082. REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES G. FINNEY

REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES G. FINNEY In 1792, a hundred years ago, and three hundred years after Columbus discovered America, a great man was born. An obscure village in Connecticut was his birthplace; he had no collegiate or theological training; he was converted when twenty-nine; and yet for forty years he taught in a theological seminary, and for fifteen years was president of a college. His chief education was derived from the study of law, yet he became a mighty preacher of the gospel. It is believed that a hundred thousand persons united with Christian churches as the result of his evangelistic labors, and twenty thousand persons came under his instruction or influence as an educator. In this year 1892, which is the centenary of his birth, it seems fitting that we should commemorate the character and work of Charles G. Finney, and draw some lessons from his example. For personal reasons, and as a representative of Rochester, I have taken interest in my theme. The city of my birth and residence owes its moral and religious standing more to him than to any other single man. In 1831 the town numbered only ten thousand, and the community was markedly irreligious and skeptical. Mr. Finney’s first visit was the occasion of a revival of religion in which the place seemed shaken to its foundations; twelve hundred persons united with the churches of the Rochester Presbytery; all the leading lawyers, physicians, and business men became Christians; forty of the converts entered the ministry; the whole character of the town was changed. In the year 1842, at the invitation of the lawyers of the city, Mr. Finney made his second visit to Rochester. The men who had begun a Christian life under his preaching eleven years before had now become pillars in Church and State. They gathered around him like a bodyguard. A thousand persons were converted. Again, in 1856, he made a third visit, and a thousand more joined the churches. It was in this last revival that I myself met with the greatest change I have known since my natural birth,—just as my father, before I was born, was converted under Mr. Finney’s preaching in 1831. Circumstances gave me access to him; I came to know the man; I loved him the more, because I saw him misunderstood and heard him misrepresented. I only partially repay a debt of gratitude, when I give my personal reminiscences. To me there is a halo of saintship about his head. That does not prevent me, I think, from perceiving in him certain defects of character and of doctrine, nor, on the other hand, does it prevent me from seeing that this "boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun," was nobly "human at the red-ripe of the heart."

Charles G. Finney was a great man. I have said this already. I must not only repeat it, but I must justify it. He was great in the possession of a natural acuteness and power of consecutive reasoning. So eminent a judge as Sir William Hamilton spoke admiringly of his logical ability, and declared that one who accepted the premises on the first page of his " Systematic Theology" would be forced to go with him to his conclusions at the end of the book. To his mind preaching was persuasion. With Paul he could say: "Therefore knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." His ideas of method in preaching were based upon his experience as a lawyer. He stood before an audience, not as a tyrannical schoolmaster before cowering youngsters who were to be brow-beaten and threatened into obedience, not as an artful demagogue before the rabble whose passions were to be roused until the worse appeared the better reason, and action was determined on at the cost of sense. Instead of all this, the audience was his jury, and he was an advocate before it, appealing to intellect and judgment, and asking for decision in his favor only because God and truth were on his side. So his notion of a sermon was that of a chain of logic, link after link so forged and bound together that escape from his conclusion was impossible. The elaborateness of his sermon-plans would be almost amusing, if they were not so instinct with life and power. His sermon on "Christians the Light of the World," has five main divisions; the subdivisions are respectively eight, six, six, seven, and five, in number; and he concludes with seventeen separate remarks. He had no hesitation in enumerating all these divisions, subdivisions, and remarks, as he went on. The effect was something overwhelming at times. When he preached on the "Searching of Conscience," he specified ninety-five different ways in which men’s consciences were seared; and in a second sermon he mentioned eighty-four others. Long before he got to the end of his categories, the hearer began to realize that his own wickedness was great and his iniquities were infinite.