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The View of Man Inherent in New Measures Revivalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Leonard I. Sweet
Leonard I. Sweet
Affiliation:
Pastor of the Geneseo United Methodist Church, Geneseo, New York.
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Extract

It has been almost exiomatic to speak of Charles G. Finney as the religious spokesman for “the Age of Jackson,” and to see the optimistic view of man supposedly inherent in Finney's “new measures” revivalism as the religious equivalent of the Jacksonian faith in the worth and dignity of the common man. Finney's ablest interpreter, William G. McLoughlin, has contended that “Finney and Jackson, each in his own way, were striving for much the same kind of free, individualistic, and equalitarian society.” Expanding upon this contention, McLoughlin viewed the “‘revolutionary’ theology and revival measures” of Charles G. Finney as a congenial and compatible counterpart of the more general political, social, and intellectual revolution of Jacksonian America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 206 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

1. McLoughlin, William G. ed., Lectures on Revivals of Religion by Charles Grandison Finney (Cambridge, Maassachusetts: The Belknap Press, 1960), pp. xlix, viii.Google Scholar Also see Weisberger, Bernard, They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and their Impact on Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), p. 52Google Scholar; and Miller, Perry, The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), p. 30.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. xi.

3. See most significantly Pessen's, EdwardRiches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (Lexington, Massachusetts: B. C. Heath and Company, 1973), especially p. 306,Google Scholar where he states that “the egalitarian version of antebellum American society should be discarded.”

4. For an analysis of revivalism's “Theology of individualism” among southern evangelicals, see Boles, John B., The Great Revival 1787–1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), pp. 125 ff.Google Scholar Perry Miller has observed the contribution of new measures revivalism towards building a sense of “community” in Life of the Mind, pp. 19, 34–35.

5. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 7.Google Scholar

6. Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 129.Google Scholar

7. The importance of the tension between the poles of “human wickedness” and “human obligation” was recognized by Fowler, P. H., Historical Sketch of Presbyterianism Within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York (Utica, New York: Curtiss and Childs, 1877), pp. 165–166.Google Scholar

8. Finney, Charles G., Sermons on Important Subjects, 3rd ed. (New York: John S. Taylor, 1836), pp. 81–85, 144–145.Google Scholar Finney's statements on human nature were not totally consistent. On the one hand, man's nature was “as it should be” on the other hand it was “very frail and temptable.” See Finney, , Scrmons on Gospel Themes (London: B. D. Dickinson, 1877), p. 48.Google Scholar

9. For man to reject God was, in Finney 's words, to “do violence to his inner convictions.… Man's whole nature cries out—this is just what I need.” Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians (New York: John S. Taylor, 1837), pp. 212, 224, 234, 242Google Scholar; idem., Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 18–19.

10. Welch, Claude, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Volume 1: 1799–1870 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 127–131.Google Scholar

11. Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 89, 139.Google Scholar

12. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 156, 211Google Scholar; idem., Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 71, 149 ff.

13. Mead, Sidney E., Nathaniel William Taylor, 1786–1858, a Connecticut Liberal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 19.Google Scholar See also Smith, H. Shelton, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology Since 1750 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), p. 97.Google Scholar

14. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 256, 299, 301.Google Scholar The Adamic original sin, which was related to food, was supplanted by the original sin of each person, which according to Finney was related to the gratification of the self in the realm of food. Rather than condemnation inhering in the Adamic transgression, for Finney condemnation inhered in each man 's first sin. Idem., Sermons on Gospel Themes, pp. 400, 105.

15. For a depiction of the utter hostility of the human heart to God, see the excerpts of Finney's sermons preached at Nathan S. S. Beman's church in Troy, New York, as found in A Brief Account of the Origin and Progress of the Division in the First Presbyterian Church in the City of Troy… (Troy, New York: Tuttle and Richards, 1827), pp. 35, 16.Google Scholar

16. Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 155.Google Scholar

17. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 195.Google Scholar

18. Ibid.

19. Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., p. 5.

