revivals—Christians with the courage of Peter Cartwright and the praying

revivals—Christians with the courage of Peter Cartwright and the praying

point of expiring. Something of an extraordinary nature seemed necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people, who were ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable, and futurity a dream. This revival has done it; it has confounded infidelity, awed vice into silence, and brought numbers beyond calculation, under serious impressions.334

The Kentucky Communions would be the first winds to fan the flame of the Second Great Awakening. Cane Ridge rang in the nineteenth century, and Azusa Street rang in the twentieth. We Christians of the twenty-first century need to rise up and pray that God will shake this century from its secular complacency —and to a greater degree than He shook Kentucky in the summers of 1800 and 1801. And we need more believers like those whose faith was refined by such revivals—Christians with the courage of Peter Cartwright and the praying tenacity of James McGready and Charles Finney.

296 Francis Asbury, "Letter to Thorton Fleming," 2 December 1802, The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, vol. 3, 251, quoted in Rudolph, Francis Asbury, 119–120.

297 Galli, "Revival at Cane Ridge," 10.

298 Paul K. Conklin, Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 53.

299 Barton Stone, A Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone, 1847, Chapter 2, based on the edition in Voices from Cane Ridge, ed. Rhodes Thompson (St. Louis, MO: The Bethany Press, 1954), 31–134, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/barton.html#ch_two.

300 James Smith, History of the Christian Church, From Its Origin to the Present Time; Compiled from Various Authors. Including a History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Drawn from Authentic Documents (Nashville: Cumberland Presbyterian Office, 1835), 672–673, http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/McGready.htm.

301 Richard Beard, Brief Biographical Sketches of Some of the Early Ministers of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Nashville: Southern

Methodist Publishing House, 1867), 7–17, http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/McGready.htm.

302 Galli, "Revival at Cane Ridge," 11.

303 Ibid.

304 James McGready, "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800," letter to a friend, 23 October 1801, Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America, http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/McGreaBK.htm#anchor222019.

305 James McGready, "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800."

306 McGready, "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800."

307 Ibid.

308 Ibid.

309 T. Marshall Smith, Legends of the War of Independence (Louisville: J. F. Brennan, Publisher, 1855), 372–373, quoted in Kenneth O. Brown, Holy Ground: A Study of the American Camp Meeting (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 18. The hymn "Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove" was written by Isaac Watts and was widely sung by Methodists.

310 John McGee to the Reverend Thomas L. Douglas, 23 June 1820, in Methodist Magazine 4 (1821): 190, quoted in John B. Boles, The Great Revival: Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1972), 54.

311 John Rankin, "Autobiographical Sketch," 1845, quoted in John Patterson MacLean, Shakers of Ohio: Fugitive Papers Concerning the Shakers of Ohio, with Unpublished Manuscripts (Columbus, OH: The F. J. Heer Printing Company, 1907), 57.

312 Rankin, "Autobiographical Sketch," 280–281, quoted in Boles, The Great

Revival, 55.

313 McGready, "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800."

314 McGready, "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800."

315 John McGee to Douglas, Methodist Magazine 4:191, quoted in Boles, The Great Revival, 57.

316 James McGready, "A Sacramental Meditation," quoted in Hughlan P. Richey, "Red River Church and the Revival of 1800," Adairville [KY] Enterprise, August 14, 1969, 2, Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America, http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/churches/RedRivKY.htm.

317 Barton Stone, Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone, 1847, Chapter 5, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/barton.html#ch_five.

318 Ibid.

319 Ibid.

320 Barton Stone, Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone, 1847, Chapter 5, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/barton.html#ch_five.

321 Barton Stone, Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone, 1847, Chapter 5, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/barton.html#ch_five.

322 Ray A. Billington, Westward Expansion (New York, 1949), 250, quoted in Bernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact upon Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), 31.

323 Letter from a man to his sister, 10 August 1801, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/accounts/letter8.html.

324 Barton Stone, Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone, 1847, Chapter 6, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/barton.html#ch_six.

325 Robert W. Finley, quoted in James R. Rodgers, The Cane Ridge MeetingHouse (Cincinnati, OH: The Standard Publishing House, 1910), 59–62.

326 Robert Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Kentucky: With a Preliminary Sketch of the Churches in the Valley of Virginia (New York: Robert Carter, 1847), 138.

327 Letter from a man to his sister, 10 August 1801, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/accounts/letter8.html.

328 Moses Hoge to Ashbel Green, 10 September 1801, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/accounts/letter3.html.

329 Peter Cartwright, Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, The Backwoods Preacher, ed. W. P. Strickland (Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts, 1856), 30–31.

330 E. Merton Coulter, College Life in the Old South (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928), 194–195, quoted in Vinson Synan, The HolinessPentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 13.

331 Theodore Morrison, Chautauqua, a Center for Education, Religion, and the Arts in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 35, quoted in Brown, Holy Ground, 39.

332 Cartwright, Autobiography, 31–33.

333 Conklin, Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost, 115–116; quotes from Baxter to Archibald Alexander, 1 January 1802, quoted in Increase of Piety, or The Revival of Religion in the United States of America, et cetera (Newburyport, MA: Angier March, 1802), 63–64.

334 Baxter to Archibald Alexander, 1 January 1802, quoted in Increase of Piety, or The Revival of Religion in the United States of America, et cetera, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/accounts/letter12.html.

Chapter Six

Peter Cartwright

"The Pistol-toting Evangelist"

Love every body and fear no man.

—Peter Cartwright's motto

It is sometimes said that hard times call for hard men, and this statement certainly applies to Peter Cartwright. He would make the American frontier his congregation for roughly seventy years of his life. If ever there was someone who took Paul's advice to "fight the good fight" (1 Timothy 6:12) and, like Paul, was able to say, "So fight I, not as one that beateth the air" (1 Corinthians 9:26), it was Cartwright. He was never afraid to confront a heckler—with a fist to the jaw, if needed—or discharge his pistol into the air to quiet a crowd.

On the American frontier, the battle for religion was as fierce as the battle for land. It seemed that this was another time when "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12). Peter Cartwright was just the man to advance the kingdom of God in this time, through his grit and his wit. His nickname, the "Backwoods Preacher," was well earned, and he was an American hero to rival the likes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.

Growing Up on the Frontier

Peter Cartwright was born on September 1, 1785, in Amherst County, Virginia, to Peter Cartwright Sr. and Christiana Garvin, one and a half years before they were married. According to a newspaper story from Civil War times, Peter was born while his mother was hiding in a dense cluster of cane trees to protect herself from an Indian attack.335 His father was a two-year veteran of the Revolutionary War. When Peter was about five years old, the family moved into the newly opened Kentucky territory. Their harrowing journey attests to Kentucky's wild past.

When the Cartwright family moved westward in 1790–1791, Kentucky was still an unbroken wilderness—the land of "canes and turkeys"—with no roads and few towns. It was a Promised Land to many poor Easterners, complete

with warring tribes to withstand and overcome. Violence and fighting between Native Americans was so rife that the group of two hundred families heading west required an escort of one hundred well-armed young men. Because there were no roads, the families traveled with pack horses instead of wagons. This made them attractive targets for the disgruntled tribes, who were unhappy about the settlers taking over their hunting grounds. Less than one day into their passage through the Cumberland Gap, the travelers came across the bodies of another group that had been murdered and scalped by a Native American war party. This discovery was not isolated. They came across several such sites during their trek, and it was not uncommon for the scouts to see small groups of Indians lurking in the trees nearby.

On their first Sunday in Kentucky, the group voted to move on rather than rest. It was a dreary day, with mist and rain. The gloom did not help the settlers' mood, nor did the campsite they chose that night—a place that had been nicknamed "Camp Defeat" after a large group of settlers was massacred there. Rumors of imminent ambush circulated within the camp.

Peter's father was placed as a sentinel at the edge of the brush surrounding the camp. A heavy cloud cover obscured the evening moon and stars, and soon after the camp had grown quiet for the evening, he heard what sounded like a pig rustling and grunting not far from him. Recalling that no one had brought a pig on the journey, he was frightened. He aimed his gun at a dark form he saw moving toward him, fired, turned on his heels, and ran back to camp.

The gunshot roused the entire camp, and everybody wanted to know what had happened. When Peter's father explained himself, some scoffed, saying he was just scared and wanted an excuse to return to the camp with the women and children. To prove that he was not a coward, he demanded a lantern and set off with a group of men to investigate the area where he had fired the shot. When they reached the site, the light of his lantern revealed an Indian brave— tomahawk in one hand, rifle in the other—lying dead in the brush. Cartwright's rifle ball had struck near the center of his forehead. Few people slept that night, but there were no further alarms. Never had they seen so beautiful a sunrise as they saw the next morning.

A few days later, the group of travelers came upon a man who had been shot in the face. He was the sole survivor of a party of seven. Days later, the party

approached Crab Orchard, the first settlement and fort they would reach in Kentucky. Feeling like they had finally reached a safe haven, the party divided as darkness fell, as some wanted to rest and continue on the next day. Seven families stayed behind, while the remainder of the travelers pressed on into the darkness to reach Crab Orchard. Of the seven families that stayed behind, only one man escaped, barefooted, to recount the attack and slaughter of the others at the hands of a raiding party. The captain of the fort organized a group to find the raiding party and recapture all that had been seized from the slaughtered families. Of the twenty-five Indians responsible for the massacre, only one survived.

After this episode, Peter's father took his family to Lincoln County, where they lived for two years on a rented farm. From there, they moved to Logan County, still known at that time as "Rogue's Harbor," even though many of the murderers and horse thieves who had earned it that name had already moved further west. As homesteaders moved in, local men formed a group and called themselves the Regulators. They did what they could to establish a rule of law in this wilderness and to chase outlaws away.

The Cartwright homestead was located about nine miles south of the county seat, Russellville, and just one mile north of the Kentucky-Tennessee border. There were no grain mills for forty miles, so they would grind their own meal and sift it through deerskin with holes turned in it, which was stretched over a hoop. They would typically eat the meat of freshly killed animals, and would gather herbs and tea leaves from the woods. They also made their own sugar and molasses from maple sap.

Though Peter's mother had become a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the young Peter was more of a rogue than a Christian, given his passions for card playing, horseracing, and dancing. His father held some sway over him, but it was his mother who wept and prayed constantly for his reform. At times, he was moved by her words, or would attend a meeting where he vowed to seek God more earnestly, but these moments of remorse were fleeting. He would inevitably find himself in the company of other young people fond of gambling and dancing, and he always joined in their pastimes.

To make matters worse, Peter's father bought him a fine horse that proved a strong racer. He also bought him a pack of cards, and while Peter never

cheated, he did become rather proficient at gambling to win money, which grew into an addiction. He called himself "naturally a wild, wicked boy."336

When Peter was fourteen or fifteen, his family sent him to live with a man named Dr. Beverly Allen so that he could attend a school near Allen's house. Allen had been a Methodist preacher, but an illicit love affair had pitted him against the law. In an effort to escape the Georgia community's retribution for this relationship, he had shot and killed a sheriff who tried to apprehend him. Afterward, he had fled to "Rogues Harbor." His immediate family soon followed him there, and he set up an office to practice medicine. The school Peter attended proved rather poor, but it did teach Peter to read and write.

The Holy Spirit Falls on Kentucky

Peter was sixteen when the four-day Communions of James McGready and others brought revival to Kentucky. Peter found himself in the thick of this wave of the Holy Spirit—a wave that ultimately converted him. In his Autobiography, he described his conversion:

In 1801, when I was in my sixteenth year, my father, my eldest half brother, and myself, attended a wedding about five miles from home, where there was a great deal of drinking and dancing, which was very common of marriages those days. I drank little or nothing; my delight was in dancing. After a late hour in the night, we mounted our horses and started for home. I was riding my racehorse.

A few minutes after we had put up the horses, and were sitting by the fire, I began to reflect on the manner in which I had spent the day and evening. I felt guilty and condemned. I rose and walked the floor. My mother was in bed. It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned blind; an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to have mercy on me.

My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord that if he would spare me, I would seek and serve him; and I never fully broke that promise. My mother prayed for me a long time. At

length we lay down, but there was little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father, and requested him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards, and gave them to mother, who threw them into the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and miserable, that I was incapable of any regular business.

My father was greatly distressed on my account, thinking I must die, and he would lose his only son. He bade me retire altogether from business, and take care of myself.

Soon it was noised abroad that I was distracted, and many of my associates in wickedness came to see me, to try and divert my mind from those gloomy thoughts of my wretchedness; but all in vain. I exhorted them to desist from the course of wickedness which we had been guilty of together. The class-leader and local preacher were sent for. They tried to point me to the bleeding Lamb, they prayed for me most fervently. Still I found no comfort, and although I had never believed in the doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation, I was sorely tempted to believe I was a reprobate, and doomed, and lost eternally, without any chance of salvation.

At length one day I retired to the horse-lot, and was walking and wringing my hands in great anguish, trying to pray, on the borders of utter despair. It appeared to me that I heard a voice from heaven, saying, "Peter, look at me." A feeling of relief flashed over me as quick as an electric shock. It gave me hopeful feelings, and some encouragement to seek mercy, but still my load of guilt remained. I repaired to the house, and told my mother what had happened to me in the horse-lot. Instantly she seemed to understand it, and told me the Lord had done this to encourage me to hope for mercy, and exhorted me to take encouragement, and seek on, and God would bless me with the pardon of my sins at another time.

Some days after this, I retired to a cave on my father's farm to pray in secret. My soul was in an agony; I wept, I prayed, and said, "Now, Lord, if there is mercy for me, let me find it," and it really seemed to me that I could almost lay hold of the Saviour, and realize a reconciled God. All of a sudden,

such a fear of the devil fell upon me that it really appeared to me that he was surely personally there, to seize and drag me down to hell, soul and body, and such a horror fell on me that I sprang to my feet and ran to my mother at the house. My mother told me this was a device of Satan to prevent me from finding the blessing then. Three months rolled away, and still I did not find the blessing of the pardon of my sins....

In the spring of this year, Mr. M'Grady [McGready], a minister of the Presbyterian Church, who had a congregation and meeting-house, as we then called them, about three miles north of my father's house, appointed a sacramental meeting in this congregation, and invited the Methodist preachers to attend with them, and especially John Page, who was a powerful Gospel minister, and was very popular among the Presbyterians. Accordingly he came, and preached with great power and success.

There were no camp-meetings in regular form at this time, but as there was a great waking up among the Churches, from the revival that had broken out at Cane Ridge [this remarkable Communion service was actually later that same year]...many flocked to those sacramental meetings. The church would not hold the tenth part of the congregation. Accordingly, the officers of the Church erected a stand in a contiguous shady grove, and prepared seats for a large congregation. The people crowded to this meeting from far and near. They came in their large wagons, with victuals mostly prepared. The women slept in the wagons, and the men under them. Many stayed on the ground night and day for a number of nights and days together. Others were provided for among the neighbors around. The power of God was wonderfully displayed; scores of sinners fell under the preaching, like men slain in mighty battle; Christians shouted aloud for joy.

