THE ESTIMATE OF FINNEY MADE BY OTHERS -- FINNEY AS A THEOLOGIAN

I have already given the opinion of Dr. Edward Beecher and Dr. Park, of Andover, of Finney's greatness as a preacher. Rev. Charles P. Bush, D. D., of New York City, describing his use of the law and the gospel in his preaching, said: "The Church being thus shaken as by an earthquake, and Christians aroused to pray fervently for God's blessing, Mr. Finney was prepared to preach to sinners. He began with the law, showing what its requirements are; what its penalty, and how just it is; how absolutely necessary to the order and stability of the universe; how even the law itself, as really as the gospel, demonstrates the goodness of the Divine Being; and, therefore, how fearful a thing it must be to sin against such a Lawgiver and against all the interests of the universe. "There was something fearful in those sermons also. Indeed, it almost makes one shudder, even after this lapse of years, to recall some of them, that especially from the text, 'The wages of sin is death.' The preacher's imagination was as vivid as his logic was inexorable. After laying down self-evident principles of human Nature and Divine government, then drawing out Scripture truth touching the same, making all plain and irresistible by argument and illustration, how he rang the changes on that word 'wages,' as he described the condition of the lost soul! 'You will get your wages; just what you have earned, your due; nothing more, nothing less; and as the smoke of your torment, like a thick cloud, ascends for ever and ever, you will see written upon its curling folds, in great staring letters of light, this awful word, 'wages, wages, wages!'

"As the preacher uttered this sentence, he stood at his full height, tall and majestic -- stood as if transfixed, gazing and pointing toward the emblazoned cloud as it seemed to roll up before him; his clear, shrill voice rising to its highest pitch, and penetrating every nook and corner of the vast assembly. People held their breath. Every heart stood still, It was almost enough to raise the dead.

"And yet that same mighty man, when speaking of the love of Christ or the peril of the soul in its sins, was as great in tenderness and pity as before in majesty and truth -- moved himself to tears and entreaties enough to break a heart of stone. Many seem to think of him only as the stern, uncompromising preacher of righteousness, He was that, and more also -- a Paul in doctrine, but touching and tender as John himself in his delineations of Divine love, But he did not preach love as a mere instinct, or a weak, mawkish, and undiscriminating sentiment, His God was not all pity, but also a God of majesty and of law and of justice. His love all the more glorious because intelligent, and because it saves from wrath deserved." (Reminiscences, pp. 12, 13.)

PECULIARITIES

"Nobody knows better than those who loved and admired this good man most that he had his peculiarities. What great man has not? But he was never accused of levity or insincerity, He was a plain, blunt man, that spoke right on, and always meant just what he said. His soul abhorred deceit and hypocrisy. Perhaps it is not too much to say that he saw the truth in greater clearness and more fully appreciated its value and importance than most men could. He was, in fact, a giant in intellect, in the grandeur of his thoughts and purposes, and in the sublime force of his character, and this was enough to justify some of his peculiarities. It is said that he told one of the elders of the Church at Adams, before he was converted, that Christians generally did not half believe what they professed. 'If ever I become a Christian,' he said, 'I shall go into it with all my might.' And he did." (Page 19.)

Rev. R. L. Stanton, D. D., Cincinnati: "When I heard Finney preach that winter, I stood in fear of him. I have heard many of the great preachers of the day, and I regard him as the greatest preacher I ever heard. I should say that Mr. Finney was a severe preacher. He held up the law as I never heard it held up before or since. He gave such delineations of sin as would make men literally tremble in their seats. On the other hand, I have never heard such exhibitions of the love of Christ. I recollect hearing him preach on 'The wages of sin is death.' I timed him, and he preached two hours. I never heard such delineations of the terrible wrath of God. I think Mr. Finney introduced a new style of preaching. The first three-fourths of his sermon was in a colloquial style; and in the latter part he would make such appeals as I never listened to anywhere." (Reminiscences, pp. 26-27.)

Hon. William E. Dodge, of New York City: "he was the most remarkable preacher that i ever listened to. He would hold his audiences an hour and a half or two hours, and no one seemed to think the time hung heavy."

