them up to present faith and repentance as the thing which God required of the in, present and instant submission to His will, and acceptance of Christ. I tried to show them that all delay was only an evasion of duty; that all praying for a new heart was only trying to throw the responsibility of their conversion upon God; and that all efforts to do duty, while they did not give their hearts to God, were hypocritical and delusive."

It will be seen from the above that Mr. Finney was a most careful preacher and teacher, He was not satisfied with appealing to the emotions, though he could do it with great power and unusual success. He showed men their guilt and their duty, and preached a theology that logically threw all the responsibility of sin and impenitence on man rather than on God.

During these revivals the Presbytery met and ordained Mr. Finney, When he began his work his health was run down, and he coughed blood, and it was thought that he could live but a short time. Mr. Gale charged him to preach but once a week, and not more than half an hour at a time; But he rode on horseback from town to town and settlement to settlement, and preached and labored every day and almost every night, and his sermons averaged two hours in length. In six months his health was completely restored, his lungs were perfectly sound, and he did his work without the least fatigue. He wrote: "I. preached out of doors; I preached in barns; I preached in schoolhouses; and a glorious revival spread all over that region of country."

It is said that a part of the world goes forward and does something; another part sits on the fence watching them, and growls, "Why didn't you do it the other way?" This homely proverb had curious illustration in the life of Finney. He says:

"I used to meet from ministers a great many rebuffs and reproof s, particularly in respect to my manner of preaching. They would reprove me for -illustrating my ideas by reference to the common affairs of men of different pursuits around me. I addressed men in the language of the common people, and sought to express my ideas in a few words, and in words that were in common use. Before I was converted I had a different tendency, and allowed myself to use ornate language. But when I came to preach the gospel, I was so anxious to be thoroughly understood that I studied in the most earnest manner, on the one hand to avoid what was vulgar, and on the other to express my thoughts with the greatest simplicity of language. Ministers would say, 'Why don't you illustrate from events of ancient history, and take a more dignified way?' I defended myself by saying that my object was not to cultivate a style of oratory that should soar above the heads of the people, but to make myself understood; and that, therefore, I would use any language adapted to this end, and that did not involve coarseness and vulgarity."

Finney attended the Presbytery about this time, and sat down in the audience. They voted that he should preach at once. The pulpit was an old-fashioned high pulpit, up against the wall, He would not have been at home in it. He arose, stepped into the open space in front, and poured out a sermon from his full heart. One of the brethren stepped up to him, and said: "Mr. Finney, if you come up our way, I should like to have you preach in some of our school districts. I should not like to have you preach in our church. But there are schoolhouses away from the village, -- I should like to have you preach in some of those."

"They used to complain," he says, "that I let down the dignity of the pulpit; that I was a disgrace to the ministerial profession; that I talked like a lawyer at the bar; that I talked to the people in a colloquial manner; that I said 'you' instead of preaching about sin and sinners and saying they; that I said 'hell,' and with such an emphasis as often to shock the people; furthermore, that I urged the people with such vehemence as if they had not a moment to live; and they complained that I blamed the people too much. One Doctor of Divinity told me that he felt a great deal more like weeping over sinners than blaming them. I told him I did not wonder, if he believed that they had a sinful nature, and that sin was entailed upon them, and they could not help it.

"After I had preached some time, and the Lord had everywhere added His blessing, I used to say to ministers who wanted me to preach as they did: 'Show me a more excellent way. Show me the, fruits of your ministry, and if they so far exceed mine as to give me evidence that you have found a more excellent way,. I will adopt your views. But do you expect me to abandon my views and practices when the results justify my methods? I intend to improve all I can; but I never can adopt your manner of preaching the gospel until I have higher evidence that you are right and I am wrong.' They complained that I was guilty of repetition; that I would take a thought and turn it over and over and illustrate it in many ways, and that I would not interest the educated part of my Congregation. But facts soon silenced them when they found that, under my preaching, judges and lawyers and educated men were converted by scores." (See Memoirs, Chapter VI.)

Chapter 5

REVIVALS AT ANTWERP, "SODOM," GOUVERNEUR, AND DEKALB

There was a village by the name of Antwerp, north of Evans' Mills, The township was largely owned by a rich land-owner of Ogdensburg, who had built a brick meeting-house to encourage settlement. The meetinghouse was locked up, and the hotel-keeper carried the key. A Presbyterian elder, living five miles away, had tried to carry on Sabbath services, until the ungodly Universalists, through whose community he had to pass, would take off the wheels of his carriage, and make it impossible for him to get to the meeting. All religious services were abandoned, and the devil seemed to rule supreme. Finney went there, and found three praying women. They feared it would be impossible to hold a religious service; but one of these Christian sisters opened her parlor. Finney went around and invited the people, and got together an audience of thirteen, and preached to them on Friday night, and announced a service on the Sabbath, for which Finney himself secured the schoolhouse. On Saturday, as he was going about the village, if seemed to him as if the men playing ball on the green, and in every business place, were all cursing and swearing and damning each other. He thought he had never heard so much profanity, and felt as if he had arrived upon the borders of hell. An awful feeling, a kind of terror, took possession of him. He betook himself to prayer, and pressed his petition until the answer came: "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for I have much people in this city." This completely relieved him of fear.