To this meeting I repaired, a guilty, wretched sinner. On the Saturday evening of said meeting, I went, with weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind, as though a voice said to me, "Thy sins are all forgiven thee." Divine light flashed all round me, unspeakable joy sprung up in my soul. I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed as if I was in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and everything seemed, and I really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God; and though I have

been since then, in many instances, unfaithful, yet I have never, for one moment, doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins and give me religion.337

Held at the Red River Meetinghouse, this meeting was in June, near the start of the biggest Communion season ever. The meeting lasted the entire night with no pauses or breaks, and more than eighty people found peace with God. Peter described what resulted from that summer's revival:

In this revival originated our camp-meetings, and in both these denominations they were held every year, and, indeed, have been ever since, more or less. They would erect their camps with logs or frame them, and cover them with clapboards or shingles. They would also erect a shed, sufficiently large to protect five thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to fifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers, of different denominations, would come together and preach night and day, four or five days together; and, indeed, I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great good resulted from them. I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than five hundred Christians all shouting aloud the high praises of God at once; and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands were awakened and converted to God at these camp-meetings. Some sinners mocked, some of the old dry professors opposed, some of the old starched Presbyterian preachers preached against these exercises, but still the work went on and spread almost in every direction, gathering additional force, until our country seemed all coming home to God.338

Peter spent much of that summer going from one Communion service to the next, hungering continually for God and growing ever bolder in his faith. He participated in many small prayer meetings that the young men would start on the periphery of the gatherings, and in doing so, he helped several men come to the Lord. At one such meeting, a number of detractors spoke against the meeting, including a rather intelligent man who said he was Jewish and seemed to enjoy opposing Christians. At one point, he observed Peter and several other young men assembling one of these small prayer groups, and he approached them to investigate. Peter recalled this incident in his

Autobiography:

In the midst of our little meeting this Jew appeared, and he desired to know what we were about. Well, I told him. He said it was all wrong, that it was idolatry to pray to Jesus Christ, and that God did not nor would he answer such prayers. I soon saw his object was to get us into debate and break up our prayer-meeting. I asked him, "Do you really believe there is a God?"

"Yes, I do," said he.

"Do you believe that God will hear your prayers?"

"Yes," said he.

"Do you really believe that this work among us is wrong?"

He answered, "Yes."

"Well now, my dear sir," said I, "let us test this matter. If you are in earnest, get down here and pray to God to stop this work, and if it is wrong he will answer your petition and stop it; if it is not wrong, all hell cannot stop it."

The rest of our company seeing me so bold took courage. The Jew hesitated. I said, "Get down instantly and pray, for if we are wrong we want to know it." After still lingering and showing unmistakable signs of his unwillingness, I rallied him again. Slowly he kneeled, cleared his throat, and coughed. I said, "Now, boys, pray with all your might that God may answer by fire."

Our Jew began and said, tremblingly, "O Lord God Almighty," and coughed again, cleared his throat, and started again, repeating the same words. We saw his evident confusion, and we simultaneously prayed out aloud at the top of our voices. The Jew leaped up and started off, and we raised the shout and had a glorious time. Several of our mourners were converted, and we all rose and started into camp at the top of our speed, shouting, having, as we firmly believed, obtained a signal victory over the devil and the Jew.339

The Kentucky Boy Starts Out

At the start of the Communion season the following year, Peter was

surprised when his pastor presented him with a letter that acknowledged him as an "exhorter" for the Methodists.

Peter Cartwright is hereby permitted to exercise his gifts as an exhorter in the Methodist Episcopal Church, so long as his practice is agreeable to the Gospel. Signed in behalf of the society at Ebenezer.

Jesse Walker, A. P. May, 1802.340

Peter had not sought this office, but he was persuaded to accept it. One provision of the office was that if the Spirit came upon him to preach, he could know that he had the right to do so.

That fall, Peter's father moved the family to Lewiston County, near the mouth of the Cumberland River—an area that just happened to be eighty miles from the nearest Methodist circuit. Peter and his mother asked for letters of membership so that they could hold meetings in their house, and in response, Peter received a letter authorizing him to form a preaching circuit in the area. This permission was much more than he had expected, let alone hoped for. He had been planning to attend school, and had considered circuit preaching too great a responsibility for him. Brother Page, the presiding elder from whom Peter had requested the letters of membership, told him that preaching

was the very best school or college that I could find between heaven and earth, but advised me, when my father got settled down there, if I could find a good moral school with a good teacher, to go to it through the winter; then, in the spring and summer, form the circuit and do the best I could.341

Peter agreed with Page, and he found a school that looked promising. It did not work out, however, because the teacher, though he was a minister, hated Methodists "more than he hated the devil."342 The other boys at the school branded Peter with the name "The Methodist Preacher" and taunted him, little deterred by the schoolmaster. At one point, two of the boys decided to throw Peter into a nearby creek at a place where the bank was about seven feet high, and the pool about ten feet deep. To lure Peter to the riverbank, they feigned anguish for their sins and asked him to pray for them. He was suspicious of the authenticity of their request, but not wanting to reject them in case they were in earnest, he agreed to go. When they reached the clearing above the bank, the

two boys tried to grab Peter, but he ducked and, in an instant, flung one of them over the bank and wrestled the other to the ground. The two boys, being of roughly equal strength, had attempted to overpower Peter's efforts, but they soon found themselves at the brink of the bank, which they proceeded to tumble over together before plummeting into the pool.

Not appreciating his classmates' abuse, and feeling he would learn little in this academic environment, Peter went out to form the circuit and reported back as had been requested of him in the fall of 1804. Jesse Walker was appointed to the circuit, and he rode it for the next two years. Methodism was growing rapidly in the Western district.

Peter was eighteen, and he was asked to travel with another circuit rider to aid him with his work. In spite of his father's objections, his mother urged him to accept help, and her exhortations prevailed. Along the route, Peter was asked to give the evening service. Peter had no experience with evening services, let alone assurance that he was called to conduct them. He prayed fervently for God to help him, asking God to give him one convert that night as evidence that his call to preach was authentic and God-given. His preaching that night was met with tears and sighs, and one young man who had been known as a heathen gave his heart to the Lord and joined the church. Peter then felt the certain calling of God on his life. He travelled the circuit for three months, saw twenty-five more people converted, and received a six-dollar payment at the end. Peter became known as the "boy preacher" or the "Kentucky boy," and would ride a circuit for the next sixty-seven years.

A Funeral Service Leads to Revival

Peter was soon summoned to conduct a funeral service in an old Baptist meetinghouse. During the service, the Holy Spirit fell, just as He had during the camp meetings. Peter stayed awhile in order to minister night and day, and every meeting saw a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Peter saw twenty-three people saved, and would have immediately had them join the Methodist Church, but he had to contend with the local Baptist church for its members. In order to do this, he pretended to be a membership candidate at the Baptist church. He attended their meeting, gave his testimony, and was acknowledged as being saved.

The Baptists invited him to be baptized the next day in a nearby creek.

When they had assembled at the creek, Peter made sure he was first in line. He proclaimed that he had already been baptized, through sprinkling of water, to the satisfaction of his conscience; he did not need to be baptized again. When the Baptist minister refused him church membership, he managed to draw the twenty-three new converts away from the Baptist church because of its strict adherence to this doctrine of baptism. Peter then signed twenty-three people into membership in the Methodist Church. Later in life, Peter would say of the Baptists, "Indeed, they made so much ado about baptism by immersion, that the uninformed would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way to get there but by diving or swimming."343

Peter continued itinerating, and at the Western Conference of 1806, Francis Asbury ordained him as a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was not uncommon in the earlier years for Bishop Asbury to travel with an armed guard through the rough Indian country of the West, but he never considered postponing or canceling his personal visits to conferences. Dangers abounded, but the Bishop never had a problem getting through.

After his ordination, Peter was sent northeast to the Ohio border, where he met his first Yankees. He had been opposed to this trip initially, but when Francis Asbury took him by the arms and said, "O no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will make a man of you,"344 he could hardly refuse. This particular area seemed filled with various sects, including Universalism, Unitarianism, and deism, and exposure to these groups proved a veritable seminary experience for the young Peter, as he had to pore over his Bible to find rebuttals to the teachings and beliefs of these groups. During this time, Peter honed his skill and sharpened his wit as a powerful debater.

Opening Spiritual Territory

The West was in many ways a religious free-for-all at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and saints and scoundrels alike came to preach their gospels. Those who claimed to see visions and to hear God speak to them individually were rife, and many people were gullible, too quick to believe bluffing charlatans. One such charlatan once made his way into the forest a short distance from town, sprinkled some gunpowder on a tree stump, set it off with a cigar, and fell to the ground. When the townspeople heard the bang and saw the flash, they ran to see what had happened. They found the man lying

trancelike on the ground. When the crowd had swelled to a sufficient size, however, he roused himself and began to tell them that God had struck him down in a flash of light and had given him a vision. As he was telling his tale, Peter approached, smelled the sulfur from the gunpowder, and exposed him as the fraud he was.

As soon as I came near the stump, I smelted the sulphur of the powder; and stepping up to the stump, there was clearly the sign of powder, and hard by lay the cigar with which he had ignited it. He was now busy delivering his message. I stepped up to him, and asked him if an angel had appeared to him in that flash of light.

He said, "Yes."

Said I, "Sargent, did not that angel smell of brimstone?"

"Why," said he, "do you ask me such a foolish question?"

"Because," said I, "if an angel has spoken to you at all, he was from the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone!" and raising my voice, I said, "I smell sulphur now!" I walked up to the stump, and called on the people to come and see for themselves. The people rushed up, and soon saw through the trick, and began to abuse Sargent for a vile impostor. He soon left, and we were troubled no more with him or his brimstone angels.345

Unfortunately, not all of the religious scam artists were as easy to expose as this man.

At the end of his apportioned time in Ohio, Peter found himself in dire straits:

I had been from my father's house about three years; was five hundred miles from home; my horse had gone blind; my saddle was worn out; my bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced, (after a sort) at least a dozen times; and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to detect the original.346

He decided to make his way home, but he had only seventy-five cents in his pocket for the journey. Deciding he had no other choice, he struck out, determined to borrow the money to cover the expenses of food and lodging, if necessary. During the journey, however, God supplied his every expense, from

ferry tolls to one night's fare at an inn—the innkeeper waived the fee when Peter ministered to his disturbed wife and led her to salvation.

His wife was subject to spasms, and often had them. I commenced a conversation with her about religion. I found she was under deep concern about her soul. I asked if I might pray for her. "O, yes," she replied, "for there is no one in this place that cares for my soul."

I knelt and prayed, and then commenced singing, and directed her to Christ as an all-sufficient Saviour, and prayed again. She suddenly sprung out of the bed and shouted, "Glory to God! he has blessed my soul." It was a happy time indeed. The old gentleman wept like a child. We sung and shouted, prayed and praised, nearly all night. Next morning the old landlord told me my bill was paid tenfold, and that all he charged me was, every time I passed that way, to call and stay with them.347

The next day, Peter arrived home with only six and a quarter cents left. His parents greeted him warmly—his mother, especially warmly—and welcomed the stories of his adventures as a preacher. Before Peter set out for his next conference and circuit assignment, his father gave him "a fresh horse, a bridle and saddle, some new clothes, and forty dollars in cash. Thus equipped, I was ready for another three years' absence."348 Remuneration was often scant for circuit riders, and tales of barely getting by, surviving on the grace of God, were not uncommon.

Peter Marries Frances

The next conference was in Chillicothe, Ohio, on September 14, 1807, roughly two weeks after Peter's twenty-second birthday. He was assigned a circuit closer to home in the Cumberland district under James Ward, the district's presiding elder. It was in this area that he met and began to court Miss Frances Gaines. Breaking with the tradition of celibacy set forth by Bishop Francis Asbury and Peter's own bishop, William McKendree, he married Frances on her nineteenth birthday, August 18, 1808. Of this departure from tradition, Peter said, "After mature deliberation and prayer...I thought it was my duty to marry,"349 and that seemed adequate justification for him, as he had consulted none of his superiors on the matter. Peter and Frances celebrated their infare (a combined wedding reception and housewarming350) with his parents the following September, on Peter's twenty-third birthday.

That year, the Western Conference convened in Liberty Hill, Tennessee (just south of Nashville), on October 1. Peter left his wife with his family and headed to Tennessee, weighed down with the knowledge that he would have to inform Bishop McKendree of his marriage. McKendree said that he was sorry, not that Peter had married, but that it meant he would have to settle in one place—an obligation that could hurt his promotion significantly. Peter accepted with grace, but became fired up to show his determination. "It raised my ambitions and I became pretty spunky, and I just said, Now, here goes; I can work for my living, I can split rails, plow, grub, mow, cradle, or reap. I was raised to it."351 And he would not give up itinerating. He would work his farm and ride his circuit without compromise. McKendree must have appreciated Peter's determination, for he made him an elder in the Methodist Church before the end of the conference.

Peter carried a pistol with him at all times. Once, while he was traveling on horseback with a fellow minister, Brother Walker, a lame man using a large stick as a crutch struck out across the road in front of them. The man asked for a ride a little way up the road, as he feared his strength would give out before he reached lodging for the night. Brother Walker said, "O yes," and started to dismount his horse, but Peter immediately felt impressed to say, "Keep your horse; we are a long way from home, have a long journey before us; under such circumstances trust no man."352 So, the two men rode past, thinking they had left the man a hundred yards behind them. Suddenly, with Walker slightly ahead of him, Peter's horse started, and he turned to see the man running toward him "as fleet as a deer."353 Obviously, his lameness had been a ruse by which he had hoped to rob the two preachers. Peter wheeled his horse around, pulled and cocked his gun, and bolted toward the man, who then disappeared into the thick forest brush at first sight of the pistol. Peter pursued him no further. He would later say that the words of warning had come into his mouth by the saving power of the Holy Spirit.

