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Oberlin College, where Finney taught for many years and served for a time as president, was in the 19th century a unique institution. Hated in the South because it symbolized abolition, allowing blacks to learn alongside whites, it was adored by abolitionists, and was a favorite project of the wealthy Tappans, who poured their financial support into it.

When Oberlin College opened its doors, it was not the only school in America to accept black students. However, inter-racial education was bitterly opposed by a great many in America, and not only from the South. Finney remarked about how even in Ohio where Oberlin was located, public support was low, and criticism was strong. Oberlin was considered a radical institution and was a symbol against which much hatred was directed. It was a busy station on the Underground Railroad, giving rest and protection to slaves being smuggled to freedom, and its friends, such as the Tappan brothers, and Theodore Weld, were renowned, or infamous (depending on where one stood) for their aggressive work for abolition. Oberlin provided a haven for the “oppressed race” and its dream was to allow an opportunity for black people to benefit from the blessings of education.

That Oberlin allowed women to attend the same classes with men, however, was another great shock, and even many who sympathized with the racial stand shuddered at the prospect of the two sexes mingling in a common classroom. And worse, mixed races and mixed sexes suggested the ghastly possibility of “amalgamation,” the mixed marriage of the races.

Charles Finney and the other members at Oberlin believed that Christianity had a lot to do with questions of rights for black people and for females. Finney saw slaveholding as a sin—the denial to another human being of their freedom was to him irreconcilable with Christian religion, especially in the day and age in which he lived. He went so far, while pastor at the Chatham Street Chapel in New York, as to deny communion to slaveowners. He was a friend to the cause of abolition for his whole career, though later the Tappans criticized him for not taking a strong enough stand.

They were too caught up to realize that Finney knew he was an evangelist first, no matter how important certain social causes were. He believed a converted society was the basis for social transformation.

At Oberlin there was a women’s department, and women also took classes with men. Women were not encouraged into higher education in those days, and especially not into mixed classrooms. But at Oberlin things were different. Finney had been criticized early on in his career for allowing women to participate in religious meetings with men. Now he was playing a part in the higher education of women. He knew that women were the main educators of children, and believed in their receiving excellent educations. He was not a promoter of women in church leadership, though Oberlin did educate women who went on to such work. The importance of the family seems to have been a major concern of Finneys, and the improvement of women, as well as men, would serve to strengthen the family and society. Oberlin was to be God’s college to prepare those who would be instruments for converting and transforming society.

A fitting tribute and symbol for Oberlin, Finney, and others who dared to take a stand, is Mary Jane Patterson, who in 1862 became the first American black woman to receive a bachelor’s degree in this country, probably in the world. A child of slaves, she went on to a career of teaching in Philadelphia and Washington. She taught until her death in 1894. Though Oberlin actually never had a large proportion of black students (average around 4%–5%), its contribution to the cause of fighting for the dignity of all people as made in the image of God, female, male, no matter what race, should be admired by all of us.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Finney’s Perfectionist teaching not only shook the establishment in his day, but it added fuel to the growing fires of the Holiness Movement.

Reformed historians in America generally believe that Calvinism Stabilizes biblical orthodoxy while Arminianism in all its forms, especially the Wesleyan one, tends toward modernism. This may be partly true for the twentieth century. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the career of Charles G. Finney demonstrates that Puritan theology was the one on the move. Many scholars, including my own research associate Thomas Umbel, are now discovering that New England religious thought was rapidly pulling away from Calvinism during the early national period, when Methodism was spreading through that section.

Others have concluded that revivalists like George Whitefield, who helped set in motion the Boston phase of the awakening that preceded the American Revolution, were “practical Arminians,” even though they were or became theoretical Calvinists. While enrolled in an academy at Litchfield, Connecticut, the youthful Finney’s attention to the preaching of Peter Starr, Lyman Beecher’s predecessor in the pastorate there, did not persuade him to believe in either predestination or imputed righteousness. The Presbyterian committee that examined Finney and licensed him to preach in 1824 was so lenient toward his rejection of major Calvinist points that many of them seem likely to have been Congregationalist migrants from New England. Certainly they shared the growing accommodation of Yankee Puritans to universal redemption, free will, and the conviction that all persons were equal before temporal laws because divine grace had made them equal heirs to eternal hopes.

Entire Sanctification

Twentieth century historians of Finney, however, still play down his doctrine of Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, as he called it. I think this is partly because secular scholars have paid chief attention to his early preaching, few going past his Lectures on Revival, and fewer still considering the Lectures to Professing Christians that Finney published after two years in the pastorate of Broadway Tabernacle in New York City.

That second volume of his lectures marked a turning point in Finney’s attitude toward the Methodist belief that all Christians should seek a “second blessing,” called heart purity or perfect love. He spelled out his new view of the sanctification believers needed in lectures seventeen through twenty-four. Most students have not understood this; they have not read his lectures printed fortnightly in the first two years’ issues of the The Oberlin Evangelist, in December 1839, after Finney had become Professor of Theology at Oberlin College and Seminary. Others have not understood it because they were personally inclined toward Calvinism and were, therefore, fascinated by the Pelagianism—the notion of salvation by good works—that seemed to lie just beneath the surface of Finney’s earliest sermons, especially the one entitled Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts.

Beginning in 1836, therefore, and with a conviction and clarity that increased until his death 40 years later, Finney’s central preoccupation was Christ’s promise to sanctify fully those who through regenerating grace had begun to love and obey him. To see this, let’s look at Finney’s major writings from 1836 on.

Seeking the Blessing

In 1837, Finney began teaching at Oberlin College for half of each year and pastoring at Broadway Tabernacle in New York City for the other half. Oberlin president Asa Mahan, a graduate of Andover Seminary in Massachusetts and a famous abolitionist evangelist, and Lewis Tappan, a wealthy importer and a member of Finney’s New York congregation, had recruited him. Mahan and Finney agreed upon the need of Christians for an experience of grace that would empower them to walk before God in righteousness. Later, they both recounted many times how, during a revival season in 1839, a student rose to ask whether a Christian might “expect to attain sanctification in the present life.” President Mahan instantly answered “yes,” and in the next few days sought and found what he believed was this blessing.

Finney had set forth his own “yes” to that question during the preceding three years. Late that fall, he began the famous lectures that the preachers of that time read avidly, but that later scholars have ignored. However, he did not receive what he seems to have thought was the experience of inward holiness until the winter of 1842–1843, which he spent in Boston, supplying the pulpit for the socially and spiritually radical congregation gathered at the Marlborough Street Chapel.

The preceding spring, Finney had published, in book form, a summary of the second year of his lectures, those of 1840–1841, under the title, Views of Sanctification. If an unidentified lay-woman’s report was accurate, the volume provoked a tantalizing response from the famous Unitarian minister of Boston, William Ellery Channing. [Finney relates in his Memoirs, pp. 356–357, that this woman claimed to have spoken with Channing who told her of his personal interest in Finney’s book and his desire to meet Finney. Unfortunately, the two men never met.]

Finney’s first year’s lectures, however, were not reported until I edited them in 1980 and titled them Promise of the Spirit. They show that Finney’s intellectual and spiritual breakthrough revolved around what he, after St. Paul, called the Blessing of Abraham. That blessing was to “come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,” when they received by faith “the promise of the Spirit.” Six climactic lectures on the Promises defined sanctifying faith as “that act of the mind that lays hold upon” these biblical promises and “yields up the whole being” to the “influence end control” of the Holy Spirit.

Bridge to Holiness

Meanwhile, Oberlin president Asa Mahan was becoming a leader among non-Methodists who had made John Wesley’s doctrine of heart purity—or perfect love—their own. Mahan’s volume, Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection, appeared at Oberlin in 1839, at the high-water mark of the institution’s dedication to such social concerns as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, public education for children of both free blacks and whites, temperance, and the American frontiersman’s obsession with land speculation. The book reappeared in Boston a few months later, issued by the Methodist firm that published Timothy Merrits new monthly The Guide to Christian Perfection, later named The Guide to Christian Holiness.

In January 1841 George Peck, editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review, printed a long essay that pronounced Mahan’s volume virtually Wesleyan, and praised especially its emphasis on grace received by faith. Thereafter, during four decades spent among Congregationalists in America and Britain, Mahan made his doctrine and experience his main concern. In 1873 he called and conducted the famous Oxford Convention for the Promotion of Christian Holiness, from which the Keswick Movement emerged. This annual summer conference, the majority of whose sponsors were Anglicans, spawned a number of satellite conferences, some of which met in cities throughout the year. No less than four monthly magazines, all independently published, were for the next 25 years nerve centers of the movement, helping to spread its influence throughout Britain and to Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, South Africa, Australia, and after 1890, to America.

Systematic Theology

Finney visited England for the first time in 1849, while he and Mahan, despite minor disagreements, were still close associates. In 1851 George Redford, a scholarly Congregationalist pastor in Worcester, England, undertook the preparation of an English edition of Finney’s two-volume Lectures on Systematic Theology, which had recently been published at Oberlin. At Redford’s prompting, Finney made extensive changes in the work’s language (to remove “objectionable phraseology”) and style, and rewrote several sections. In a new preface, however, the evangelist insisted that the numerous critics of the original edition had not convinced him to alter his views “upon any point of doctrine.” Far from being a retreat from the perfectionism Finney had adopted between 1836 and 1839, then, his Systematic Theology was an effort to sustain and extend it.