Sunday morning he went to the woods three times, and prayed for the people until relief came, It was then meeting time. The house was packed. He took for his text John iii, 16. He largely dwelt on the treatment God received for His love. He pointed out men in the audience whom he had heard damning each other the day before, and told them they seemed "to howl blasphemy about the streets like hell-hounds, until it seemed to him he had arrived on the verge of hell."

"I felt like rebuking them with all my heart, and yet with a compassion which they could not mistake. It seemed as if my love to God, in view of the abuse they heaped upon Him, sharpened up my mind to the most intense agony. It seemed to myself as if I could rain hail and love upon them at the same time. The people quailed under the message. They did not appear offended; but they wept about as much as I did myself. From that day, appoint a meeting when and where I would, the people would throng to hear, and the work went forward with great power."

Would to God that all of us who are called to preach would learn this simple lesson from this great preacher's experience! The way to preach these stern truths and the judgments of God is with weeping eyes and a compassionate heart, "Sodom."

Now comes that remarkable incident that shows how the Spirit of God guided and used Finney. On the third Sabbath at Antwerp an aged man came to him as he was entering the pulpit, and asked him to come out and preach in his schoolhouse, three miles distant, where they had never had any services. An appointment was made for the next day at five o'clock in the afternoon, It was a warm day, but the schoolhouse was packed. Finney gave out a hymn, which the people "bawled" out in such awful discords that he had to cover his ears to shut out the distressing sounds. He then dropped on his knees, in a state of desperation, and began to pray. He says: "The Lord opened the windows of heaven, and the Spirit of prayer was poured out, and I let my whole heart out in Prayer."

He immediately rose from his knees, and God gave him this text, "Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city." He told them he did not recollect exactly where the text was; but he went on to tell the story of Abraham and Lot and the destruction of Sodom. He saw that, for some unaccountable reason, they were very angry while he was giving the narrative, But when he had finished that, he turned upon them, and said he had understood that they had never had a religious service in that place, and he was compelled to take it for granted that they were an ungodly people. He pressed it home upon them with more and more energy, and with a heart almost bursting. Suddenly an awful solemnity seemed to settle upon them. The congregation began to fall from their seats and cry for mercy. He wrote:

"If I had had a sword in each hand I could not have cut them off .their seats as fast as they fell. I think the whole congregation were on their knees or prostrate in two minutes. Every one prayed for himself who could speak at all.

"I saw the old man who had invited me to preach sitting in the middle of the house, and looking around in utter amazement. I raised my voice almost to a scream, and, pointing to him, said, 'Can't you pray?' He instantly fell upon his knees, and poured out his soul in a stentorian voice to God. The people did not hear. Then I said to them as loud as I could, 'You are not in hell yet; let me direct you to Christ.'"

The explanation of this strange scene was this, as Finney afterward learned: The community was so desperately wicked that with one consent they called themselves "Sodom," and the only Christian in it was the old man who had invited Finney to preach; and they had named him "Lot." Hence their anger at the Bible Story, and the explanation of the wonderful leading of the Holy Ghost.

Finney pointed one, and another, and another to Jesus, and they found peace. He had to go to another preaching service, and left the meeting in the charge of the old man, whose name was Mr. Cross. "There was too much interest, and there were too many wounded souls to dismiss the meeting, and so it was held all night. In the morning there were still those that were prostrate and helpless, and they were carried to a private house in the neighborhood to make room for the day-school."

Finney preached there again, and the community was renovated. The converts were sound, and the work, so sudden and noisy in its beginning, was permanent and genuine. A grandson of that old man, Rev. R. T. Cross, graduated from Oberlin, and was at the head of the Preparatory Department when I was a student in Oberlin College. His father, a son of the old man, was converted in that ever-memorable meeting, and became a minister.

We have mentioned the Universalist neighborhood, whose people took the wheels off the elder's carriage to vent their hatred of God. Finney was invited to preach there, and he did so, With that holy boldness that ever characterized him, he took for his text, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" The scene was similar to that in Sodom. Conviction fell upon the whole assembly, and the people with one heart turned to God.

The reader will miss the secret of Finney's success in preaching the gospel to these excessively wicked communities if he fails to bear in mind, first, that. he was filled with the Holy Spirit; second, that the intensity of his religious convictions and his courage in presenting the stern truths were fully matched by the tenderness of his heart. "His words of rebuke were not those of one who loved denunciation; they were rather like the faithful probing of the surgeon who knows full well the gravity of the case. When his words of rebuke had accomplished their design, he then, with tears, set forth the love of God and the atoning mercy of Christ." Furthermore, his preaching was intensely Scriptural, and a sermon would consist largely in expounding some great truth of the Bible.