Issues of Slavery

As an elder, Peter was expected to engage actively in church politics, and he soon found himself embroiled in the debate over slavery. While the Methodist Disciplines forbade the purchase, sale, and ownership of slaves, southern Methodists in the United States had long disregarded that stipulation. Now it was becoming an issue in the West, where slavery, though sanctioned

by law, was quickly losing popularity in the wake of the revivals and the growing support of abolitionism they had inspired. Slavery was an issue that Peter had avoided, at first; he considered it more political than spiritual. He did believe, however, that owning slaves was immoral, and his office as elder would not long permit neutrality on the issue. Members of the Methodist conferences soon became divided along pro-slavery versus abolitionist lines. This spirit of divisiveness came up whenever a slave owner was nominated for ordination as a minister, raising the question, "Could a man who owned slaves be welcomed as a minister for the Methodist Episcopal Church?" In his Autobiography, Peter had this to say about the matter:

Slavery had long been agitated in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and our preachers, although they did not feel it to be their duty to meddle with it politically, yet, as Christians and Christian ministers, be it spoken to their eternal credit, they believed it to be their duty to bear their testimony against slavery as a moral evil, and this is the reason why the General Conference, from time to time, passed rules and regulations to govern preachers and members of the Church in regard to this great evil. The great object of the General Conference was to keep the ministry clear of it, and there can be no doubt that the course pursued by early Methodist preachers was the cause of the emancipation of thousands of this degraded race of human beings; and it is clear to my mind, if Methodist preachers had kept clear of slavery themselves, and gone on bearing honest testimony against it, that thousands upon thousands more would have been emancipated who are now groaning under an oppression almost too intolerable to be borne. Slavery is certainly a domestic, political, and moral evil.354

Not all of Peter's fellow elders felt this way, however, for many of them owned slaves. And while Peter's cantankerous nature won him much support in the fight to end slavery, it also made him a focal point for the opposition, who said he was merely opposing slavery to cause trouble and advance his position in the church leadership. The issue was tabled at the 1808 conference because the debate seemed so heated, but it would only grow more so in the coming years.

Peter at War with "The Shakers"

Peter was assigned to the Salt River circuit, an area where he had been

assigned during his first tour of duty from 1804 to 1805. Though he had left the area strong in its Methodism, it was now being overrun with Shakers, or, as they also called themselves, the "United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing." This group's leader was an Englishwoman they called "Mother Ann Lee," supposedly an embodiment of the returned Christ, whom they called upon to prepare communities for the millennial reign of Jesus on the earth, as foretold in the book of Revelation. It was a cult of preposterous self-proclaimed authority, and not one with which Methodism could comfortably coexist. Therefore, Peter went to war with them, so to speak—he battled through debate. Peter and his "armor bearer," John Davison, shook the Shakers rather thoroughly and brought many people back to Methodism, reestablishing the area as a strong circuit.

Sometime during the winter of 1808 or the spring of 1809, Peter's father passed away. As soon as he heard the news, Peter returned home, but not in time to attend the funeral or burial. The following year, Peter was appointed to Livingston Circuit, where his father's farm was located—the land that constituted the homestead he had claimed upon his eighteenth birthday. He would make the area his home until 1813. It was here that Peter and Frances's first two daughters were born: Eliza B. on May 11, 1810, and Maria H. on September 20, 1812. In 1813, the family sold the farm and moved to a new homestead near Hopkinsville in Christian County, Kentucky.

In 1811, in addition to his scheduled travels and preaching engagements, Peter was challenged to a debate by a scholarly preacher from the East who believed all Methodist preachers to be "illiterate, ignorant babblers."355 Peter was never one to back down from a challenge, so even though he had little schooling, he accepted. Hoping to prove Peter's ignorance, the scholar posed a question in Greek—a language that, of course, Peter could not understand. He had, however, picked up some German along the way, so he responded in that language, which was unknown to the scholar. Caught off guard, the scholar assumed the language to be Hebrew, and he caved in, proclaiming to the crowd that Peter was the first educated Methodist preacher he had met.

Andrew Jackson and Peter Cartwright

Cartwright's Autobiography includes few details about the War of 1812,

which began the year after Peter's famed debate with the scholar. Aside from providing recruits, Kentucky and Tennessee were largely unaffected by the war. As the population of Kentucky decreased with the departure of soldiers, so, too, the number of Methodists in Kentucky decreased for a time. It was later reported that Peter served as a chaplain to Andrew Jackson during the war. According to a newspaper article covering one of Peter's sermons, he was present with General Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. (Jackson became the seventh president of the United States in 1829.) The article reads as follows:

At the time of the last British War, just before Gen. Jackson fought his successful battle of New Orleans, a regiment of infantry camped near his [Peter's] residence in Christian County, Ky. The Chaplain was sick, and he was induced to take his place, and marched on the way to New Orleans. Gen. Jackson told the chaplains they must go in the front ranks of the battle; by their remonstrating, the general relented, but told them he wanted them to preach to his soldiers that no man would die till his time had come, and that they were as safe at the cannon's mouth as anywhere else. He refused to preach anything of the kind, because, as he stated it, it was a lie; but he promised to preach to them that the war was a justifiable one, and that they were engaged in a righteous cause. The general said that would do, and the minister told him it would have to do.356

This was not the only interaction Peter had with General Jackson. A few years later, the future president walked into a meeting where Peter was preaching.

I then read my text: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" After reading my text I paused. At that moment I saw General Jackson walking up the aisle; he came to the middle post, and very gracefully leaned against it, and stood, as there were no vacant seats. Just then I felt some one pull my coat in the stand, and turning my head, my fastidious preacher, whispering a little loud, said: "General Jackson has come in; General Jackson has come in." I felt a flash of indignation run all over me like an electric shock, and facing about to my congregation, and purposely speaking out audibly, I said, "Who is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea negro!"

The preacher tucked his head down, and squatted low, and would, no doubt, have been thankful for leave of absence. The congregation, General Jackson and all, smiled, or laughed right out, all at the preacher's expense. When the congregation was dismissed, my city-stationed preacher stepped up to me, and very sternly said to me: "You are the strangest man I ever saw, and General Jackson will chastise you for your insolence before you leave the city." "Very clear of it," said I, "for General Jackson, I have no doubt, will applaud my course; and if he should undertake to chastise me, as Paddy said, 'There is two as can play at that game.'"

General Jackson was staying at one of the Nashville hotels. Next morning, very early, my city preacher went down to the hotel to make an apology to General Jackson for my conduct in the pulpit the night before. Shortly after he had left, I passed by the hotel, and I met the general on the pavement; and before I approached him by several steps he smiled, and reached out his hand and said: "Mr. Cartwright, you are a man after my own heart. I am very much surprised at Mr. Mac, to think he would suppose that I would be offended at you. No, sir; I told him that I highly approved of your independence; that a minister of Jesus Christ ought to love everybody and fear no mortal man. I told Mr. Mac that if I had a few thousand such independent, fearless officers as you were, and a well-drilled army, I could take old England."

General Jackson was certainly a very extraordinary man. He was, no doubt, in his prime of life, a very wicked man, but he always showed a great respect for the Christian religion, and the feelings of religious people, especially ministers of the Gospel.357

At this time, circuit riders in the West were lucky to make forty dollars a year, and lodging was often hard to come by. Their circuits could stretch as far as five hundred miles, and being away from friends and family most of the time must have been difficult. Temptations threatened to derail even the most devoted of ministers, and many succumbed to these temptations. Peter himself experienced at least one such temptation, when the sins of his youth called on him with great force and emotion. Read what he recorded and observe how he prevailed:

Saturday night came on, and found me in a strange region of country, and in the hills, knobs, and spurs of the Cumberland Mountains. I greatly desired to

stop on the approaching Sabbath, and spend it with a Christian people; but I was now in a region of country where there was no Gospel minister for many miles around, and where, as I learned, many of the scattered population had never heard a Gospel sermon in all their lives, and where the inhabitants knew no Sabbath only to hunt and visit, drink and dance. Thus lonesome and pensive, late in the evening, I hailed at a tolerably decent house, and the landlord kept entertainment. I rode up and asked for quarters. The gentleman said I could stay, but he was afraid I would not enjoy myself very much as a traveler, inasmuch as they had a party meeting there that night to have a little dance. I inquired how far it was to a decent house of entertainment on the road; he said seven miles. I told him if he would treat me civilly and feed my horse well, by his leave I would stay. He assured me I should be treated civilly. I dismounted and went in. The people collected, a large company. I saw there was not much drinking going on.

I quietly took my seat in one corner of the house, and the dance commenced. I sat quietly musing, a total stranger, and greatly desired to preach to this people. Finally, I concluded to spend the next day—Sabbath—there, and ask the privilege to preach to them. I had hardly settled this point in my mind, when a beautiful, ruddy [redheaded] young lady walked very gracefully up to me, dropped a handsome courtesy, and pleasantly, with winning smiles, invited me out to take a dance with her. I can hardly describe my thoughts or feelings on that occasion. However, in a moment I resolved on a desperate experiment. I rose as gracefully as I could; I will not say with some emotion, but with many emotions. The young lady moved to my right side; I grasped her right hand with my right hand, while she leaned her left arm on mine. In this position we walked on the floor. The whole company seemed pleased at this act of politeness in the young lady, shown to a stranger. The colored man, who was the fiddler, began to put his fiddle in the best order. I then spoke to the fiddler to hold a moment, and added that for several years I had not undertaken any matter of importance without first asking the blessing of God upon it, and I desired now to ask the blessing of God upon this beautiful young lady and the whole company, that had shown such an act of politeness to a total stranger.

Here I grasped the young lady's hand tightly, and said, "Let us all kneel down and pray," and then instantly dropped on my knees, and commenced praying with all the power of soul and body that I could command. The young lady tried to get loose from me, but I held her tight. Presently she fell on her

knees. Some of the company kneeled, some stood, some fled, some sat still, all looked curious. The fiddler ran off into the kitchen, saying, "Lord a marcy, what de matter? what is dat mean?"

While I prayed some wept, and wept out aloud, and some cried for mercy. I rose from my knees and commenced an exhortation, after which I sang a hymn. The young lady who invited me on the floor lay prostrate, crying earnestly for mercy. I exhorted again, I sang and prayed nearly all night. About fifteen of that company professed religion, and our meeting lasted next day and next night, and as many more were powerfully converted. I organized a society, took thirty-two into the Church, and sent them a preacher. My landlord was appointed leader, which post he held for many years. This was the commencement of a great and glorious revival of religion in that region of country, and several of the young men converted at this Methodist preacher dance became useful ministers of Jesus Christ.358

It is understandable that Peter would have been an attractive figure as a frontiersman. He was nearly six feet tall, and stood erect and composed. His thick, curly, black hair sat atop a large imposing head and a short, thick neck. His eyes were dark and piercing. He had a Roman nose, and he constantly wore a mirthful grin. His face was enormously theatrical: its expression was generally friendly but could turn stormy and menacing in an instant, a skill he used well in preaching. To these characteristics he added the air of a man in charge of the situation, a man born to rule. Combine that with his sharp wit and uncanny insightfulness, and he was an imposing, virile presence wherever he went.

Time for Change; Meddling in Politics

Peter remained in Kentucky until 1824, where he and his wife had five more children: three daughters (Cynthia, born on March 27, 1815; Wealthy M. Jane, born on August 9, 1819; and Sarah M., born on July 2, 1823) and two sons (Madison, born on July 4, 1817; and Valentine, born on May 19, 1821). Caroline M. and Arminda, their eighth and ninth children, would be born in Illinois on September 9, 1826, and October 3, 1828, respectively. As Eliza, now fourteen, was approaching marrying age on the frontier, Peter became concerned that his girls might marry into slave-owning families and thereby disgrace his antislavery stance. So he sold his land, and early in October 1824,

he moved his family to Illinois.

Though the roads were much safer now, and Indian attacks posed less of a threat, traveling was still hazardous. Violent wind was partly responsible for the death of their daughter, Cynthia, as Peter recounted in his Autobiography:

Just before we struck the prairies, the man that drove my team contrived to turn over the wagon, and was very near killing my oldest daughter [Eliza]. The sun was just going down; and by the time we righted up the wagon and reloaded, it was getting dark, and we had a difficult hill to descend, so we concluded to camp there for the night, almost in sight of two cabins containing families. I was almost exhausted reloading my wagon; the evening was warm, and my wife persuaded me not to stretch our tent that night; so I struck fire, kindled it at the root of a small, and, as I thought, sound, tree. We laid down and slept soundly.

Just as day was appearing in the east, the tree at the root of which we had kindled a small fire fell, and it fell on our third daughter [Cynthia, who would have been nine years old], as direct on her, from her feet to her head, as it could fall; and I suppose she never breathed after. I heard the tree crack when it started to fall, and sprang, alarmed very much, and seized it before it struck the child; but it availed nothing. Although this was an awful calamity, yet God was kind to us; for if we had stretched our tent that night, we should have been obliged to lie down in another position, and in that event the tree would have fallen directly upon us, and we should all have been killed instead of one. The tree was sound outside to the thickness of the back of a carving knife, and then all the inside had a dry rot; but this we did not suspect.359

On October 23, 1824, Peter and Frances buried Cynthia near present-day McLeansboro, Illinois. They set up their new homestead near Richland Creek in Illinois on November 15, and Peter named the area Pleasant Plains.

Peter Runs for Office against

Abraham Lincoln

Now thirty-nine, Peter had become a formidable man to deal with, whether he was behind the pulpit, engaging in personal confrontations, or filling his role as a public figure. Though he had left slavery behind in Kentucky, he now embraced emancipation on an even larger scale. In addition to his circuit

duties as a presiding elder and the responsibilities of running a farm, Peter ran for a two-year seat in the General Assembly of Illinois. He finished fourth of eleven men vying for three seats in 1826. He won a seat in 1828, lost in 1830, and won again in 1832, this time against a formidable opponent, Abraham Lincoln. Peter would run again in 1834, but he withdrew before the election, and thus Lincoln won his first public office. In 1835, Lincoln ran for a seat in the state senate but lost to Job Fletcher. Lincoln ran again for General Assembly in 1836, 1838, and 1840, and won—Peter was not an opponent in any of these elections. Neither Cartwright nor Lincoln would run for office again until the two vied for a U.S. Senate seat in 1846. Peter would find himself facing down another future president in one of his services, but this time not quite as successfully. As the story goes,

during the campaign Lincoln went to a revival meeting where Cartwright was to preach. In the course of the meeting, Cartwright announced: "All who desire to lead a new life, to give their hearts to God and go to heaven, will stand." Quite a few stood up. Then the preacher raised his voice and roared: "All who do not wish to go to hell will stand." All stood up except Mr. Lincoln. Cartwright was quick to note the exception, and in solemn tones he said:

"I observe that many responded to the first invitation to give their hearts to God and go to heaven, and I further observe that all of you save one indicated you did not wish to go to hell. The sole exception is Mr. Lincoln, who did not respond to either invitation. May I inquire of you, Mr. Lincoln, where you are going?"

Lincoln rose slowly, the eyes of all upon him. "I came here," he said, "as a respectful listener. I did not know I was to be singled out by Brother Cartwright; I believe in treating religious matters with due solemnity. I admit that the questions propounded by Brother Cartwright are important. I did not feel called upon to answer as the rest did. Brother Cartwright asks me directly where I am going. I desire to reply with equal directness: I am going to Congress!"360

And so he did. He beat Cartwright by 1,511 votes.