The work began with 22 trenchant lectures arguing that God’s moral government consists in persuading human beings through his love, manifested in Christ, to make moral choices in real freedom. Regenerate persons must return to obedience to God’s moral law, Finney wrote, inspired by “the indwelling spirit of Christ received by faith to reign in the heart,” that is, in the will. In “every dispensation of the divine government,” Finney said, such a return was “the unalterable condition of salvation.” He called imputed holiness an absurdity that the impenitent seize upon to avoid submitting to “the righteousness of God wrought in them.” Grace cannot save the soul except “upon condition of entire sanctification.” Finney then quoted a litany of scriptural promises from both Old and New Testaments—a list almost identical to the one Wesley had drawn together in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

Further discourses on the atonement, human depravity, moral ability, and six on the experience of regeneration, preceded Finney’s climactic 17 lectures on the experience of entire sanctification. An early one of these expounded the scriptural promises of it, developing only slightly Finney’s earlier articles in The Oberlin Evangelist of 1840, cited above. Another repeated, but did not refer to, John Fletcher’s argument in his book Portrait of St. Paul, rejecting interpretations of the apostle’s words that would suggest he did not profess or enjoy the experience of holiness of heart and life.

The disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark, recorded in Acts 15:36–41, Finney said, did not remotely imply sin or sinful anger in the behavior of the two men. Romans 7:7–25, he continued, could not refer to Paul’s state in grace at the time he wrote the epistle; the apostle’s object in that chapter was manifestly to describe not himself, but one who was “living in sin and every day condemned by the law,” whereas in both the preceding and the following chapters, Finney argued, Paul depicted a believer over whom sin had no dominion and who in fact had been brought by grace into the experience of entire sanctification.

Three years later in America, in what must have been a triumphant assertion of the evangelistic character of Christian theology, Finney published a volume he called Guide to the Savior. It consisted of chapters taken from the section on entire sanctification in the English edition of his Lectures on Systematic Theology. Holiness preachers sold it for many years at Methodist and interdenominational camp meetings.

Equality, Morality, and Social Hope

Here then in Finney’s life and thought is a demonstration of how and why the Holiness Movement, which before the Civil War observers equated with earnest Methodism, grew so rapidly among American Protestants—the Methodist Episcopal Church becoming the largest denomination in the country by 1850. The essentially evangelistic assertion that all persons could be saved, and the biblical assurance that a life of personal righteousness flowed from that salvation, were not simply dogmas Finney’s generation increasingly accepted. They also underlay the political principles of equality, morality, and social hope that were central to American democracy.

Historians of American religion have been indebted to Timothy L. Smith since his important book, Revivalism and Reform in 19th Century America (Abington). Dr. Smith is professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and Director of Johns Hopkins’ Program in American Religious History. His most recent book is Whitefield & Wesley on the New Birth (Zondervan, 1986).

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

The career of Charles Finney was nothing short of remarkable. From international fame as a revivalist, to professor at and president of a unique educational institution, to advocate and defender of a controversial doctrine of Christian perfection, Finney has left a major imprint on American religion. He challenged common ideas about conversion, evangelism, and personal holiness, and helped reshape American Christian thought. No matter what your opinion of the controversial Charles Finney, this magnetic Christian leader was genuinely remarkable.

Charles Finney was born in Warren, Connecticut, in 1792 into an old New England family. In 1794 his family moved to New York State, where, in the central and northern sections, he spent his childhood. Eventually, his family settled in Henderson, near Lake Ontario, where Charles spent most of his adolescent years.

As a young man he decided to study law, and he began that study in the office of lawyer Benjamin Wright in Adams, New York. Charles was also an amateur musician who played the cello, and apparently led the choir at the local Presbyterian church, which was pastored by the Rev. George W. Gale.

According to the account in his Memoirs, around this time he decided that he must settle the question of his soul’s salvation. Having gone alone into the woods, he knelt by a log and wrestled with God in prayer, and was instantaneously converted. The event was so dramatic that Finney later recalled that he experienced what seemed like waves of liquid love throughout his body; it so affected him that he explained it in intimate detail when he was at an advanced age. The drama of the event may have made him impatient in later years with those who could not testify to a similar experience.

The next morning at the law office a client came in to inquire about the status of his case. No doubt to the client’s consternation, Finney replied that the man would have to find someone else to help him, for he was no longer going to pursue a law career so that he might become a preacher of the gospel. The St. Lawrence Presbytery took him under their care and he was licensed to preach in December 1823. The Female Missionary Society of Western New York commissioned him as a missionary to Jefferson County in March of 1824. Thus Finney’s revivalistic career was launched.

Early Work and the Burned-over District

Finney’s early meetings were held in the frontier communities of upper New York state, and he received, at best, a mixed reception. It was plain that his preaching was different than that of the local parish ministers, and his theology seemed a reaction against the prevailing Calvinism of the time. He married Lydia Andrews of Whitestown, New York, in October 1824, and appeared to be on a course for a normal and uneventful parish ministry of some sort in that area.

However, Finney’s career took a turn in 1825, when while on a journey to Whitestown to visit Lydia’s parents, he and his wife stayed over at the home of his former pastor, George Gale, in the town of Western, NY. Gale asked Finney to preach and when the young evangelist complied, the results were immediate and dramatic. Crowds came to hear Finney and many asked him for help in obtaining assurance of conversion. The results were the same when he afterward preached in the towns of Utica and Rome, NY. (The whole area where Finney was then preaching has been referred to by historians as the “Burned-over district”; a reference to the fact that the area had experienced so much religious enthusiasm—from revivals and new religions, to cults and spiritualism—that the district had been scorched.) The revival meetings were described in detail by the Oneida Presbytery in a pamphlet referred to as the Narrative of Revival. These meetings in the Burned-over District moved Finney up a notch and made him the subject of some notice in East Coast newspapers.

Finney began to gather friends and supporters who saw in him a figure of more than local importance. Among them were George W. Gale, his former pastor, Theodore D. Weld, a Utica revival convert and eventual national figure in the antislavery movement, Joshua Leavitt, a New York City newspaper editor, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, prominent lay merchants in New York City, and Nathan S. S. Beman, a pastor in Troy, NY.

Controversy and the New Measures

Finney began to receive opposition from many people as well. The Old School Presbyterians, led by the New England revivalist Asahel Nettleton, resented Finney’s modifications to Calvinist theology. Traditional Calvinists taught that a person would only come to believe the gospel if God had elected them to salvation. Hence, a person might hear the gospel in church, go home to meditate on the preacher’s message, and pray and wait for assurance from on high. Finney stated that unbelief was a “will not,” instead of a “cannot,” and could be remedied if a person willed to become a Christian. The revivalistic Congregationalists, led by Lyman Beecher, feared that Finney was opening the door to fanaticism within the ranks by allowing too much expression of human emotion. On the other side, the Unitarians and Universalists opposed Finney on the general grounds that he was using scare tactics in his messages in order to gain converts. They were particularly offended by his references to Hell as the destination of those who refused to believe the gospel.

There was also a growing controversy over the New Measures being used by Finney in conducting his evangelistic meetings. Particularly offensive were his allowing women to pray in mixed public meetings; the use of an anxious bench at the front of the church—special seats for singling out persons who felt a special urgency about their salvation; the adoption of protracted meetings—daily meetings, as opposed to regular weekly meetings only; informal, instead of reverential, language, especially in prayer; and the hasty admission of new converts to church membership. A meeting was held at New Lebanon, NY, beginning on 18 July 1827, to examine the use of these so-called New Measures. The clergy present was mixed in their opposition and support of Finney, but the New Measures passed the test and Finney became nationally known as a result of the publicity surrounding these meetings.

The zenith of Finney’s evangelistic career was reached at Rochester, NY, where he held meetings during 1830–1831. The whole city was involved as shopkeepers closed down their businesses and urged people to attend Finney’s meetings. The frontier crudeness once criticized was now gone and witnesses described Finney’s approach as that of a lawyer making his case before a jury. People from all walks of life attended the meetings and the entire region was affected by Finney’s presence. He still was convinced that persons could will to be saved. A person visiting Finney told him that he had no feeling regarding the condition of his soul. At this Finney picked up a fire poker and threatened to strike the man. The defensive reaction from the man caused Finney to remark that he was demonstrating feeling and should have feeling about his salvation also.

Not long after the Rochester campaign, Finney accepted the pastorate of the Chatham Street Chapel in New York City. Whether his wife was weary of caring for a family on the itinerant trail and influenced his decision can only be guessed, but they settled in at their new home. After a bout with illness and a trip abroad to recover his health, Finney gave a series of lectures that were transcribed and published as Lectures on Revivals of Religion. This book made Finney more famous and added to the controversy surrounding him, for he stressed at the beginning of the book that a revival was not a miracle, but the right use of proper means. Professor Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, a famous Old School Presbyterian theologian, condemned the book; soon thereafter Finney left that denomination. He was now an acknowledged leader of the New School Presbyterians (progressive Presbyterians, many of whom had abandoned traditional Calvinistic teachings) and an important leader in the free church movement. Free churches were congregations that rejected the concept of pew rent in favor of free seating for anyone who wanted to enter the church. Friends of Finney built the Broadway Tabernacle in 1835 for him to pastor, and the emphasis there was on wide-open doors as an invitation for all to enter.