In October, 1824, Finney married Miss Lydia Andrews, a young lady of the highest personal qualities, who had been deeply interested in praying for his conversion. After three days he went to Evans' Mills to spend the Sabbath, expecting to return for his wife the next week. But revivals broke out in so many places, and calls were so abundant to preach, that he plunged into the work night and day, and never saw his wife until the following spring.

"It would," as Professor Wright has well observed, "be doing the keenest injustice to Finney to attribute this long separation from his wife, so soon after their marriage, to any indifference of feeling, It is to be taken purely as an index of the strength of his devotion to the ministerial work to which he felt himself called. For, throughout his life he was passionately devoted to his family, and was never separated from them except upon occasion of necessity, and then with much self-sacrifice and solicitude."

In the early spring, before the sleighing broke up, he started to get to his wife, one hundred miles away. He had to stop at the town of LeRaysville to have the shoes of his horse reset, It was about noon. No sooner did the people learn that he was in town, .than they gathered about him, and begged him to speak at one o'clock. He did so. The interest was so great that he felt constrained to remain over night. This he did from day to day, gathering souls in such numbers that he did not dare to leave the work, and finally was compelled to send another man to bring his wife to him, The great mass of the people were converted, and among them Judge C____, the leading man in the community.

GOUVERNEUR

While laboring at Antwerp, the wicked people of Gouverneur, twelve miles distant, threatened to come down and mob Finney and break up his meetings. He paid no attention to it, But months afterward, the Holy Spirit, while he was in prayer; revealed to him in a most explicit way, as clear as the light, that he must go and preach in Gouverneur, and that God would pour out His Spirit there. He afterward saw a man from Gouverneur, and told him of this revelation. He stared at Finney as if he were insane. But Finney charged him to go home and report to the brethren that he was coming, and for them to prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit. Father Nash had joined himself to Finney, and was sent ahead to explore the place, find the spiritual condition, and report to him. Finney sent him back to announce his coming on a certain day.

He writes: "There was a general turning out of the people. The Lord gave me a text, and I went into the pulpit, and let my heart out to the people. The Word took powerful effect." This brief quotation is an epitome of much of Finney's life during these eventful and fruitful years. He had literal revelations from God. God gave him his texts, much of the time, without previous meditation as to what he should preach. When he preached he truly "poured out his heart," and the Holy Spirit caused the Word to take instant and powerful effect, Would to God we had more of such Spirit-filled preachers!

The village hotel was kept by Dr. S____, a confirmed and avowed Universalist. The next day, after the first sermon, Finney found all the Universalists and their leader, Dr. S____, in a shop, and intent on having a debate on the subject. Finney agreed, but insisted on preliminary conditions: First, to take up one point at a time; secondly, that they should not interrupt one another; thirdly, that there should be no caviling or mere banter, but only candor and courtesy in debate. Finney showed that endless punishment was a Bible doctrine. The Universalist held that endless punishment was unjust, and that, if the Bible taught it, it could not be true. Finney then closed in with him on the justice of endless punishment. Soon the friends became greatly agitated; then one left the shop, then another, and another, until the leader was left alone, When he had nothing more to say, Finney tenderly urged him to attend to his personal salvation, and then kindly bade him good-morning.

The doctor went home from that conversation, walked his house in agony, and finally told his wife, with tears, that Finney had turned his weapons on his own head. He soon surrendered to Christ, In a few days his companions, one after another, were brought in, till the revival made a clean sweep of them.

The Baptist Church began to oppose the revival. This encouraged a set of young men to join hand in hand to strengthen each other in opposition to the work, and their resistance was peculiarly bitter and strong. Father Nash and Mr. Finney, after a consultation, decided that this opposition must be overcome by prayer, and that it could not be reached in any other way. They therefore retired to a grove, and give themselves to prayer until they prevailed, and were confident that no power which earth or hell could interpose would be allowed to stop the revival.

Finney preached, and Father Nash gave himself continually to prayer. At one of the Sabbath meetings the young men were all present, and sat braced up against the Spirit of God. "It was too solemn for them to ridicule what they heard and saw; and yet their brazen-facedness and stiff-neckedness were apparent to everybody." Father Nash addressed them With great earnestness, pointing out the guilt and danger of their course, closing in great warmth with these words: "Now, mark me, young men! God will break your ranks in one week, either by converting some of you, or by sending some of you to hell. He will do it as certainly as the Lord is my God!" He then dropped on his knees and groaned with pain.

The house was still as death, and the people held down their heads. Finney regretted that Father Nash, in his mighty faith, had gone so far, thus committing God to convert some or send some to hell within a week. But, sure enough, on Tuesday morning the leader of the band broke down and was converted, and before the week closed nearly all of them.