In the course of the debates, Peter accused Lincoln of being an unbeliever, or a deist, at best. In a printed pamphlet, Lincoln retorted that while he was not

a member of any church, he had "never denied the truth of the Scriptures."361 This seemed to satisfy the populace, and the matter did Peter no good. In later years, Lincoln would confess to Congressman Henry C. Deming,

When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership…the Saviour's condensed statement of both Law and Gospel, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself," that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.362

Lincoln's faith in Christ is a matter of public record—one has only to read the transcripts from his public speeches to notice the biblical influence. Perhaps he was more of a Calvinist, though, thinking the matter of his eternal salvation depended on God rather than on whether he stood or remained seated at a meeting. Despite the fact that these two "Kentucky boys" shared faith in God and stood on the same side of the slavery issue, they seemed to agree on little else. Peter was ever the backwoodsman—he preferred the emotionally charged preaching of camp meetings to the stoic, sophisticated, progressive intellectualism he painted Lincoln as representing.

Peter's Preaching Style

Few examples of Peter's preaching style remain, but the best is probably "The Jocose363 Preacher," a short narrative written about him from an eyewitness account of a camp meeting sometime in the 1830s.

The story begins by describing Peter's arrival at night to preach a sermon— he would have come in the morning, but his horse had fallen and been injured. He could have left the horse and walked, but in a note to the awaiting group, he had explained, "Horses have no souls to save, and therefore it is all the more the duty of Christians to take care of their bodies."364 It was late on a beautiful summer evening when he finally arrived, and

they knew not...what to think or make of the man. His figure was tall, burly, massive, and seemed even more gigantic than the reality from its crowning foliage of luxuriant coal black hair, wreathed into long, curling ringlets. Add a head that looked large as a half-bushel, beetling brows, and rough and craggy as fragmentary granite, irradiated at the base by eyes of dark fire, small and twinkling like diamonds in the sea—(they were diamonds of a soul shining in a

measureless sea of humor,) a swarthy complexion, as if embrowned by the kisses of sunbeams, a fixedness of purpose in the expression of the mouth, with rich, rosy lips, always slightly parted as if wearing a perpetual and merry smile, and you have a life-like portrait of Peter Cartwright, the far-famed Methodist Residing Elder.365

When the singing finished, a hush fell over the crowd. Taking his text from Mark 8:36, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"—one of Peter's favorites—he began to preach. The eyewitness described his sermon as "transcendent eloquence." 366 Peter delivered a fifteen-minute conversational introduction that led into a half-hour satirical parable of the folly of a sinner. From here, he descended into a dramatic description of the horrors of hell itself, finally ascending to a triumphant picture of the joys of heaven awaiting those who turned to the Lord.

The audience was visibly moved. "Five hundred, many of them until that night infidels, rushed forward and prostrated themselves upon their knees. The meeting was continued for two weeks, and more than a thousand converts were added to the church." 367 Thus was the power of a Peter Cartwright sermon.

A Run-in with Joseph Smith

After escaping from prison in Independence, Missouri, in April 1839, Joseph Smith made his way into Illinois, and there, in a classic confrontation, ran into Peter Cartwright. Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, tried to befriend Cartwright as a fellow minister, but Peter would have none of it. In his Autobiography, Peter told of what happened when the two met:

On a certain occasion I fell in with Joe Smith, and was formally and officially introduced to him in Springfield, then our county town. We soon fell into a free conversation on the subject of religion, and Mormonism in particular. I found him to be a very illiterate and impudent desperado in morals, but, at the same time, he had a vast fund of low cunning.

In the first place, he made his onset on me by flattery, and he laid on the soft sodder thick and fast. He expressed great and almost unbounded pleasure in the high privilege of becoming acquainted with me, one of whom he had heard so many great and good things, and he had no doubt I was one among God's noblest creatures, an honest man. He believed that among all the Churches in

the world the Methodist was the nearest right, and that, as far as they went, they were right. But they had stopped short by not claiming the gift of tongues, of prophecy, and of miracles, and then quoted a batch of Scripture to prove his positions correct. Upon the whole, he did pretty well for clumsy Joe. I gave him rope, as the sailors say, and, indeed, I seemed to lay this flattering unction pleasurably to my soul.

"Indeed," said Joe, "if the Methodists would only advance a step or two further, they would take the world. We Latter-day Saints are Methodists, as far as they have gone, only we have advanced further, and if you would come in and go with us, we could sweep not only the Methodist Church, but all others, and you would be looked up to as one of the Lord's greatest prophets. You would be honored by countless thousands, and have of the good things of this world all that heart could wish."

I then began to inquire into some of the tenets of the Latter-day Saints. He explained, I criticised his explanations till, unfortunately, we got into high debate, and he cunningly concluded that his first bait would not take, for he plainly saw I was not to be flattered out of common sense and honesty. The next pass he made at me was to move upon my fears. He said that in all ages of the world the good and right way was evil spoken of, and that it was an awful thing to fight against God.

"Now," said he, "if you will go with me to Nauvoo, I will show you many living witnesses that will testify that they were, by the saints, cured of blindness, lameness, deafness, dumbness, and all the diseases that human flesh is heir to; and I will show you," said he, "that we have the gift of tongues, and can speak in unknown languages, and that the saints can drink any deadly poison, and it will not hurt them;" and closed by saying, "the idle stories you hear about us are nothing but sheer persecution."

I then gave him the following history of an encounter I had at a campmeeting in Morgan County, some time before, with some of his Mormons, and assured him I could prove all I said by thousands that were present.

The camp-meeting was numerously attended, and we had a good and gracious work of religion going on among the people. On Saturday there came some twenty or thirty Mormons to the meeting. During the intermission after the eleven o'clock sermon they collected in one corner of the encampment, and

began to sing, and they sang well. As fast as the people rose from their dinners they drew up to hear the singing, and the scattering crowd drew up until a large company surrounded them. I was busy regulating matters connected with the meeting. At length, according, I have no doubt, to a preconcerted plan, an old lady Mormon began to shout, and after shouting a while she swooned away and fell into the arms of her husband. The old man proclaimed that his wife had gone into a trance, and that when she came to she would speak in an unknown tongue, and that he would interpret. This proclamation produced considerable excitement, and the multitude crowded thick around. Presently the old lady arose and began to speak in an unknown tongue, sure enough.

Just then my attention was called to the matter. I saw in one moment that the whole maneuver was intended to bring the Mormons into notice, and break up the good of our meeting. I advanced instantly toward the crowd, and asked the people to give way and let me in to this old lady, who was then being held in the arms of her husband. I came right up to them, and took hold of her arm, and ordered her peremptorily to hush that gibberish; that I would have no more of it; that it was presumptuous, and blasphemous nonsense. I stopped very suddenly her unknown tongue. She opened her eyes, took me by the hand, and said,

"My dear friend, I have a message directly from God to you."

I stopped her short, and said, "I will have none of your messages. If God can speak through no better medium than an old, hypocritical, lying woman, I will hear nothing of it." Her husband, who was to be the interpreter of her message, flew into a mighty rage, and said,

"Sir, this is my wife, and I will defend her at the risk of my life."

I replied, "Sir, this is my camp-meeting, and I will maintain the good order of it at the risk of my life. If this is your wife, take her off from here, and clear yourselves in five minutes, or I will have you under guard."

The old lady slipped out and was off quickly. The old man stayed a little, and began to pour a tirade of abuse on me. I stopped him short, and said, "Not another word of abuse from you, sir. I have no doubt you are an old thief, and if your back was examined, no doubt you carry the marks of the cowhide for your villainy." And sure enough, as if I had spoken by inspiration, he, in some of the

old states, had been lashed to the whipping-post for stealing, and I tell you the old man began to think other persons had visions besides his wife, but he was very clear from wishing to interpret my unknown tongue. To cap the climax, a young gentleman stepped up and said he had no doubt all I said of this old man was true, and much more, for he had caught him stealing corn out of his father's crib. By this time, such was the old man's excitement that the great drops of sweat ran down his face, and he called out, "Don't crowd me, gentlemen; it is mighty warm."

Said I, "Open the way, gentlemen, and let him out." When the way was opened, I cried, "Now start, and don't show your face here again, nor one of the Mormons. If you do, you will get Lynch's law."

They all disappeared, and our meeting went on prosperously, a great many were converted to God, and the Church was much revived and built up in her holy faith.

My friend, Joe Smith, became very restive before I got through with my narrative; and when I closed, his wrath boiled over, and he cursed me in the name of his God, and said, "I will show you, sir, that I will raise up a government in these United States which will overturn the present government, and I will raise up a new religion that will overturn every other form of religion in this country!"

"Yes," said I, "Uncle Joe; but my Bible tells me the bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days;" and I expect the Lord will send the devil after you some of these days, and take you out of the way."

"No, sir," said he; "I shall live and prosper, while you will die in your sins."

"Well, sir," said I, "if you live and prosper, you must quit your stealing and abominable whoredoms!"

Thus we parted, to meet no more on earth; for in a few years after this, an outraged and deeply-injured people took the law into their own hands, and killed him, and drove the Mormons from the state.368

The No-nonsense Preacher

Despite his forays into politics, Peter remained a circuit preacher and participated regularly in camp meetings. As he got older, however, his tolerance for the hecklers and rowdies who tried to break up his meetings waned. In one particular camp meeting on the banks of the Cumberland River, a group tried to break up the meeting while Peter was preaching. In the midst of the sermon, one of the largest of the group came forward and shouted for Peter to "dry up!" Peter asked the crowd if they would give him a few moments. Taking off his jacket, he stepped down to face the ruffian. He proceeded to knock the man down, showering him with punches until he cried for mercy. Peter then said that he would not let him up until he repented. When the man did so, Peter sent him to the "Amen corner" to pray with others seeking salvation. He dusted off his shirt, remounted the pulpit, and put his jacket back on. Looking again at the audience, he said, "As I was saying brethren,"369 and recommenced his sermon.

As the years progressed, camp meetings attracted all kinds of people, and soon carried a reputation for vice as much as for victory over it. Whisky sellers, card players, and carousers would hang around at the outskirts of the meetings to prey on the crowds. Some said that there were more souls conceived at the camp meetings than there were saved. Peter was, of course, anxious to put a stop to such chicanery. At a camp meeting in 1841, Peter faced down a group of troublemakers who were actually supported by the local deputy sheriff.

When we were called to the stand by the sound of the trumpet, I called the attention of the congregation to the absolute necessity of keeping good order. I stated that my father was a Revolutionary soldier, and fought for the liberties we enjoyed, and all the boon he had left me was liberty; and that, as the responsible officer of the camp-meeting, if the friends of order and the sworn officers of the law would give me backing, I would maintain order at the risk of my life. My lecture roused the friends of order, and they gave me their countenance and aid; but the whisky sellers and whisky drinkers, nothing daunted, commenced their deeds of darkness. Some were soon drunk, and interrupted our devotions very much. I then ordered several writs, and took into custody several of those whisky venders and drunken rowdies; but these rowdies rose in mob force, and rescued the whisky seller and his wagon and team from the officer of the law. The officer came running to me, and informed me of the rising of the mob, and that the whisky man was given up, and was

making his escape; and it appeared to me he was very much scared. I told him to summon me and five other men that I named, and I would insure the re-taking of the transgressor, in spite of any mob. He did so. We rushed upon them and stopped the team. The man that had transgressed drew a weapon, and ordered us to stand off; that he would kill the first man that touched him: and as one of the men and myself that were summoned to take him rushed on him, he made a stroke at my companion with his weapon, but missed him. I then sprang upon him and caught him by the collar, and jerked him over the wagon bed, in which he was standing, among his barrels. He fell on all-fours. I jumped on him, and told him he was my prisoner, and that if he did not surrender I should hurt him. The deputy sheriff of the county, who was with the mob, and a combatant at that, ran up to me, and ordered me to let the prisoner go. I told him I should not. He said if I did not, he would knock me over. I told him if he struck to make a sure lick, for the next was mine. Our officer then commanded me to take the deputy sheriff, and I did so. He scuffled a little; but finding himself in rather close quarters, he surrendered.

We then took thirteen of the mob, the whisky seller, and the sheriff, and marched them off to the magistrate, to the tune of good order. They were fined by the justice of the peace; some paid their fine, some appealed to court. This appealing we liked well, because they then had to give security, and this secured the fine and costs, which some of them were not able to pay.

This somewhat checked them for a while, but they rallied again, and gave us trouble. There was one man, a turbulent fellow, who sold whisky about a quarter of a mile off. He had often interrupted us by selling whisky at our camp-meetings. He generally went armed with deadly weapons, to keep off officers. I sent the constable after him, but he had a musket well loaded, and would not be taken. He kept a drinking party round him nearly all night; however, toward morning they left him, and went off to sleep as best they could, and he lay down in his wagon, and went to sleep, with his loaded musket by his side.

Just as day dawned, I slipped over the creek and came up to his wagon. He was fast asleep. I reached over the wagon bed and gathered his gun and ammunition; then struck the wagon bed with the muzzle of the musket, and cried out, "Wake up! wake up!" He sprang to his feet, and felt for his gun. I said, "You are my prisoner; and if you resist, you are a dead man!" He begged me

not to shoot, and said that he would surrender. I told him to get out of the wagon, and march before me to the camp ground; that I was going to have him tried for violating good order and the laws of his country. He began to beg most piteously, and said if I would only let him escape that time, he would gear up and go right away, and never do the like again. I told him to harness his team, and start. He did so. When he got ready to go, I poured out his powder, and fired off his musket and gave it to him; and he left us, and troubled us no more.370

Peter's Final Years

In 1856, Peter released his Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, The Backwoods Preacher, and the book became a best-seller in one of the greatest decades of American literature—a decade that produced such renowned works as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Peter's book is still popular today; it is a wonderful portrait of frontier life, the Kentucky camp meetings, and Peter's remarkable experiences of preaching and living in the Wild West of the early 1800s. It is hard to come away from reading his autobiography without feeling that Peter is indeed a legend from a time in America when the "West" was still east of the Mississippi River. This was not his only book, however; he also wrote Fifty Years as a Residing Elder (1871), among others.

Peter finally retired from circuit riding in 1869. Evidence suggests that Peter ended his days in senility, struggling to sell a piece of land to someone who thought he was only doing this because he had lost his mind. Before his prospective buyer could take legal action, however, Peter passed away at three o'clock in the afternoon on September 25, 1872, just a few weeks after his eighty-seventh birthday. The exact cause of his death is unknown.

Peter's long years as a circuit rider not only helped to establish Methodism as the way of revival in his time, but also contributed to the conversion of roughly ten thousand people. This figure says a good deal about a man who spent most of his time preaching to rural communities and small crowds. In his sixty-seven years as a minister, he preached almost fifteen thousand sermons. Peter Cartwright was a preacher to rival anything ever accomplished by Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. With God's help, he won the West as no one

else ever would.