Oberlin and Social Reform

Finney’s life took another turn when he left New York City in 1835 to become a professor at Oberlin College in Ohio. (He was going to divide his time between Oberlin and the Broadway Tabernacle, but before long devoted himself to Oberlin.) This offer was made to him as a result of a group of students at Lane Seminary in Cincinatti, Ohio, who were mostly his converts from the Burned-over District revivals. These students insisted that slave-owning was a sin; they were opposed by Lane Seminary trustees, many of whom owned slaves themselves. The students left Lane and traveled to Oberlin on the condition that Finney become their professor. Arthur and Lewis Tappan—wealthy abolition leaders—agreed to underwrite the costs, so Finney and his family moved to Oberlin. There he taught a class in pastoral theology, went East each year after classes were over to conduct revival meetings, and began to write for the Oberlin Evangelist. The more his writings appeared, the more he irritated members of the Old School who sensed that he was distorting Calvinism in order to give a free and open invitation for all to be converted in his revival meetings.

Finney succeeded in involving Oberlin in the leading social reforms of the Jacksonian era. One historian said that he unleashed a mighty impulse to social reform by insisting that new converts make their lives count for the Kingdom of God. The result was an optimistic, postmillenial theological thrust and the revitalization of a “benevolent empire” of Protestant organizations determined to make the world a better place by hastening the coming of the Kingdom. The reform movements involved were: the temperance movement, Sabbath keeping, manual labor schools, and abolitionism. Oberlin even became a station on the Underground Railroad (a network of locations used to help slaves escape to Canada), and the scene of a dramatic slave rescue. Indeed, Finney was successful in linking evangelical circles to antislavery crusades. On the other hand, he cautioned Theodore Weld and others not to allow reform efforts to replace revivalism. Charles Finney was, first and foremost, a revivalist.

Perfectionism and British Revivals

Finney began to ponder the problem raised by the number of his revival converts who became backsliders. The result was the formulation of a doctrine on Christian perfectionism by himself and Oberlin College president Asa Mahan. [see Timothy Smith’s article on Finney’s perfectionism in this issue] Perfectionist ideas earned for Finney many more criticisms and placed a stigma on Oberlin College.

Later revivals Finney conducted in Rochester and Boston—scenes of earlier triumphs—were not as successful, perhaps because his listeners did not understand his new perfectionist emphasis. He was the pastor of the First Congregational Church at Oberlin, and now did most of his preaching there, instead of on the itinerant trail. His first wife, Lydia, died at Oberlin on December 18, 1847, leaving five children from ages three to 19; Finney was profoundly affected by the loss. She had not only been the mother of his children, but also a devoted helper in his revival meetings as well. Soon after Lydia’s death, Finney married Elizabeth Ford Atkins, a widow from Rochester. The degree to which Finney allowed Lydia and, later, Elizabeth to be involved in his campaigns demonstrates the impact of Finney on the changing roles of women in Jacksonian America.

The Finneys journeyed to England twice during the decade of the 1850s. Charles preached throughout the British Isles and was generally successful with the same methods he had used in America. Elizabeth began holding meetings for women, starting a trend that would become an accepted practice in some Christian circles. Finney’s impact in England shows his effectiveness as a religious bridge across the Atlantic. His last trip to England, on the eve of the American Civil War, seems to have worn him out physically; he was never well after that time.

Finney’s later years were spent at Oberlin College teaching theology, serving for 15 years as its president, and writing rather extensively in opposition to Freemasonry. His wife Elizabeth died in 1864, when he was 71; a year later he married Rebecca Rayl, assistant principal of Oberlin’s ladies department. He was encouraged by friends to write down a narrative of the revivals he conducted; he began this work in 1868. Published after his death as his Memoirs, they are still popular today. Charles Finney died at Oberlin on the dawn of Monday 16 August 1875, two weeks before his 83rd birthday.

Finney’s Legacy

Charles Finney made a significant impression upon the religious life of 19th century America, and his influence is still evident today. Called the “father of modern revivalism” by some historians, he paved the way for later revivalists like Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham. He constructed a theology that harmonized with the ideals of the Jacksonian era; if President Andrew Jackson was the political folk-hero of early l9th-century America, Charles Grandison Finney was its religious folk-hero. Just as the American frontier was being widened and common folk were getting the vote, Finney gave the public an opportunity to cast their votes on the matter of salvation.

This democratization of Calvinism worked and no doubt caused some jealousy among his rivals in the field of revivalism. In fact, his New Measures opened up the field so that lay-witnessing became the order of the day, including contingents of women who made house visits and held special prayer meetings. The measures worked and Finney was in demand because of the successful results obtained in his meetings. He also personalized religion so that individuals attending his meetings were forced to make a choice. Indeed, the choice of a destiny in Heaven or in Hell was entirely up to the individual.

Finney did not rebuke his hearers for the sin of Adam (what theologians call imputed sin), but rather challenged them to do something about their own sins. He left no room for excuses and interpreted a “cannot” as a “will not.” Rejecting Calvinism’s total depravity, he taught that the only bondage a person was under was a voluntary bondage to their own selfishness and love of the world. Hence, he argued that the revivalist could demand immediate repentance and submission to God. Indeed, he insisted that ministers should expect results before the potential converts left the meetings.

His impression on Oberlin was also significant; in fact, from 1835 to his death in 1875, Oberlin and Finney were synonymous. Alumni later recalled “Father Finney” as he prayed during the class, preached from the pulpit, walked the paths of the campus, or tended his raspberry patch at home. His mark was made on the reform movements during the Jacksonian years, especially in the areas of women’s rights and the antislavery movement. His ideas about Christian perfectionism and sanctification caused the Oberlin community some distress, but the idea of holiness has endured and flourished in parts of the Christian community. His trips to England were successful, even when judged by the remarks of his critics. [see Garth Rosell’s article on Trans-Atlantic revivalism in this issue]

Finney’s writings were numerous and influential. The Lectures on Revivals have been translated into several languages and are still being published and sold today. They are used as texts in colleges and seminary classes, and remain the starting point for discussions on modern revivalism. His writings on Christian perfectionism have endured as well, and are in favor today among many charismatic Christians. Although systematic theologians generally do not accept the premises outlined in his large works on that subject, these works too have stood the test of time. Finney’s writings persist, in spite of the critics, and seem to be increasing in popularity.

Some critics have referred to a “Finney cult” in America. Finney still has his serious opponents, and is blamed for, among other things, some of the more controversial techniques of modern mass evangelism. We might imagine Finney replying to his critics that he did what he had to do to get people out of what he saw as a valley of Calvinist apathy and into the path of active soul-winning. History leaves to our opinions whether he was right or wrong. Nevertheless, it seems fitting that even today, more than a century after his long and remarkable career, Charles Grandison Finney still arouses our feelings, and presses us with a decision.

James E. Johnson is professor of history and Chairperson of the Department of History at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Johnson is also Editor of Fides et Historia, the historical journal published three times a year at Bethel College by the Conference on Faith and History.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

America has not been the same since the likes of Charles Grandison Finney. He is the giant of American revivalism between Jonathan Edwards and D. L. Moody. He was a powerful preacher and a commanding presence, even his enemies conceded as much. And what no doubt especially miffed his critics—and he had quite a few, and in high places—was the great popularity of the man. He has been called one of the most important figures in American history, and it would be impossible to understand the American religious experience without trying to understand him.

Finney has been likened to an Andrew Jackson of the pulpit. Comparisons between Jackson and Finney are understandable. James Johnson, in his biographical article Father of American Revivalism, tells us that if Jackson was America’s political folk hero, Finney was her religious one. And to many evangelicals today, Finney is still a hero (“imagine … 500,000 conversions!”). We have always been told (with some exaggeration) how Jackson was “for the common man.” Likewise, Finney did seem to grab the Gospel from the dry, stuffy practitioners of his day and take it to the common folk so they could scrape their boots, come in, and cast their own votes for heaven or hell. Yet Finney, interestingly, emphasized his impact on the professionals of his day, and liked to mention how he had converted scores of doctors, businessmen, and lawyers.

He was not a frontier ranter, but a child of the intellectual New England tradition, as it had moved west into upstate New York. He was described by his contemporaries as “frank, open, giving his opinion without solicitation, somewhat dictatorial.” “… the great actor of the American pulpit ,” with “glittering eyes, shaggy brows, beak-like nose, and expressive mouth.” One person is said to have remarked that for Finney’s stare to fall on you while he preached was to be lifted up and turned slowly over the fire. When Finney said hell, which he often did, the crowds it seems could smell smoke. He wanted them to. For, much to the anger of many in the “old establishment,” he called upon people to face the future options and decide for themselves their eternal bliss or torment.

