REVIVALS IN BOSTON -- PROVIDENCE -- ROCHESTER, AND AGAIN IN BOSTON, 1842-1844 RENEWED BAPTISM WITH THE HOLY GHOST -- LOSS OF HIS WIFE

Mr. Willard Sears, of Boston, in order to have a pulpit open to revivals and the discussion of all great questions of reform, purchased the Marlborough Hotel, on Washington Street, and had connected with it a large chapel for public worship, revivals, and reform meetings, that could not find entrance anywhere else. In 1842, Finney was urged to occupy Marlborough Chapel, and preach for a few months. He went, and preached with all his might for a few months. "The Spirit of the Lord was immediately poured out," and "there was a general agitation among the dry bones." "I was visited at my room almost constantly, during every day in the week, by inquirers from all parts of the city, and many were obtaining hopes from day to day."

Elder Knapp, the well-known Baptist revivalist, was laboring in Providence, but under much opposition. The Baptist brethren invited him to Boston, and he came. At the same time Finney's friend, Josiah Chapin, and others, were urging Finney to come to Providence, It was a great trial for him to leave Boston; but, after seeing Brother Knapp and informing him of the state of things, he went.

PROVIDENCE

The work in Providence began with great power immediately. The number of inquirers was so large and the congregations so crowded that he could not call them forward, as he had done in other places, and had to invite them to the large lecture-room below. From night to night, after preaching, that room would be filled with rejoicing young converts and trembling, inquiring sinners. It continued so for two months, when he started for home. Weary with labor and travel, he stopped to rest a day or two at Rochester.

ROCHESTER

As soon as it was known that he was there, the ministers gathered and insisted on his preaching for them, In the meantime Judge G -- , one of the judges of the Court of Appeals in the State, united, with other members of the bar, in a written request to Finney to preach a course of sermons to lawyers, adapted to their way of thinking. The house was packed night after night, and Finney felt that he was getting his grip on the minds and consciences of those thinking men. "One night I arrived at a point where I thought it was time to draw the net ashore. I had been carefully laying it around the whole mass of lawyers, and hedging them in by a train of reasoning that they could not resist. Just at the close, as I was about to call for a decision, I missed the judge, who, as an influential leader, I was especially anxious to reach; and I was finishing my address with a sinking heart, when I felt the judge pull at my coat. He had left his seat in the gallery, had gone down through the basement, and up by narrow stairs to the pulpit, and said: 'Mr. Finney, won't you pray for me by name? and I will take the anxious seat.' The congregation had observed this movement; and when I announced to them what he said, it produced a wonderful shock. There was a great gush of feeling in every part of the house. Many held down their heads and wept; others engaged in earnest prayer. The judge crowded around in front of the pulpit, and knelt down. The lawyers arose almost en masse, and crowded into the aisles, and filled the open space in front, wherever they could get a space to kneel. The movement had begun without my requesting it; but then I publicly invited any who were prepared to renounce their sins and give their hearts to God, and to accept Christ and His salvation, to come forward into the aisles, or wherever they could, and kneel down. There was a mighty movement. We prayed, and I then dismissed the meeting."

The next day at two o'clock the basement of the church was filled with inquirers. A large number of lawyers were converted, Judge G____ at the head of them. This went on day after day. One lawyer made out a quit-claim deed of himself and all his possessions to the Lord in regular legal form, and handed it to Finney. Bishop Whitehouse, of Illinois, was then a pastor in the city, and seventy of his congregation were converted. His own heart had been previously blessed by Finney's revival in Reading. Finney speaks of his doctrines and measures used in this revival as follows:

"The doctrines were those I always preached every where. The moral government of God was made prominent, and the necessity of an unqualified and universal acceptance of God's will as a rule of life; the acceptance, by faith, of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, and in all His official relations and work; and the sanctification of the soul through or by the truth; these and kindred doctrines were dwelt upon.