335 Robert Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 7.

336 Cartwright, Autobiography, 27.

337 Cartwright, Autobiography, 34–38.

338 Ibid., 45–46.

339 Cartwright, Autobiography, 56–57.

340 Ibid., 58.

341 Cartwright, Autobiography, 59–60.

342 Ibid., 60.

343 Ibid., 134.

344 Cartwright, Autobiography, 98.

345 Ibid., 101–102.

346 Ibid., 102.

347 Cartwright, Autobiography, 106–107.

348 Ibid., 107.

349 Ibid., 111.

350 Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 54.

351 Peter Cartwright, Fifty Years as a Presiding Elder (Cincinnati, OH: Hitchcock and Walden, 1871), 217, quoted in Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 54.

352 Cartwright, Autobiography, 201.

353 Ibid.

354 Ibid., 128.

355 Cartwright, Autobiography, 80.

356 "Lecture by Rev. Peter Cartwright," Bloomington Pantagraph, June 4, 1868, 3:3; and Chicago Times, February 19, 1863, 3:1, quoted in Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 69.

357 Cartwright, Autobiography, 192–193.

358 Cartwright, Autobiography, 206–209.

359 Cartwright, Autobiography, 247–248.

360 Edgar DeWitt Jones, Lincoln and the Preachers (Salem, NH: Ayer Publishing, 1970), 44.

361 Gordon Leidner, "Lincoln's Faith in God," Great American History, http://www.greatamericanhistory.net/lincolnsfaith.htm.

362 John C. Bogle, "Reflections on the Importance of History—Milestones, Men, and a Moral Society," Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20061116.htm.

363 Means "with a playfully joking disposition."

364 "Rev. Peter Cartwright, the Methodist Presiding Elder. A Genuine Portrait from 'Life in Illinois,'" Southern and South-Western Sketches, 6–7, quoted in Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 153.

365 "Rev. Peter Cartwright, the Methodist Presiding Elder," 7–8, quoted in Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 153–154.

366 "Rev. Peter Cartwright, the Methodist Presiding Elder," 11, quoted in Bray, Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, 154.

367 Ibid.

368 Cartwright, Autobiography, 342–347.

369 Jones, Lincoln and the Preachers, 47.

370 Cartwright, Autobiography, 377–381.

Chapter Seven

Charles Finney

"The Father of Modern Revivalism"

Christian people, are you figuring round and round to get a little property, yet neglecting souls? Beware lest you ruin souls that can never live again! Do you

say—I thought they knew it all? They reply to you, "I did not suppose you believed a word of it yourselves. You did not act as if you did. Are you going

to heaven? Well, I am going down to hell! There is no help for me now. You will sometimes think of me then, as you shall see the smoke of my woe rising

up darkly athwart the glorious heavens. After I have been there a long, long time, you will sometimes think that I, who once lived by your side, am there. O

remember, you cannot pray for me then; but you will remember that once you

might have warned and might have saved me."

—Charles G. Finney

On the eve of the Industrial Revolution in America, Charles Finney touched the United States and Western Europe as no single Christian had before. His ministry is credited with leading more than half a million people to salvation, and his methods and doctrine laid the foundation for revival services as we know them today. The power of the Holy Spirit worked mightily in him to transform the emerging culture of New England from impotent Calvinism into active and effective evangelism wherever he went. Finney's preaching catalyzed the Second Great Awakening, a movement that unified the United States at a critical time in its history—between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. He may well be the most significant American evangelist of the nineteenth century, as well as one of the most important figures in American history during its first century as a nation. Finney may also have been the most innovative and anointed evangelist the world has ever seen.

A Refined Young Heathen

Charles Grandison Finney was born in Warren, Connecticut, on August 29, 1792—only a year after the death of John Wesley—the seventh child of Sylvester and Rebecca Finney. His name was pulled from the title of a novel by Samuel Richardson, Sir Charles Grandison, which tells the story of an

English aristocrat.

Sylvester and Rebecca had had four daughters—Sarah, Dotia, Zenas, and Chloe—and two sons—Sylvester Jr. and Harry—before Charles was born. When Charles was about two years old, the family moved to Oneida County, New York, which, at the time, was a relative wilderness. Here, another son, George Washington Finney, was born in 1795, followed by Sylvester Rice Finney in 1802. Sylvester Jr. died about the time Sylvester Rice was born; sadly, Sylvester Rice died, too, in 1808.

Sylvester Sr. was a farmer who had fought in the colonial militia during the Revolutionary War. In all the years Charles lived with his family, he had little religious education. He never heard his father pray in the house; the first time he read the Bible, he was twenty-nine years old. Religious books were scarce among the households of the area, and there was no church. Not unlike many of their neighbors, Charles's parents professed no religion. Though Methodist circuit riders would speak in the local one-room schoolhouse from time to time, they were usually uneducated and rarely held their audience's attention. Western New York at this time had become known as the "Burned-over District," as it had seen so many preachers that the local population had grown immune to their preaching.

It was in this environment that Charles grew and was educated. By the time he was about fifteen or sixteen, he had learned enough to be the teacher of a one-room community schoolhouse. About this time, the Finneys moved again, to the wilderness skirting the shores of Henderson's Bay on Lake Ontario near Sackets Harbor, New York. It appeared Oneida County was becoming too "civilized" for Sylvester Finney.

Here, Charles Finney found a school looking for a master, and he accepted the post. Because of his love for music, the first thing he bought himself with his earnings was a cello. At six feet two inches, Charles was also an excellent athlete. His grandson later described this period of Charles's life as follows:

When he was twenty he excelled every man and boy he met, in every species of toil or sport. No man could throw him; no man could knock his hat off; no man could run faster, jump farther, leap higher or throw a ball with greater force and precision.371

Charles's students adored him because he would participate in their sporting events and almost always championed the winning side. Since his family now lived by the water, Charles added rowing, swimming, and sailing to his list of skills. It was a clean, unfettered life for someone living on the frontiers—moral, but ignorant of God.

Off to Join the Navy

As the fledgling United States entered a second war with the British in 1812, Charles went to Sackets Harbor with the intention of enlisting in the navy, but when he arrived there, he heard more profanity than he had in his entire life. Also, the pretty, young prostitutes who accosted him did more to repel him than attract him. His grandson again related the story of one such encounter:

He looked at her in wonder and when he comprehended the nature of her request, he was so overcome with pity for her…that his cheeks burned, and before he could check it he was shedding tears….She, moved to shame, wept too.372

It was an incident he would remember even fifty-five years later, when he spoke with anguish of his regret that he was not able to offer the young woman God's grace since he himself did not know the Lord at the time.

Because this atmosphere so offended Charles, he chose not to join the navy, instead returning to Connecticut where he had been born. Eventually, he went to a town in New Jersey not far from New York City, where he resumed teaching in a schoolhouse and studying. He acquired a limited knowledge of Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, though he himself admitted, "I…never possessed so much knowledge of the ancient languages as to think myself capable of independently criticising our English translation of the Bible."373 During these years, Charles returned twice to New England and also attended high school for a season. These were the first places he had lived where there were regular religious services, but Charles found the sermons dry and unmoving; they left "no impression whatever on my mind."374 He also gave some thought to attending Yale College, but one of his teachers persuaded him that it would be a waste of his time. The teacher felt he could acquire the same knowledge of four years at Yale in just two years of independent study, and without the expense.

Charles the Lawyer

In 1818, Charles's parents persuaded him to enter the law office of Judge Benjamin Wright in Adams, New York, not far from their home near Lake Ontario, rather than move south to instruct at an academy with the same teacher who had dissuaded him from attending Yale. Though he had never attended law school, young Charles's mind took to the law profession with a passion.

It was in Adams that Charles met the Reverend George W. Gale, the pastor of the town's Presbyterian church. While Charles was not greatly moved by Gale's sermons, he spent a good deal of time discussing them with him. Charles was determined to make sense of what he heard, but the more he talked with Gale, the more questions formed in his mind. Gale found Charles rather well-informed about religion but hardened to it at the same time. When church members thought of making Charles a special subject of prayer for his conversion, Gale advised against it; he thought it unlikely that Charles would ever be saved. Gale believed that no matter what he said to Charles, he would not be converted, for all he ever did was debate doctrine. Despite Gale's doubts, Charles faithfully attended a weekly prayer meeting that was held near the law offices. Whenever his legal work allowed enough time, he would go to listen to the prayers offered by those assembled. It was an experience that would affect him in much the same way as conversing with Gale did—again, Charles had generated more questions than answers.

As Charles studied the law, he began to notice how writers time and again quoted the Bible as an authority for many of the great principles of common law. This piqued his curiosity to the point that he went out and purchased his first Bible. Then, when he would come across legal texts that referred to Scripture passages, he would check the references and their biblical context. Though he didn't understand much of it, he found himself reading the Bible more and more, and with greater and greater interest.

The Word Starts Working

Finney described the impact of this practice on his soul:

As I read my Bible and attended the prayer meetings, heard Mr. Gale preach, and conversed with him, with the elders of the church, and with others from time to time, I became restless. A little consideration convinced me that I

was in no means in a state of mind to go to heaven if I should die. It seemed to me that there must be something in religion that was of infinite importance; and it was soon settled with me, that if the soul was immortal I needed a great change in my inward state to be prepared for happiness in heaven….The question, however, was of too much importance to allow me to rest in any uncertainty on the subject.375

A major stumbling block fed his confusion, however: the issue that, as far as he could tell, no prayer offered at the weekly prayer meetings was ever answered. As he read the Bible, he came upon such passages as Luke 11:9–10: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." He saw that God was more willing to give His Holy Spirit to those who asked Him to than parents were willing to give good things to their children. Yet week after week in these prayer meetings, he heard prayers offered up to heaven and saw nothing come back in return. The issue troubled his soul so much that it nearly drove him away from the Bible and Christianity.

In fact, as his frustration continued and became visible in the way he carried himself, the people who led the weekly meetings offered to pray for him. To these offers, he responded,

I suppose I need to be prayed for, for I am conscious that I am a sinner; but I do not see that it will do any good for you to pray for me; for you are continually asking, but you do not receive. You have been praying for a revival of religion ever since I have been in Adams, and yet you have it not. You have been praying for the Holy Spirit to descend upon yourselves, and yet you complain of your leanness….You have prayed enough since I have attended these meetings to have prayed the devil out of Adams, if there was any virtue in your prayers. But here you are praying on, and complaining still.376

Despite the candor of his remarks, Charles didn't intend them to be insulting. They were merely an expression of his honest pursuit for real answers. Restlessness grew within him as he confronted the realization that he needed a Savior, but he could find no one who could tell him how to properly seek Him.

Calvinistic Barriers to God

One of the issues with which Charles struggled was the very one that had driven a wedge between George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. Despite what had happened during the First Great Awakening, New England churches —especially Presbyterian churches—remained staunchly Calvinistic. God's sovereignty was preached as supreme in all matters—especially salvation. Accordingly, those who were saved were the "elect" who had been "predestined" to receive salvation through the cross, so that Jesus' sacrifice covered their sin alone. Jesus died only for these elect, and no one else. Thus, no individual could know for certain whether he or she was saved; salvation depended on the will of God.

Everyone was still expected to live a holy life before a holy God, knowing that if they did not, they would provoke the wrath of God that Jonathan Edwards and those like him had so aptly described. They knew little, though, about responding to God's love and mercy. Their best hope was to live righteously before God the Father and inherit the salvation already ordained for them, or at least live the best life they could on earth before facing the hell they justly deserved. Salvation was a miracle that came only under God's sovereignty; it had nothing to do with human initiative.

When Charles struggled with the desire to know, with some degree of certainty, the state of his salvation, the Calvinists from whom he sought answers gave only doctrine. They knew how to pray, but they didn't think their prayers could have any effect on God's will—everything that was going to happen had been established to happen before the world began. In other words, they had no expectancy or faith that God would ever do what they were asking Him to do. They knew how to petition Him, but they didn't know how to receive from Him.

When Charles applied the same logic he used in preparing legal cases to what he read in the Bible, however, he saw that the Calvinists' basic failure was believing what was preached from the pulpit instead of believing what they read in the Bible. He saw that if God were a good and righteous judge, and if the Bible was His written Word and law to humanity, then either the Bible was a lie or the Calvinists were following a delusion. Once he concluded this, he knew he had only two choices: "accept Christ as presented in the Gospel, or pursue a worldly life."377

Is God a Lie?

On a Saturday evening in October 1821, twenty-nine-year-old Charles decided to settle the question of the future of his soul, once and for all. Either he would make his peace with God, or God was a lie and the Bible a fabrication. Since he found no answers in the church and no help from its membership, he knew his answers would be found in studying the Bible and seeking God in prayer. Although he was still required to spend long hours in the law office, Charles decided to try to put his work aside as much as possible until this issue was resolved.

The odd thing was that in the midst of this decision, he suddenly felt quite timid and ashamed when people saw him with a Bible or heard him praying. He had read his Bible openly at work when he first purchased it and had even left it lying open when others met with him, but now, whenever someone entered the office, he would throw a law book over his Bible to conceal it. Charles kept his Bible out of sight as much as he could. He also stopped up the keyhole to his office and whispered his prayers for fear that someone would hear him praying for the salvation of his soul. He spent Monday and Tuesday of that week in anguish; Tuesday night, he became virtually paralyzed with fear that he would die and go to hell because he couldn't find voice enough to cry out to God for His mercy.

On Wednesday morning, October 10, 1821, Charles prepared himself for work, still mulling these questions over in his mind. When he set out as he always did, a voice within confronted him suddenly, asking, "What are you waiting for? Did you not promise to give your heart to God? And what are you trying to do? Are you endeavoring to work out a righteousness of your own?"378

The answer to these questions came just as suddenly:

Just at this point the whole question of Gospel salvation opened to my mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time. I think I then saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement of Christ. I saw that his work was a finished work; and that instead of having, or needing, any righteousness of my own to recommend me to God, I had to submit myself to the righteousness of God through Christ. Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an offer of something to be accepted; and that it was full and complete; and that

all that was necessary on my part, was to get my own consent to give up my sins, and accept Christ. Salvation, it seemed to me, instead of being a thing to be wrought out, by my own works, was a thing to be found entirely in the Lord Jesus Christ, who presented himself before me as my God and my Saviour.

