The Spirit and Style of Charles Finney
This year marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the great revival of 1830–1 in Rochester, New York. It is also the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the third of the religious awakenings in that city. All of them were connected with the name of Charles Gradison Finney.
Charles Finney was born in 1792 in Connecticut. As a child, he moved with his parents to the then frontier of Oneida County, New York. He returned in his teen years to New England for schooling that included some Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. His main training, however, was in law.
In 1821, at the age of 29, Finney was converted. He immediately became the chief agent in a local revival in Adams, New York, that saw almost all the young people in the community converted. Finney began the study of theology, and was licensed as a frontier evangelist by the Presbyterian church in 1824. He expected to be limited to working among the rude and uneducated frontiersmen. Before he was middle-aged, however, he was the best-known revivalist in America.
Both by inclination and natural temperament, as well as by training, Finney became a preacher of powerful logic. He had considerable natural dramatic ability and a voice renowned for its range and rich quality. Over six feet tall, athletic in person and with a commanding presence, he was an imposing figure behind the pulpit. He was a lover of music, and himself a singer and musician of some ability.
His three revivals in Rochester best illustrate the qualities of the man. The campaign of 1830–1 was so successful that Finney’s methods have been followed by revivalists and evangelists ever since.
He came to Rochester (pop. 10,000) in September 1830 at the invitation of the First Presbyterian Church. Almost at once a powerful revival broke out, one of the first fruits of which was a reconciliation of the pastor and an estranged elder in the church. The first convert was the wife of a prominent judge—the first of many converts from among the leading classes of the city. Finney soon conducted meetings in other churches and also held meetings for prayer and for counseling inquirers. He first used the “anxious seat” at Rochester as a means of bringing convicted sinners to an immediate, public commitment to Christ as Savior.
In spite of some objections to his preaching on the necessity of a new birth, Finney saw over 1,200 converts unite with the churches of Rochester. Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer and journalist on the Monroe Telegram, heard most of Finney’s addresses. He described the evangelist in October 1830:
“A tall, grave-looking man, dressed in an unclerical suit of gray, ascended the pulpit. Light hair covered his forehead, his eyes were of sparkling blue, and his pose and movements dignified. It did not sound like preaching, but like a lawyer arguing a case before a court and jury.… The discourse was a chain of logic, brightened by felicity of illustration and enforced by urgent appeals from a voice of great compass and melody. Mr. Finney was then in the fullness of his powers.”
The Rochester Observer of October 15, 1830, reported on a “very general and powerful work of grace” and added that “The inquiry, ‘What shall we do to be saved’ daily continues to be heard from awakened sinners. Such a revival, perhaps, was never experienced, where less disorder was witnessed.… The most perfect harmony prevails between the … Presbyterian churches and other denominations.”
All classes of Rochester society were deeply affected by the revival, especially the leading elements. A clergyman in the city reported that nearly all the judges, lawyers, physicians, merchants, bankers, and skilled tradesmen were converted in the revival, which lasted until March 1831.
The revival quickly spread beyond Presbyterian circles to affect other denominations and also to bring spiritual renewal to the towns and villages around Rochester. Stories of the revival were printed in the daily papers and the religious journals. The revival spread to communities like Sacket’s Harbor, Atwater, Troy, Utica, Poughkeepsie, and many other centers in New York State.
The moderator of the Monroe Baptist Association reported in his “Circular Letter” of 1831 that: “The last has been a year of unparalleled religious triumph, in which the great Captain of our salvation has subdued mighty hosts of enemies to the obedience of friends.… In reviewing our history for the past year, we see abundant occasion for devout and humble thanksgiving to God, not only for the extensive conversion of sinners, but also for leading His people to higher and holier effort and obedience.”
From among the more than 1,200 converts in this revival came 40 men who later became ministers and missionaries. The revival spread to Hamilton College and beyond New York State to Yale, and as far south as Virginia. Altogether, some 50,000 converts were reported by churches in hundreds of towns and villages in the East within five months of the start of the Rochester revival.
Finney left Rochester in March 1831, weary and somewhat weakened by his extensive labors. During his sojourn he had preached three times each Sunday and three or four times during the week. He generally preached an hour, but sometimes a packed audience listened without movement for two-and-a-half hours. Altogether, he preached 98 sermons in six months. An able body of assistants helped him in counseling and praying with inquirers. Finney was quick to see the value of having such assistants in his meetings, and this practice has been imitated since by most modern evangelists.
