REVIVALS AT STEPHENTOWN, WILMINGTON, PHILADELPHIA, AND READING -1827-1830

A young lady from Stephentown came to New Lebanon, after the Convention, and heard Finney preach. She was so impressed that she invited him to come to her place and preach. Finney told her his hands were full, and he thought he could not. Her utterance was choked with deep feeling, and Finney's mind became stirred profoundly over the condition of things in the place. It seems that the Only church in the place was an endowed Presbyterian Church that had been ministered to for many years by a minister until the Church was run down entirely, and the minister himself had become an infidel. The only unmarried person in the Church was the young lady who invited Finney to preach. Nearly the whole town was in a state of impenitence. Most of the people lived scattered along a street nearly five miles long, and there was not a religious family on the street, nor a single house in which family prayer was maintained.

Finney made an appointment to preach the next Sunday afternoon. Here occurred one of the characteristic incidents of which Finney's life was so full. He asked the person who was to take him in his carriage, "Have you a steady horse?" "O yes!" he replied; "perfectly so. What made you ask the question?" "Because," said Finney, "if the Lord wants me to go to Stephentown, the devil will prevent it if he can; and if you have not a steady horse, he will try to make him kill me." Strange to say, the horse ran away twice, a thing he had never done before, and came near killing them.

The people were solemn and attentive. Miss S____ spent the whole of the following night in prayer. The spirit of prayer also came powerfully upon Finney. It spread so much and was so answered that soon the Word would cut the strongest men down and render them entirely helpless.

On the evening of the day of the State election, one of the men who had sat at the table to receive votes all day was so overcome by conviction that he could not leave his seat. In another pew was another man in the same condition. The infidel preacher mightily opposed the work, and God struck him down, so that during the revival he died a horrible death. It broke the spell of his influence, and there was a great turning to the Lord. There was one family of sixteen, and another of seventeen, all of whom were converted. The revival was characterized by a mighty spirit of prevailing prayer; overwhelming conviction of sin; sudden and powerful conversions to Christ, great love and abounding joy of the converts, and their great earnestness, activity, and usefulness in their prayers and labors for others. Nearly all the inhabitants of the town were .gathered into the Church, and the town was morally renovated. (Chap. 17 of Memoirs.)

WILMINGTON

A Rev. Mr. Gilbert, of Wilmington, Delaware, visited his father in New Lebanon while Finney was preaching there, and heard him. He earnestly invited him to Wilmington. Mr. Gilbert had the old Calvinistic doctrines, and he had trained his people until they were afraid to do anything for a revival lest they should take the work out of the hands of God. Their theory was, that God would convert sinners in His own time; and that, therefore, to urge them to immediate repentance, and, in short, to attempt to promote a revival, was to attempt to make men Christians by human agency and human strength, and thus to dishonor God by taking the work out of His. hands.

With his usual courage, Finney took for his text, "Make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die ?" He showed what a new heart was, and the sinner's responsibility to have one. He preached for two hours. The house was packed. The audience was amazed at this new gospel. Some laughed, some wept, some were angry; but so spellbound were they held that they rose to their feet and stood in all parts of the house. He writes: "I endeavored to show that if man was as helpless as their views represented him to be, he was not to blame for his sins, If he had lost in Adam all power of obedience, so that obedience had become impossible to him, and that not by his own act or consent, but by the act of Adam, it was mere nonsense to say that he could be blamed for what he could not help. I endeavored also to show that, in that case, the atonement was no grace, but really a debt due to mankind on the part of God for having placed them in a condition so deplorable and so unfortunate. Indeed, the Lord helped me to show up with irresistible clearness the peculiar dogmas of Old-schoolism (Calvinism) and their inevitable results."

The pastor himself accepted the truth of the sermon, and, going out of church, said to a parishioner, "I am sorry to say I have never preached the gospel." From that day the work went forward, and the pastor and his people got where they could wisely labor to win souls.