Without being distinctly aware of it, I had stopped in the street right where the inward voice seemed to arrest me. How long I remained in that position, I cannot say. But after this distinct revelation had stood for some little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put, "Will you accept it now, today?" I replied, "Yes; I will accept it to-day, or I will die in the attempt." 379

North of the village was a small forest where Charles would walk almost every day, provided the weather was fair. Instead of going to work, he headed away from the town, which would be filled with too many curious onlookers. He went to the forest, where he could drop to his knees and pray as loudly as he wanted. Still paranoid that someone might see him going into the woods, he snuck—not wanting to be seen—along under a fence until he was out of town before he made his way into the trees. He then went into the forest about a quarter of a mile, hiked over a small hill, and found a place where some trees had fallen together and formed a partially covered enclosure. Here, he decided, "I will give my heart to God, or I never will come down from there."380 This exact phrase had run through his mind again and again since the time he had left the fence and entered the wood. He climbed into the enclosure within the fallen trees, knelt, and set his heart to pray.

The words still didn't come. He mumbled a little at a time but felt his words were heartless nonetheless. Each time he heard a rustle of leaves, he looked behind him, afraid that someone was watching. Inside he began to despair that somehow he had missed God's grace and that it was too late for him. He felt foolish, self-conscious, and discouraged, but he determined to stick to his vow—he would not leave that place unchanged.

Again, at a noise, he looked to see whether someone had followed him, and suddenly he saw his pride. He was more afraid that someone should see him than he was that he wasn't saved! He said to himself, "What!...such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have any human being, and sinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavoring to make my peace with my offended God!"381 Suddenly, a

Scripture passage came to his mind: "Then shall ye…go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. [Then] ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:12–13). Charles seized the message of these verses with all of his inner strength, crying out, "Lord, I take thee at thy word. Now thou knowest that I do search for thee with all my heart, and that I have come here to pray to thee; and thou hast promised to hear me."382

Charles's Heart Opens

This finally allowed Charles to open his heart, and as he did so, God filled it with promises from His Word. Charles accepted each personally, as if it had been made to him alone, and he clung to them like a drowning man would cling to a branch or tree limb offered from the shore.

Soon, Charles found himself on his way back to town with no idea how long he had been in the woods, or when he had risen to his feet and begun walking back toward his office. He thought, "If I am ever converted, I will preach the Gospel." He then realized that the despair for his soul was completely gone— he had no conviction of sin in his heart. Still hesitant to believe he had truly been changed, he thought for a moment that perhaps the Spirit of God had left him altogether. He wondered whether he had grieved the Holy Spirit with his brashness of taking God at His Word in the way that he had; yet, at the same time, he could not get over the peace that now pervaded his soul and mind.

When he got back to town, he was surprised to find that it was dinnertime.383 He went to eat, but finding that he had no appetite, he returned to the law office. Judge Wright had gone to his dinner, so he took down his viola and began to play and sing some hymns and sacred songs. As soon as he did, tears came to his eyes. It was as if his heart had turned to liquid within him. Every word filled him with emotion to the point that he finally put up his instrument and stopped singing.

Meeting Jesus Face-to-Face

That afternoon, the law office employees were occupied with moving all of the furniture and books from one office to another, so they worked hard and spoke little. Charles was still amazed by the peace within him, as well as by his inability to elicit any feelings of guilt or the anxiety for his soul that had

possessed him in the past days and months. When it was finally dark and the office move was complete, Judge Wright bade Charles good night and went home. Charles described what happened at that moment:

I had accompanied him to the door; and as I closed the door and turned around, my heart seemed to be liquid within me. All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out; and the utterance of my heart was, "I want to pour my whole soul out to God." The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the room back of the front office, to pray.

There was no fire, and no light, in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterward, that it was wholly a mental state. On the contrary it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. He said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet….I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance. It seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears; and yet I had no distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect.

I must have continued in this state for a good while; but my mind was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect anything that I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became calm enough to break off from the interview, I returned to the front office, and found that the fire that I had made of large wood was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings.

No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say, I literally

bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, "I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me." I said, "Lord, I cannot bear any more"; yet I had no fear of death.384

For some time Charles sat in the midst of this experience, God's love rolling over him in wave after wave as the tears continued to flow from his eyes. It is likely that Charles's "unutterable gushings" were the beginning of a prayer language—a manifestation of speaking in tongues—that he could put no better description upon than this paraphrase of the words of Romans 8:26. At length one of the choir members from the church dropped by (despite his and his pastor's concerns for his salvation, Charles was the director of the choir) and asked what was wrong. At first, Charles could not find words to answer. "Are you in pain?" the man persisted. Charles replied, "No, but so happy that I cannot live."

A Great Presence and Holy Laughter

Still concerned, the man left the office and went to get one of the elders of their church whose shop was just across the street. When the two returned, the elder, whom Charles had always seen as a serious man, asked how he felt. When Charles started to explain, the Spirit of God overwhelmed the elder with convulsive laughter that sprang from the innermost parts of his soul, and he couldn't stop for some time. Coming from the presence of God in the room, this holy laughter confirmed Charles's testimony and poured into a staunch, religious man the true joy of the Holy Spirit.

Then, another friend of Charles, who had been struggling with his salvation in a similar way, stopped by. When he entered the room, saw the condition of the elder, and heard Charles explaining what he had experienced that day, he immediately fell to his knees, saying, "Do pray for me!"385 The elder and the choir member knelt and prayed for him, and when they finished, Charles prayed for him. After this episode, they all returned to their homes.

Charles was still perplexed by what he had experienced. Why had the elder laughed as he did? Did he find his story preposterous? Did he think Charles was somehow deluded? He began to wonder again if he really had made his peace with God. After arriving home, he soon fell asleep but kept waking up throughout the night because of the love he felt welling up in his heart. He

would begin to doubt again, the love would abate, and he would fall back to sleep—only to wake later from that love again overwhelming him from within. Finally, however, he fell asleep and slept until morning.

The Morning Light

In his Memoirs, Charles described his feelings as he awoke the next morning:

When I awoke in the morning the sun had risen, and was pouring a clear light into my room. Words cannot express the impression that this sunlight made upon me. Instantly the baptism that I had received the night before, returned upon me in the same manner. I arose upon my knees in the bed and wept aloud with joy, and remained for some time too much overwhelmed with the baptism of the Spirit to do anything but pour out my soul to God. It seemed as if this morning's baptism was accompanied with a gentle reproof, and the Spirit seemed to say to me, "Will you doubt?" "Will you doubt?" I cried, "No! I will not doubt; I cannot doubt." He then cleared that subject up so much to my mind that it was in fact impossible for me to doubt that the Spirit of God had taken possession of my soul.386

In that instant, Charles fully understood what Paul meant in Romans 5:1, 5: "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." It would become a foundational doctrine of his ministry that people were not elected or predestined by God to go to heaven but rather were justified by their own faith in accepting Jesus' sacrifice for their sin.

For Charles Finney, salvation had been an experience that wiped away all guilt and condemnation, and he expected the same experience could come to anyone else who sought it. His sense of the condemnation of sin had been washed away by the love "shed abroad" in his heart. He described it thusly: "Instead of feeling that I was sinning all the time, my heart was so full of love that it overflowed. My cup ran over with blessing and with love; and I could not feel that I was sinning against God. Nor could I recover the least sense of guilt for my past sins."387

Charles finally rose, prepared for the day, went to the law office, and began

his career as an evangelist. He first spoke with his employer, Judge Wright, who left the office greatly troubled by Charles's words. Later, though, he would be wonderfully converted as a result of their conversation. Charles had a case scheduled for ten o'clock that morning. When his client, who happened to be a deacon in the church, came in for his pre-trial appointment, he asked, "Mr. Finney, do you recollect that my cause is to be tried at ten o'clock this morning? I suppose you are ready?" Charles told him, "I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, I cannot plead yours." The deacon looked on in astonishment and asked, "What do you mean?" When Charles explained what had happened to him and said that he now intended to preach the Gospel rather than practice law, the deacon hung his head and walked out. He was so affected by Charles's words that he went directly to settle his case himself, then returned home to pray and rededicated his life to the Lord.388

Charles Finney's conversion challenges us by the fact of the power that was released in his life simply by his being born again. If there was ever a person transformed through conversion, it was Charles Finney. Those around him immediately felt the power of God on his life—not because Charles was somehow special in his calling, but because he was uncompromising in praying for what God had promised in His Word. Charles Finney saw Scripture as the law book that governed the universe, and once he was convinced of something it promised, he wouldn't let go of it in prayer until he knew God had assured his heart it would be done on earth just as it had been decreed in heaven.

"I Don't Believe It!"

After the deacon had left, the law office became too quiet, and Charles ventured forth to find someone new to speak with for the sake of the Gospel. The Spirit of God made a lasting impression on the heart of every person he spoke with that day. The word spread, and soon the entire town was astir with the news of Charles's conversion. Many, including Rev. Gale, thought it was a hoax. People began to gather at the church to discuss it, and soon Charles found himself there as well. The place was packed. Since he seemed to be the principal point of discussion, Charles approached the pulpit and began telling everyone how he knew religion was from God and how his experience convinced him of that fact. The audience, for the most part, sat entranced. As soon as Charles was finished, Rev. Gale arose, greatly moved by what he had

heard, and asked the congregation to forgive him for his unbelief. He confessed that he had been blocking the church's growth because of it and asked forgiveness for not believing that Charles could be saved.

Once Rev. Gale had finished repenting, he called on Charles to pray. As he did so, more hearts were touched. For the next several days, they had meetings every night. As Charles had been head of the choir and a leader among the young people, every member of the church except one was soon saved. Charles described it in this way: "The word of God had wonderful power; and I was every day surprised to find that a few words, spoken to an individual, would stick in his heart like an arrow."389

Charles's Anointing Starts to Spread

A short time later, Charles visited his parents in Henderson on Lake Ontario. Until this time, only his younger brother, George, had professed to have any kind of a relationship with God. On this trip, prayer was offered in his home for the first time in Charles's life, and he saw his parents come to the Lord. While at home, Charles also met with and spoke to others. The area experienced its own small revival during the next monthly prayer meeting of local Baptists and Congregationalists, even though it was George Finney, not Charles, who attended the meeting. Again, the work of the Lord spread in every direction. It seemed wherever Charles Finney went, the Holy Spirit touched lives in wonderful ways because of his submission to Christ.

In the following months, Charles took it upon himself to undergo training to be a Presbyterian minister. It was suggested that he attend Princeton for training, but Charles saw little fruit in the ministry of those trained at Princeton, so he opted instead to stay in Adams to be tutored by Rev. Gale and to study his library of religious books.

This training brought Charles head-to-head with the religious complacency that bound New England in his day. Had he attended Princeton, he would either have been converted to Calvinism or drummed out of ministry; however, under Rev. Gale's tutelage, he could meet doctrinal fallacies head-on. Rev. Gale did not spare Charles the education that he himself had completed, even though it conflicted at times with Charles's views—Rev. Gale was familiar with Charles and the good he had done in their community, so he accepted Charles's resistance without rejecting him as a pupil. In this way, Rev. Gale and Charles

debated all of the recognized doctrines of the day. Before accepting anything Rev. Gale taught him, Charles ascertained that he had the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart and proof from the Word of God. As a result, Charles never embraced Calvinism and "predestination" but took the view that each person held his own deciding "vote" regarding where he would spend eternity. As a result, Charles Finney would revolutionize evangelism in North America and Europe by actually calling people who attended his meetings to make a decision for Christ—a concept that never would have made sense according to strict Calvinistic thinking.

Not only did Charles find Calvinist doctrine erroneous, but he also deemed many of the practices and teachings of the day empty. He clung tenaciously to prayer, a practice that proved to be his lifeline. As he described it,

I used to spend a great deal of time in prayer; sometimes, I thought, literally praying "without ceasing." I also found it very profitable, and felt very much inclined to hold frequent days of private fasting. On those days I would seek to be entirely alone with God, and would generally wander off into the woods, or get into the meeting house, or somewhere away entirely by myself.

Sometimes I would pursue a wrong course in fasting, and attempt to examine myself according to the ideas of self-examination then entertained by my minister and the church. I would try to look into my heart, in the sense of examining my feelings, and would turn my attention particularly to my motives, and the state of my mind. When I pursued this course, I found invariably that the day would close without any perceptible advance being made. Afterwards I saw clearly why this was so. Turning my attention, as I did, from the Lord Jesus Christ, and looking into myself, examining my motives and feelings, my feelings all subsided of course. But whenever I fasted, and let the Spirit take his own course with me, and gave myself up to let him lead and instruct me, I universally found it in the highest degree useful. I found I could not live without enjoying the presence of God; and if at any time a cloud came over me, I could not rest, I could not study, I could not attend to anything with the least satisfaction or benefit, until the medium was again cleared between my soul and God….

The Lord taught me, in those early days of my Christian experience, many very important truths in regard to the spirit of prayer.390

Praying for the Sick

Charles soon found that healing could follow this spirit of prayer. Not long after his conversion, the sister-in-law of Judge Wright became seriously ill; no one believed she would live through the night. Charles said, "It seemed to plant an arrow, as it were, in my heart. It came upon me in the sense of a burden that crushed me, the nature of which I could not at all understand; but with it came an intense desire to pray for that woman."391 He went to the meetinghouse and began to pray but found few words, able only to "groan with groanings deep and loud."392 It was an example of Romans 8:26: "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."

Charles went back and forth between the meetinghouse and his office that evening because he could find no peace in his heart that the woman would live. Finally, after his third trip back and forth, he felt a release that his prayer had been answered and that the woman would live and never die in her sins. The woman recovered and, soon after, she was converted and found hope for her future in Christ.

Charles also found that his arguments for God's truth were more and more difficult for people to resist the more he prayed. It didn't matter whether he debated Calvinists, nonbelievers, or Universalists—who believed that all would be saved because of Jesus' sacrifice—none could resist the truth as he preached it. He attributed this result to his having been baptized in the Holy Spirit—a baptism he renewed continually in prayer. In fact, he soon recognized that the ministers with whom he interacted lacked this "anointing," a lack he believed responsible for their apparent absence of fruit.

When Christ commissioned his apostles to go and preach, he told them to abide at Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high. This power, as everyone knows, was the baptism of the Holy Ghost poured out upon them on the day of Pentecost. This was an indispensable qualification for success in their ministry. I did not suppose then, nor do I now, that this baptism was simply the power to work miracles. The power to work miracles and the gift of tongues were given as signs to attest the reality of their divine commission. But the baptism itself was a divine illumination, filling them with faith, and love,

with peace and power; so that their words were made sharp in the hearts of God's enemies, quick and powerful, like a two-edged sword. This is an indispensable qualification for preaching Christ to a sinful world. Without the direct teaching of the Holy Ghost, a man will never make much progress in preaching the Gospel. The fact is, unless he can preach the Gospel as an experience, present religion to mankind as a matter of consciousness, his speculations and theories will come far short of preaching the Gospel.393

When the presbytery came to Adams to examine Charles for ordination in March 1824, his reputation and testimony preceded him, and they seemed to deliberately avoid asking questions that would bring out his disagreements with their doctrine. In the end, they voted unanimously to license him to minister.

