1. The standard biography remains George Wright, F., Charles Grandison Finney (Cambridge, 1891).Google Scholar Many accounts of Finney's career by evangelical authors are largely hagiographic and uncritically dependent upon Finney's own memoirs. The most helpful work on Finney as a revivalist was by McLoughlin, William G. Jr, in Modern Revivalism: Charles G. Finney to Billy Graham (New York, 1959), pp. 11–153.Google Scholar The classic study of the area from which Finney emerged is Cross, Whitney R., The Burnedover District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, 1950), especially pp. 151–251.Google Scholar For a general study of the revival period see Weisberger, Bernard A., They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalistc and Their Impact upon Religion in America (Chicago, 1966), pp. 87–126.Google Scholar

2. Chroust, Anton-Hermann, The Rise of the Legal Profession in America, Vol. 2: The Revolution and the Post-Revolutionary Era (Norman, Oklahoma, 1965), pp. 97–98.Google Scholar

3. Charles Warren explained that the “popular odium” of the legal profession was grounded in “the general feeling that the intricacies of special pleading which made the law so mysterious and unintelligible to laymen, the technicalities of the old Common Law, and the jargon of Latin, French, and unfamiliar terms in which it was so often expressed, were all tricks of the trade, designed and purposely kept in force by the Bar, in order to made acquisition of a knowledge of the law difficult to the public, and in order to constitute themselves a privileged class and monopoly” A History of the American Bar (Boston, 1911), pp. 224–225.Google Scholar

4. From the preamble of the Pike River Claimants Union, quoted by Hurst, James Willard in Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison, 1956) p. 4.Google Scholar

5. “The American People: Their Space, Time and Religion,” Journal of Religion 34 (1954): 247.Google Scholar

6. Law and the Conditions of Freedom, p. 6.

7. Ibid., p. 24.

8. Ritter, George, An Essay on the Lawyer and the Law as a Profession (St. Louis, 1880), p. 10.Google Scholar

9. The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1826–1860 (New York, 1954), p. 11.Google Scholar

10. Cf. McLoughlin's, William helpful introduction to The American Evangelicals, 1800–1900 (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

11. It is well known that Americans beleagured the early county court system with disputes and made the days when court was in session community festivals. The sort of judge most likely to win support in these circumstances was typified by the “indomitable Democrat,” remembered by Levi Beardsley, one Jedediah Peck, preacher and politician: “Not being a lawyer by profession, his honor never pretended to much knowledge of the law, but went for the common sense reasonable construction of each transaction” Reminiscences: personal and other incidents: early settlement of Ostego county.… (New York, 1852), p. 72.Google Scholar

12. Perry Miller provides a detailed account of what he calls “the amazing rise, within three or four decades, of the legal profession from its chaotic condition of around 1790 to a position of political and intellectual domination,” in his The Life of the Mind in Americafrom the Revolution to the Civil War (New York, 1965), pp. 99–265.Google Scholar

13. Sweet, W. W., Religion in the Development of American Culture, 1765–1840 (New York, 1952),Google Scholar chapter five.

14. Perry, Miller, The Life of the Mind in America, p. 103.Google Scholar

15. Calvin Colton, History and Character of American Revivals (London, 1832), p. 1.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 6.

17. Ibid., p. 34.

18. Ibid., p. 28.

19. Ibid., p. 170–172.

20. Ibid., p. 256.

21. Ibid., p. 257. Colton's enthusiasm for revivalism waned considerably in the next few years, and by the time of his return to America in 1835 he was so disturbed by the disorder among the Presbyterians that he took orders in the Episcopal Church. See Cave, Alfred A., “Calvin Colton: An Antebellum Disaffection with the Presbyterian Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History 50 (1972): 39–53.Google Scholar It is significant, however, that all of Colton's objections—to the increased power of the laity, particularly in the criticism of their social betters; to emotional sensationalism in the raising of revivals; to various reform movements, especially abolition, which threatened existing laws and institutions—rested on the conviction that law is the foundation of true religion. In 1836 Colton published his Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country: With Reasons for Preferring Episcopacy, in which he wrote, “Religion without government runs into fanaticism—into chaos—in the same manner, as the ordinary state of society would be dissolved into anarchy without civil order” (quoted by Cave, op. cit., p. 46). Charles Finney would have agreed heartily with Colton's statement; the crucial difference between them is that Finney believed every person can understand and participate (directly) in the government of both Church and State. Colton was an “artistocrat;” for him the law orders society into ranks of relative rights and authority. Finney was a “democrat;” for him the law is a set of divine precepts to which all persons have equal access and equal responsibility. To juxtapose the two is to dramatize the ambivalence toward law in the nineteenth century: is the law designed to restrain and conserve, or is the law an instrument for activity and change? Both the promoters and the opponents of Finney's revivals could appeal to law as the foundation of their views.