PHILADELPHIA, 1828-1830

In the meantime Dr. Patterson, a Presbyterian pastor of Philadelphia, invited Finney to preach in his church. It led to his alternating every other night between Wilmington and Philadelphia, going back and forth daily by boat. The Word took such effect in Philadelphia that soon it was evident to Finney that he must give his whole time to that city.

One day Mr. Patterson said to him: "Brother Finney, if the Presbyterian ministers in this city find out your views, and what you are preaching to the people, they will hunt you out of the city as they would a wolf." He replied: "I can not help it. I can preach no other doctrine; and if they must drive me out of the city, let them do it, and take the responsibility. But I do not believe that they can get me out."

He says: "I did not preach in a controversial way, but simply employed the truth in my instruction to saints and sinners in a way so natural as not, perhaps, to excite very much attention except from discriminating theologians." One night he preached on this text, "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." From this he preached the nature and universality of the atonement, and the sermon attracted so much attention and excited such an interest that, by request, he preached it seven different evenings in succession in as many different churches.

He preached for months in all the Presbyterian churches in the city but one, with such gracious results that he was urged to take a central position in the city. A German church, seating three thousand, the largest audience-room in the city, was secured, and there he preached for months. It seems, from the Memoirs, that he preached in this city not far from two years.

In the spring of 1829 the lumbermen came down the Delaware with their rafts from the "lumber regions" up the river. Many of them, reaching the city, heard of the revival, attended Finney's meetings, got converted, and went back to the lumber-camps and told the story of salvation, and people turned to Christ in vast numbers. In 1831, three men from that region visited Finney in Auburn to inquire how they could get ministers to go in there. They said that the revival had extended along the river for eighty miles, and there was not a single minister of the gospel there, and not less than five thousand people were converted in that lumber region.

Finney tells an incident or two that occurred in Philadelphia, which I am moved to mention briefly. Among those who opposed his meetings was a German skeptic. His wife had come to the meetings, and was thoroughly converted, He was a man of athletic frame and great fixedness of purpose. When he learned that his wife had become a Christian, he forbade her coming to the meetings. She asked Finney about it, He told her "to avoid giving offense as much as she innocently could, but in no case to omit her duty to God for the sake of complying with his wishes; and that, as he was an infidel, she could not safely follow his advice."

She went to meeting again, and he threatened to kill her. She thought it only a vain threat, and went again. When she returned he was in a great rage, locked the door, drew out a dagger, and swore he would kill her. She fled upstairs. He caught a light to follow her, which the servant blew out. In the darkness she got down by the back stairs into the cellar and out of the cellar window, and passed the night with a friend. Thinking his rage would be over in the morning, she returned early. She found the house in great disorder; he had broken up the furniture in his insane rage. As she entered the house he pursued her again through the house with a drawn dagger. It was daylight, and she could not escape him. As she reached the last room, she turned to face him, fell upon her knees, and cried to God for help. At this point God arrested him. . He glared at her for a moment, dropped his dagger, and fell upon the floor and cried for mercy himself. He confessed his sins to God and to her, and begged both to forgive him. "From that moment he was a wonderfully-changed man, and became one of the most earnest of Christian converts, and became greatly attached to Finney, who received him and his wife into the Church and baptized their children."

Finney tells also of a minister's daughter who had been trained in Calvinism by her father from childhood, and led to think that if she was one of the elect she would be converted in due time, and that until she was converted and her nature changed by the Spirit of God, she could do nothing for herself but to read her Bible and pray for a new heart. She became greatly convicted, she would never marry till she was a Christian, supposing that God would soon convert her. When eighteen years of age she became engaged to a noble young man, but deferred marriage, according to her vow, until she was converted. She thus kept him waiting five years, until he was thrown from a carriage and suddenly killed. This aroused the enmity of her heart against God, and she accused Him of dealing hardly with her.