Charles Marries

Charles did not desire to preach to an established church or regular congregation, so he took a six-month commission with a women's missionary society in Oneida County in upstate New York, and traveled to the town of Evans Mills to begin his ministry. He traveled back and forth between there and a German settlement in Antwerp, ministering regularly at both.

At the time, Charles was engaged to Lydia Andrews of Whitestown in Oneida County, and they married in October 1824 and traveled to Adams. Two days after the wedding, Charles went back to Evans Mills with the intention of returning about one week later to move the couple's home there. Lydia, meanwhile, would stay in Adams and get everything in order for the trip. Because the revival took off so quickly, however, Charles wouldn't return until early spring of 1825—some six months later. This delay was probably not the makings of a very good honeymoon.

Charles's preaching style was markedly different from that of his contemporaries, especially because it was influenced greatly by his legal training. He did not speak down to his audiences as if he were an authority to whom they needed to conform; rather, he preached as if they were the jury deciding a case—the case being the salvation of their own souls. While other ministers criticized his common speech, use of repetition, and illustrations of everyday occupations and events, these techniques were the same tools lawyers employed to elicit a desired verdict. The members of Charles's

"juries" said, "Why, anyone could preach as you do. You just talk to the people. You talk as if you were as much at home as if you sat in the parlor," and, "It seems as if Mr. Finney had taken me alone and was conversing with me face to face."394 Charles had no desire to impress or awe; he was looking for decisions for Christ and refused to deviate from that goal.

Preaching by Inspiration

In his first decade of ministry, he never preached from notes or prepared sermons but always took the text God presented in his heart and spoke on it as the Spirit of God led him. Speaking about this method, Charles said, "[I] first went among the people to learn their wants. Then in light of the Holy Spirit I take the subject that I think will meet their present necessities….I pray much over the subject and then go pour it out to the people." Charles would put the Word in his heart and keep his prayer life full, and the Holy Spirit would give him the words when he stepped before an audience. As he put it, "If I do not preach from inspiration, I don't know how I did preach."395

When his style was criticized by more educated ministers, Charles answered matter-of-factly,

Show me a more excellent way. Show me the fruits of your ministry; and if they so far exceed mine as to give me evidence that you have found a more excellent way, I will adopt your views. But do not expect me to abandon my own views and practices, and adopt yours, when you yourself cannot deny that, whatever errors I may have fallen into, or whatever imperfections there may be in my preaching, in style, and in everything else, yet the results justify my methods….I intend to improve all I can; but I never can adopt your manner of preaching the Gospel, until I have higher evidence that you are right and I am wrong.396

Charles's preaching also received a great deal of attention because he proclaimed that his listeners could find peace with God and assurance of their salvation by prevailing in prayer, something that truly rocked the boat of traditional Calvinists. He held people accountable for their own salvation. When he was getting little response from those at Evans Mills, he called them directly to the primary question he wanted to hold before them:

You admit that what I preach is the Gospel. You profess to believe it. Now

will you receive it? Do you mean to receive it, or do you intend to reject it? You must have some mind about it. And now I have a right to take it for granted, inasmuch as you admit that I have preached the truth, that you acknowledge your obligation at once to become Christians.397

When they refused to rise to their feet in response to this call, he said,

Then you are committed. You have taken your stand. You have rejected Christ and his Gospel; and ye are witnesses one against the other, and God is witness against you all. This is explicit, and you may remember as long as you live, that you have thus publicly committed yourselves against the Saviour and said, "We will not have this man, Jesus Christ, to reign over us."…

I am sorry for you; and will preach to you once more, the Lord willing, tomorrow night.398

The next night, he started his sermon thusly: "Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him; for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be given him."399

At the end of the sermon, a woman in the back of the audience fell, slain by the Spirit, and her friends held her up. Thinking she had suffered a fainting spell, Charles went to check on her and discovered she had been struck dumb. The woman lay speechless for sixteen hours. When she finally spoke again, she admitted she thought she had been saved before, but when she had been presented with the true righteousness of God, she realized her salvation was not complete. Her realization caused several others in her church to rethink their standing with Christ.

Another time, Charles was called to the bedside of a woman ailing from consumption.400 Her husband was a Universalist and had indoctrinated her to be one, as well; but upon hearing Charles's words and prayers, she rejected Universalism and accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. Her husband was so incensed that he took his gun to Charles's next meeting planning to kill him. In the middle of the sermon, the man began to sink down in his seat, groaning and crying out that he was sinking down to hell. After the meeting, the man's friends helped him home. As Charles was walking down the street the next day, this man went to meet him. He practically leaped in greeting him,

taking Charles up in his arms and spinning him around in the air! All opposition to the Gospel had gone out of him, and he began seeking his peace with God.

Meeting the Prayer Warrior

It was also in Evans Mills that Charles again met Daniel Nash for the second time, a minister he had first encountered when he was examined to be licensed. At that time, his impression of Nash, better known as "Father Nash," was rather unfavorable; he had felt Nash was in somewhat of a backslidden state. Charles learned, however, that since they had last met, Nash had been infected with an eye disease that had left him lying in a dark room, unable to read or write. Because of his ailments, Nash had given himself almost entirely to prayer; eventually, he had emerged from the sickness physically healed and spiritually transformed into a man of intercessory prayer. He was far from the man whose acquaintance Charles had made earlier.

When Nash arrived in Evans Mills, he had "a praying list," as he called it, with the names of people for whom he felt called to pray every day, often several times a day. As Charles and Nash began to pray together in meetings, Charles was deeply moved by the power of Nash's prayers and the magnitude of his faith.

A Bar Becomes a Prayer Chapel

When Nash learned of a bar owner who was causing a good deal of trouble for the Christians in the community, he wrote the man's name down on his list as a "hard case." The bar owner was known to accost those he knew to be Christians with the most abusive and foul language. His bar had a reputation for entertaining people who engaged in drunkenness and profane revelry. A few days later, Nash pressed on, being called to another area to pray.

Not long afterward, this "hard case" showed up at one of Charles's meetings. His appearance caused considerable commotion, but as he caused no trouble when he entered, Charles left him alone, though he felt obliged to keep an eye on him throughout the service. As the meeting progressed, Charles sensed that the man was uneasy; he fidgeted constantly in his seat. Finally, he arose and asked if he could speak. When Charles gave him permission to do so, he poured himself out in brokenhearted repentance before those who had

gathered. It was incredibly moving for everyone there, and many whose hearts had been hardened against what Charles had been preaching found themselves broken before God as well. Within a short time, the man made his peace with God and closed his bar to the debauchery that had formerly been prevalent in it. For the remainder of the time that Finney spent in this town, a prayer meeting took place virtually every night in this bar.

Nash's ministry had been nothing special up to this point. He was born on November 27, 1775, and took his first pastorate in Lowville Township in 1816, just short of his fortieth birthday. During his first year there, a revival broke out that saw seventy people come to the Lord, but convoluted church politics slowed things down and resulted in a church split. On September 25, 1822, Nash was voted out of office and replaced by a younger minister, although he was still asked to speak at that church from time to time. When he returned to speak, a second revival broke out. Two hundred people were converted—a sizeable number for a community of only two thousand—but Nash was not recalled to leadership in the congregation. This rejection took its toll on Nash, and it was during this downtrodden time that Charles had first met him as a member of his examination team.

After meeting again at Evans Mills, Charles and Nash decided to work together, as the Lord was leading them in similar directions. They determined to make the unchurched their primary focus. As Nash stated in a letter,

When Mr. Finney and I began our race, we had no thought of going amongst ministers. Our highest ambition was to go where there was neither minister or reformation and try to look up the lost sheep, for whom no man cared. We began and the Lord prospered….We go into no man's parish unless called….We have room enough to work and work enough to do.401

Prayer Paves the Way

They established a pattern of ministry: Nash would go into an area three to four weeks ahead of Charles to prepare the ground for his arrival and even set up his speaking engagements. Sometimes Nash would go alone; at other times, he would travel with someone he knew well—most often Abel Clary; sometimes he would come together with a few local people to pray. Rarely were more than three people involved in this advance prayer movement. While the revivals were happening, Nash rarely attended the meetings; instead, he

would stay in a house nearby and continue praying as the services took place.

Following Evans Mills, Nash preceded Charles to the town of Gouverneur, New York, where Charles's next speaking appointments were planned. As the meetings began to gain steam, a group of young men from a neighboring church began to oppose the move of God happening through Charles's meetings. Feeling that prayer was the only way to overcome this opposition, Nash and Charles entered a grove of trees and prayed until they felt they had gained the victory. In his Memoirs, Charles described what happened as a result of this prayer time:

The next Sabbath, after preaching morning and afternoon myself—for I did the preaching altogether, and Brother Nash gave himself up almost continually to prayer—we met at five o'clock in the church, for a prayer meeting. The meeting house was filled. Near the close of the meeting, Brother Nash arose, and addressed that company of young men who had joined hand in hand to resist the revival. I believe they were all there, and they sat braced up against the Spirit of God. It was too solemn for them really to make ridicule of what they heard and saw; and yet their brazen-facedness and stiff-neckedness were apparent to everybody.

Brother Nash addressed them very earnestly, and pointed out the guilt and danger of the course they were taking. Toward the close of his address, he waxed exceeding warm, and said to them, "Now, mark me, young men! God will break your ranks in less than one week, either by converting some of you, or by sending some of you to hell. He will do this as certainly as the Lord is my God!" He was standing where he brought his hand down on the top of the pew before him, so as to make it thoroughly jar. He sat immediately down, dropped his head, and groaned with pain.

The house was as still as death, and most of the people held down their heads. I could see that the young men were agitated. For myself, I regretted that Brother Nash had gone so far. He had committed himself, that God would either take the life of some of them, and send them to hell, or convert some of them, within a week. However on Tuesday morning of the same week, the leader of these young men came to me, in the greatest distress of mind. He was all prepared to submit; and as soon as I came to press him he broke down like a child, confessed, and manifestly gave himself to Christ. Then he said, "What

shall I do, Mr. Finney?" I replied, "Go immediately to all your young companions, and pray with them, and exhort them at once to turn to the Lord." He did so; and before the week was out, nearly if not all of that class of young men, were hoping in Christ.402

For the next seven years until his death, Nash became a key part of every revival Charles Finney led. Together, they learned a great deal about "praying down revival." Nash was not timid in prayer—it was said his prayers could sometimes be heard up to half a mile away, though some attributed this to his poor hearing.

Revival in the "Burned-over District"

Between 1825 and 1827, Charles itinerated throughout other parts of western New York, speaking wherever he could in frontier towns and community halls. This region had earned the nickname of the "burned-over district"—few could generate any excitement about religion anywhere in the region since it had been traveled by so many circuit preachers. Then, from December 1827 until June 1829, Charles traveled and ministered in Delaware and Pennsylvania. On June 8, 1828, while Charles was leading a revival in Philadelphia, his first child, Helen Clarissa Finney, was born. Charles took his wife, Lydia, and his daughter back to Lydia's family in western New York, then preached his way back to Philadelphia. He wouldn't return to New York to see them until June of the following year.

After Philadelphia, Charles ministered in New York City from October 1829 until May 1830. These revivals were marked with events similar to those that had marked his time in Evans Mills, nearby Antwerp, and elsewhere, and Finney attracted increased attention from the press and from churches throughout New England.

Charles's revivals benefited greatly from the industrialization and urbanization of his day. For example, the Erie Canal, finished in 1825, connected Lake Erie near Buffalo to the Hudson River at Albany, and thus the Atlantic Ocean and New York City were connected to any of the communities that could access the Great Lakes. As a result, the towns along the canal became centers of industry to which workers flocked from the rural communities throughout the region. As water transport was much cheaper than transporting goods by wagon (railways weren't built in New York before

1829), these population centers flourished and became hubs of enterprise. Thus, by speaking in places such as Utica, Troy, Rochester, and New York City, Charles was able to touch the hearts of larger crowds and youth who had left their families for jobs in the larger towns and cities. As a result, his revivals spread like wildfire and his fame grew more rapidly.

Charles Finney's fame earned him some enemies as well. Established ministers such as Lyman Beecher (father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Asahel Nettleton saw his practices as unrefined, barbaric, and manipulative. They dealt harsh criticism to the "new measures" Charles used—the adoption of the Methodists' "anxious seat" as seen in the camp meetings (marking off a bench or area in the front of a meeting hall for those "anxious" about their salvation to come and dwell in prayer), nightly instead of weekly meetings (called "protracted meetings"), allowing women to pray in mixed-gender prayer meetings, as well as the use of common speech and slang in his sermons. Many saw these measures as too aggressive and felt Charles was more interested in conquering territory than winning souls.

At one point, Beecher challenged, "Finney, I know your plan, and you know I do; you mean to come to Connecticut, and carry a streak of fire to Boston. But if you attempt it, as the Lord liveth, I'll meet you at the state line and call out the artillerymen and fight every inch of the way to Boston and then I'll fight you there."403

Others took up Nettleton and Beecher's cause. Many of the stories about Charles's practices were exaggerated, and false reports were printed in the newspapers. They made Charles out to be a harsh inquisitor of his audiences rather than a man pleading passionately for their souls. He was also accused of being a flagrant self-promoter who whipped crowds into emotional frenzies in order to manipulate them and draw larger and larger audiences. People who opposed Charles claimed his meetings ran to unreasonable hours, his prayers were irreverent, and his language was coarse. Those who attended his meetings, however, knew that the Spirit of God did mighty things wherever Charles Finney went.

For example, in 1826, Charles spoke at the schoolhouse in New York Mills, a community skirting Utica. His brother-in-law, a superintendent in a local cotton factory, invited him there to speak; he felt the Word would have a

powerful effect among the young people. The next morning, Charles took a tour of the factory, and he wrote about the experience in his memoirs:

One of them [a young girl], was trying to mend a broken thread, and I observed that her hands trembled so that she could not mend it. I approached slowly, looking on each side at the machinery, as I passed; but observed that this girl grew more and more agitated, and could not proceed with her work. When I came within eight or ten feet of her, I looked solemnly at her. She observed it, and was quite overcome, and sunk down, and burst into tears. The impression caught almost like powder [exploding], and in a few moments nearly the whole room was in tears. The feeling spread throughout the factory….The owner of the establishment was present, and seeing the state of things, he said to the superintendent, "Stop the mill, and let the people attend to religion; for it is more important that our souls should be saved than that this factory run."...The revival went through the mill with astonishing power, and in the course of a few days nearly all in the mill were hopefully converted.404

The Reverend John Frost, a local Presbyterian minister, estimated that three thousand people had been saved in the region; eight months later, every one was still a faithful, active church member.