22. Finney, Charles G., Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney Written by Himself (New York, 1876), pp. 89, 339.Google Scholar Hereafter referred to as MF.

23. History and Character of American Revivals, p. 274.

24. Thus we must modify William Warren Sweet's thesis that revivalism in America grew out of the social conditions of the frontier where traditional institutions had lost their cohesive power [Revivalism in America: Its Origin, Growth and Influence (New York, 1944).]Google Scholar While this argument holds for frontier awakenings, such as the revival at Cane Ridge in 1801, Finney's revival preaching appealed to those who had already achieved a minimal degree of social order, including a system of laws which regulated men's power to shape their own destinies. Edward Pessen notes that Finney's appeal to the power of self-determination attracted both the rural supporters of Jacksonian democracy and the professional and commercial classes of the urban areas who were anti-Jacksonian in politics [Jacksonian America: Society, Personality and Politics (Homewood, Illinois, 1969), pp. 75–84].Google Scholar The reason for the universality of Finney's appeal is the fact that his theology provided a means of directing individual initiative, an interest shared by settler and capitalist alike.

25. Lectures to Professing Christians (New York, 1879), p. 309.Google Scholar Hereafter referred to as LPC. Subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the Lectures, pp. 432, 435, 78.

26. Cf. William McLoughlin's argument that Finney's millennialism is the social equivalent of his perfectionism, in Modern Revivalism, pp. 105–108.

27. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1955), pp. 67f.Google Scholar

28. Cross, Barbara M., ed., The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher (Cambridge, 1961) 1: 258, 260.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., 2: 167.

30. Ibid., 2: 204.

31. The nineteenth-century defenders of Presbyterian orthodoxy, as set forth in the Westminister Confession (1645), were called the “Old School” to distinguish their views from the modified Calvinism of Nathaniel W. Taylor, Lyman Beecher, and Finney. These latter evangelicals were closely associated with the revival movement, and emphasized the free agency of man in conversion. Joseph Haroutunian provided a detailed account of the transition from “Old School” to “New School” views in Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology (New York, 1970 [1932]).Google Scholar

32. Revival Sketches and Manual. In Two Parts (New York, 1859), p. 333.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 472.

34. Sermons on Gospel Themes, ed. Henry Cowles (Oberlin, 1876), p. 26.Google Scholar

35. Quoted by Chroust, , Rise of the Legal Profession, pp. 221–222.Google Scholar

36. Annual Address (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1881), p. 17.

37. Childhood and Society, revised edition (New York, 1963), p. 254.Google Scholar

38. MF, p. 5. In the newly-established village of Henderson, in Jefferson County, it is unlikely that Charles encountered any religious training except that afforded by an occasional itinerant. It was not until he had spent four years teaching in a district school (1808–1812) and four more years in Connecticut and New Jersey that he returned to New York State and settled in the town of Adams, a few miles from his parents' home. Here he first met the Reverend George Gale and began to receive instruction in theology. Finney recalled that “when I went to Adams to study law, I was almost as ignorant of religion as a heathen” (MF, p. 7). It was also true, as far as Finney was concerned, that he was as condemned “as a heathen,” and for that sorry state he laid no little blame on his father.

39. LPC, p. 347.

40. See “The Inner and Outer Revelation,” in Gospel Themes. In his Lectures to Professing Christians Finney cites legal authority for his theological position: “The common law, which is the voice of common reason, adopts it as a maxim that no man who breaks the law is to be excused for ignorance of the law, because all are held bound to know what the law is. … So it is in religion: where men have both the outward means of instruction, and the inward teachings of the Holy Spirit, absolutely within their reach.…” (pp. 413–414).