This Father Nash was almost as unique and wonderful a character as Finney himself, and was on terms of marvelous intimacy with God. He became a marked subject of attack from those ministers who banded together to oppose Finney. His detractors averred that it was impossible for Father Nash to pray in secret, even though he Shut the door of his closet or retired Into the depths of the forest, since "they could hear him pray half a mile off." One morning, before sunrise, he rose up, as was his custom, and went back to a grove fifty rods from the road to have a season of prayer alone. A man living a long distance away heard the voice, and knew that it was Father Nash in prayer. It brought a profound sense of the reality of religion to him, and lodged an arrow in his heart. He found no relief from it until Jesus, the Healer, touched his convicted soul.

The work in this place was greatly hindered for a time by the shameful proselytizing of the Baptist pastor and people. They had first opposed the revival; but when there came to be many scores of converts, then they began to preach immersion and to proselyte. The disgraceful procedure went on until the Spirit was grieved, and there was not a convert for six weeks. Finney was compelled to speak on baptism, and was so fair in his discussion that all hearts were touched, sectarianism and narrowness were put to shame, and the blessed Spirit returned with great power, until the great majority of the people in the community were converted to Christ. (Memoirs, Chapter 10.)

From Gouverneur, Finney went to DeKalb, a village sixteen miles farther to the north. Here there were Presbyterians and Methodists, and ill-feeling had grown up between them because, in a previous revival led by the Methodists, a number of cases of people falling prostrate under the power of God had taken place, and the Presbyterians had made light of it and resisted the work, But now the tables were to be turned. Finney had preached but a few times when a man fell from his seat near the door. It caused Finney a little uneasiness for fear the old feud would start up; but lo! this time it was a leading member of the Presbyterian Church, In this revival there were many such instances, and in every case they were Presbyterians. This led to their humiliation and confession, and the binding together of Christians in Christian union and love most favorable to the work. An elder of the Church received the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Some of the leading people of Ogdensburg came down to visit the meeting over Sunday, among them Elder S_____ of the Presbyterian Church, The Spirit-filled Elder B____ invited S____ to his house for refreshment, Sunday noon, As they sat at the table, Elder S____ asked Elder B____ how he got this blessing. B____ replied: "I stopped lying to God. All my Christian life I have been making pretenses, and asking God for things that I was not, on the whole, willing to have; and I had gone on and prayed as other people prayed, and often had been insincere, and really lied to God. As soon as I made up my mind that I would never say anything to God in prayer that I did not really mean, God answered me, and the Spirit came down, and I was filled with the Holy Ghost."

"Mr. S____, who had not yet commenced to eat, shoved his chair back from the table, fell on his knees, and began to confess how he had lied to God, and how he had played the hypocrite in his prayers as well as in his life. The Holy Ghost fell upon him immediately, and filled him as full as he could hold." (Page 139.)

In this fullness of blessing he rushed into the church, and into the pulpit, caught Finney in his arms, and cried, "God bless you; God bless you!" He then began to speak to the people in the power of the Holy Spirit, and people melted on every side, among others his own son. The Roman Catholic who had come from Ogdensburg to measure Finney for a suit of clothes was converted on the spot, and began to testify. Thereupon people were converted on every side. There was no chance to preach. Finney could Only sit still and see the salvation of the Lord, by the spontaneous movement of the Holy Ghost in convicting and converting sinners. These people, returning to Ogdensburg, called and prayed and conversed with people along the way, and thus the work spread clear to the city.

We might pause here long enough to express the wish that a multitude of people would stop "lying to the Holy Spirit," The number of people is legion who pray for the baptism with the Holy Ghost, but who, in their hearts, are not willing to pay the price and meet the responsibility involved in receiving the blessing, It is almost safe to say that a thousand ministers pray for this blessing for every one who is really willing to die to sin and self and the world, and live ever and Only for God in holiness of heart.

In October, Finney went to Utica, with his wife, to attend the Synod. It led, as we shall see, to larger and more gracious work than he had yet known. It was preceded by remarkable experiences in prayer. All these revivals of which we have been writing were carried on in the spirit and power of prayer. "Christians would take alarm at any tendency to fanaticism or disorder, and give themselves to prayer that God would direct and control all things." "It was common for young converts to be greatly exercised in prayer, and in some instances they were constrained to pray whole nights, and until their bodily strength was quite exhausted, for the conversion of souls around them."

"In regard to my own experience," Finney writes, unless I had the experience of prayer, I could do nothing. If even for a day or an hour I lost the spirit of grace and supplication, I found myself unable to preach with power and efficiency, or to win souls by personal conversation. For several weeks before going to the Synod I was very strongly exercised in prayer, and had an experience somewhat new to me. I found myself so much exercised, and so borne down with the weight of immortal souls, that I was constrained to pray without ceasing. Some of my experiences, indeed, alarmed me. A spirit of importunity sometimes came upon me so that I would say to God that He had made a promise to answer prayer, and I could not, and would not, be denied. I felt so certain that He would hear me that frequently I found myself saying to Him: 'I hope Thou dost not think that I can be denied. I come with Thy faithful promises in my hand, and I can not be denied.' I can not tell how absurd unbelief looked to me, and how certain it was, in my mind, that God would answer those prayers that from day to day I was offering in such agony and faith. My impression was that the answer was near, even at the door; and I felt myself strengthened in the Divine life, put on the harness for a mighty conflict with the powers of darkness, and expected soon to see a far more powerful outpouring of the Spirit of God." God) did not disappoint His believing child.