21. Ibid., pp. 20 ff.

22. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 9.Google Scholar In his Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1876), p. 407,Google Scholar Finney contended that God's grace is “imparted, not imputed.”

23. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 316.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., pp. 19, 344. That contemporaries like E. D. Griffin and Asahel Nettleton completely misunderstood Finney on this point is revealed in Griffin's summary criticism of Finney for not believing that “in a word, it is God using means upon the sinner, and not the sinner using means for himself.” Quoted in Cooke, Parsons, Recollections of Rev. E. D. Griffin, or Incidents Illustrating his Character (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1855), p. 167.Google Scholar Also see Tyler, Bennet, Lectures on Theology (Boston: J. E. Tilton and Company, 1859), pp. 168 ff.Google Scholar

25. See Ibid., pp. 18, 59, 99, 108. Also Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 24, 30Google Scholar; idem., Sermons on Gospel Themes, pp. 245 ff.; idem., Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 177, 298. For Finney's identification of the “heart and will” see his Sermons on Gospel Themes, pp. 117, 128, 135.

26. Ibid., pp. 102, 317. This certainly is making more than just a “slight obeisance to the agency of the Holy Spirit,” which is all that McLoughlin allows Finney, in Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1959), p. 85.Google Scholar

27. For example, see Porter, James, Revivals of Religion: Their Theory, Means, Obstructions, Uses and Importance: With the Duty of the Christian in Regard to Them, 6th ed. (New York: Carlton and Phillips, 1853), p. 56.Google Scholar

28. Finney, , Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 265Google Scholar; McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 280, 282.Google Scholar

29. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 153, 102.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 318.

31. Ibid., pp. 203–204; also p. 320. For Beecher's similar conclusion when he arrived in Boaton, see Weisborger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 83.Google Scholar

32. Finney's explanation of why Paul could stress justification by faith when James stressed the deadliness of faith without works is revealing. Paul eonfronted the Jewish error of works righteousness, and erased that fiction by emphasizing faith. James was forced to ward off the Antinomian threat, and he proclaimed with equal vigor that good works are the legitimate fruits of faith. Finney, , Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 328.Google Scholar

33. For Finney's belief that only new measures could “succeed in gaining the attention of of the world to religion,” see McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 272.Google Scholar Calvin Colton initially shared the belief that without “extra efforts and extra measures” to promote revivals, human nature will cause the church to fall asleep in a “dull round of religious formality.” History and Character of American Revtvas of Religion (London: Frederick Westley, and A. H. Davis, 1832), pp. 106–107.Google Scholar

34. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 104.Google Scholar

35. Oberlin Evangelist, 12 February 1945, as cited in Johnson, James E., “Charles G. Finney and a Theology of Revivalism,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 38 (09 1969): 349–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christans, p. 63Google Scholar; idem., Memoirs, p. 321.

37. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 181–182.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. 279: “Whenever Christians become mechanical in their attempts to promote” revivals, Finney averred, revivals are dead. Perry Miller's remarks are found in The Life of the Mind, p. 77.