It was inevitable that this law student-turned evangelist would set not only revival fires, but fires of controversy as well. The arguments flared up in his day and they still smolder. Many were deeply offended that he would reduce conversion to a mere human choice and thereby dismiss God’s sovereign grace in predestination. Arminians and Calvinists still square off on the matter. (Whether you shrink from such labels or not, they have important historical value. If this is a mystery to you, our glossary in this issue might help you see the important distinctions.) Finney represents great tensions in American religion after Jonathan Edwards. Issues of the nature of sin, human choice and predestination, holiness, and social change, all swirl around this: magnetic character. If, as has been said, American theological thought is a series of footnotes to Jonathan Edwards, American evangelistic practice could be called a series of footnotes to Finney.

This makes Finney a fascinating character, also a complex one. Just where he falls is no easy question. And as you will see from a few of our articles, historians have worked to understand the source of his ideas. Timothy Smith’s article The Blessing of Abraham, deals with Finney’s famous and controversial position on Christian perfection. Dr. Smith is one of this country’s finest historians and he has done extensive work on the 18th and 19th centuries. The influence of Wesleyan ideas on Finney and Finney’s influence on Holiness are of particular interest in his thought. Allen Guelzo is a historian with expertise in the area of Edward’s thought and its subsequent influence in American theology. In his article The Making of a Revivalist, he describes Finney’s connections within the Edwards tradition. He explains a continuity between Edwards and Finney that may make some Edwards enthusiasts pause a bit.

Garth Rosell’s article Sailing for the Kingdom of God will help you see how Finney took his revivals and ideas beyond America and had a large influence in the British Isles. Rosell and Johnson did doctoral dissertations on Finney and are known for their activity and expertise in the area.

It is hard to capture a character like Finney in a few pages, for his influence and importance touch many areas. For example, critics of modern revival methods consider him the great granddaddy of many modern pressure tactics. The manipulative methods some revival preachers have used to get folks to “decide now” in a fit of emotional instability are often said to have grown from the methods Finney used to confront his hearers with the ultimate choice. Though it is not accurate to credit him with inventing these methods, it is fair to ask if he should be held responsible for emphasizing debatable practices that are common in modern evangelicalism. He did deliberately scorn old ideas by his practice of calling for decisions on the spot, but it was not his style to whip crowds up into panic before popping the big question. Those who heard him preach reported he spoke calmly, persuasively—the lawyer logically arguing the case. Some followers were not so careful; one minister said, Finney had “imitators, who, as usual in such cases, [found] it easier to exaggerate his defects than equal his excellencies.”

Finney’s role in social change, especially in the areas of the antislavery movement and in women’s rights deserve special notice. We can only regret having limited space to devote to the subject. Any discussions of the role of evangelicals in opposing slavery and in fighting for women’s rights must give important credit to Finney and Oberlin College, where he taught. We must all admit, whether we agree with Finney’s ideas or not: He deserves credit for his influential stand on the dignity of all human beings. He was amazingly balanced amidst, on the one hand, radicals like William Lloyd Garrison, who were willing to blatantly twist Christian religion to their ends, and on the other hand, Christians who, tragically, used the Bible to defend slavery and to subordinate women. It’s hard for us to imagine: In Finney’s day most women were not allowed to even pray aloud in meetings with men present.

Rev. Lyman Beecher, a famous contemporary of Finney’s, said this when comparing Finney and Asahel Nettleton, the man whom Finney upstaged as America’s favorite revivalist: “The latter set snares for sinners, the former rode them down in a calvary charge. The one, being crafty, took them with guile; the other, being violent, took them by force.” Mainstream Jacksonian America was more a place for stampedes and fist fights than for subtle twists of cunning. When President Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson died, it was said he still carried in his leathery hide eight bullets from duels (apparently they had been able to remove the others!). Finney was a tough customer too, but of a different sort. A man of spiritual fiber who dared grasp the moment, he may seem to many a maverick, brash, and even careless, in doctrine and in deeds. Maybe at times he was. But the winds of change were blowing hard, and he dared to roll up his sleeves and, regardless of the scoffing of many in ivory towers, enter the fight down on main street for the souls of men and women.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Charles Finney

1792: Born: Warren, CT, Aug. 29, 1792

1808–1812: Schoolteacher in Henderson, New York

1812–1814: Works on his uncle’s farm in Warren, Connecticut

1814–1815: Schoolteacher in New Jersey

1818–1821: Works in the law office of B. Wright in Adams, NY

1821: Converted to Christ

1824: Ordained

1824: Marries Lydia Root

1824–1825: Beginning of revivals in small New York towns

1826–1827: Revivals in NY “Burned-over District”; New Measures arouse controversy

1827: April: New Lebanon Conference

1828: Helen Finney born

1830–1831: Great Rochester revival, national recognition, high point as a revivalist

1830: Charles Finney Jr. born

1832: Frederic Finney born

1832–1836 Pastor, Chatham Street Chapel, NYC

1834: Julia Finney born

1836–37: Becomes pastor of Broadway Tabernacle, and professor of theology at Oberlin College

1837: Resigns Broadway Tabernacle pastorate

1840–1848: Preaching tours: Boston, New York City, etc; perfectionist message, growing criticism of Oberlin

1843: Delia Finney born

1843–44 Winter: Finds second blessing in Boston

1846–47: Publishes vols. 2 and 3 of Systematic Theology

1847: Lydia Finney dies

1848: Marries Elizabeth Atkinson

1849–1851:The Finneys travel to England for revivals

1851: Elected president of Oberlin College

1851–1857: Tours Boston, NY City, Hartford, Rochester

1859–60: Second trip of three to ENGLAND; work in SCOTLAND

1860–75: Teaching and preaching at Oberlin

1863: Elizabeth Finney dies

1865: Marries Rebecca Allen Rayl

1866: Resigns as Oberlin president; continues to teach theology

16 August 1875: Dies at Oberlin at 82 years

The United States

1787: Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

1788: Constitution ratified

1789: First Federal Congress

1790: Benjamin Franklin dies

1794: US Navy established

1794: Thomas Paine writes The Age of Reason

1796: Tennessee becomes a state

1799: George Washington dies

1800: US capitol moves from Philadelphia to Washington DC

1801-1805: Triopolitan War: War with Tripoli

1803:Louisiana Purchase by Jefferson ends French rule in N America

1804: Alexander Hamilton killed by Aaron Burr in a duel

1805:US and British relations broken over trade with West Indies

1807: US Embargo Act against England and France

1808: US prohibition against importation of slaves from Africa

1811: Wm. Henry Harrison defeats Chief Tec*msah at Tippecanoe, IN

1812: Louisiana statehood

1812-1814: War of 1812 with England

1814: British burn Washington DC

1815: War of 1812 ends with Treaty of Ghent

1815: Battle of New Orleans won by Andrew Jackson: “Old Hickory”

1816: American Bible Society founded

1816: Indiana statehood

1817: Mississippi statehood

1818: Illinois statehood

1817–1818: Seminole Wars

1819: First steamship crossing of the Atlantic

1819: Alabama statehood

1820: Missouri Compromise:

1820: Maine statehood—free state

1821: Missouri statehood—slave state

1822: Boston gets gas lights

1823: The Monroe Doctrine ends colonial settlement in US

1825: Erie Canal opens

1828: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad begun

1828: Noah Webster’s Dictionary

1830: Joseph Smith founds Mormon Church

1831: Virginia slave revolt—55 whites massacred

1832: New England Antislavery Society founded

1833–1837: Financial panic

1834: McCormick Reaper

1835: Colt revolver

1836 Samuel Morse’s telegraph

1836: Battle of the Alamo

1836: Arkansas statehood

1837: Michigan statehood

1838: Underground Railroad starts

1845: Texas and Florida statehood

1846–1848: Mexican-American War

1846: Iowa statehood

1848: California gold rush

1848: Wisconsin statehood

1850: The “Great Compromise” over issue of slavery in new states

1850: California statehood

1851–1863: US Capitol built

1851: Melville’s Moby Dick

1852: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1853: New York-Chicago rail link