"The measures were simply preaching the gospel and abundant prayer, in private, in social circles, and in public prayer-meetings, much stress being always laid upon prayer as an essential means of promoting the revival. Sinners were not encouraged to expect the Holy Ghost to convert them while they were passive; and were never told to wait God's time, but were taught, unequivocally, that their first and immediate duty was to submit themselves to God, to renounce their own will, their own way, and themselves, and instantly to deliver up all that they were and all that they had to their rightful Owner, the Lord Jesus Christ, They were taught that the only obstacle in the way was their own stubborn will; that God was trying to gain their unqualified consent to give up their sins and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their righteousness and salvation. The point was frequently urged upon them to give their consent; and they were told that the only difficulty was to get their own honest and earnest consent to the terms on which Christ would save them, and the lowest terms upon which they possibly could be saved. I pursued such a course as was calculated to strip them of every excuse, and bring them face to face with the great question of present, unqualified, universal acceptance of the will of God in Christ Jesus. Faith in God, and God in Christ, was ever made prominent. The doctrine of the justice of endless punishment was fully insisted upon; and not only its justice, but the certainty that sinners will be endlessly punished, if they die in their sins, was strongly held forth. Sinners were taught that, without the Divine teaching and influence, it is certain, from their depraved state, that they never would be reconciled to God, and yet that their want of reconciliation was simply their own hardness of heart, or the stubbornness of their own wills, so that their dependence upon the Spirit of God is no excuse for their not being Christians at once.

"Sinners were never taught in those revivals that they needed to expect conversion in answer to their own prayers. They were told that if they regarded iniquity in their hearts the Lord would not hear them; and that, while they remained impenitent, they did regard iniquity in their hearts. I do not mean that they were not exhorted to pray. They were informed that God required them to pray in the spirit of repentance and faith; and that when they asked God to forgive them, they were to commit themselves unalterably to His will, They were taught expressly that mere impenitent and unbelieving prayer is an abomination to God; but that if they were truly disposed to offer acceptable prayer to God they could do it; for there was nothing but their own obstinacy in the way of their offering acceptable prayer at once, They were never left to think that they could do their duty in any respect, could perform any duty whatever, unless they gave their hearts to God. To repent, to believe, to submit as inward acts of the mind, were the first duties to be performed; and until these were performed, no outward act whatever was doing their duty; that for them to pray for a new heart while they did not give themselves up to God, was to tempt God; that to pray for forgiveness until they truly repented was to insult God, and to ask Him to do what He had no right to do; that to pray in unbelief, was to charge God with lying, instead of doing their duty; and that all their unbelief was nothing but a charging of God with lying. In short, pains were taken to shut the sinner up to accepting Christ, His whole will, atonement, official work and official relations, cordially, and with fixed purpose of heart, renouncing all sin, all excuse-making, all unbelief, all hardness of heart, and every wicked thing, in heart, and life, here, and now, and forever."

Would that all the ministers who pretend to do revival work would commit these words to memory. Probably no more thorough work was ever done in preaching to sinners than Finney did. If more preached like him, we should 'not have so much "wood, hay, stubble," and other rubbish built upon the foundation of Christ, which will all be consumed in the testing fires of God.

Of lawyers he wrote: "I have always been particularly interested in the salvation of lawyers, and of all men of the legal profession. They were more certainly controlled by arguments, by evidence, and by logical statements than any other class of men'. I have always found that, when the gospel was properly presented, they were the most accessible class of men; and I believe it is true that, in proportion to their number in any community, more have been converted than of any other class. A clear presentation of the law and of the gospel will carry the intelligence of judges and legal minds

Several of the lawyers that were at this time converted in Rochester gave up their profession and went into the ministry. Indeed, as a general thing, lawyers take a more intelligent view of the whole plan of salvation than any other class of men to whom I have ever preached, or with whom I have ever conversed.

"Very many physicians, too, have also been converted in the great revivals that I have witnessed. I think their studies incline them to skepticism, or to a form of materialism. Yet they are intelligent; and if the gospel is thoroughly set before them, stripped of the peculiar features which are embodied in hyper-Calvinism, they are as easily convinced and as readily converted as any other class of people.