39. The necessity for precision in defining what constitutes the “new” measures of Fiuneyite revivalism is especially apparent when it is remembered that even the most crusted Calvinist conservatives admitted that some “meaures” were implicit in the salvation process, making the debate less one of kind than of degree. Moreover, two pastors who participated in Finney 's revivals between 1825 and 1826 even went so far as to deny that Finney used any measures which had not already been introduced by evangelists of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening (see the remarks of William E. Knox of Rome and Samuel Clark Aiken of Utica in Fowler, , Historical Sketch, pp. 200–209).Google Scholar The ambiguity of the label “new measures” is further revealed in John Wiffiamson Nevin's 1843 tract against Finneyite revivalism. He explained that he entitled his tract The Anxicus Bench to indicate that his quarrel was not with a multiplicity of admissable “measures” which were often included within the blanket term “new measures” (see Nichols, James Hastings, Romanticism in American Theology [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961], p. 56).Google Scholar In a similar vein The Lutheran Observer warned its readers in 1843 that “‘New Measures’ is a relative phrase” which has meaning only in relationship to those who were using the label (The Lutheran Observer, 17 November 1943, as cited in Seilhamer, Frank H., “The New Measures Movement Among Lutherans,” The Lutheran Quarterly 12 [05, 1960]: 121–122).Google Scholar In general, the only “new measures” which received universal recognition for their novelty were the anxious seat and the prayer of females in the presence of males, the latter being the most fractious question raised at the New Lebanon Convention in July, 1827. On this see Cole, Charles C. Jr, “The New Lebanon Convention,” New York History 30 (10 1950): 389–392Google Scholar; Tyler, Bennet, Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D.D. (Hartford: Robins and Smith, 1844), pp. 57, 195–196Google Scholar; Rev. Hotchkin, James, A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York, and of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Presbyterian Church in that Section (New York: M. W. Dodd, 1848), p. 163.Google Scholar By themselves, however, these practices are insufficient to explain the degree of hostility to what was termed new measures revivalism. The physician Amarich Brigham provides a clue to how contemporaries perceived Finney 's methods when he compared the tactics of new measures revivalism in effecting conversion with the curious custom of parents in western New York in the 1830s of whipping their children into obedience to divine authority as they whipped them into obedience to parental authority. The intensity and frequency of flagellations induced obedience, as did by analogy the obedience induced by the fears engendered by the intensity of new measures. Brigham, Amarich, M.D., Observations on the Influence of Religion Upon the Health and Physical Welfare of Mankind (Boston: Marsh, Copen and Lyon, 1835), p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Journal and Telegraph, 9 March 1833, as cited in Fowler, , Historical Sketch, p. 275.Google Scholar What distinguished Finney's variety of new measures from the old measures of preceding revivalists was not so much the measures themselves, but the intensity and indiscretion with which they were applied. The controversy over new measures revivalism, then, arose primarily from the mischief of style.

40. New measures were not just restricted to church practices. Lewis Tappan conceived of the renovation of Chatham Street Theater into a church as a new measure which would spotlight Finney 's revival efforts. McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, p. 80.Google Scholar

41. Marty, Martin B., Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York: The Dial Press, 1970), pp. 77;Google ScholarMcLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 200.Google Scholar

42. Miller, , Life of the Mind, p. 32.Google Scholar

43. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 189, 193.Google Scholar

44. Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

45. Finney, , Memoirs, p. 90.Google Scholar

46. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 64, 106Google Scholar; idem., Sermons on Imporian: Subjects, p. 202; McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 117, 198.Google Scholar

47. Finney responded to those who “would reprove me for illustrating my ideas by reference to the common affairs of men of different pursuits around me” in his Memoirs, p. 81.

48. See Beecher's, Lyman animadversions on Finney's overbearing preaching style in Letters of the Rev. Dr. Beecher and Rev. Mr. Nettleton on the ‘New Measures’ in Conducting Revivals of Religion (New York: G. and C. Cavil, 1828), pp. 82, 85Google Scholar; also 3. Brockway, , A Delineation of the Characteristic Features of a Revival of Religion in Troy, in 1826 and 1837 (Troy: Francis Adancourt, 1827), pp. 26, 28, 34.Google Scholar

49. The phrase is that of Mead, Hiram, “Charles Grandison Finney,” Congregational Quarterly 19 (01 1877): 9.Google Scholar

50. For a condemnation of Finney 's alleged attempt to produce a “stage-effect” on the audience, see Letters of Beecher and Nettleton, pp. 34–35.