Chapter 6

REVIVALS AT WESTERN, ROME, UTICA, AUBURN, TROY, AND NEW LEBANON

Returning from the Synod at Utica, Finney met Mr. Gale, his old teacher, who insisted that he stop and preach, or at least make him a visit.. Gale had lost his health, and was living in the country near the village of Western. The Presbyterian Church had no stated preaching at all, and no pastor. He was in time to attend the Thursday evening prayer-meeting, led by one of the elders. Each elder made a long prayer, which was a mournful wail, telling the Lord how many years they had their prayer-meeting with no answer to their prayers, -- by implication throwing the responsibility on God for their barrenness of soul. This stirred Finney to the heart. He arose, took their confessions for a text. He says, "God inspired me to give them a terrible searching." He asked them whether they had come together professedly to mock God. "They all wept, confessed, and broke their hearts before God," and begged him to remain and preach on the Sabbath. On Friday his "mind was greatly exercised." He spent the day in prayer, "and got a mighty hold upon God." "Sunday the house was packed," and he preached, and "God came down with power upon the people," and everybody realized that a revival was on them. He made an appointment to preach in different parts of the town. The startling experiences of previous revivals were repeated here, and the work swept out farther and farther, until the people were attending his meetings from Rome.

ROME

Rev. Moses Gillett, then a pastor there, came to hear Finney. After the second visit he said to him: "Brother Finney, it seems to me that I have a new Bible. I never before understood the promises as I do now. My mind is full of the subject, and the promises are new to me." This led Finney to see that God was preparing that pastor for a great work among his people. Rev. Gillett arranged for an exchange, which Finney was reluctant to grant. But he went, and preached three times on Sunday. The Word took immediate effect, and heads bowed before the Lord in the deepest conviction. Monday morning the pastor returned, and, by the advice of Finney, appointed an inquiry-meeting, Without letting people know that Finney would be there, To his surprise and great agitation he found a room packed, and the leading members and foremost young men of his congregation there, and "the feeling was so deep that there was danger of an outburst that would be almost uncontrollable." This Finney always endeavored to avoid as a thing that hindered the action of the soul. He spoke a few calm, quiet words; but the stoutest men writhed in their seats. "It would not be possible," he wrote, "for one who had never witnessed such a scene to realize what the force of the truth sometimes is, under the power of the Holy Ghost, It was indeed a two-edged sword. The pain that it produced, when searchingly presented in a few words of conversation, would create a distress that seemed unendurable."

The pastor, unaccustomed to such a sight, turned pale, and said, "What shall we do? What shall we do?" Finney put his hand on Brother Gillett's shoulder, and whispered, "Keep quiet." "He then, in a few words, pointed the convicted to Jesus; stopped short, and led them in prayer in a low, unimpassioned voice, but interceded with the Savior to interpose His blood then and there, and to lead all these sinners to accept the salvation which He proffered, and to believe to the saving of their souls." He rose from his knees, and said: "Now please go home without speaking a word to each other; try to keep silent, and do not break out into any manifestation of feeling, but go to your rooms." Careful as he was, a young man fell to the floor, and several of his companions then fell around him. The people went sobbing and sighing into the street. The next morning people were calling from every direction for Finney and the pastor to visit their families. As they went into a house) the people would rush in and fill the largest room. In some houses they would find people kneeling, and others prostrate on the floor. In The afternoon the large dining-room of the hotel was crammed to its utmost capacity. The state of things was extraordinary. Men of the strongest nerves were cut down and helpless, and had to be carried home. The meeting lasted till nearly midnight, and a great number were hopefully converted. The court-house was opened and crowded daily. Ministers rushed in from neighboring towns, and were filled with amazement at what they saw. Nearly all the professional men and prominent citizens embraced religion. An opposer fell dead. Rev. Gillett's whole congregation were converted, and he afterward reported that in twenty days five hundred were converted in Rome.

The effect of this revival was also felt in outlying settlements, in some of which all the people were converted. For months a sunrise prayer-meeting was maintained, and was largely attended. Open immorality was banished. So pervasive and permanent was the influence that Mr. Gillett said it did not seem like the same place.

UTICA

A great excitement sprung up in Utica over this work. The most prominent citizen of Rome was president of a bank in Utica. He was not a Christian. The first time he heard Finney he told his family, "That man is mad, and I should not be surprised if he set the town on fire." He would not go to the meetings, but they went on. At a meeting of the directors of the bank, one of them rallied him on the condition of things at Rome. He responded: "Gentlemen, say what you will, there is something very remarkable in the state of things at Rome. Certainly no human power or eloquence has produced what we see there. I can not understand it. You say it will soon subside. No doubt the intensity of feeling that is now in Rome will soon subside, or the people will become insane. But, gentlemen, there is no accounting for that state of feeling by any philosophy, unless there be something Divine in it." The banker was soon converted.