"Universalism, Unitarianism, and indeed all forms of fundamental error, have given way and fallen out of sight in the presence of great revivals. I have learned, again and again, that a man only needs to be thoroughly convicted of sin by the Holy Ghost to give up, at once and forever, and gladly give up, Universalism and Unitarianism."

BOSTON, 1843-4

When Finney was in Boston in 1842, Mr. Miller was in the city, creating no little excitement by his lectures on the second advent of Christ. He held Bible classes daily, several of which Mr. Finney attended. He procured his books and read them. The last time Finney visited his class, he was inculcating the doctrine that Christ would. come personally and destroy His enemies in 1843. He gave what he called an exposition of the prophecy of Daniel on the subject. He said that the stone cut out of the mountain without hands was Christ.

Finney invited Mr. Miller to his room, and called his attention to the fact that the prophet affirmed expressly that the stone was not Christ, but the kingdom of God; and that the prophet there represented the Church, or the kingdom of God, as demolishing the image. This was so plain that Mr. Miller was obliged to acknowledge that that was indeed a fact, and that it was not Christ that was going to destroy those nations, but the kingdom of God. "I then asked him if he supposed that the kingdom of God would destroy those nations, in the sense that he taught that they would be destroyed, with the sword or with making war upon them? He said, No, he could not believe that. I then inquired: 'Is it not the overthrow of the governments that is intended, instead of the destruction of the people? and is not this to be done by the influence of the Church of God in enlightening their minds by the gospel? And if this is the meaning, where is the foundation of your teaching, that, at a certain time, Christ is coming in person to destroy all the peoples of the earth?' I said to him: 'Now, this is fundamental to your teaching. This is the great point to which you call attention in your classes; and here is a manifest error, the very words of the prophet teaching the direct opposite to what you teach.'

"But it was vain to reason with him and his followers at that time. Believing, as they most certainly did, that the advent of Christ was at hand, it was no wonder that they were too wild with excitement to be reasoned with to any purpose.

Finney was again called to Boston in 1843, and he makes an extended comment on the peculiar characteristics of Boston, which have already been noticed in the close of Chapter 9:

"The excitement of Millerism had blown over; but many forms of error prevailed among the people. Indeed, I have found that to be true of Boston of which Dr. Beecher assured me the first winter I labored there. He said to me: 'Mr. Finney, you can not labor here as you do anywhere else. You have got to pursue a different course, and begin at the foundation; for Unitarianism is a system of denials, and under its teaching the foundations of Christianity are fallen away. You can not take anything for granted; for the Unitarians and the Universalists have destroyed the foundations, and the people are all afloat. The masses have no settled opinions, and every "lo here" or "lo there" finds a hearing; and almost any conceivable form of error may get a footing.'

"I have since found this to be true to a greater extent than in any other field in which I have ever labored. The mass of the people in Boston are more unsettled in their religious convictions than in any other place that I have ever labored in, notwithstanding their intelligence; for they are surely a very intelligent people on every other subject but that of religion. It is extremely difficult to make religious truths lodge in their minds, because the influence of Unitarian teaching has been to lead them to call in question all the principal doctrines of the Bible. Their system is one of denials. Their theology is negative. They deny almost everything, and affirm almost nothing. In such a field error finds the ears of the people open, and the most irrational views on religious subjects come to be held by a great many people." (Pages 370-372.)

"This winter was spent mostly in preaching to professed Christians, and many of them were greatly blessed in their souls. I felt very confident that, unless the foundations could be re-laid in Some sense, and Christians in Boston took on a higher type of Christian living, they never could prevail against Unitarianism. All that could be accomplished by discussion had been accomplished. I felt that what Unitarians needed was to see Christians live out the pure gospel of Christ. They needed to hear them say, and prove what they said by their lives, that Jesus Christ was a Divine Savior, and able to save them from all sin. In other words, they needed the doctrine and experience of sanctification or holiness.

