The GOSPEL TRUTH
THE MEMOIRS OF

CHARLES G. FINNEY

1868

CHAPTER VII.

 
Further Remarks upon Ministerial Education

 

In what I say upon this subject I hope my brethren will not impute to me any other motive than a kind and benevolent regard for their highest usefulness. I have always taken their criticisms kindly and given them credit for benevolent intentions. Now I am an old man and many of the results of my views and methods are known to the public. Is it out of place in me now to speak freely to the ministry upon this subject? In reply to their objections I have sometimes told them what a judge of the Supreme Court remarked to me upon this subject. "Ministers," said he, "do not exercise good sense in addressing the people. They are afraid of repetition. They use language not well understood by the common people. Their illustrations are not taken from the common pursuits of life. They write in too elevated a style and read without repetition and are not understood by the people. Now," said he, "if lawyers should take such a course as that, they would ruin themselves and their cause. When I was at the bar," he added, "I used to take it for granted, when I had before me a jury of respectable men, that I should have to repeat over my main positions about as many times as there were jury men in the jury box. I learned that unless I did so, and illustrated, and repeated, and turned the main points over--the main points of law and of evidence--unless I did this over and over," said he, "I expected to lose my cause. Our object," he said, "in addressing a jury is to get their minds settled before they leave the jury box. Not to make a speech in language but partially understood by them; not to let ourselves out in illustrations entirely above their apprehensions; not to display our oratory, and then let them go. We are set on getting a verdict. Hence we are set upon being understood. We mean to convince them; and if they have prejudices, to overcome their prejudices; if they have doubts as to the law, to make them understand it, and rivet it in their minds. In short, we expect to get a verdict, and to get it upon the spot; so that when they go to their room to see if they are agreed it will be found that they have understood us; and that they have been convinced by the facts and arguments presented to them--and that they have all been convinced. And if we do not take these pains to urge every thought, and every word, and every point home, so as to lodge it in their convictions, we are sure to lose our cause. We must overcome their prejudices; we must overcome their ignorance: we must try to overcome even their interest, if they have any, against our client.

"Now," said he, "if ministers would do this, the effects of their preaching would be unspeakably different from what they are. They go into their studies and write a sermon; they go into their pulpit and read it. But those that listen to it but poorly understand it. Many words are used that will not be understood until they go home and consult their dictionaries. They do not address the people expecting to convince them, and to get their verdict in favor of Christ upon the spot. They seek no such object. They rather seem to aim at making fine literary productions, and displaying great eloquence and an ornate use of language." Of course I do not profess, at this distance of time, to give the exact language used by the judge; but I have given his remarks in substance, as made to me at the time. I have often told ministers of this.

I never entertained the least hard feeling toward my brethren for the roughness with which they often treated me. I knew that they were very anxious to have me do good, and really supposed that I should do much more good and much less evil, if I should adopt their views. But I was of a different opinion.

I could mention many facts illustrative of the views of ministers, and of the manner in which they used to snub me and treat me. When I was preaching in Philadelphia, for example, Dr. Hewitt, the celebrated temperance agent from Connecticut, came to Philadelphia and heard me preach. He was indignant at the manner in which I let down the dignity of the pulpit. His principal conversation, however, was with Brother Patterson, with whom at that time I labored. He insisted upon it that I should not be allowed to preach till I had a ministerial education. That I should stop preaching and go to Princeton and learn theology, and get better views of the way in which the Gospel should be preached. But from Brother Patterson's account of the matter, Dr. Hewitt did not get much consolation from him: for Brother Patterson turned upon the ministers as they were educated, and with their views, and compared the results of their preaching with the manifest results of mine.

Let not anything I say on this subject leave the impression on any mind, that I thought either my views or my methods perfect, for I had no such thought. I was aware that I was but a child. I had not enjoyed the advantages of the higher schools of learning. And so conscious had I been all along that I lacked those qualifications that would make me acceptable, especially to ministers, and I feared to the people in populous places, that I had never had any higher ambition or purpose than to go into the new settlements and places where they did not enjoy the Gospel. Indeed I was often surprised myself, in the first years of my preaching, to find it so edifying and acceptable to the most educated classes. This was more than I had expected--greatly more than my brethren had expected, and more than I had dared to hope myself. I always endeavored to improve in everything in which I discovered myself to be in error. But the longer I preached, the less reason had I to think that my error lay in the direction in which it was supposed to lie by my brother ministers.

