Charles G. Finney was the acknowledged king of American evangelists until Dwight L. Moody came on the stage of action.  They resembled each other in untiring industry, unflinching courage, unswerving devotion to the marrow of the Gospel, and unreserved consecration to the service of Christ.  The secret of Finney’s power was the fearless manner with which he drove God’s word into the consciences of sinners—­high or humble—­and his perpetual reliance on the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit in his own soul.  Emptied of self, he was filled with the Holy Spirit.  His sermons were chain lightning, flashing conviction into the hearts of the stoutest sceptics, and the links of his logic were so compact that they defied resistance.  Probably no minister in America ever numbered among his converts so many lawyers and men of intellectual culture.

Soon after commencing his law practice he was brought under the most intense conviction of sin; and the narrative of his conversion—­as given in his autobiography—­equals any chapter in John Bunyan’s “Grace Abounding.”  After light and peace broke into his agonized soul, he burst into tears of joy, and exclaimed:  “I am so happy that I cannot live,” He began at once to converse with his neighbors about their souls.  When a certain Deacon B. came into his office and reminded him that his cause was to be tried at ten o’clock that morning, Mr. Finney replied, “Deacon B., I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause, and cannot plead yours.”  The deacon was thunderstruck, and went off and settled his suit with his antagonist immediately.

From that time a law office was no place for the fervid spirit of Charles G. Finney, and he resolved at once to prepare for the ministry.

Revivals followed his red-hot discourses wherever he went.  At Auburn he declares that he had—­during prayer in his own room—­a wonderful vision in which God drew so near to him that his flesh trembled on his bones, and he shook from head to foot as if amid the thunderings of Sinai!  He felt an assurance that God would sustain him against all his enemies; and then there came a “great lifting up,” and a sweet calm followed after the agitation.  Such extraordinary spiritual experiences occurred quite often during his career as a revivalist, and they remind one strikingly of similar experiences of John Bunyan—­to whom Finney bore a certain degree of resemblance.  At Rochester many of the leading lawyers were attracted by his bold and logical style of speech; and among his converts there was the distinguished jurist, Addison Gardner.  It was during his ministry in New York that he delivered his celebrated “Lectures on Revivals,” which were reprinted abroad and translated into several foreign languages.  Of all Mr. Finney’s published productions, these lectures are the most characteristic.  Often extravagant in their rhetoric, and sometimes rather reckless in theological statements, they contain a mine of pungent truth which every young minister ought to possess and to peruse very often.  I shall never cease to thank God for the inspiration they have imparted to my own humble ministry; and they have had a place in my library close beside the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and the biographies of Payson and McCheyne, and the soul-quickening sermons of Bushnell, Addison Alexander and Dr. McLaren.