Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), Lectures on Revivals of Religion
Finney grew up in upstate New York, the center of early American revivalism. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister and became the leading advocate of the "new measures" of simple, emotional preaching and the calculated planning of revivals. He published these lectures in 1835, the same year in which he joined the faculty of Oberlin College as Professor of Theology (p. 117).
Calculated planning is essential in order to influence rational people toward God. “Religion is the work of man.” It is man’s duty to obey, but because of his great wickedness, he is reluctant to obey. God has to reach out in order to influence man to obey. Because of this, all the religion in the world has been produced by revivals. God finds it necessary to take advantage of the excitability that exists in man. He finds the need to produce powerful excitements in people before He can lead them to obey. People have “so many things to lead their minds off religion.” By raising the excitement level, these obstacles are able to be overcome. The church is so little enlightened that she will not go to work without a special interest being awakened. Believers must be rationally appealed to, often in a way so outrageous as to wear them down and break through any barriers they had constructed to the gospel. “A revival of religion is not a miracle…It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means.” The means affects the result. We are not to sit idly by and hope in the sovereignty of God to same others. We must roll up our sleeves and be strategic about what we do. It is man’s job to go to work promoting religion, not just sit back and rely on God’s sovereignty.
Tomorrow: Sarah M. Grimké
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