The more experience I had, the more I saw the results of my method of preaching, the more I conversed with all classes, high and low, educated and uneducated, the more was I confirmed in the fact that God had led me, had taught me, had given me right conceptions in regard to the best manner of winning souls. I say that God taught me; and I know it must have been so, for surely I never had obtained these notions from man. And I have often thought that I could say with perfect truth as Paul said, that I was not taught the Gospel by man but by the Spirit of Christ himself. And I was taught it by the Spirit of the Lord in a manner so clear and forcible, that no arguments of my ministerial brethren, with which I was plied so often and so long, had the least weight with me.

I mention this as a matter of duty. For still I am solemnly impressed with the conviction, that the schools are to a great extent spoiling the ministers. Ministers in these days have great facilities for obtaining information on all theological questions. And are vastly more learned, so tar as theological, historical, and biblical learning is concerned, than they perhaps ever have been in any age of the world. Yet with all their learning, they do not know how to use it. They are, after all, like David in Saul's armor to a great extent. A man can never learn to preach except by preaching. But one great thing above all others ministers need, and that is singleness of eye. If they have a reputation to secure and to nurse, they will do but little good. Many years ago a beloved pastor of my acquaintance left home for his health, and employed a young man just from the seminary to fill his pulpit while he was absent. He wrote and preached as splendid sermons as he could. The pastor's wife finally ventured to say to him: "You are preaching over the heads of our people. They do not understand your language or your illustrations. You bring too much of your learning into the pulpit." He replied: "I am a young man. I am cultivating a style. I am aiming to prepare myself for occupying a pulpit and surrounding myself with a cultivated congregation. I cannot descend to your people. I must cultivate an elevated style." I have had my thought and my mental eye upon this man ever since. I am not aware that he is yet dead. But I have never seen his name connected with any revival, amidst all the great revivals that we have had from year to year since that time; and I never expect to unless his views are radically changed, and unless he addresses the people from an entirely different standpoint, and from entirely different motives.

The fact is if ministers have a single eye, and intend to reach and to save the people, they will feel the necessity of being understood. They will not be satisfied with setting the crowd agape with their great eloquence and splendid education; but they will come down to them, and will try to understand their language and accommodate their addresses to their capacities and positions, to their modes of thought and language. I could name ministers who are yet alive, old men like myself, who were greatly ashamed of me when I first began to preach because I was so undignified in the pulpit, used language in such common use, addressed the people with such directness, and said "you," and because I aimed not at all at ornament, or at supporting the dignity of the pulpit. But I heard at secondhand much more in this direction from ministers, than was spoken directly to my face. Now I wish to be distinctly understood as insisting that in the main, if not universally, those ministers were honest, and very solicitous for my usefulness. They of course verily thought that their views and ways were right and mine were wrong. It was not because of any quarrel they had with me as a man or a Christian; but they lamented my want of ministerial education, which prevented me, as they supposed, from maintaining the dignity of the pulpit and of the profession.

Dear brethren they were, and I always felt in the kindest manner toward them, and do not know that in a single instance I was ruffled or angry at what they said. I did not wonder they thought so. I was from the very first aware that I should meet with this opposition, and that there was this wide gulf in our views, and would be in our practices, between myself and other ministers. I seldom felt as if I was one of them, or as if they regarded me as really belonging to their fraternity. I was bred a lawyer. I came right forth from a law office to the pulpit, and talked to the people as I would have talked to a jury. All this was exceedingly opposed to the manner in which they had been educated, and to all their views and feelings. Of course I was a speckled bird. I was a foreigner, an interloper, a man that had come into the ministry without being brought in under the regular course of training.

