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Taylor (see NEw ENGLAND TBEoroGy, V., § 1), with whom he afterward had some brief association. He was soon licensed to preach by the local presbytery and subsequently ordained, though not without much criticism of his peculiar views. His labors had, however, been too fruitful to permit of refusing him ordination. After his work at Adams, Finney went to Evans' Mills and began that long series of revival meetings by which he wrought more powerfully and over a greater territory than any man of his generation. The story is fascinating as repeated by himself in his Memoirs, replete with striking incidents and with remarkable successes. From the first he was apparently fully prepared and entirely mature. His eloquence was astonishing, his methods were original and effective, his personal power was extraordinary, the results were unmatched. The open secret of his skill in handling men was the perfect clearness with which he apprehended the nature of conversion and the nature of man. His perfect confidence also in the main doctrines of the Evangelical scheme and the startling vividness with which he presented them led to the most profound self-examination and personal consecration. Through it all ran the vein of rationality, for Finney was always explaining and defending doctrines, and had the art of making them appear self-evident and their contradictories inconceivable. It is to be doubted if anywhere, at any period in the history of the Christian church, there were more profound experiences or a firmer and more intelligent grasp of the essentials of the process of making one's peace with God.

Opposition was early felt in various ways, but it was to those features of Finney's methods which would to-day be regarded as his principal merits, to his use of homely illustrations, his avoidance of a stilted rhetorical style, and his extemporaneous address. They were the very reasons 3. Criticism of his success and had he listened to of Finney's the directions of those about him, he

Methods. wed have become as ineffective as they were. But there was no opposition from those that knew the work because of any irregularities, such as were soon to raise the antagonism of the brethren in New England and involve Asahel Nettleton. Nettleton's objections to Finney's methods were to the " irreverence " displayed in prayer, to " the spirit of denunciation " exhibited, especially against ministers, " the practise of females praying in promiscuous assemblies," the creation of discord in churches, and " praying for people by name." In his own letters nothing is said against the practise of asking inquirers to come forward to anxious seats; but this is one of the new measures against which Nettleton's biographer, Bennet Tyler, represents him as objecting. On the whole, it appears that Tyler's representation of the matter is somewhat exaggerated, and that he did not have correct sources of information; Nettleton also seems to have obtained his information largely indirectly, and it appears exaggerated and incorrect. Finney's work was not open to the charges which both of these men made so freely against it. The antagonism between Finney and Nettleton was a matter of temperament, for the one was as contained as the

other was unrestrained. It was partly a matter of civilization-the settled and staid East against the newer West; partly a matter of party-conservative New England against a man who reproduced in the West the Taylorism against which Tyler and Nettleton were contending in the East. But at bottom it was an antagonism of ideas, excited by the inability of Nettleton and others to think their way through the consequences and implications of a new theory of the will.

Finney's revivals covered a wide and interesting field, which included Philadelphia, New York (where he founded the Broadway Tabernacle, and made the acquaintance of the men who sustained him at Oberlin), Oberlin itself and the intense and wonderful history of its early years, London, England, and back again among American towns of greater or less celebrity. The revivals at Rochester were among his greatest, and long left their mark upon that city. That in the year 1842 was chiefly among the lawyers of the city, a large number of whom were converted. The preaching was argumentative and covered the range of Christian doctrine. That Finney should have gained men is not strange when it is remembered that men are gained preeminently by the ideal, by convictions as to duty, and rational fear. Were exact statistics present, they would probably show something like those of Edwards' revival of 1734-35, the culmination of conversions lying about the years of a man's prime, viz., about forty-five.

For the work of Dwight Lyman Moody see the article on him. The philosophy of revivals under which this laborer worked was, for the most part, the philosophy of common sense. He believed in large assemblies of people, and was anxious to have Christian people in great numbers. He

Moody. undue excitement. To preach the Gospel as wisely as he could, to gather the interested together for special instruction and encouragement, to rely greatly upon prayer, to busy converted men in various Christian work, these constituted all the method Mr. Moody had. Perhaps a greater change from the methods of his predecessors was to be found in his preaching than anywhere else. His doctrine was of the old Evangelical type, and he taught as an essential part of it the eternal future punishment of the wicked. This position gave strenuousness to his efforts for the salvation of men; but it did not fix that salvation as consisting primarily in rescue from punishment. He preached the doctrine of atonement by the substitution of Christ for the sinner before the face of justice; but this did not make the salvation which Christ brought an external and merely forensic affair which left the innermost man untouched. Both of these doctrines were transfigured by the conception of the awfulness of sin as alienation from God, and the glory of salvation as the restoration of personal and loving relations between the sinful child and the heavenly Father. The doctrine of the divine love had at last come to its rights. Moody urged predominantly the love of God as the great reason for repentance. It was preeminently reasonable that the child should return to his Father, to be