Finney's preaching stripped all these refuges of lies away from her. She saw that her father's teaching had been wrong, and that she should have given her heart to God long ago, and that she herself, and not God, was entirely to blame. The thought of her blasphemous attitude toward God in blaming Him as she had done threw her into despair. Out of this state of mind Finney had to lead her, when she became a most humble, submissive, and beautiful convert. (Memoirs, Chap. 18.)

Here the great evangelist in his Memoirs pays his respects to the Calvinistic theology of Princeton in the following words: "As I found myself in Philadelphia in the heart of the Presbyterian Church, and where Princeton views were almost universally embraced, I must say still more emphatically than I have done, if possible, that the greatest difficulty I met in promoting revivals of religion was the false instruction given to the people, and especially to inquiring sinners. Indeed, in all my ministerial life, in every place and country where I have labored, I have found this difficulty to a greater or less extent; and I am satisfied that multitudes are living in sin who would immediately be converted if they were truly instructed. The foundation of the error of which I speak is the dogma that human nature is sinful in itself, and that, therefore, sinners are entirely unable to become Christians.

"It is admitted, either expressly or virtually, that sinners may want to be Christians, and that they really do want to be Christians, and often try to be Christians, and yet somehow fail. It had been the practice, and still is to some extent, when ministers were preaching repentance and urging the people to repent, to save their orthodoxy by telling them that they could not repent any more than they could make a world. But the sinner must be set to do something; and with all their orthodoxy, they could not bear to tell him that he had nothing to do. They must, therefore, set him self-righteously to pray for a new heart. They would sometimes tell him to do his duty, to press forward in duty, to read his Bible, to use the means of grace; in short, they would tell him to do anything and everything but the very thing which God commands him to do. God commands him to repent now, to believe now, to make to him a new heart now. But they were afraid to urge God's claims in this form, because they were continually telling the sinner that he had no ability whatever to do these things."

Here he tells what he heard a good minister preach in England. His text was, "Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." He made four points: 1. Repentance is an involuntary change, a mere state of the sensibility -- feeling bad over sin. 2. It is the sinner's duty to repent. 3. Although God required it of them, they. could not repent, and God knew it was impossible for them to repent, only as He gave them repentance. 4. You ask, then, what you shall do. "Go home and pray for repentance; if it does not come, keep praying until it does come."

Finney says: "I actually found it difficult to keep from screaming to the people to repent, and not to think that they were doing their duty in merely praying for repentance. Such instruction always pained me exceedingly, and much of my labor in the ministry has consisted in correcting those views, and impressing the sinner immediately to do just what God commands him to do.

"When the sinner has asked me if the Spirit of God has nothing to do with it, I have said: 'Yes, as a matter of fact, you will not do it of yourself. But the Spirit of God is now striving with you to lead you to do just what He would have you do. He is striving to lead you to repentance, to lead you to believe, and is striving with you, not to secure the performance of mere outward acts, but to change your heart.'

"The Church, to a Very great extent, has instructed sinners to begin on the outside in religion, to secure an inward change. I have ever treated this as totally wrong, and in the highest degree dangerous. . . I think I may say I have found thousands of sinners, of all ages, who are living under this delusion, and would never think themselves called upon to do anything more than merely to pray for a new heart, live a moral life, read their Bibles, attend meetings; use the means of grace, and leave all the responsibility of their conversion and salvation with God,"

I can not but feel, with Finney, that these characteristic teachings of Calvinism have sent thousands of people to hell. We shall-have some specimen cases very soon in these pages.

REVIVAL AT READING EARLY PART OF 1830

Finney went from Philadelphia to Reading. There were several German Churches, and one Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, Dr. Greer, secured the help of Finney. One of the elders of the Church was manager of a series of balls that was to extend through the winter. Finney told the pastor that those balls would soon be given up, or he would be shut out of the pulpit. He preached several days, and then appointed a meeting for those only who were anxious for salvation, and had made up their minds to attend to the subject at once. The lecture-room, nearly as large as the body of the church above, was filled. Finney stripped away their misapprehensions and mistakes, that they must simply use means and wait for God to convert them. He then called upon all who were Willing, then and there, to pledge themselves to give up all sin and renounce it forever, and live wholly to God, and who were willing to commit themselves to the sovereign mercy of God in Christ Jesus, to kneel down and do what God required of them. They knelt in vast numbers -people of all classes, rich and poor, high and low. The stillness of death came upon them, broken only by sobs and sighs and weeping, while Finney prayed.