Ever Relying on the Spirit of Prayer

In Auburn, New York, in 1826, Charles was confronted with so much opposition that many of the churches to the east began closing their doors to him. Newspapers included reports of excesses in his meetings. Of this time, Nash wrote,

The work of God moves forward in power, in some places against dreadful opposition. Mr. Finney and I have both been hanged and burned in effigy. We have frequently been disturbed in our religious meetings. Sometimes the opposers make a noise in the house of God; sometimes they gather round the house and stone it, and discharge guns. There is almost as much writing, intrigue, and lying, and reporting of lies, as there would be if we were on the eve of a presidential election. Oh, what a world! How much it hates the truth! How unwilling to be saved! But I think the work will go on.405

Charles again took the matter to prayer:

I said nothing publicly, or as I recollect privately, to anybody on the subject; but gave myself to prayer. I looked to God with great earnestness day after day, to be directed; asking him to show me the path of duty, and give me grace to ride out the storm….

The Lord showed me as in a vision of what was before me. He drew so near to me, while I was engaged in prayer, that my flesh literally trembled on my bones. I shook from head to foot, under a full sense of the presence God. At first, and for some time, it seemed more like being on the top of Sinai, amidst its full thunderings, than in the presence of the cross of Christ.

Never in my life, that I recollect, was I so awed and humbled before God as then. Nevertheless, instead of feeling like fleeing, I seemed drawn nearer and nearer to God—seemed to draw nearer and nearer to that Presence that filled me with such an unutterable awe and trembling. After a season of great humiliation before him, there came a great lifting up. God assured me that he would be with me and uphold me; that no opposition should prevail against me; that I had nothing to do, in regard to all this matter, but to keep about my work, and wait for the salvation of God. 406

Such prayer became a key not only in facing opposition, but also in everything else Charles faced, especially in "praying down revival." While most people thought of revivals only as moves of God, who, in His sovereignty, poured out His Spirit (another instance where the ministers of the day used God's sovereignty as an excuse for their lack of effective ministry), Charles believed that human beings could set the stage for revival through prayer, fasting, and holding God accountable to His promises in the Bible. Charles wrote about this spirit of prayer as it affected him during the revival at De Kalb in upstate New York:

I found myself so much exercised, and so borne down with the weight of immortal souls, that I was constrained to pray without ceasing. Some of my experiences, indeed, alarmed me. A spirit of importunity sometimes came upon me so that I would say to God that He had made a promise to answer prayer, and I could not, and would not, be denied. I felt so certain that He would hear me, and that faithfulness to his promises, and to himself, rendered it impossible that he should not hear and answer, that frequently I found myself saying to him, "I hope thou dost not think that I can be denied. I come with thy faithful

promises in my hand, and I cannot be denied." I cannot tell how absurd unbelief looked to me, and how certain it was, in my mind, that God would answer prayer—those prayers that, from day to day, and from hour to hour, I found myself offering in such agony and faith. I had no idea of the shape the answer would take, the locality in which the prayers would be answered, or the exact time of the answer. My impression was that the answer was near, even at the door; and I felt myself strengthened in the divine life, put on the harness for a mighty conflict with the powers of darkness, and expected soon to see a far more powerful outpouring of the Spirit of God, in that new country where I had been laboring.407

Oswald J. Smith explained why this kind of prayer was so important to Charles's ministry:

He always preached with the expectation of seeing the Holy Spirit suddenly outpoured. Until this happened little or nothing was accomplished. But the moment the Spirit fell upon the people, Finney had nothing else to do but point them to the Lamb of God. Thus he lived and wrought for years in an atmosphere of revival.408

Charles and his wife went on to minister in several places from October 1829 until May 1830, ending in New York City, where their second child and first son, Charles Beman Finney, was born on March 28.

100,000 Saved

A major breakthrough, and the greatest outpouring of his life, came when Charles held a revival in Rochester, New York, starting in September 1830. Rochester was the fastest-growing American city in the 1820s. The town was founded in 1811, when fifteen people settled along the Genesee River to take advantage of the waterfalls to power their mills. In 1823, the city had grown to a population of twenty-five hundred, and the aqueduct connecting the Erie Canal to the Genesee River was completed, connecting the farmers of western New York with New York City and the Atlantic Ocean.

It seemed that the town became a thriving commercial center overnight. Farmers would take their grains there, receive cash payment from the mills, and then shop for necessities in Rochester's marketplaces before returning home. As a result, more than half of the adult men in Rochester were skilled

artisans, and many professional people, such as county-seat lawyers and physicians, settled there.

By 1830, Rochester had almost quadrupled to nearly ten thousand residents, making the town about a tenth of the size of Philadelphia. During the months when Charles spoke there, nearly the entire population was converted; roughly one hundred thousand people in the region came to the Lord.409 The revival touched communities as far as a hundred miles away. Lyman Beecher, Charles's harsh critic in his early years, would eventually call Charles's work in Rochester "the greatest work of God, and the greatest revival of religion, that the world has ever seen, in so short a time. One hundred thousand…were reported as having connected themselves with churches....This...is unparalleled in the history of the church, and the progress of religion."410

It was recorded that as many as 85 percent of Charles's converts remained Christians years later. It was all that Cane Ridge had been, with fewer excesses, but multiplied several times over—and it was in an urban area striving to become a cultural center rather than at a rural gathering of farmers and pioneers.

Charles was initially invited to Rochester to fill the pulpit for the Third Presbyterian Church, whose pastor had just been called to lead the First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Helping to initiate this move was one of the church elders, Josiah Bissell. Bissell was a wealthy businessman who owned the Pioneer Stage Line, famous throughout the East for not operating its coaches on Sundays. Bissell was a generous man who helped significantly to finance the construction of both the Second and Third Presbyterian Churches in Rochester.

Before accepting the call to Rochester, however, Charles looked into the spiritual atmosphere of the town to determine whether it was ripe for revival. He learned that there was disagreement among the Christians of the town. It appears Bissell had seen the Second Presbyterian Church pastor, the Reverend William James, riding in one of the Sunday coaches of another stage line. Bissell, who apparently thought his wealth and social position gave him a say in everything, had already entered into conflict with James about the day-today affairs of the church. This was the last straw for Bissell, and he persuaded the members of the congregation to request James's dismissal. Dr. Joseph

Penney, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Rochester, came to James's defense, provoking Bissell to complain to the presbytery411 about Penney's interference. Thus, the rift between the churches began.

After praying about the matter and seeking advice from those around him, Charles concluded that Rochester was an unpromising invitation. He determined to turn it down, but God had other ideas. When Charles was alone that night and about to retire, he came to the realization that his logic had been faulty: "Certainly you are needed at Rochester all the more because of these difficulties. Do you shun the field because there are so many things that need to be corrected, because there is so much that is wrong? But if all was right, you would not be needed."412 He determined at once to answer the invitation.

Between September 1830 and March 1831, Charles preached several nights each week and three times each Sunday. Penney came to one of Charles's first services, and their spirits were immediately knit together by the Holy Spirit. Penney then invited Charles to speak at the First Presbyterian Church, and as the revival began to take hold, Bissell and Penney soon resolved their difference in the spirit of Christian unity that overpowered Rochester and the surrounding communities, including Ogden, Brockport, Penfield, and Clarkson.

It was a revival that touched all social classes—from civic and business leaders to schoolteachers, from physicians and shopkeepers to farmers and migrant workers. Many businesses closed so that employees could attend the meetings, and women from the church went door-to-door, praying for people and inviting them to come to the evening service. Bars closed for lack of patrons. Crime rates dropped dramatically and stayed low for years, even as the population grew. At one point, the teenagers in the local high school were so distraught about the condition of their souls that they paid no attention to their lessons, so the director invited Charles to come and speak. Nearly the entire student body was saved, including the director, who had originally thought it was a ploy by the students to get out of their work. Forty of the students went on to become ministers. The society in and around Rochester was transformed and became distinctly Christian. One could not go out into the streets or into a bank or shop and not overhear a discussion about religion. As one student, Charles P. Bush, who later became a leading pastor in New York City, put it,

The whole community was stirred. Religion was the topic of conversation, in the house, in the shop, in the office and on the street. The only theater in the city was converted into a livery stable; the only circus into a soap and candle factory. Grog shops were closed; the Sabbath was honored; the sanctuaries were thronged with happy worshippers; a new impulse was given to every philanthropic enterprise; the fountains of benevolence where opened, and men lived to good.413

Again, Charles felt that prayer played a major part in the work of the revival. He wrote that "the key which unlocked the Heavens in this revival was the prayer of [Abel] Clary, Father Nash, and other unnamed folk who laid themselves prostrate before God's throne and besought Him for a divine outpouring."414 When Charles heard that Clary was in town, he remarked, "I have not seen him at any of our meetings." The man who told him of Clary's attendance responded, "No…he cannot go to meetings, he says. He prays nearly all the time, day and night, and in such an agony of mind that I do not know what to make of it. Sometimes he cannot even stand on his knees, but will lie prostrate on the floor, and groan and pray in a manner that quite astounds me." Charles replied, "I understand it; please keep still. It will all come out right; he will surely prevail."415 He knew what this spirit of prayer was doing and he knew better than to do anything to interfere with it.

Of this kind of fervent prayer, Charles said,

I have never seen a person sweat blood, but I do know a person who prayed until his nose bled. And people have prayed until drenched with sweat, even in the coldest winter. Some have prayed for hours until their strength was exhausted from the labor of their minds. Such prayers reached out and took hold of God.416

Rochester became the first place where Charles really began using the "anxious bench"—a precursor to the altar calls used widely today. Prior to this, Charles had had "anxious meetings"—gatherings following the main evening service, often held the next morning, where those anxious about the state of their souls could come to inquire more earnestly and personally about the conversion of their souls. In Rochester, however, Charles found people needed no "working up" to salvation but were immediately ready to embrace it once it was presented to them. Rather than waiting, he sectioned off a front part

of the meetinghouse so that people could come forward to pray for their salvation as soon as he invited them. As he put it,

I had found also that something was needed, to make the impression on them that they were expected at once to give up their hearts; something that would call them to act, and act as publicly before the world, as they had in their sins; something that would commit them publicly to the service of Christ. When I had called them simply to stand up in the public congregation, I found that this had a very good effect; and so far as it went, it answered the purpose for which it was intended. But after all, I had felt that for some time, that something more was necessary to bring them out from among the masses of the ungodly, to a public renunciation of their sinful ways, and a public committal of themselves to God.417

The Rochester revival would prove to be the height of the Second Great Awakening and a spark to light the fuse of a national revival that ran like wildfire throughout the United States in 1831. A host of evangelists, including Beecher himself, took up the torch from Rochester, and the rolls of membership swelled in churches everywhere—Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Congregational, and others alike. New England churches grew by one-third in 1831 alone. Following the Rochester revival, criticism of Charles and his methods all but evaporated.

The National Revival of 1831 brought greater unity to the United States, where the common talk of the day centered on religion. Day-to-day chores and business hours revolved around church gatherings and prayer meetings. Churches became the community centers of the day. Protestantism became a glue that bound together American hearts through prayer, and the Protestant work ethic became synonymous with prosperity, growing communities, and Yankee ingenuity.

It is also important to note that Father Nash died at the age of fifty-six near the end of that year, on December 20, 1831. Less than four months later, Charles would give up his itinerant ministry to take a position as a pastor.

Pastoring in New York City

The heavy preaching load of the Rochester revival took its toll on Charles. Doctors believed that he had consumption, and they prescribed rest. Several

thought he would die. Having heard this before, Charles informed them that they were mistaken—he was merely overtired, and all he needed was a little rest.

By the spring of 1831, Charles felt his work in Rochester was done. He had accepted an invitation to speak at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and began making his way there by coach. The going was tough, however, and in three days he had traveled only as far as Auburn, a distance of roughly sixty miles. Before continuing on his way, he received a written request to stay and preach in Auburn. The request had been signed by a large number of town leaders, many of whom had formerly opposed his ministry. Charles would stay and minister six weeks, and many years later, a historian of the First Presbyterian Church of Auburn recorded,

He was then at the prime of life and at the height of his fame. As a preacher…he was without rival. The glance of his full sharp eye and the tones of his commanding voice were in keeping with the sterner aspects of truth, which he never failed to present with searching discrimination and powerful effect….Mr. Finney preached in no other pulpit than this, but the results were by no means limited to this congregation. Many, who ascribed their conversion to his instrumentality, united with other churches in the village and vicinity; and now, after a generation has passed, and with it the prejudice of the time, there can be no question of the service then rendered to the cause of vital religion.418

From Auburn, Charles would press on to Buffalo, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; and eventually, Boston, Massachusetts. His opposition had softened so much by this time that he even held meetings together with his former critic, Lyman Beecher.

On March 7, 1832, the Finneys' third child, Frederick Norton Finney, was born, and Charles and his wife decided that the traveling evangelist's life was not conducive to raising a family. As Charles put it, "I had become fatigued, as I had labored about ten years as an evangelist, without anything more than a few days or weeks of rest, during the whole period."419 These factors, among others, led him to take the pastorate of the Chatham Street Chapel (also known as the Second Free Presbyterian Church) in New York City. He left Boston and began his pastorate in New York in April 1832.

A group of benefactors, including businessman and abolitionist Lewis Tappan, paid to have the Chatham Street Theatre refurbished into a church. Upon the building's completion, Charles spoke to crowds of fifteen hundred to two thousand—sizeable audiences even for New York City. From May to June of that year, he preached seventy consecutive evenings. Charles purposed not to take members from other churches but to reach the unsaved. He instructed his church members

to scatter themselves over the whole house, and to keep their eyes open, in regard to any that were seriously affected under preaching, and if possible, to detain them after preaching, for conversation and prayer. They were true to their teaching, and were on the lookout at every meeting to see, with whom the Word of God was taking effect; and they had faith enough to dismiss their fears, and to speak to any whom they saw to be affected by the Word. In this way the conversion of a great many souls was secured. They would invite them into those rooms, and there we could converse and pray with them, and thus gather up the results of every sermon.420

He and his congregation did this with such success that another church was soon planted out of new members from Chatham Street.

By midsummer, a cholera epidemic hit New York City; while many fled, Charles stayed to minister to his flock. However, at his installation service on September 28, Charles took ill with a fever that proved to be cholera. Though he survived the disease, the treatments were so harsh that he was unable to resume his preaching until the spring of 1833. In January 1834, taking a break due to the fatigue of work and the toll of the cholera and its treatment, Charles left for six months on a sea voyage to try to recover his strength. His trip took him to the Mediterranean Sea and the islands of Malta and Sicily. He recorded in his Memoirs,

On my homeward passage my mind became exceedingly exercised on the question of revivals. I feared that they would decline throughout the country. I feared that the opposition that had been made to them, had grieved the Holy Spirit. My own health, it appeared to me, had nearly or quite broken down; and I knew of no other evangelist that would take the field, and aid pastors in revival work. This view of the subject distressed me so much that one day I found myself unable to rest. My soul was in an utter agony. I spent almost the

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