1854: Gadsden Purchase: S. New Mexico and Arizona

1854: “War for bleeding Kansas” over state slavery rights

1856: John Brown massacres pro-slavery supporters in Kansas

1858: Minnesota statehood

1858: The Lincoln-Douglas debates

1858: Nationwide prayer meetingrevivals

1859: Oregon statehood

1861: Kansas statehood

1861-1865: The Civil War

1863: W. Virginia statehood

1863: Emancipation Proclamation

1864: Nevada statehood

1865: Lincoln assassinated

1866: Transatlantic telegraph

1867: Nebraska statehood

American Presidency

1789–1796: George Washington

1796–1800: John Adams

1800–1809: (2 terms) Thomas Jefferson

1809–1817: (2 terms) James Madison

1817–1825: (2 terms) James Monroe

1825–1829: John Quincy Adams

1829–1837: (2terms) Andrew Jackson

1837–1841: Martin Van Buren

1841: William Henry Harrison Harrison dies in office

1841–1845: John Tyler

1845–1849: James K. Polk

1849-1853: Zachary Taylor

1851–1853: Millard Fillmore

1853–1857: Franklin Pierce

1857–1861: James Buchanan

1861–1865: Abraham Lincoln

1865–1869: Andrew Johnson

1869-1877: (2 terms) US Grant

World Events

1794: Slavery ended in French colonies

1796: Spain declares war on Britian

1796: English smallpox vaccination

1797: Admiral Nelson defeats Spanish fleet

1798: French capture Rome

1798: Nelson defeats French fleet

1799: Discovery of Rosetta stone

1800: Volta invents electric battery

1800: Napoleon conquers Italy

1802: Peace of Amiens between England and France

1804: Napoleon crowned emperor

1805: Battle of Trafalgar

1807: English abolish slave trade

1809: Composer Franz J. Haydn dies

1810: Napoleon’s zenith of power

1812: French invade Russia

1814: First Anglican bishop in India

1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

1815: Brazilian independence

1816: Argentinian independence

1821: Napoleon dies

1821: Champollion deciphers hieroglyphics using the Rosetta stone

1824: Bolivar becomes emperor, Peru

1825: First English passenger railroad

1825: Nicholas I–Russian czar

1827: Ludwig Beethoven dies

1829: Slavery abolished in Mexico

1830: Polish uprising against Russia

1830: Revolution in Paris

1831: Belgian independence

1831: Darwin sails on expedition

1831: Faraday demonstrates electromagnetism

1833: Slavery abolished in Britain

1837–1901: Queen Victoria reigns

1841: Hypnosis discovered

1841–1842: The Opium War between England and China

1844: Wood-pulp paper invented

1848: Revolutions in France, Germany, Italy

1848: Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto

1851: Victoria, Australia, proclaimed a separate colony

1851: Cuba declares independence

1853–1856: Missionary William Livingston crosses Africa

1856: Anglo-Chinese War begins

1857: English Navy destroys Chinese fleet

1858: Ottawa becomes Canadian capitol

1860: Lenoir’s internal-combustion engine

1861: Dickens’ Great Expectations

1862: Bismarck becomes Prussian prime minister

1863: French capture Mexico City

1867: Russia sells Alaska to US

1869: Opening of Suez Canal

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Soon after its publication in America in 1835, Finney’s Lectures on Revivals had sold around 12,000 copies. A London publisher printed 80,000 copies and it was translated into French and Welsh. Right after its publication in Wales, a great revival occurred there. Finney viewed his Lectures as his attack on the views of revival held by traditional Calvinists, and as his declaration of what he believed was the proper meaning of revival. For Finney, conversion is not miraculous—a mysterious work of the Holy Spirit—but is merely a proper use of the power to believe that men and women have by nature been given by God . Belief is merely a rational choice. For many, Finney’s making salvation completely dependent upon human choice seemed to suggest that man’s will was not entirely corrupted by the Fall; because of this many labeled Finney a “Pelagian” (after the ancient theologian, Pelagius, who taught that the will was not ruined by the Fall). However, the book was extremely popular, and has had a great influence on subsequent ideas and practices concerning evangelism, especially in its appeal to methods, and by its insistence on the necessity of personal evangelism—lay witnessing—by all Christians. For Finney, revival is as much a work of awakening backslidden Christians as one of saving souls.

I. A Revival of Religion is not a Miracle.

1. A miracle has been generally defined to be, a Divine interference, setting aside or suspending the laws of nature. It [revival] is not a miracle, in this sense. All the laws of matter and mind remain in force. They are neither suspended nor set aside in a revival.

2. It is not a miracle according to another definition of the term miracle—something above the powers of nature. There is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature. It consists entirely in the right exercise of the powers of nature. It is just that, and nothing else. When mankind become religious, they are not enabled to put forth exertions which they were before unable to put forth. They only exert the powers they had before in a different way, and use them for the glory of God.

3. It is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means. There may be a miracle among its antecedent causes, or they may not. The apostles employed miracles, simply as a means by which they arrested attention to their message, and established its Divine authority. But the miracle was not the revival. The miracle was one thing; the revival that followed it was quite another thing. The revivals in the apostle’s days were connected with miracles, but they were not miracles.

I said that a revival is the right use of the appropriate means. The means which God has enjoined for the production of a revival, doubtless have a natural tendency to produce a revival. Otherwise God would not have enjoined them. But means will not produce a revival, we all know, without the blessing of God. No more will grain, when it is sowed, produce a crop without the blessing of God. It is impossible for us to say that there is not as direct an influence or agency from God, to produce a crop of grain, as there is to produce a revival. What are the laws of nature, according to which, it is supposed, that grain yields a crop? They are nothing but the constituted manner of the operations of God. In the Bible, the word of God is compared to grain, and preaching is compared to sowing seed, and the results to the springing up and growth of the crop. And the result is just as philosophical in the one case, as in the other, and is naturally connected with the cause.

I wish this idea to be impressed on all your minds, for there has long been an idea prevalent that promoting religion has something very peculiar in it, not to be judged of by the ordinary rules of cause and effect; in short, that there is no connection of the means with the result, and no tendency in the means to produce the effect. No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the church, and nothing more absurd.

Suppose a man were to go and preach this doctrine among farmers, about their sowing grain. Let him tell them that God is a sovereign, and will give them a crop only when it pleases him, and that for them to plow and plant and labor as if they expected to raise a crop is very wrong, and taking the work out of the hands of God, that it interferes with his sovereignty, and is going on in their own strength; and that there is no connection between the means and the result on which they can depend. And now, suppose the farmers should believe such a doctrine. Why, they would starve the world to death.

Just such results will follow from the church’s being persuaded that promoting religion is somehow so mysteriously a subject of Divine sovereignty, that there is no natural connection between the means and the end. What are the results? Why, generation after generation have gone down to hell, while the church has been dreaming, and waiting for God to save them without the use of means. It has been the devil’s most successful means of destroying souls. The connection is as clear in religion as when a farmer sows his grain.

There is one fact under the government of God, worthy of universal notice, and of everlasting remembrance; which is, that the most useful and important things are most easily and certainly obtained by the use of the appropriate means. This is evidently a principle in the Divine administration. Hence, all the necessaries of life are obtained with great certainty by the use of the simplest means. The luxuries are more difficult to obtain; the means to procure them are more intricate and less certain in their results; while things absolutely hurtful and poisonous, such as alcohol and the like, are often obtained only by torturing nature, and making use of a kind of infernal sorcery to procure the death-dealing abomination. This principle holds true in moral government, and as spiritual blessings are of surpassing importance, we should expect their attainment to be connected with great certainty with the use of the appropriate means; and such we find to be the fact; and I fully believe that could facts be known it would be found that when the appointed means have been rightly used, spiritual blessings have been obtained with greater uniformity than temporal ones.

II. I Am to Show What a Revival Is.

It presupposes that the church is sunk down in a backslidden state, and a revival consists in the return of the church from her backslidings, and in the conversion of sinners.

1. A revival always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the church. Backslidden professors cannot wake up and begin right away in the service of God, without deep searchings of the heart. The fountains of sin need to be broken up. In a true revival, Christians are always brought under such convictions; they see their sins in such a light, that often they find it impossible to maintain a hope of their acceptance with God. It does not always go to that extent; but there are always, in a genuine revival, deep convictions of sin, and often cases of abandoning all hope.

2. Backslidden Christians will be brought to repentance. A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. Just as in the case of a converted sinner, the first step is a deep repentance, a breaking down of the heart, a getting down into the dust before God, with deep humility, and forsaking of sin.

3. Christians will have their faith renewed. While they are in their backslidden state they are blind to the state of sinners. Their hearts are as hard as marble. The truths of the Bible only appear like a dream. They admit it to be all true; their conscience and their judgement assent to it; but their faith does not see it standing out in bold relief, in all the burning realites of eternity. But when they enter into a revival, they no longer see men as trees walking [Mark 8:22–26], but they see things in that strong light which will renew the love of God in their hearts. This will lead them to labor zealously to bring others to him. They will feel grieved that others do not love God, when they love him so much. And they will set themselves feelingly to persuade their neighbors to give him their hearts. So their love to men will be renewed. They will be filled with a tender and burning love for souls. They will have a longing desire for the salvation of the whole world. They will be in agony for individuals whom they want to have saved; their friends, relations, enemies. They will not only be urging them to give their hearts to God, but they will carry them to God in the arms of faith, and with strong crying and tears beseech God to have mercy on them, and save their souls from endless burnings.

4. A revival breaks the power of the world and of sin over Christians. It brings them to such vantage ground that they get a fresh impulse towards heaven. They have a new foretaste of heaven, and new desire after union with God; and the charm of the world is broken, and the power of sin overcome.

5. When the churches are thus awakened and reformed, the reformation and salvation of sinners will follow, going through the same stages of conviction, repentance, and reformation. Their hearts will be broken down and changed. Very often the most abandoned profligates are among the subjects. Harlots, and drunkards, and infidels, and all sorts of abandoned characters, are awakened and converted. The worst part of human society are softened, and reclaimed, and made to appear as lovely specimens of the beauty of holiness.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Ministers, he said, should always avoid levity and “all winking and roguishness,” should be grave but not morose, dignified but not sanctimonious. “Where ministers hold out the idea that they are the great ones of the earth they create a false impression of religion.” “A minister should be polite and considerate, should observe unusual personal kindness.” “Good manners [are] benevolence acted out, bad manners, selfishness acted out.” Ministers, of all people, he insisted, must avoid slovenliness, affectation, effeminacy, coarseness and vulgarity, selfishness, impertinence, and a spirit of contradiction. They should beware of “band box manners” and of anything “foppish.” They should not wear ruffles, rings, breast pins, beards and whiskers (This was in 1843, before he took to wearing them himself.), and they should not carry gaudy pocket hankershiefs. Evidently much more needed and occupying much more time in his talks were warnings against vulgarity and coarseness. They should not blow their noses with their fingers; they should not use a dirty hankerchief; they must not spit on the carpet; they must not put their feet and muddy boots on the sofa or on the door jams, nor pull off their stockings before a family! He related the story of a young clergyman who “called on some ladies after walking some distance, took off his boots and hung his socks on the andirons the first thing,” and he told of another ministerial acquaintance who “put his feet up in a window in a ladies parlor to enjoy the cool air!” He advised the embryo preachers to keep their nails cleaned and pared and their teeth clean. It was disgusting, he said, “in anxious meetings to be obliged to smell the breath of a filthy mouth.” At table, he reminded them, they were not supposed to cut their meat with their pocket knives nor wipe their mouths on the table cloth!

