Recollections of a Long Life: An AutobiographyCuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Religion
Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography
Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard), 1822-1909
Revivals followed his red-hot discourses wherever he went. At Auburn he
declares that he had--during prayer in his own room--a wonderful vision
in which God drew so near to him that his flesh trembled on his bones,
and he shook from head to foot as if amid the thunderings of Sinai! He
felt an assurance that God would sustain him against all his enemies;
and then there came a "great lifting up," and a sweet calm followed
after the agitation. Such extraordinary spiritual experiences occurred
quite often during his career as a revivalist, and they remind one
strikingly of similar experiences of John Bunyan--to whom Finney bore a
certain degree of resemblance. At Rochester many of the leading lawyers
were attracted by his bold and logical style of speech; and among his
converts there was the distinguished jurist, Addison Gardner. It was
during his ministry in New York that he delivered his celebrated
"Lectures on Revivals," which were reprinted abroad and translated into
several foreign languages. Of all Mr. Finney's published productions,
these lectures are the most characteristic. Often extravagant in their
rhetoric, and sometimes rather reckless in theological statements, they
contain a mine of pungent truth which every young minister ought to
possess and to peruse very often. I shall never cease to thank God for
the inspiration they have imparted to my own humble ministry; and they
have had a place in my library close beside the "Pilgrim's Progress,"
and the biographies of Payson and McCheyne, and the soul-quickening
sermons of Bushnell, Addison Alexander and Dr. McLaren.
After his extended evangelistic labors in various cities, Mr. Finney was
appointed to a theological chair in the newly organized college at
Oberlin, Ohio. From this post, his irrepressible desire to kindle
revivals and to save souls often called him away, and he conducted two
famous evangelistic campaigns in Great Britain. He was the first man to
introduce American revivalistic methods into England and Scotland; but
his labors were never as wide, as influential, and generally acceptable
there as the subsequent labors of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Forty years
of his busy and heaven-blessed life were spent at Oberlin, where he
impressed his powerful personality on a multitude of students of both
sexes; few religious teachers in America have ever moulded so many
lives, or had their opinions echoed from so many pulpits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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