It was very common, as I learned, among ministers in my earlier years of preaching to agree among themselves that if I were allowed to succeed in the ministry it would bring the schools into disrepute. The theological seminaries would be thrown into the shade, and men would come to think it hardly worthwhile to support them with their funds, if a man could be accepted as a successful preacher without them. Now I never had a thought of opposing or throwing into the shade any college or theological seminary--though I did think, and think now that in certain respects they are greatly mistaken in their modes of training their students. They do not encourage them to talk to the people and accustom themselves to extemporaneous addresses to the people in the surrounding country while pursuing their studies. Men cannot learn to preach by study without practice. The students should be encouraged to exercise, and prove, and improve their gifts and calling of God by going out into any places open to them and holding Christ up to the people in earnest talks. They must thus learn to preach. Instead of this the students are required to write what they call sermons, and present them for criticism. To preach, i.e., read them to the class and the professor. Thus they play preaching. But to whom are they addressed? Not to the class, but to a congregation of saints and sinners. No man can preach in this manner. These so-called sermons, will of course, under the criticism they will receive degenerate into literary essays. The people have no respect for such sermons as sermons. This reading of elegant literary essays is not to them preaching. It is reading. It is gratifying to literary taste, but not spiritually edifying. It does not meet the wants of the soul. It is not calculated to win souls to Christ. The students are taught to cultivate a fine elevated style of writing. As for real eloquence and that gushing, impressive, and persuasive oratory that would naturally flow from an educated man whose soul was on fire with his subject, and who was free to pour out his heart extemporaneously to a waiting and earnest people they have none of it.

A reflecting mind will feel as if it were infinitely out of place to present in the pulpit to immortal souls hanging upon the verge of everlasting death, such specimens of learning and rhetoric. They know that men do not do so on any subject where they are really in earnest. The captain of a fire company, when a city is on fire, does not read to his company an essay, or exhibit fine specimens of rhetoric, when he shouts to them and directs their movements. It is a question of urgency, and he intends that every word shall be understood. He is entirely in earnest with them, and they feel as if criticism would be out of place in regard to the language he uses. It is a question of too much importance and urgency for his company to expect that he is going to trim his language, and speak to them under such circumstances with all the fine drapery and furniture of a studied and ornate discourse. So it always is when men are entirely in earnest about a thing. Their language is direct, simple, in point. Their sentences are short, cogent, powerful. The appeal is made directly to them for action; and hence all such discourses take effect. This is the reason why the ignorant Methodist preachers, and formerly the earnest Baptist preachers produced so much more effect than our most learned theologians and splendid divines. They do so now. The mere efforts of a common exhorter will often move a congregation far beyond anything that those splendid exhibitions of rhetoric will do. Great sermons lead the people to praise the preacher. Good preaching leads the people to praise the Savior.

Our theological schools would be of much greater value than they are if there was much more about them that was practical. I heard a theological teacher read a sermon on the importance of extemporaneous preaching. His views on that subject were correct; but his practice entirely contradicted them. He seemed to have studied the subject, and to have attained to practical views of the highest importance. But yet I have never known one of his students in practice to adopt those views; and surely he does not do it himself. I have understood that he says that if he were to begin his life as a preacher anew, he would practice according to his present views; and that he laments that his education was wrong in this respect, and consequently his practice has been wrong. In our school here our students have been led--not by myself, I am bound to say--to think that they must write their sermons; and very few of them, notwithstanding all I could say to them, have the courage to launch out, and commit themselves to extemporaneous preaching. They have been told again and again: "You must not think to imitate Mr. Finney. You cannot be Mr. Finneys."

Ministers do not like to get up and talk to the people as best they can, and break themselves at once into the habit of talking to the people. They must preach; and if they must preach in the common acceptation of the term, they must write. Hence according to that view I have never preached. Indeed, people have often said to me: "Why, you do not preach. You talk to the people." A man in London went home from one of our meetings greatly convicted. He had been a skeptic, and his wife seeing him greatly agitated, said to him, "Husband, have you been to hear Mr. Finney preach?" He replied: "I have been to Mr. Finney's meeting. He don't preach: he only explains what other people preach." This, in substance. I have heard over and over again. "Why!" they say, "anybody 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." Others have said: "Why it don't seem like preaching: but it seems as if Mr. Finney had taken me alone, and were conversing with me face to face."