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

EARLY NEW YORK REVIVALS

1824–1825

Evans Mills, LeRay Antwerp, Gouverneur Dekalb, Western

1826–1827

Rome (Jan 1826)Utica (Feb.–May, Nov. 1826, Jan. l827)Auburn (June–Aug. 1826)Troy (October 1826)New Lebanon (April 1827)New Lebanon Conference and national recognition

Little Falls, (July 1827)Stephentown (July–Oct. 1827)

LEAVES NEW YORK STATE

Wilmington, Delaware(Dec.1827)

1828–1829

Philadelphia, PA (Jan. 1828)Wilmington, DE -Jan. 1829)Reading, PA (Jan.–May 1829)Lancaster, PA (May–June 1829)New York City (Oct. 1829–May 1830)

1830-1831

Rochester, NY(Sept. 1830–Mar. 1831)Great Rochester Revival

1831–1837

Auburn, NY (May–Apr. 1831)Buffalo, NY (April–June 1831)Providence, RI (Aug. 1831)Boston, MA (Aug. 1831–Apr. 1832)

New York, CityChatham St Chapelpastor, May 1832–Mar. 1836

(Jan.–July 1834:Finney took a Mediterranean cruise to recuperate from cholera contracted in a NY epidemic)

Broadway Tabernacle pastor, 1836–1837

(For one year Finney combined responsibilities at the Broadway Tabernacle and Oberlin College, then left permanently for Oberlin)

Oberlin College Oberlin, OHBecomes professor of theology,Fall 1887; remains until death

LATER REVIVALS

1842

Boston, MAProvidence, RIRochester, NY

1843–1844

Boston, MA(This winter, Finney claims the “baptism of the Spirit.”)

Nov. 1849–Mar. 1851

ENGLAND Houghton, Birmingham, Worcester, London(visits France)

(1851 August: Becomes president of Oberlin College; serves until 1866

Fall 1851: New York CitySpring 1852: Hartford, CTFall 1855: Rochester, NYFall 1856: Boston, MAFall 1857: Boston, MA

Dec. 1858–Aug. 1860

ENGLAND Houghton, St. Ives, London, Huntington, Bolton, Manchester SCOTLAND Edinburgh, Aberdeen

(Finney spent the remainder of his life teaching and writing, and preaching and pastoring at First Church, Oberlin,OH, where he was pastor from 1844 to 1872)

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Whitney R Cross, The Burned-over District , Cornell Univ Press, Ithaca NY, 1950. All about the upstate NY area and its revivals.

Keith J Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney, 1792–1875, Revivalist and Reformer, Syracusr Univ Press, 1987. The most recent thorough biography of Finney.

George Frederick Wright, Charles Grandison Finney, Houghton-Mifflin Co, Boston, 1891. Until Hardman’s book, the standard biography.

Lewis A Drummond, Charlse G Finney and the Birth of Modern Evangelism , Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1983.

Leonard I Sweet, The Evangelical Tradition in America , Mercer Univ Press, Macon GA, 1984. Essays from a Finney conference, including one on Finney by Garth Rosell.

Robert S Fletcher, History of Oberlin College: from its Foundation Through the Civil War , 2 vols., Oberlin College, 1943.

David L Weddle, The Law as Gospel: Revival and Reform in the Theology of Charles G Finney , Scarecrow Press, Metuchen NJ, 1985.

Frank G Beardsley, A Mighty Winner of Souls , American Tract Society, NY, 1937.

Frank G Beardsley, History of American Revivals , ATS, 1912.

William G McLoughlin Jr, Modern Revivalism from Charles G Finney to Billy Graham , Ronald Press Co, NY, 1959.

William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform , Univ of Chicago Press, 1978.

Richard Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism: Popular evangelicalism in Britian and America 1790–1865 , Greenwood, Westport CT, 1978.

Writings by Finney

Charles G Finney, Autobiography of Finney, or Memoirs of Rev Charles G Finney , AS Barnes & Co, New York, 1876.

CG Finney, edited by William G McLoughlin, Lectures on Revivals of Religion , Belknap-Harvard Univ Press, 1960.

CG Finney, critical edition byGarth Rosell and Richard AG Dupuis, The Memoirs of Charles G Finney , the complete restored text, annotated, Academie/Zondervan, to be released June 1989. Finney’s 1876 Autobiography had been edited and reworded; this edition is Finney’s complete, unedited text.

CG Finney, compiled with an introduction by Timothy L Smith, Promise of the Spirit , Bethany House, Minneapolis, 1980. Important writings by Finney on perfectionism first published in the Oberlin Evangelist in 1839 and 1840.

CG Finney, compiled by Donald Dayton, Reflections on Revival , Bethany House, 1979. Essays first published in the Oberlin Evangelist in 1845 and 1846.

Bethany House Publishers has issued 11 volumes of Finney’s writings, the “Principles of …” series, edited [and updated] by Louis Parkhurst. The volumes are: Principles of— Devotion, Holiness, Liberty, Love, Prayer, Revival, Sanctification, Union with Christ, Victory; also Answers to Prayer. Bethany House has several other titles by or about Finney also.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Finney’s Lectures on Systematic Theology was issued in two volumes in 1846 and 1847. Though it appears Finney planned a work of a number of volumes, only the two were finished: Volume 2 in 1846, and Volume 3 in 1847 (Volume 1 never appeared). In the Preface of the first volume, Finney states “What I have said on the ‘Foundation of Moral Obligation’ is the key to the whole subject.” Finney’s system was based upon the premise of the complete freedom of the human will and the moral responsibility that involves. Dr. Keith Hardman, Finney’s recent biographer, points out that for Finney “… a person must be completely holy or totally sinful. There can be no gradation or degrees. Every person is therefore at any given instant perfectly sinful or perfectly holy. As Finney declared“ Moral agents are at all times either as holy or as sinful as with their knowledge they can be.” Dr. Hardman goes on, “It cannot be overemphasized that Finney makes these states mutually exclusive.” He again quotes Finney, “Sin and holiness, then, both consist in supreme, ultimate, and opposite choices, or intentions, and cannot, by any possibility, coexist.” These difficult concepts begin to explain Finney’s emphasis on the need for perfection. Strong criticism followed the publication of the Systematic Theology, especially from Charles Hodge of Princeton, the renowned Calvinist theologian. Hodge argued that Finney’s system was consistent, but that it was a total departure from the traditional Protestant teaching about justification by Faith, and was more a system of morals. Nevertheless, it is recognized that this work is one of a high degree of sophistication, and despite its difficult reasoning and use of terms, it has had a wide influence.

Righteousness Is Imparted

I have said that this state of mind implies conversion; for although the awakened sinner may have agonies and convictions, yet he has no clear conceptions of what this union with Christ is, nor does he clearly apprehend the need of a perfectly cleansed heart. He needs some experience of what holiness is, and often he seems also to need to have tasted some of the exceeding bitterness of sin as felt by one who has been near the Lord, before he shall fully apprehend this great spiritual want of being made a partaker indeed of Christ’s own perfect righteousness. By righteousness here, we are not to understand something imputed, but something real. It is imparted, not imputed. Christ draws the souls of His people into such union with Himself, that they become “partakers of His holiness.” For this the tried Christian pants. Having had a little taste of it, and then having the bitterness of a relapse into sin, his soul is roused to most intense struggles to realize this blessed union with Christ.

A few words should now be said on what is implied in being filled with this righteousness.

Worldly men incessantly hunger and thirst after worldly good. But attainment never outstrips desire. Hence, they are never filled. There is always a conscious want which no acquisition of this sort of good can satisfy. It is most remarkable that worldly men can never be filled with the things they seek. Well do the Scriptures say—This desire enlarges itself as hell, and is never satisfied. They really hunger and thirst the more by how much the more they obtain.

Let it be especially remarked that this being filled with righteousness is not perfection in the highest sense of this term. Men often use the term perfection, of that which is absolutely complete—a state which precludes improvement and beyond which there can be no progress. There can be no such perfection among Christians in any world—earth or heaven. It can pertain to no being but God. He, and He alone, is perfect beyond possibility of progress. All else but God are making progress—the wicked from bad to worse, the righteous from good to better. Instead of making no more progress in heaven, as some suppose, probably the law of progress is in a geometrical ratio; the more they have, the farther they will advance. I have often queried whether this law which seems to prevail here will operate there, viz. [namely], of what I may call impulsive progression. Here we notice that the mind from time to time gives itself to most intense exertion to make attainments in holiness. The attainment having been made, the mind for a season reposes, as if it had taken its meal and awaited the natural return of appetite before it should put forth its next great effort. May it not be that the same law of progress obtains even in heaven?