41. Ed. William G. McLoughlin, Jr. (Cambridge, 1960), p. 13.

42. Finney's mentor, Benjamin Wright, is listed as the surrogate judge of Jefferson County for the years 1820–1821, and 1823–1840 [Chester, Alden, Courts and Lawyers of New York: A History, 1609–1925, 3 vols. (New York, 1925)].Google Scholar Wright's position during Finney's apprenticeship gave him jurisdiction over the probate of wills and testaments and the settlement of estates. Since the town of Adams boasted only four lawyers as late as 1836, we may conclude that Judge Wright was a man of considerably business, with little time for the conscientious instruction of his apprentices [Gordon, Thomas F., Gazetteer of the State of New York. … (Philadelphia, 1836), p. 487].Google Scholar

43. Skeletons of a Course of Theological Lectures (Oberlin, 1840).Google Scholar

44. Blake, D. T., quoted by Miller, , The Life of the Mind in America, p. 165.Google Scholar The vision of “the essential unity of plan” hidden beneath the multitude of civil laws guided the legal mind of the nineteenth century. In his introduction to the American edition of The Institutes of Justinian (Chicago, 1876), p. lxi,Google Scholar W. G. Hammond, chancellor of the Law department at Iowa State University, argued that, while the Institutes are “destitute of scientific order,” they bear witness to the true nature of law which “Blackstone and his system” sought to clarify. “… all law, properly studied, is one system, one science, and … no man has ever done anything of real value to the grand edifice unless, like Blackstone, he was willing to follow the plans of the Great Architect, revealed in history …”

45. Laws of Ecclessiastical Polity (1594), Book I.

46. MF, pp. 24, 53.

47. MF, p. 155.

48. “Converting Sinners a Christian Duty,” Gospel Themes, p. 335; LPC, p. 272.

49. Finney, , Lectures on Systematic Theology, ed. Fairchild, J. H. (Oberlin, 1878) p. 298,Google Scholar hereafter referred to as LST. In “Quenching the Spirit,” Finney insists that no matter how vividly the gospel is presented, “the will has still the same changeless power to yield or not yield.…” (Gospel Themes, p. 247).

50. MF, p. 371.

51. “On the Atonement,” Gospel Themes, p. 208.

52. LST, p. 311.

53. Pufendorf, Samuel, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, in Eight Books, tr. Kennett, Basil (London, 1710),Google Scholar Book I, chapter three, p. 28. Pufendorf, a German statesman and author of several works on history and jurisprudence, appears on the early reading lists of John Adams and James Kent, as well as in the curriculum of the College of Philadelphia as early as 1756, and is quoted frequently throughout Blackstone's Commentaries.

54. “The Excuses of Sinners Condemn God, ” Gospel Themes, p. 80.

55. MF, pp. 1–2.

56. MF, p. 89. This self-description is corroborated by a member of Finney's audience in the Rochester revival: “I listened. It did not sound like preaching, but like a lawyer arguing a case before a court and jury…” (quoted by McLoughlin, , Modern Revivalism, pp. 55f).Google Scholar Finney proudly recorded that the revival affected “the highest classes of society” in Rochester, and that “very soon the work took effect, extensively, among the lawyers in that city” (MF, p. 289). Finney's innovative style was unquestionably effective, drawing crowds both large and anxious. Henry O'Reilly noted that the First Presbyterian Church of Rochester was remarkable for its many buttresses, “added to strengthen the walls, after an alarm occasioned by some imaginary insecurity of the building, owing to the large concourse who thronged to hear the Rev. Mr. Finney during a revival a few year ago” [Settlement in the West. Sketches of Rochester; with Incidental Notices of Western New York (Rochester, 1838), p. 279].Google Scholar

57. LST, p. xi.

58. “On Trusting in the Mercy of God,” Gospel Themes, pp. 22–23, 30.

59. LST, p. 227.

60. Social Ideas, p. 125.

61. See Marty, Martin E., Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York, 1970)Google Scholar, especially ch. 12.

62. LPC, p. 342.