"The orthodox Churches there are too formal; they are in bondage to certain ways; they are afraid of measures, afraid to launch forth in all freedom, in the use of means to save souls. They have always seemed to me to be in bondage in their prayers, insomuch that what I call the spirit of prayer I have seldom witnessed in Boston. The ministers and deacons of the Churches, though good men, are afraid of what the Unitarians will say, if, in their measures to promote religion, they launch out in such a way as to wake the people up. Everything must be done in a certain way. The Holy Spirit is grieved by their yielding to such a bondage.

"I have labored in Boston in five powerful revivals of religion, and I must express it as my sincere conviction that the greatest difficulty in the way of overcoming all forms of error is the timidity of Christians and Churches. Knowing, as they do, that they are constantly exposed to the criticism of the Unitarians, they have become overcautious. Their faith has been depressed. - The doctrine of endless punishment, the necessity of entire sanctification, or the giving up of all sin, as a condition of salvation, are not held forth with that frequency and power that are indispensable to the salvation of that city." (Pages 384-385.)

"During the winter the Lord gave my own soul a Very thorough overhauling and a fresh baptism of His Spirit. My mind was greatly drawn out in prayer for a long time; as, indeed, it has always been when I have labored in Boston, But this winter in particular my mind was exercised on the question of personal holiness; and in respect to the state of the Church and their want of power with God; the weakness of the orthodox Churches in Boston, the weakness of their faith, and their want of power in the midst of such a community.

"I gave myself to a great deal of prayer. I rose at four o'clock in the morning, and immediately went to my study and engaged in prayer. I frequently prayed till the gong called to breakfast at eight o'clock. I had a great struggle to consecrate myself to God in a higher sense than I had ever before seen to be my duty, or conceived as possible. I had often before laid my whole family on the altar of God, and left them to be disposed of at His discretion. But at this time I had a great struggle about giving up my wife to the will of God. She was in very feeble health, and it was very evident that she could not live long. I had never before seen so clearly what was implied. in laying her and all that I possessed upon the altar of God; and for hours I struggled upon my knees to give her up unqualifiedly to the will of God. But I found myself unable to do it. I was so shocked and surprised at this that I perspired profusely with agony. I struggled and prayed until I was exhausted, and found myself entirely unable to give her altogether up to God's will in such a way as to make no objection to His disposing of her just as He pleased.

"This troubled me much. I wrote to my wife, telling her what an experience I had had, and the concern I felt at not being willing to commit her to the perfect will of God. The bitterness of death seemed, for a few moments, to possess me at the thought that my religion might be of the sensibility only.. But I was enabled, after struggling a few moments with this fiery dart of Satan, to fall back in a deeper sense than I had ever done before upon the infinitely blessed and perfect will of God, I then told the Lord that I had such confidence in Him that I felt perfectly willing to give myself, my wife, and my family, all to be disposed of according to His own wisdom. I then had a deeper view of what was implied in consecration to God than ever before. I spent a long time upon my knees in considering the matter all over, and giving up everything to the will of God: the interests of the Church, the progress of religion, the conversion of the world, and the salvation or damnation of my own soul, as the will of God might decide. Indeed, I recollect that I went so far as to say to the Lord with all my heart that He might do anything with me or mine to which His blessed will could consent; that I had such perfect confidence in His goodness and love as to believe that He could consent to do nothing to which I could object. I felt a kind of holy boldness in telling Him to do with me just as seemed to Him good; that He could not do anything that was not perfectly wise and good, and therefore I had the best of grounds for accepting whatever He could consent to in respect to me and mine. So deep and perfect a resting in the will of God I had never before known. This sprung a vein of joy in my mind that kept developing more and more, for weeks and months, and, indeed, I may say for years. For my mind was too full of joy to feel much exercised with anxiety on any subject. My prayer that had been so fervent and protracted during so long a period, seemed all to run out into, 'Thy will be done.' What I had been praying for, for myself, I had received in a way that I least expected. Holiness To The Lord seemed to be inscribed on all the exercises of my mind. I had such strong faith that God would accomplish all His perfect will, that I could not be careful about anything. The great anxieties about which my mind had been exercised were set aside, so that for a long time, when I went to God to commune with Him, I would fall on my knees and find it impossible to ask for anything with any earnestness, except that His will might be done in earth as it is done in heaven. My prayers were swallowed up in that; and I often found myself smiling, as it were, in the face of God, and saying that I did not want anything. I was very sure that He would accomplish all His wise and good pleasure; and with that my soul was entirely satisfied. At this time it seemed as if my soul was wedded to Christ in a sense in which I had never had any thought or conception of before.