Here we see the operations of this law in the usual Christian progress. Intense longing and desire beget great struggling and earnest prayer; at length the special blessing sought is found, and the soul seems to be filled to overflowing. It seems to be fully satisfied and to have received all it supposed possible and perhaps even more than was ever asked or thought. The soul cries out before the Lord, I did not know there was such fullness in store for Thy people. How wonderful that God should grant it to such an one as myself! The soul finds itself swallowed up and lost in the great depths and riches of such a blessing. Oh, how the heart pours itself out in the one most expressive petition: “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven!” All prayer is swallowed up in this. And then the praise, The FULLNESS OF PRAISE! All struggle and agony are suspended: the soul seems to demand a rest from prayer that it may pour itself out in one mighty tide of praise. Some suppose that persons in this state will never again experience those longings after a new baptism; but in this they mistake. The meal they have had may last them a considerable time—longer, perhaps, than Elijah’s meal, on the strength of which he went 40 days; but the time of comparative hunger will come round again, and they will gird themselves for a new struggle.

This is what is sometimes expressed as a baptism, an anointing, an unction, an ensealing of the Spirit, an earnest of the Spirit. All these terms are pertinent and beautiful to denote this special work of the Divine Spirit in the heart. They who experience it, know how well and aptly it is described as eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Lord Jesus, so really does the soul seem to live on Christ. It is also the bread and the water of life which are promised freely to him that is athirst. These terms may seem very mystical and unmeaning to those who have had no experience, but they are plain to him who has known in his own soul what they mean.

Sanctification

This state is to be attained by faith alone. Let it be forever remembered, that “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and “whatsoever is not of faith, is sin.” Both justification and sanctification are by faith alone. Romans 3:30: “Seeing it is one God who shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith,” and Romans 5:1: “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Also, Romans 9:30, 31: “What shall we say then? that the Gentiles, who followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, who followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.”

But let me by no means be understood as teaching sanctification by faith, as distinct from and opposed to sanctification by the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Christ, which is the same thing, by Christ our sanctification, living and reigning in the heart. Faith is rather the instrument or condition, than the efficient agent that induces a state of present and permanent sanctification. Faith simply receives Christ, as king, to live and reign in the soul. It is Christ, in the exercise of his different offices, and appropriated in his different relations to the wants of the soul, by faith, who secures our sanctification. This he does by Divine discoveries to the soul of his Divine perfections and fulness. The condition of these discoveries is faith and obedience. He says, John 14:21–23: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, (not Iscariot,) Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” But I must call your attention to Christ as our sanctification more at large hereafter.

A Thirst for Righteousness

This state of mind is not merely conviction; it is not remorse, nor sorrow, nor a struggle to obtain a hope or to get out of danger. All these feelings may have preceded, but the hungering after righteousness is none of these. It is a longing desire to realize the idea of spiritual and moral purity. He has in some measure appreciated the purity of heaven, and the necessity of being himself as pure as the holy there, in order to enjoy their bliss and breathe freely in their atmosphere.

This state of mind is not often developed by writers, and it seems rarely to have engaged the attention of the church as its importance demands.

When the mind gets a right view of the atmosphere of heaven, it sees plainly it cannot breathe there, but must be suffocated, unless its own spirit is congenial to the purity of that word. I remember the case of a man who, after living a Christian life for a season, relapsed into sin. At length God reclaimed His wandering child. When I next saw him, and heard him speak of his state of relapse, he turned away and burst into tears, saying, “I have been living in sin, almost choked to death in its atmosphere; it seemed as if I could not breathe in it. It almost choked the breath of spiritual life from my system.”

Have not some of you known what this means? You could not bear the infernal atmosphere of sin—so like the very smoke of the pit! After you get out of it, you say, “Let me never be there again!” Your soul agonizes and struggles to find some refuge against this awful relapsing into sin. O. you long for a pure atmosphere and a pure heart, that will never hold fellowship with darkness or its works again.

The young convert, like the infant child, may not at first distinctly apprehend its own condition and wants; but such experience as I have been detailing develops the idea of perfect purity, and then the soul longs for it with longings irrepressible. I must, says the now enlightened convert, I must be drawn into living union with God as revealed in Jesus Christ. I cannot rest till I find God, and have Him revealed to me as my everlasting refuge and strength.

On Being Filled with the Spirit

If you have much of the Spirit of God, you must make up your mind to have much opposition, both in the Church and in the world. Very likely the leading men of the Church will oppose you. There has always been opposition in the church. So it was when Christ was on earth. If you are far above their state of feeling, Church members will oppose you. If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he must expect persecution (2 Tim 3:12). Often the elders and even the minister will oppose you, if you are filled with the Spirit of God.

You must expect very frequent and agonizing conflicts with Satan. Satan has very little trouble with those Christians who are not spiritual, the lukewarm, and slothful, and worldly minded. And such do not understand what is said about spiritual conflicts. Perhaps they will smile when such things are mentioned. And so the devil lets them alone. They do not disturb him, nor he them. But spiritual Christians, he understands very well, are doing him a vast injury, and therefore he sets himself against them. Such Christians often have terrible conflicts. They have temptations that they never thought of before: blasphemous thoughts, atheism, suggestions to do deeds of wickedness, to destroy their own lives, and the like. And if you are spiritual you may expect these terrible conflicts.

You will have greater conflicts with yourself than you ever thought of. You will sometimes find your own corruptions making strange headway against the Spirit.” The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). Such a Christian is often thrown into consternation at the power of his own corruptions. One of the Commodores in the United States Navy was, as I have been told, a spiritual man; his pastor told me he had known that man to lie on the floor and groan a great part of the night, in conflict with his own corruptions, and to cry to God, in agony, that He would break the power of temptation. It seemed as if the devil was determined to ruin him, and his own heart, for the time being, was almost in league with the devil.

But, you will have peace with God. If the Church, and sinners, and the devil oppose you, there will be One with whom you will have peace. Let you who are called to these trials, and conflicts, and temptations, and who groan and pray, and weep, and break you hearts, remember this consideration: your peace, so far as your feelings towards God are concerned, will flow like a river.

You will likewise have peace of conscience if you are led by the Spirit. You will not be constantly goaded and kept on the rack by a guilty conscience. Your conscience will be calm and quiet, unruffled as the summer’s lake.

The Religion of Law and Gospel

The difference does not lie in the fact, that under the law men were justified by works, without faith. The method of salvation in both dispensations has been the same. Sinners were always justified by faith. The Jewish dispensation pointed to a Savior to come, and if men were saved at all, it was by faith in Christ. And sinners now are saved in the same way.

Not in the fact that the gospel has cancelled or set aside the obligations of the moral law. It is true, it has set aside the claims of the ceremonial law, or law of Moses. The ceremonial law was nothing but a set of types pointing to the Savior, and was set aside, of course, when the great antitype appeared. It is now generally admitted by all believers, that the gospel has not set aside the moral law. But that doctrine has been maintained in different ages of the church. Many have maintained that the gospel has set aside the moral law, so that believers are under no obligation to obey it. Such was the doctrine of the Nicolatians, so severely reprobated by Christ. The Antinomians, in the days of the apostles and since, believed that they were without any obligation to obey the moral law; and held that Christ’s righteousness was so imputed to believers, and that he had so fulfilled the law for them, that they were under no obligation to obey it themselves.

There have been many, in modern times, called Perfectionists, who held that they were not under obligation to obey the law. They suppose that Christ has delivered them from the law, and given them the Spirit, and that the leadings of the Spirit are now to be their rule of life, instead of the law of God. Where the Bible says, sin shall not have dominion over believers, these persons understand by it, that the same acts, which would be sin if done by an unconverted person, are not sin in them. The others, they say, are under the law, and so bound by its rules, but they themselves are sanctified, and are in Christ, and if they break the law it is no sin. But all such notions must be radically wrong. God has no right to give up the moral law. He cannot discharge us from the duty of love to God and love to man, for this is right in itself. And unless God will alter the whole moral constitution of the universe, so as to make that right which is wrong, he cannot give up the claims of the moral law. Besides, this doctrine represents Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as having taken up arms openly against the government of God.

The distinction between law religion and gospel religion does not consist in the fact that the gospel is any less strict in its claims, or allows any greater latitude of self-indulgence than the law. Not only does the gospel not cancel the obligations of the moral law, but it does in no degree abate them. Some people talk about gospel liberty; as though they had got a new rule of life, less strict, and allowing more liberty than the law. I admit that it has provided a new method of justification, but it every where insists that the rule of life is the same with the law. The very first sentence of the gospel, the command to repent, is in effect a reenactment of the law, for it is a command to return to obedience. The idea that the liberty of the gospel differs from the liberty of the law is erroneous.

Neither does the distinction consist in the fact that those called legalists, or who have a legal religion, do, either by profession or in fact, depend on their own works for justification. It is not often the case, at least in our day, that legalists do profess dependence on their own works, for there are few so ignorant as not to know that this is directly in the face of the gospel. Nor is it necessarily the case that they really depend on their own works. Often they really depend on Christ for salvation. But their dependence is false dependence, such as they have no right to have. They depend on him, but they make it manifest that their faith, or dependence, is not that which actually “worketh by love,” or that “purifieth the heart,” or that “overcometh the world.”