51. For Finney's decidedly unenlightened views of the role of women in society and in the home, see Lectures to Profesring Christians, pp. 335–341. Whereas in earlier revival meetings women were noted for being the first to respond to the emotional excitement in the form of physical paroxysms, with Finnoy they responded readily but in the form of more intellectual exercises like prayer and exhortation. See Cleveland, Catharine C., The Great Revival in the West, 1797–1805 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1916), p. 119.Google Scholar

52. Fowler, , Historical Sketch, p. 272Google Scholar also Eller, Paul Himmel, “Revivalism and the German Churches in Pennsylvania, 1783–1816” (Ph. P. diss.: The University of Chicago, 1933), p. 240.Google Scholar

53. Tyler, Bennet, Memoir of Nettleton. p. 280Google Scholar; Finney, . A Sermon Preached in the Presbyterian Church at Troy, March 4, 1857 (Troy, New York: Tuttle and Richards, 1827), p. 7.Google Scholar See also Beecher's, concurrence in Letters of Beecher and Nettlcton, p. 82Google Scholar and Colton, , History of Revivals, p. 55.Google Scholar

54. Wisner, William, Incidents in the Life of a Pastor (New York: Charles Scribner, 1851), pp. 271, 272Google Scholar; Tyler, , Memoirs, pp. 78, 207Google Scholar; Finney, , Sermons on Important Subject, p. 202.Google Scholar

55. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. xvii.Google Scholar This was the charge levied by William R. Weeks against Finney in a letter to Nettleton and Beecher.

56. Ibid., pp. 105, 383, 399, 411: Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 44–45Google Scholar; idemSermons on Gospel Themes, p. 85.

57. Ibid., pp. 11–12. Edward Pessen has described the way in which Finney, “first opened the snuier's heart through a demonic emotional attack and then reached his mind through force of logic.” Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Ilinois: The Dorsey Press, 1969), p. 77.Google Scholar

58. Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, pp. 62–64, 184Google Scholar; McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. 400,Google Scholar and p. 121, no. 4, where McLongblin states the ambiguity of the distinction between “animal feelings” and religious affections and their roles in revivalism. Also McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, pp. 86–87.Google Scholar

59. Johnson, , “Finney and Theology of Revivalism,” p. 353Google Scholar; Walzer, William Charles, “Charles Grandison Finney and the Presbyterian Revivals of Central and Western New York” (Ph. D. diss.: The University of Chicago, 1944), p. 182Google Scholar; McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, p. 67.Google Scholar

60. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 71–72.Google Scholar Even the emotion of happiness was sacrificed on the altar of utility. “Show me a very joyful and happy Christian,” Finney wrote, “and he is not generally a very useful Christian.” Ibid., pp. 23–24, 68, 154, 171.

61. Finney, , Sermons on Important Subjects, p. 62.Google Scholar Also Head, Hiram, “Charles Grandison Finney,” p. 6.Google Scholar

62. Jefferly, R., “Introductory Essay” to Autobiography of Elder Jacob Knapp (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1868), p. ix.Google Scholar In the words of Fowler, , Historical Sketch, p. 284,Google Scholar “the tendency of his teaching was to induce a legal, more than an evangelical experience.”

63. Swing, Albert Temple, “President Finney and an Oberlin Theology,” Bibliotheca Sacra 57 (1900): 465.Google Scholar Swing called Finney (p. 469) “the most rational theologian and evangelist which America has ever produced.” Others who have stressed Finney's intellectual bent in preaching include the eyewitness Stanton, Henry B., Random Recollections, 3d ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887), p. 41Google Scholar; also Bauslin, David H., “The Genesis of the ‘New Measures’ Movement in the Lutheran Church in this Country,” Lutheran Quarterly 40 (07 1910): 365.Google Scholar The incident with Griffin and the young itinerant is related in Parsons Cooke, . Recollections of Griffin, p. 70.Google Scholar

64. Letters of Beecher and Nettieton, pp. iv-v; Weeks, William B., The Pilgrim's Progress in the Nineteenth Century (New York: H. W. Dodd, 1849), p. 244.Google Scholar