The county sheriff came from Utica to Rome on business. He said as soon as he crossed the old canal a strange impression came over him, an awe so deep that he could not shake it off. He felt as if God pervaded the whole atmosphere. The hostler of the hotel appeared to feel the same. He said everybody else appeared to feel just as he did. Such an awe, such a solemnity, such a state of things, he had never had any conception of before. He got out of town as soon as possible, but was converted a few Weeks later at Utica.

The minister's wife, a sister of the famous missionary Mills, whose zeal led to the formation of the American Board of Foreign Missions, was converted. She was under awful conviction for many days, until it was feared she would go insane. She finally found pardon, and rushed out of her room with her face all in a glow, exclaiming: "O, Mr. Finney! I have found the Savior I have found the Savior! Don't you think that it was the ornaments in my hair that stood in the way of my conversion? I found when I prayed they would come up before me. I was driven to desperation. I said, 'I will not have these things come up again.. I will put them away from me forever.' As soon as I had promised that, the Lord revealed Himself to my soul."

These marvelous occurrences were all reported in Utica, A woman in that town was also given such a burden of prayer for the ungodly in the city that she prayed for two days and nights incessantly, until her strength was overcome by exhaustion, -- a literal travail of soul, It was God's Spirit preparing the way for the coming of His servant. The pastor, Dr. Aiken, of one of the Presbyterian Churches, invited Finney to preach in his church.. The Word took immediate effect, and the place became filled with the manifested influence of the Holy Spirit. The work spread and moved on powerfully. The sheriff was among the first to be converted. At once the leading hotel, where he boarded, became a center of religious work. The stages stopped there, and travelers, in many instances, stopping for a meal or over night, would get convicted and converted before leaving. Merchants from neighboring villages, coming to town to trade, would get mad because everybody in the stores talked religion; but they themselves would soon be in anguish of soul and bowing to God.

A proud and cultured schoolteacher in Newburg heard of the wonderful work in Rome and Utica, and dismissed her school for two weeks to see it for herself. She got under powerful conviction, and was wonderfully converted. She soon afterward married a Mr. Gulick, and went with him as a missionary to the Sandwich Islands, where she did a great work for Christ.'.

The Oneida Presbytery met during the revival, and a minister, on the afternoon of the closing day, made a violent speech against the revival, which greatly shocked and grieved the Christians present. They gave themselves to prayer, and there was a great crying to God that he would counteract the evil influence of that speech. The next morning the minister who made it was found dead in his bed.

THE MILL SCENE

The brother-in-law of Mr. Finney was superintendent of a cotton factory in a neighboring village, now called New York Mills. Finney, by invitation, went there, and preached an evening sermon in a schoolhouse, It was crowded, especially with mill-operatives, The Word took powerful effect. The next morning, after breakfast, Finney went into the factory to look through it. He observed, as he was passing along in silence, a good deal of agitation among those who were busy at the looms and other implements of work. In one room were many young women. Finney could see that they were excitedly talking about him. One was trying to mend a broken thread, but her hand trembled so that she could not tie it. "When I came within eight or ten feet of her I looked solemnly at her. She observed it, and was quite overcome, and sank down, and burst into tears. The impression caught almost like powder, and in a few moments all in the room were in tears. The feeling spread through the factory. The owner of the establishment was present, and, seeing the condition of things, though not a Christian, he said to the superintendent, 'Stop the mill, and let the people attend to religion; for it is more important that our souls should be saved than that this factory should run.'" The factory was immediately stopped, the hands were assembled in the largest room, and Finney spoke to them. "A more powerful meeting," he says, "I scarcely ever attended. The revival went through the mill with astonishing power, and in a few days nearly all were converted." There were hundreds working in this mill.

A young man of unusual gifts in Hamilton College, who afterwards became quite famous, Theodore Weld by name, came over to inspect the meetings, declaring it was all fanaticism, and boasting to his college-mates that he would not be moved. He heard Finney but once, when he met him and abused him for an hour in a most shameful manner. Finney said a few words to him about his soul, and left him. That night he spent by turns walking the floor and prostrate in agony, angry and rebellious, yet so convicted that he could hardly live. Just at daylight a pressure came upon him that crushed him down to the floor. He finally gave his heart to God, went the next night to the meeting, and made a humble confession, and from that time became a very efficient helper, and for years was a mighty winner of souls.

This revival spread from Rome and Utica as a center in all directions, as Finney circled out. Of five hundred conversions in one place, there was not a case of apostasy after eight months. A pamphlet was published by a Presbyterian minister describing the revival, and stating that there were three thousand converts within the bounds of the Presbytery. Probably more thorough conversions never took place under any preacher in the history of the Christian Church.