Ministers generally avoid preaching what the people before them will understand as addressed particularly to them. They will preach to them about other people, and the sins of other people, instead of addressing them and saying, "You are guilty of these sins"; and "the Lord requires this of you." They often preach about the Gospel instead of preaching the Gospel. They often preach about sinners instead of preaching to them. They studiously avoid being personal, in the sense of making the impression on anyone present that they mean him or her. Now I have thought it my duty to pursue a different course, and I always have pursued a different course. I have intended to make every person present feel as if I meant him and her. And I have often said: "Do not think I am talking about anybody else: but I mean you, and you, and you." Now ministers told me at first that people would never endure this; but would get up and go out, and never come to hear me again. But this is all a mistake. Very much in this, as in everything else, depends on the spirit in which it is said. If the people see that it is said in the Spirit of love, with a yearning desire to do them good; if they cannot call it an ebullition of personal animosity, but if they see, and cannot deny that it is telling the truth in love, that it is coming right home to them to save them individually--there are very few people that will continue to resent this. If at the time they feel pointed at, and rebuked: nevertheless the conviction is upon them that they needed it, and it will surely ultimately do them great good.

I have often said to people when I saw that they looked offended: "Now you resent this, and you will go away and say that you will not come again; but you will. Your own convictions are on my side. You know that what I tell you is true, and that I tell it for your own good, and that you cannot continue to resent it." And I have always found this to be true. I have very seldom found individuals staying away permanently from our meetings because they were offended at my plainness.

My experience has been, that even in respect to personal popularity, "honesty is the best policy" in a minister. That if he means to maintain his hold upon the confidence, and respect, and affection of any people, he must be faithful to their souls. He must let them see that he is not courting them for any purpose of popularity, but that he is trying to save their souls. Men are not fools. They have no solid respect for a man that will go into the pulpit and preach smooth things. They cordially despise it in their inmost souls. And let no man think that he will gain permanent respect, that he will be permanently honored by people, unless as an ambassador of Christ he deals faithfully with their souls.

The great argument in opposition to my views of preaching the Gospel was, that I should not give nearly so much instruction to the people as I should if I wrote my sermons. They said I should not study; and consequently, although I might succeed as an evangelist, where I labored but a few weeks or months in a place--still it would never do for a pastor to preach extemporaneously.

Now I have the best of reasons for believing that preachers of written sermons do not give their people so much instruction as they think they do. The people do not remember their sermons. I have in multitudes of instances heard people complain--"I cannot carry home anything that I hear from the pulpit." They have said to me in hundreds of instances: "We always remember what we have heard you preach. We remember your text and the manner in which you handled it, but written sermons we cannot remember."

I have been a pastor now for many years--indeed ever since 1832, forty years--and I have never heard any complaint that I did not instruct the people. I do not believe it is true that my people are not as well instructed, so far as pulpit instruction is concerned, as those people are who sit under the preaching of written sermons. It is true that a man may write his sermons without studying much, and so it is true that he may preach extemporaneously without much study or thought. Many written sermons that I have heard manifested anything but profound, accurate thought. My habit has always been to study the Gospel, and the best application of it, all the time. I do not confine myself to hours and days of writing my sermons, but my mind is always pondering the truths of the Gospel, and the best ways of using them. I go among the people and learn their wants. I then in the light of the Holy Spirit take a subject that I think will meet their present necessities. I think intensely on, and pray much over the subject on Sabbath morning, for example, and get my mind full of the subject, and then go and pour it out to the people. Whereas one great difficulty with a written sermon is, that a man after he has written it needs to think but little of the subject. He needs to pray but little. He perhaps reads over his manuscript Saturday evening or Sabbath morning. But he does not feel the necessity of being powerfully anointed, that his mouth may be opened and filled with arguments, and that he may be enabled to preach out of a full heart. He is quite at ease. He has only to use his eyes and his voice, and he can preach in his way; that is, he can read a written sermon. It may be a sermon that has been written for years; it may be a sermon that he has written, every word of it, within the week. But on Sabbath day there is no freshness in it. It does not come necessarily new and fresh, and as an anointed message from God to his heart, and through his heart to the people. I am prepared to say most solemnly, that I think I have studied all the more for not having written my sermons. I have been obliged to make the subjects upon which I preached familiar to my thoughts, to fill my mind with the subject, and then go and talk it off to the people. I simply note the heads upon which I wish to dwell in the briefest possible manner, and in language not a word of which I use, perhaps, in preaching. I simply jot down the order of my propositions and positions which I propose to take, and in a word sketch an outline of the remarks and inferences with which I conclude.