Professor John Morgan, D. D.: "I think those who were most intimately acquainted with Mr. Finney have come to the conclusion that he was a man who combined, in a remarkable degree, the intuitive and the logical powers. He had a wonderful intuitive power, and when he had arrived at his bold premises by intuition, whether taken from reason and the works of God, or from the Word of God, he would reason from them with wonderful power. I came, therefore, to the conclusion that, although Mr. Finney was not a learned man, he had been such a student, such a thinker, had so profoundly reflected, that he was really one of the deepest theologians that I had any knowledge of; and I have been compelled to compare him with president Edwards, as at least his equal; and President Edwards is confessedly one of the first theologians that our country has ever produced. In fifty years, if it be not now, I think that Mr. Finney's equality with him will be admitted.

"But I think that all of us felt that his spiritual power was that in which he most excelled. The influence which he exerted on souls was sometimes Very strong. I remember times when he thought religion was declining in Oberlin; for his standard was so high that he wanted to have things at a very high pitch in order to satisfy him at all. I remember how he used to come and talk the matter over with us, and I used to quake as his mighty eye would fix itself upon me. I believe that he had much the same kind of influence over whole congregations; but I felt it especially when he addressed me personally. . . . There was in him, in prayer, the most remarkable power that I have ever seen in any human being." (Reminiscences, pp. 57, 58.)

Professor Barbour, of Yale. I remember hearing Rev. Dr. Barbour in a long, critical lecture, declare that President Finney was the first great thinker who had ever adequately and fully maintained, in all its bearings, the doctrine of the freedom of the will. He named him among the very foremost of the metaphysical thinkers of the world.

Professor George F. Wright, speaking of Finney as a theologian, makes a striking comparison between him and Augustine, and describes his system of thought as follows:

"It is expected of me to speak of President Finney in the role of an Augustine elaborating a theological system, and through it reaching onward with a direct grasp to the generations of the future. With, of course, many qualities, that are in contrast, these characters [Augustine and Finney] certainly have numerous striking points of resemblance. Their early neglect of religion, the pronounced nature of their conversion, and the overwhelming flood of emotion that accompanied it, the philosophical cast of their minds, and, what is more in point, the mental furniture with which they began and carried on their expositions of the Christian system of thought, give a striking likeness to these remarkable men. Augustine knew no Hebrew, and very little Greek. Yet, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge, no single uninspired name has ever exercised such power over the Christian Church, and no one mind ever made such an impression on human thought."

President Finney frankly acknowledged that, while he had studied Hebrew and Greek to some extent, he nevertheless did not consider himself competent to venture on any independent criticism of the Scriptures in their original languages. Our English version was to him what the Vulgate was to Augustine.

President Finney's system of theology may be described as a growth rather than a creation. He did not set himself to work in early life to write a symmetric treatise of Divinity. It has not the pointless mediocrity of such a production. But his system is the outgrowth of a profound religious and extensive practical experience, coupled with an unusual aptitude for philosophical speculation and logical discrimination. He has not interpreted Scripture after the delusive and belittling method of the mere linguist, who is so buried in the details of the grammar and the lexicon that he can never see the broad current of general doctrine that underlies and comprehends it all.

In his view, the Bible is a religious revelation to the common people, which does not, to any great degree, lose its perspicuity in a translation. Its main revelation is so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein, It is a practical revelation of a highway of holiness, which is not a substitute for common sense, but a supplement to it. Regarding points in dispute the characteristics of Finney's system are briefly these:

1. The human will is self-determining in its action.

2. Obligation is limited by ability.

3. All virtuous choice terminates on the good of beings, and in the ultimate analysis, on the good. of being in general.

4. The will is never divided in its action, but with whatever momentum it has at each instant, it is either wholly virtuous or wholly sinful.

5. With regard to total depravity, he accepts it as a Biblical doctrine, that all the acts of men since the fall, and previous to regeneration, are sinful.

6. Regeneration and conversion are treated as synonymous terms, descriptive of a coetaneous act, both of the Holy Spirit and of the human will, He is content to accept the facts, and let alone the mystery; insisting, however, that the human reason is always so far respected that the truth is, in all cases, the instrument through which conversion is secured by the Holy Spirit.

7. The condition into which men are brought by regeneration is either that. of continued holiness, increasing in volume, or of states alternating from entire holiness to entire sinfulness; the former state finally predominating, and ending, according to the ordinary Calvinistic doctrine of perseverance, in everlasting salvation. The final perseverance of the saints is accepted as a revealed truth, which the reason can not contradict, and whose mysteries are left with the Lord.

8. Likewise the doctrine of election is maintained as being, in the wisdom of God, our only assurance that the salvation of any will be secured. There is a plan of salvation whose means and ends were chosen from eternity, and which is now unfolding before us.