Finney also had a remarkable helper named Abel Clary, a man mighty in prayer. He never attended the 1830–1 public meetings, but agonized alone in prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the salvation of souls. It is not surprising that Charles Finney’s messages were so powerful in bringing sinners under conviction of sin.
Finney’s method was first to deal with those who professed to be Christians, pointing out their duties and responsibilities, which were often badly neglected. After he dealt with the worldliness and lukewarmness of professing believers, he turned his attention to the unrepentant. By now the church had been brought to pray fervently for the conversion of sinners and to work for their salvation.
The second Rochester revival of 1842 began with an invitation to Finney that came from Dr. Shaw of the Brick Church and Judge Gardiner. Even the conservative Dr. Whitehouse, rector of Saint Luke’s, encouraged his people to attend Finney’s meetings. As a result, over 70 of them were converted. Finney began his campaign, as requested, with a special series of lectures for lawyers. For nine nights he lectured on the theme, “Do We Know Anything?” Each sermon was a two-hour-long, carefully reasoned, logical defense of Christianity. One of the most notable converts in this revival was Judge Gardiner, whose invitation to Finney came while he was himself unconverted. During one meeting, the judge went up to the pulpit and asked Finney publicly to pray for his salvation. The effect was so great that the entire crowd of lawyers in the church rose en masse and filled the open space at the front of the church, wherever they could find a place to kneel.
Finney spent only two months in Rochester in 1842. He had become a professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio and could spend only part of each year in revivals. But this second awakening in Rochester had an equally powerful impact on the city and surrounding community. Once again the legal and business communities were much influenced. About a thousand converts were counted by the churches of Rochester.
In his Memoirs, written some years later, Finney specified what doctrines and means he had employed in all of his Rochester meetings. He wrote that he preached the moral government of God, the need for acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior, and the sanctification of the soul through truth. Sinners were taught that their first duty was to submit to God, and that true faith was not mere intellectual assent but a voluntary, intelligent trust in God as revealed in Jesus.
The methods he employed, wrote Finney, were simply these: preaching the gospel, abundant private and public prayer, and meetings of inquiry to instruct inquirers.
The third Finney revival in Rochester spanned the winter months of 1855–6. It began with a series of sermons to crowded churches. Once more, at the request of the Rochester Bench and Bar, he gave a series of lectures of particular interest to them, this time on the theme, “The Moral Government of God.” One Dr. Anderson, present at all the lectures, highly praised his “magnificent logic” and “his candor and honesty in meeting frankly the questions involved.”
Besides these activities, Finney preached two or three times each weekday for about eight months. In spite of advancing years, his magnetic voice and powerful preaching overcame all opposition. Contemporaries report that his hearers were first of all captivated by the beauty of his diction and the magic of his voice. Then they were convinced by his unanswerable arguments.
According to eyewitness accounts, nearly one thousand converts were accepted into the Rochester churches. A close watch of the converts was kept, and with very few exceptions, it was determined that all of them could be found in their churches many years later. J. H. McIlvaine, one of the eye-witnesses of the 1855–6 awakening, called it “the greatest revival I ever saw.” Augustus Strong, who was later to become president of Rochester Theological Seminary, claimed that “Rochester owes more to revivals of religion than it owes to its providential location or the energy of its people.”
The Rochester revivals provide evangelicals with some valuable lessons on the kinds of men and methods necessary for great religious awakening.
Finney’s method was first of all to awaken professing believers to their obligations, and second, to preach to sinners. The preaching was simple, sincere, scriptural, and spiritual. He avoided dogmatism, substituted argument for authority, assumed nothing, led the mind on step-by-step, and then appealed to the will for an immediate decision. He depended primarily upon preaching, and a great deal on public and private prayer for success.
The response of the churches was equally important to the outcome of the revivals. Professing believers confessed their shortcomings, engaged in reconciliation and restitution where necessary, and set themselves to serious effort and to prayer for the conversion of their friends, relatives, and neighbors. The after services, for prayer and for counseling of awakened sinners, were characterized by calmness and by the absence of undue emotionalism, although the effect of the sermons made guilty sinners sometimes cry out aloud for mercy.
Not only did numerous conversions result, but the revivals served to enhance the spiritual lives of professing Christians and to revitalize the corporate life of the churches. The churches became forces to be reckoned with in the social life of their communities, and awakened believers gave powerful impetus to the charitable and benevolent enterprises of the age. The various campaigns against the liquor trade, slavery, and governmental corruption were aided by renewed churches. The seminaries and colleges had increased numbers of new candidates for the ministry. Missionary societies received both funds and missionaries in abundance.
