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 schoolma'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.)