9. In this plan of salvation Christ is the central figure; a Being who is both God and man, and whose humiliation and sufferings are a governmental substitute for the punishment of those who are sanctified through faith in His name. The atonement satisfies the demands of general justice, and its provisions are freely offered to all men. (Reminiscences, pp. 68-71.)

Professor Wright, in this careful statement of Finney's theology, scarcely mentions sanctification. But Finney gave more space relatively to the discussion of sanctification than any other theologian, more than one-eighth of his entire theology. He held that it was the privilege of God's people to be sanctified; that they were under obligation to be holy, and God expected it of them in this life. The discussion of this, however, and in what respect Finney failed to teach sanctification, we will reserve for the next and concluding chapter.

We will make one more quotation from Professor Wright: "It is an old saying that Calvinists preach Arminianism, and that Arminians pray Calvinism, and so, in one way or the other, the whole truth of both is preserved by congregations of either stamp. [This is not true.]

"President Finney has, we believe, succeeded better than any other author with whose writings we are acquainted, in elaborating a system of theology which combines and harmonizes the truth of these contending parties. He has done this in part in a negative way, by not philosophizing overmuch. The charge of doing that pertains rather to the so-called Old School theologians, who burden the system with their inflexible theories of 'an imputed guilt which is not guilt;' with an idea of obligation which is dissevered from ability. It is they who enter into the philosophy of regeneration, and attempt to prove a universal negative regarding it, asserting that it is an act of the Spirit which is not moral and persuasive. They undertake to prove that, in regeneration, the Spirit produces a change 'in those immanent dispositions, principles, tastes, or habits, which underlie all conscious exercises.'

"President Finney's example is invaluable in this, that he leaves no excuses for sin; that he presses home upon all present responsibility; that he exalts the atonement of Christ, and magnifies the holy spirit."

President Fairchild, I believe, was a graduate in the first graduating class of Oberlin, He was one of the earliest of the Oberlin students, and spent his life in the college either as student, tutor, professor, or the successor of Finney in the presidency of the college. He knew the great man as well as one soul can know another when the two are very unlike each other. He thus explains Finney's independent attitude in theology:

"Mr. Finney was taken from the world, and not from the Church. He was brought up with very slight associations with religious institutions or churchly influences. With a nature strongly impressible to religious truth, and drawn to its contemplation as by a fascination, he had still stood apart from the Church in the attitude of a critic upon her doctrines and her life. He had no such association with religious people as led him to look to them for counsel, or to seek their guidance in the determination of his work. His natural independence of character led, doubtless, in the same direction. The training he had received in his pursuit of the law co-operated to the same result, He was not hampered by any associations from instruction in catechism or any forms of sound words with which the Church indoctrinates her children, and which in general are doubtless wholesome in their action,

"He came to the study of the Bible and the doctrines of the gospel with the same freedom of judgment and of rational instinct with which he had apprehended and embraced the principles of law, and looked for a similar self-evident truthfulness. Thus he turned away at once from the Old School dogmas of sin in the nature, of obligation beyond ability, of the literal transfer of the sinner's guilt and punishment to Christ, and of regeneration by a change of nature. These, so far as he knew, were at the time the prevalent doctrines of the Church, He found them, as he believed, in the Westminister Confession; and in discarding them, he naturally felt that he was departing from the traditions of the Church, and taking a position in a measure antagonistic to that held by the ministry in general. The outspoken boldness of his preaching in these directions led, on the other hand, to apprehensions and suspicions, on the part of many, as to his soundness in the faith; and thus all the influences conspired to confirm him in this somewhat independent line of labor. The strong conviction, beginning with his conversion, and abiding with him to the end, that he must look to Divine rather than to human guidance, naturally disposed him to mark out a path for himself; and thus, probably unconsciously at first, he entered upon the career of a reformer in the Church, The mission to which he felt himself appointed was that of saving men; and he rejected the old forms of doctrine because they were a hindrance and not a help in his work. he needed doctrines which he could preach, and which would move the consciences of men. In submitting himself to God, he had consciously yielded to the truth, and he came to depend upon the truth as the power of God unto salvation. Thus he was led to readjust and restate for his own uses as a preacher of salvation the great doctrines of grace. He was naturally a keen analyst in the range of philosophic thought, and few men have had an intenser relish for such studies on the ground of their own intrinsic merit; but it was not as a philosopher that he pushed his inquiries, but as a servant of Christ to whom a dispensation of the gospel had been committed, on his knees, before his open bible, sustained by the prayers and sympathy of one good elder, he wrought out his theological system -- not that he might become a reformer in theology, but that he might qualify himself as 'a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.'