Finney stops in his Memoirs to tell us what he preached that God so blessedly used. It were well if all preachers would, note them well:

"The doctrines preached in these revivals were those I always preached. Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit, and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God. We told them the Spirit was striving with them to induce them now to give Him their hearts, now to believe, and to enter at once upon a life of devotion to Christ, of faith, and love, and Christian obedience. We taught them that, while they were praying for the Holy Spirit, they were constantly resisting Him, and that if they would at once yield to their own convictions of duty, they would be Christians. We tried to show them that everything they did or said before they had submitted, believed, given their hearts to God, was all sin, was not that which God required them to do, but was simply deferring repentance and resisting the Holy Ghost.

"Such teaching as this was, of course, opposed by many; nevertheless it was greatly blessed by the Spirit of God. Formerly it had been supposed necessary that a sinner should remain under conviction a long time; and it was not uncommon to hear old professors of religion say that they were under conviction many months or years before they found relief; and they evidently had the impression that the longer they were under conviction, the greater was the evidence that they were truly converted. We taught the opposite of this. I insisted that if they remained long under conviction, they were in danger of becoming self-righteous, in the sense that they would think that they had prayed a great while and done a great deal to persuade God to save them; and that finally they would settle down with a false hope; We told them that under this protracted conviction they were in danger of grieving the Spirit of God away, and when their distress of mind ceased, a reaction would naturally take place; they would feel less distress, and perhaps obtain a degree of comfort from which they were in danger of inferring that they were converted; that the bare thought that they were possibly converted might create a degree of joy and peace; and that this state of mind might still further delude them by being taken as evidence that they were converted.

"We tried thoroughly to dispose of this false teaching. We insisted then, as I have ever done since, on immediate submission as the only thing that God could accept at their hands, and that all delay, under any pretext whatever, was rebellion against God. It became very common under my preaching for persons to be convicted and converted in the course of a few hours, and sometimes in the course of a few minutes. Such sudden conversions were alarming to many good people; and, of course, they predicted that the converts would fall away, and prove not to be soundly converted. But. the event proved that among those sudden conversions were some of the most influential Christians that have ever been in that region of country. This has been my experience through all my ministry."

REVIVAL AT AUBURN

It was in the summer of 1826. Dr. Lansing, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Auburn, came to Utica to witness the revival, and urged Finney to go out and labor with him. He did so. He soon found that some of the professors in the theological seminary in that place were taking an attitude of hostility to the revival. We shall speak of this opposition of ministers in a chapter by itself. It is an interesting phase of all progressive work in the kingdom of God.

In Auburn, as in other places, God was with His faithful servant. A prominent physician, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, was felled to the floor by the Holy Spirit coming upon him. A Universalist bitterly opposed the work, as they invariably did, and forbade his wife to attend the meetings. The poor wife wrestled in prayer for her husband, and he was led by the Spirit to invite her to go with him to church. Finney knew nothing of this. He had been visiting and laboring with inquirers all day, and he reached the pulpit, as he often did in those days, without either sermon or text. During the introductory service a text occurred to his mind from which he had never preached. It was the words of the man with an unclean spirit, who cried out, "Let us alone." God helped him to depict in a most vivid manner the conduct of sinners who wanted to be let alone, and tried to keep others from God. In the midst of the discourse the Universalist fell from his seat, and cried out in such a terrific manner that all preaching was at an end. He wept aloud, and confessed his sins in a way that brought tears and sobs to nearly every one in the house. The Universalist was soon rejoicing in conscious pardon.

Dr. Lansing's Church members were much conformed to the world, and were accused by the unconverted of being leaders in dress, and fashion, and worldliness. Finney, as usual, directed his preaching so as to secure the reformation of the Church. One Sabbath he preached on that line as searchingly as he was able, and then called upon the pastor to pray. The pastor was so much impressed with the sermon that he supplemented the discourse with an earnest appeal to the people. Just then a man arose in the gallery, and said in a distinct tone: "Mr. Lansing, I do not believe that such remarks from you can do any good while you wear a ruffled shirt and a gold ring, and while your wife and the ladies of your family sit, as they do before the congregation, dressed as leaders in the fashions of the day." It seemed as if this would kill Dr. Lansing outright. He cast himself over the pulpit, and wept like a child. The people almost universally dropped their heads upon the seat in front of them, and many wept on every side, With the exception of the sobs and sighs, the house was profoundly silent.

Dr. Lansing was a good man. He had worn ruffled shirts from childhood; his ring was very small, and given him by his dying wife with the request that he would wear it for her sake. He had done so without a thought of its being a stumbling-block, But he said, "If these things are an offense, I will not wear them." The Church had a public confession of their backsliding and want of a Christian spirit written, and they stood while it was read, many of them in tears. It is needless to say that Church was revived. The revival spread to Cayuga, and to Skaneateles, and to other places.