65. For evidonce of the generational conflict between young converts and older church authorities, see A Brief Account, p. 17; Letters of Beecher and Nettleton, pp. 57, 83, 85, 89, 99; Tyler, , Memoir of Nettleton, p. 219Google Scholar; Weeks, , Pilgrim's Progress, p. 241Google Scholar; Fowler, , Historical Sketch, p. 283Google Scholar; and Finney, , Memoir, p. 340.Google Scholar

66. The issue of the role of itinerants in revivals, which had been building since the 1740s, is mentioned in Tracy, Joseph, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1841) pp. 347–350Google Scholar; Maxson, Charles Hartshorn, The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1958), p. 146Google Scholar: Gewehr, Wesley M., The Great Awakening in Virginia, 1740–1790 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1930), pp. 13, 78 ff.Google Scholar; Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 59.Google Scholar The dispute ovor itinerating in the time of Finney is revealed in Hotchkin, James H., A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York, pp. 132. 172, 163Google Scholar; Letters of Beecher and Nettleton, pp. 10–11, 18–20; Tyler, , Memoir of Nettleton, p. 58.Google Scholar

67. For Finney's elevation of the laity in the revival process, see his Sermons on Gospel Themes, pp. 335 ff. and his Memoir, pp. 321, 322; also Seilhamer, Frank H., “The New Measures Movement Among Lutherans,” pp. 128–129.Google ScholarSmith, Timothy L. has documented this trend of laicization of evangelism in Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 80 ff.Google Scholar Finney's threat to ocelestiastical authority was feared most acutely by Colton, Calvin in Thoughts on the State of the Country: With Reasons for Preferring Episcopacy, 2d ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836).Google Scholar

68. Cave, Alfred A., “Calvin Colton: An Antebellum Disaffection with the Presbyterian Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History 50 (Spring 1972): 53.Google Scholar

69. Finney's cruel rejection of his early revival partner in 1826 reveals most graphically his shift towards sophistication. Embarrassed by the crude and crass mannerisms of “Father” Daniel Nash, Finney refused to include him in hi revivals after initial successes. See Walzer, , “Charles Grandison Finney,” p. 141,Google Scholar and Cross, Whitney R., The Burned-over District (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 161.Google Scholar

70. Fletcher, Robert Samuel, A History of Oberlin College From Its Foundation Through the Civil War, 2 vols. (Oberlin, Ohio; Oberlin College, 1943), 1:31–32Google Scholar; Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, pp. 125–126Google Scholar; and Walzer, “Charles Grandison Finney,” pp. 148–149.Google Scholar Finney was quite concerned lest his revivals offend “persons of taste.” McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. 136–137.Google Scholar

71. A Narrative of the Revival of Religion, in the County of Oneida, Parictularly in the Bounds of the Presbytery of Oneida, in the Year 1826 (Utica: Hastings and Pracy, 1826), pp. 24, 37Google Scholar; Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 109Google Scholar; Stanton, , Random Recollections, p. 41.Google Scholar

72. Finney, , Memoir, pp. 307, 437, 289, 297, 359, 365–368, 436.Google Scholar While in Rochester Fiiuiey held special revival sessions exclusively for lawyers, and took pride in his success among physicians and lawyers, calling the latter group “the most accessible class of men.” Even Mrs. Finney's prayer meetings “were composed of the more intelligent lathes in the different churches.” No wonder that Finney esteemed Rochester highly: “I never preached any where with more pleasure than in Rochester.” See Memoir, pp. 424, 439.