"Other men in the Churches were at the same time working for similar modifications of the old Calvinism -- men like Taylor and Beecher in New England, and Beeman and Aiken and others in New York, But with these men Finney had no communication. He had no opportunity to confer with 'flesh and blood,' but received his gospel as the Word of God communicated to his mind by the illumination of the Spirit. Thus he went forth to his work as a preacher, with the full conviction that he had a message from God to man; and this conviction was strong upon him during the fifty years of his public life and labor." (Reminiscences, pp. 78-80.)

In closing this chapter, it is proper to attempt to locate Finney as a theologian. Many speak of him as if he were a Calvinist. Indeed, the phrase "New School Calvinist" is a vague, indefinite term, under whose ample folds a multitude of theologians, who are unwilling to break away wholly from their ecclesiastical relations, are hiding from the horrors of Calvinism. Finney was no Calvinist. We might arrive at this decision from several arguments:

1. He utterly rejected the Westminster Confession, declared he was ashamed of it, and of the Scripture arguments made in its support. All his life long he held it up to scorn by his withering sarcasm, and hewed it to pieces by his merciless logic, But the Westminster Confession is the embodiment and quintessence of Calvinism; whoever rejects the former is no disciple of the latter.

2. To his dying day true-blue Calvinists feared and fought Finney. Dr. Charles Hodge turned all his batteries against him relentlessly; and Hodge was the incarnation of Calvinism, and gloried in all its horrors and blasphemies.

3. The Five Points of Calvinism are: (1) Unconditional election; (2) Complete redemption for the elect only, or limited atonement; (3) Fallen man is incapable of faith and repentance, or total moral inability; (4) God's grace is irresistibly efficacious for the salvation of the elect, and no others can be saved; (5) A soul once converted or regenerated is never lost, or final perseverance of the saints.

Now, the first four of these, and all the awful corollaries and inferences drawn from them, Finney utterly repudiated a thousand times over in every kind of expression and argument. He once said, in a sermon, of the doctrine of moral inability: "It is echoed and reechoed over every Christian land, and handed down age after age, never to be forgotten. With unblushing face it is proclaimed that men can not do what God requires of them. It is only moderate language to call this assertion from the Confession of Faith a libel. if there is a lie either in hell or out of hell, this is a lie, or god is an infinite tyrant. If reason be allowed to speak at all, it is impossible for her to say less or otherwise."

In another place he names one of the well-known doctrines of Calvinism and declares, "No slander could be more groundless or more foul." At another time he cried out against one of the shameful statements that make God responsible for the awful wickedness of this world, "It is as vile a slander against god as was ever vomited out of hell!"

At another time, a man who had been made an infidel by Calvinism quoted to Finney, "Is it not true that no mere man since the fall has been able wholly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed?" Finney answered:

"Ah, my friend, that is Catechism, not Bible. We must be careful not to impute to the Bible all that human catechisms have said. The Bible only requires you to consecrate to God what strength and powers you actually have, and is by no means responsible for the affirmation that God requires of man more than he can do. No, verily, the Bible nowhere imputes to God a requisition so unreasonable and cruel. No wonder the human mind should rebel against such a view of God's law. If any human law were to require impossibilities, there could be no end to the denunciations that must fall upon it. No human mind could possibly approve of such a law; nor can it be supposed that God can reasonably act on principles which would disgrace and ruin any human government." Now I submit that it is an abuse of language to call a man a Calvinist who thus indignantly rejected all the doctrines that were the very heart and core and marrow of Calvinism.

4. I call attention to the fact that nowhere, either in England or America, did Finney preach with more hearty co-operation with his brethren, nor more in harmony with them, than in Bolton, England, where John Wesley had done his most successful work, and where Wesleyanism was in the ascendency.

Joseph Cook once said in Boston that the Methodists had a theology that they could preach without making an apology for it, That is exactly what Finney learned on his knees -- a theology that honored God and justified his ways to men. He learned it not from books, but from the Book and from the Holy Spirit's illumination, He was as original a thinker as Arminius, and we do not hesitate to say that whatever there was of practical value in his theology, and a help to his soulwinning, was essentially Arminian. So far from being a Calvinist, he was just such an one as John Calvin himself would have burned at the stake, with far more relish than he burned Servetus.