Early one morning an able lawyer visited Finney, deeply concerned for salvation. He informed Finney that, when he was a student in Princeton College, he and two of his classmates, under deep conviction, went to Dr. Ashbel Green, president of the college, and asked him what they should do to be saved. The doctor told them to read their Bible, and to pray God to give them a new heart, and to press forward, and "the Spirit of God will convert you; or else He will leave you, and you will return back to your sins again."

"Well," asked Finney, "how did it terminate?" "O," replied he, "we did just as he told us to do, until We lost all interest in the subject." Then, bursting into tears, he said, "My two companions are in drunkards' graves, and if I can not repent I shall soon be in one myself." Finney showed him that God could not do for him what He required him to do. God required him to repent, but could not repent for him; required him to believe, but could not believe for him; God required him to submit, but could not submit for him. He then showed him the agency that the Spirit of God has in giving the sinner repentance and a new heart; that it is a divine persuasion; that the Spirit leads him to see his sins, urges him to give them up, and to flee from the wrath to come. He presents to him the Savior, the atonement, the plan of salvation, and urges him to accept it.

He soon knelt down and gave his heart to God, and then said: "O! if Dr. Green had only told us this that you have told me, we should all have been converted immediately. But my friends are lost; and what a wonder of mercy it is that I am saved!"

One night a wicked man was so convicted under the preaching that he went home and got in such agony that his family thought he would die, and dispatched a messenger for Finney in the face of a terrific storm. He could hear the man fairly howling in agony before he got near the house. "When I entered, I found him sitting on the floor, his wife supporting his head -- and what a look in his face! Accustomed as I was to seeing people under great conviction, his appearance gave me a tremendous shock. It was indescribable. He was writhing in agony, grinding his teeth, and literally gnawing his tongue for pain. He cried out to me, 'O, Mr. Finney! I am lost! I am a lost soul!' I was greatly shocked, and exclaimed, 'If this is conviction, what is hell?' But I soon led his thoughts to the way of salvation, pressed the Savior upon his attention and upon. his acceptance, and he found peace.

The elder who was managing the ball was converted, and his whole family, and the vast congregation. A distiller was converted, and ordered his distillery torn down.

The German pastors very generally opposed the revival. One of them told Mr. Finney that he had made sixteen hundred Christians in that city by baptism and giving them the communion, That was their only conception of religion. "It was held that, for the people to begin to think of becoming religious by being converted, and to establish family prayer, or to give themselves to secret prayer, was not only fanaticism, but was virtually saying that their ancestors had all gone to hell; for they had done no such thing. Some of their people got converted, but the pastors spoke very severely of those that forsook the ways of their fathers, and thought it necessary to be converted and to maintain family and secret prayer." How fallen the German Church is -- a Church of form and ceremony without vital piety!

LANCASTER, SPRING OF 1830

From Reading, Finney went to Lancaster, and remained a short time. The interest increased from day to day, and hopeful conversions multiplied. One night he urged the audience to immediate decision, and asked all to rise who would then and there accept Christ. He even pressed the thought upon them that, in an audience so large, it might be the last opportunity some would ever have to decide the question, and that they would then decide their everlasting destiny one way or the other, God would hold them to their decision. Many rose to their feet, and decided for God and heaven. Two men sat near the door, deeply agitated, but did not rise, On their way home they discussed the matter, one of them confessing that he was deeply moved over the fact that it might be the final opportunity. They soon separated at a corner, It was a very dark night. The man so deeply moved by the Holy Spirit walked but a little way when he fell over the curbstone and broke his neck. Called, but lost!