It is a simple matter of fact that the faith which they have does not do what the faith does which men must have in order to be saved, and so it is not the faith of the gospel. They have a kind of faith, but not that kind that makes men real Christians, and brings them under the terms of the gospel.

I am to mention some to the particulars in which these two kinds of religion differ.

There are several different classes of persons who manifestly have a legal religion. There are some who really profess to depend on their own works for salvation. Such were the pharisees. The Hicksite Ouakers formerly took this ground, and maintained that men were to be justified by works; setting aside entirely justification by faith. When I speak of works, I mean works of law. And here I want you to distinguish between works of law and works of faith. This is the grand distinction to be kept in view. It is between works produced by legal considerations, and those produced by faith. There are but two principles on which obedience to any government can turn: one is the principle of hope and fear, under the influence of conscience. Conscience points out what is right or wrong, and the individual is induced by hope and fear to obey. The other principle is confidence and love. You see this illustrated in families, where one child always obeys from hope and fear, and another from affectionate confidence. So in the government of God, the only thing that ever produces even the appearance of obedience, is one of these two principles.

There is a multitude of things that address our hopes and fears; such as character, interest, heaven, and hell, etc.. These may produce external obedience, or conformity to the law. But filial confidence leads men to obey God from love. This is the only obedience that is acceptable to God. God not only requires a certain course of conduct, but that this should spring from love. There never was and never can be, in the government of God, any acceptable obedience of faith. Some suppose that faith will be done away in heaven. This is a strange notion. As if there were no occasion to trust God in heaven, or no reason to exercise confidence in him. Here is the great distinction between the religion of law and gospel religion. Legal obedience is influenced by hope and fear, and it is hypercritical, selfish, outward, constrained. Gospel obedience is from love, and is sincere, free, cheerful, true.

There is another distinction here. The religion of law is the religion of purposes, or desires, founded on legal considerations, and not the religion of preference, or love to God. The individual intends to put off his sins; he purposes to obey God and be religious; but his purpose does not grow out of love to God, but out of hope and fear. It is easy to see that a purpose, founded on such considerations, is very different from a purpose growing out of love. But the religion of the gospel is not a purpose merely, but an actual preference consisting in love.

Again, there is a class of legalists that depend on Christ, but their dependence is not gospel dependence, because the works which it produces are works of law; that is, from hope and fear, not from love. Gospel dependence may produce, perhaps, the very same outward works, but the motives are radically different. The legalist drags on a painful, irksome, moral, and perhaps, outwardly, religious life. The gospel believer has an affectionate confidence in God, which leads him to obey out of love. His obedience is prompted by his own feelings. Instead of being dragged to duty, he goes to it cheerfully, because he loves it ….

There is another point. The legalist expects to be justified by faith, but he has not learned that he must be sanctified by faith. I propose to examine this point another time in full. Modern legalists do not expect to be justified by works; they know these are inadequate—they know that the way to be saved is by Christ. But they have no practical belief that justification by faith is only true, as sanctification by faith is true, and that men are justified by faith only, as they are first sanctified by faith. And therefore, while they expect to be justified by faith, they set themselves to perform works that are works of law.

Justification by Faith

Gospel justification is not the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Under the gospel, sinners are not justified by having the obedience of Jesus Christ set down to their account, as if he had obeyed the law for them, or in their stead. It is not an uncommon mistake to suppose, that when sinners are justified under the gospel, they are accounted righteous … by having the obedience or righteousness of Christ imputed to them. I have not time to enter into an examination of this subject now. I can only say this idea is absurd and impossible, for this reason, that Jesus Christ was bound to obey the law for himself, and could no more perform works of supererogation [performance of more than duty requires], or obey on our account, than anyone else. Was it not his duty to love the Lord his God, with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and to love his neighbor as himself? Certainly, and if he had not done so, it would have been sin. The only work of supererogation he could perform was to submit to sufferings that were not deserved. This is called his obedience unto death, and this is set down to our account. But if his obedience of the law is set down to our account, why are we called on to repent and obey the law ourselves? Does God exact double service, yes, triple service—first to have the law obeyed by [Christ] for us, then that he must suffer the penalty for us, and then that we must repent and obey ourselves? No such thing is demanded. It is not required that the obedience of another should be imputed to us. All we owe is perpetual obedience to the law of benevolence. And for this there can be no substitute. If we fail of this, we must endure the penalty, or receive a free pardon.

Justification by faith does not mean that faith is accepted as a substitute for personal holiness, or that by an arbitrary constitution faith is imputed to us instead of personal obedience to the law.

Some suppose that justification is this, that the necessity of personal holiness is set aside, and that God arbitrarily dispenses with the requirement of the law, and imputes faith as a substitute. But this is not the way. Faith is accounted for just what it is, and not something else that it is not. Abraham’s faith was imputed unto him for righteousness, because it was itself an act of righteousness, and because it worked by love, and thus produced holiness. Justifying faith is holiness, so far as it goes, and produces holiness of heart and life, and is imputed to the believer as holiness, not instead of holiness.

Nor does justification by faith imply that a sinner is justified by faith without good works, or personal holiness.

Some suppose that justification by faith only, is without any regard to good works, or holiness. They have understood this from what Paul has said, where he insists so largely on justification by faith. But it should be borne in mind that Paul was combating the error of the Jews, who expected to be justified by obeying the law. In opposition to this error, Paul insists on it that justification is by faith, without works of law. He does not mean that good works are unnecessary to justification, but that works of law are not good works, because they spring from legal considerations, from hope and fear, and not from faith that works by love. But inasmuch as a false theory had crept into the church on the other side, James took up the matter, and showed them that they had misunderstood Paul. And to show this, he takes the case of Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar. Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith,Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” This epistle was supposed to contradict Paul, and some of the ancient churches rejected it on that account. But they overlooked the fact that Paul was speaking of one kind of works, and James of another. Paul was speaking of works performed from legal motives. But he has everywhere insisted on good works springing from faith, or the righteousness of faith, as indispensable to salvation. All that he denies is that works of law, or works grounded on legal motives, have anything to do in the matter of justification. And James teaches the same thing, when he teaches that men are justified, not by works nor by faith alone, but by faith together with the works of faith: or as Paul expresses it, faith that works by love. You will bear in mind that I am speaking of gospel justification, which is very different from legal justification.

Gospel justification, or justification by faith, consists in pardon and acceptance with God.

When we say that men are justified by faith and holiness, we do not mean that they are accepted on the ground of law, but that they are treated as if they were righteous, on account of their faith and works of faith. This is the method which God takes, in justifying a sinner. Not that faith is the foundation of justification. The foundation is in Christ. But this is the manner in which sinners are pardoned, and accepted, and justified, that if they repent, believe and become holy, their past sins shall be forgiven, for the sake of Christ.

Here it will be seen how justification under the gospel differs from justification under the law. Legal justification is a declaration of actual innocence and freedom from blame. Gospel justification is pardon and acceptance, as if he [were] righteous, but on other grounds than his own obedience. When the apostle says, “By deeds of Law shall no flesh be justified,” he uses justification as a lawyer, in a strictly legal sense. But when he speaks of justification by faith, he speaks not of legal justification, but of a person’s being treated as if he were righteous.

Christian Perfectionism

It is perfect obedience to the law of God. The law of God requires perfect, disinterested, impartial benevolence, love to God and love to our neighbor. It requires that we should be actuated by the same feeling, and to act on the same principles that God acts upon; to leave self out of the question as uniformly as he does, to be as much separated from selfishness as he is, in a word, to be in our measure as perfect as God is. Christianity requires that we should do neither more nor less than the law of God prescribes. Nothing short of this is Christian perfection. This is being moral, just as perfect as God. Every thing is here included, to feel as he feels, to love what he loves, and hate what he hates, and for the same reasons that he loves and hates.

God regards every being in the universe according to its real value. He regards his own interests according to their real value in the scale of being, and no more. He exercises the same love towards himself that he requires of us, and for the same reason. He loves himself supremely, both with the love of benevolence and the love of complacency, because he is supremely excellent. And he requires us to love him just so, to love him as perfectly as he loves himself. He loves himself with the love of benevolence, or regards his own interest, and glory, and happiness, as the supreme good, because it is the supreme good. And he requires us to love him in the same way. He loves himself with infinite complacency, because he knows that he is infinitely worthy and excellent, and he requires the same of us. He also loves his neighbor as himself, not in the same degree that he loves himself, but in the same proportion, according to their real value. From the highest angel to the smallest worm, he regards their happiness with perfect love, according to their worth. It is his duty—to conform to these principles, as much as it is our duty. He can no more depart from this rule than we can, without committing sin; and for him to do it would be much worse than for us to do it, as he is greater than we. God is infinitely obligated to do this. His very nature, not depending on his own volition, but uncreated, binds him to this. And he has created us moral beings in his own image, capable of conforming to the same rule with himself. This rule requires us to have the same character with him, to love as impartially, with as perfect love—to seek the good of others with as single an eye as he does. This, and nothing less than this, is Christian Perfection.

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