But unless men will try it, unless they will begin and talk to people as best they can, keeping their hearts full of truth and full of the Holy Ghost, they will never make extemporaneous preachers. I believe that half an hour's earnest talk to the people from week to week, and from time to time--if the talk be pointed, direct, earnest, logical, will really instruct the people more than the two labored sermons that those who write get off to their people on the Sabbath. I believe the people would remember more of what is said, be more interested in it, and would carry it away with them to be pondered, vastly more than they do what they get from the labored written sermons which they hear.

Just above I have spoken of my method of preparing for the pulpit in more recent years. When I first began to preach, and for some twelve years of my earliest ministry, I wrote not a word; and was most commonly obliged to preach without any preparation whatever except what I got in prayer. Oftentimes I went into the pulpit without knowing upon what text I should speak, or a word that I should say. I depended on the occasion and the Holy Spirit to suggest the text, and to open up the whole subject to my mind; and certainly in no part of my ministry have I ever preached with greater success and power than I did when I preached in that way. If I did not preach from inspiration, I don't know how I did preach. It was a common experience with me, and has been during all my ministerial life, that the subject would open up to my mind in a manner that was surprising to myself. It seemed that I could see with intuitive clearness just what I ought to say, and whole platoons of thoughts, words, and illustrations, came to me as fast as I could deliver them.

When I first began to make skeletons, I made them after, and not before I preached. It was to preserve the outline of the thought which had been given me on occasions such as I have just mentioned. I found when the Spirit of God had given me a very clear view of a subject, I could not retain it after preaching to be used on any other occasion unless I jotted down an outline of the thoughts. But after all, I have never found myself able to use old skeletons in preaching, to any considerable extent, without remodeling them, and having a fresh and new view of the subject given me by the Holy Spirit. I almost always get my subjects on my knees in prayer; and it has been a common experience with me upon receiving a subject from the Holy Spirit, to have it make so strong an impression on my mind as to make me tremble so that I could with difficulty write. When subjects are thus given me that seem to go through me body and soul, I can in a few moments make out a skeleton that shall enable me to retain the view presented by the Spirit; and I find that such sermons always tell with great power upon the people.

And some of the most telling sermons that I have ever preached in Oberlin, I have thus received after the bell had rung for church; and I was obliged to go and pour them off from my full heart without jotting down more than the briefest possible skeleton, and that sometimes not covering half the ground that I covered in my sermon.

I tell this, not boastfully, but because it is a fact, and to give the praise to God and not to any talents of my own. Let no man think that those sermons which have been called so powerful were productions of my own brain, or of my own heart, unassisted by the Holy Ghost. They were not mine, but from the Holy Spirit in me.

And let no man say that this is boasting of a higher inspiration than is promised to ministers, or than ministers have a right to expect. For I believe that all ministers, called by Christ to preach the Gospel, ought to be, and may be in such a sense inspired, as to "preach the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." What else did Christ mean when He said, "Go and disciple all nations--and lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world"? What did He mean when He said, speaking of the Holy Spirit--"He shall take of mine and show it unto you"? And also, "He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you"? What did He mean when He said, "If any man believe in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water"? "This spake He of the Spirit that they which believe on Him should receive." All ministers may be and ought to be, so filled with the Holy Spirit that all who hear them shall be impressed with the conviction that "God is in them of a truth."

 

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