"I began to preach to the people in Boston in accordance with this new and enlarged experience. My mind was too full of the subject to preach anything except a full and present salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. I spent nearly all the remaining part of the winter in instructing the people in regard to the fullness there is in Christ. A considerable number could understand me; but I found that I preached over the heads of a majority of the people." (Memoirs, pp. 374-379.)

To those of us who are acquainted with the literature of holiness, it is perfectly evident that this experience which Finney passed through in Boston was a sanctifying baptism with the Holy Ghost. That awful struggle; that dying to self and everything of earth, and sinking into the will of God; that dying of "the old man" for holiness, is a very familiar thing. We have witnessed these dying agonies of hundreds of people followed by the witness of the Spirit to heart cleansing.

But some one will ask, "What about his experience at conversion?" When relating it in the early part of the book, we remarked at the time that it was anomalous and unparalleled that one should receive such a signal baptism with the Holy Ghost when too ignorant to ask for it, and without in the least expecting it. In the course of years, and in some one of the many trials of his life, that fullness of the blessing may have leaked away so gradually that he was scarcely aware of it, until he waked up with horror, to find that his will was not wholly submissive to God. Then his Lord, as he says, gave him "an overhauling," and a blessed renewal of "the fullness of blessing." O that Finney's philosophy of sanctification had been such that he could have led others into an experience like his own!

The state of heart into which he entered seemed to be an advance on his previous Christian experience that was abiding. He wrote: "I have felt since then a religious freedom, a religious buoyancy and delight in God and in His Word, a steadiness of faith, a Christian liberty and overflowing love that I had only experienced occasionally before. My bondage at that time seemed entirely broken; and since then I have had the freedom of a child with a loving parent. It seems to me that I can find God within me in such a sense that I can rest upon Him, and be quiet, lay my heart in His hand, and nestle down in His perfect will, and have no carefulness or anxiety."

DEATH OF HIS WIFE

"A few years after this season of refreshing that beloved wife, of whom I have spoken, died. This was to me a great affliction. However, I did not feel any murmuring or the least resistance to the will of God. But it was to me a great sorrow. The night after she died the thought of my bereavement flashed over my mind with such power! My brain seemed to reel, as if my mind would swing from its pivot. I rose instantly from my bed, exclaiming, 'I shall be deranged if I can not rest in God!'

"The Lord soon calmed my mind for that night; but still, at times, seasons of sorrow would come over me. One day I was upon my knees talking with God about it, when all at once He seemed to say to me: 'Did you love your wife for your own sake or for her sake? Did you love her, or yourself? If you loved her for her own sake, why do you sorrow that she is with Me? Should not her happiness with Me make' you rejoice instead of mourn, if you loved her for her own sake? Did you love her for My sake? If you loved her for My sake, surely you would not grieve that she is with Me. Why do you think of your loss and lay so much stress upon that, instead of thinking of her gain? Can you be sorrowful when she is so joyful and happy? If you loved her for her own sake, would you not rejoice in her joy, and be happy in her happiness?'

"I can never describe the feelings that came over me. It produced an instantaneous change in the whole state of my mind, From that moment sorrow on account of my loss was gone forever. My wife had died in a heavenly frame of mind. Her rest in God was so perfect that it seemed to me that, in leaving this world, she only entered into a fuller apprehension of the love and faithfulness of God, so as to confirm and perfect forever her trust in God and her union with His will.

"It seemed as if I knew what her state of mind was there, what profound, unbroken rest in the perfect will of God. I could see that that was heaven; and I experienced it in my own soul. It seemed as if I could enter into the very state of mind in which she was in heaven; and if there is any such thing as communing with an absent spirit, or with one who is in heaven, I seemed to commune with her." (Pages 381, 383.)