REVIVAL AT TROY, AUTUMN OF 1826

Rev. Dr. Beeman and his session invited Finney to come and labor with them in Troy. He spent the autumn and winter of 1826 in that city and vicinity. We have few incidents recorded; for Mr. Finney, in his Memoirs, soon begins to tell us of the opposition of the preachers, which we will relate in the next chapter. He does tell us that the revival was powerful in that city; that the Presbytery put Dr. Beeman on trial during the revival, and he was acquitted of all charges against him; that the failure of the effort to break down Dr. Beeman considerably discomfited the outside movement to break down the revival; that Christian people continued praying mightily to God; and he (Finney) kept up preaching and praying incessantly, and the revival went on with increasing power; that Mr. 5 -- , cashier of a bank in that city, was so pressed by the spirit of prayer for the conversion of the president of the bank that, when the meeting closed, he could not rise from his knees. The president was soon after converted. These incidents are of exceeding value as showing the large place which prayer held in the revivals under Finney.

NEW LEBANON REVIVAL

A young lady from New Lebanon; Columbia County, came to Troy during the revival to purchase a dress for a ball. A cousin, lately converted, urged her to attend the meetings and hear Finney. At first she was full of enmity of heart, but soon became deeply convicted, then thoroughly converted. She returned home, not to participate in a ball, but to prepare the Church for Finney to come and hold a revival. It started in her own home with her father, who was an elder of the Presbyterian Church. "Most of the prominent men in the community were converted." A young man by the name of John T. Avery was converted, who afterward became a minister and a celebrated evangelist, and who labored in a Church of which I was a member in my boyhood, about 1860. This was in the late spring and early summer of 1827. For a little time God had withdrawn His precious servant from the strive. of tongues and the opposition that was rolling up against him, and rejoiced his heart by another harvest of souls.

Chapter 7

MINISTERIAL OPPOSITION AND THE NEW LEBANON CONVENTION

The devil hates true religion and all Scriptural revivals with a perfect hatred, He is never at a loss to find means and agencies. to oppose them. One of his most subtle and Satanic methods is to arouse prominent and eminent leaders in the Church to oppose their brethren who are successful in winning souls. Paul's worst-enemies were his own brethren, the Jews, and members of the Sanhedrin. The dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church thirsted for the blood of Luther. Men prominent in the Church, to their abiding disgrace, rolled up a mighty opposition against John Wesley. The holiness preachers are opposed in the same way today by dead Churches and barren preachers. Finney did not escape.

It is with great sorrow that we must record things that dim the fame of two or more names honorable in the history of the American Churches. When Finney went, to Auburn he was not fully aware of the amount of opposition he was destined to meet from the ministry; not the ministry in the region where he labored, but from those where he had not labored, and who knew personally nothing of him, but were influenced by the false reports which they heard. But in that center of learning he found, from various sources, that a system of espionage was being carried on that was destined to result, and intended to result, in an extensive union of ministers and Churches to hedge in and prevent the spread of revivals in connection with his labors.

Asahel Nettleton, the evangelist, and Dr. Lyman Beecher, of Boston, were the leaders in this unseemly opposition. Nettleton boasted that Finney should go no farther east than Central New York. Finney said nothing to anybody publicly or privately, but gave himself incessantly to prayer. "I looked to God with great earnestness day after day to be directed, asking Him to show me the path of duty, and give me grace to ride out the storm. I shall never forget what a scene I passed through one day in my room at Dr. Lansing's, of Auburn, The Lord showed me, as in a vision, what was before me. He drew so near to me while I engaged in prayer that my flesh literally trembled on my bones. I shook from head to foot under a full Sense of the presence of God. At first, and for some time, it seemed more like being on the top of Sinai, amidst its full thunderings, than in the presence of the cross of Christ. Never in my life was I so awed and humbled before God as then. Nevertheless, instead of feeling like fleeing, I seemed drawn nearer and nearer to God, to that Presence that filled me with such unutterable awe and trembling. After a Season of great humiliation before Him, there came a great lifting up. God assured me that He would be with me and uphold me; that no opposition should prevail against me; that I had nothing to do in regard to all this matter but to keep about my work, and wait for the salvation of God, The sense of God's presence, and all that passed between my soul and God at that time, I can never describe. It led me to be perfectly trustful, perfectly calm, and to have nothing but the most kindly feelings toward all the brethren that were misled, and were arraying themselves against me. I felt assured that all would come out right; that my true course was to leave everything to God, and to keep about my work; and as the storm gathered and the opposition increased, I never for one moment doubted how it would result. I was never disturbed by it; I never spent a waking hour in thinking about it, when, to all outward appearances, it seemed as if all the Churches of the land, except where I had labored, would unite to shut me out of their pulpits. This was the avowed determination, as I understood, of the men that led in the opposition, They were so deceived that they thought there was no effectual way but to unite, and, as they expressed it 'put him down.' But God assured me that they could not put me down.

"The Lord did not allow me to lay the opposition to heart, and I can truly say, so far as I can recollect, I never had an unkind feeling toward Mr. Nettleton or Dr. Beecher or any leading opposer of the work during the whole of their opposition."

It seems .that Rev. William R. Weeks, an extreme Calvinist of a community where Finney labored, opposed him on theological grounds. He