73. Fletcher, , History of Oberlin College, 1:28Google Scholar; Finney, , Memoir, pp. 282–283, 318–319, 324.Google Scholar

74. Quoted by McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, pp. 79–80.Google Scholar

75. Finney, , Memoir, p. 288.Google Scholar

76. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, p. 108.Google Scholar

77. Fletcher, , History of Oberlin College, 1: 23Google Scholar; Finney, , Memoir, p. 324, 332–333Google Scholar; McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, pp. 46, 50–54.Google Scholar For the control of benevolent societies by men of wealth, and the collapse of the benevolent empire due to the withdrawl of their support resulting from the depression of 1837, see Pessen, , Riches, Class and Power Before the Civil War, pp. 176–177,Google Scholar and Barnes, Gilbert H. and Dumond, Dwight L., ed., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and Sarah Grimke, 1822 -1844, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934), 1:12 n.Google Scholar

78. Cited in Pessen, , Jacksonian America, p. 76.Google Scholar

79. Finney, , Memoir, pp. 300–301.Google Scholar A Edward Pessen and Bernard Weisberger have noted, despite all the “popular trappings… equalitarian slogans and…democratic unplications” Finney 's new measures revivalism had in Pessen 's words “a touch of conservatism at its core.” In fact, the Jacksonian party was not the political preference of those revivalists who announced a party. See Pessen, , Jacksonian America, p. 80Google Scholar; Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 156.Google Scholar

80. For the millennial underpinnings to the progressive theory of education embodied in manual labor schools like Oberlin and Knox Colleges, see Muelder, Herman R., Fighters for Freedom: The History of Anti-Slavery Activities of Men and Women Associated with Knox College (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 29,Google Scholar and Fletcher, , History of Oberlin College, 1:39, 89–90, 169, 205.Google Scholar

81. Ibid., p. 252; McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, pp. 110, 112 ff.Google Scholar

82. Finney, Charles O., Lectures on Systematic Theology (London: William Tegg and Co.; 1851), p. 708Google Scholar; McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, p. xliv.Google Scholar

83. Finney, , Lectures to Professing Christians, pp. 52, 103–104.Google Scholar

84. Brace's 1854 observation is quoted in Weisberger, , They Gathered at the River, p. 157.Google Scholar

85. McLoughlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.Google ScholarSmith, Timothy, Revivalism and Social Reform, p. 103,Google Scholar has noted the neglected relationship between the “Oberlin Heresy” and Wesleyanism. Finney's initial suspicions of Methodist teachings on perfectionism were grounded in his perception of the Wesleyan association of sanctification with “states of the sensibility.” Memoirs, p. 340. This did not stop Finney, however, from esteeming the work of the Methodists as worth more than all the rest of the denominations put together, prompting one critic to quip, let Finney “go to the Methodists.” See Brockway, , Delineation, p. 59.Google Scholar

86. Johnson, James E., “Charles O. Finney and Oberlin Perfectionism,” Journal of Presbyterlan History 46 (03 1968): 47–48.Google Scholar

87. Finney, , Memoirs, pp. 373–384.Google Scholar

88. Ibid., p. 384.

89. Finney, , Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 619.Google Scholar

90. Ibid., p. 596.

91. Ibid., pp. 619 ff.

92. Ibid., pp. 729, 758.

93. Ibid., pp. 583, 580, 587.

94. Ibid., p. 616.

95. Ibid., p. 618; Mead, “Charles Grandison Finney,” p. 13.

96. Ibid., pp. 759–760, 593–595; Finney, , Lectures to Profeesing Christians, p. 253Google Scholar; Opie, John, “Finney 's Failure of Nerve: The Untimely Demise of Evangelical Theology,” Journal of Presbyterian History 51 (Summer 1973): 172–173.Google Scholar Opie identifies five stages in Finney's theological development, culminating in his perfectionism stage.

97. Ibid., pp. 595, 612, 573, 575. Finney stated unequivocally that if Christian perfection is understood as that plateau where future progress is impossible, Christian perfection is unattainable.

98. Johnson, , “Finney and Oberlin Perfectionism,” p. 49Google Scholar; Johnson, , “Finney and Oberlin Perfectionism: Part II,” Journal of Presbyterian History 46 (06 1968): 135Google Scholar; Finney, , Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 616.Google Scholar

99. McLonghlin, , Lectures on Revivals, pp. xivlii–xlii.Google Scholar

100. Letters of Beecher and Nettleton, pp. 71–72.