Lectures to Professing Christians
Overview
Finney’s Lectures to Professing Christians contains twenty-five lectures delivered in New York City during 1836 and 1837. This volume includes lectures on a variety of theological and social issues, including justification and sanctification—the perennial themes in all of Finney’s works—as well as Finney’s famous lectures on Christian perfectionism and true repentance.
Top Highlights
“You hear the word, and believe it in theory, while you deny it in practice. I say to you, that ‘you deceive yourselves.’” (Page 12)
“THERE are two extremes in religion, equally false and equally fatal. And there are two classes of hypocrites that occupy these two extremes. The first class make religion to consist altogether in the belief of certain abstract doctrines, or what they call faith, and lay little or no stress on good works. The other class make religion to consist altogether in good works, (I mean, dead works) and lay little or no stress on faith in Jesus Christ, but hope for salvation by their own deeds. The Jews belonged generally to the last-mentioned class. Their religious teachers taught them that they would be saved by obedience to the ceremonial law. And therefore, when Paul began to preach, he seems to have attacked more especially this error of the Jews.” (Page 9)
“And so if any one supposed that he could be justified by faith while his works were evil, he ought to know that without sanctification his faith is but dead, and cannot even be the instrument of his justification.” (Page 10)
“And he pressed this point so earnestly, in his preaching and in his epistles, that he carried it, and settled the faith of the church in the great doctrine of justification by faith. And then certain individuals in the church laid hold of this doctrine and carried it to the opposite extreme, and maintained that men are saved by faith altogether, irrespective of works of any kind. They overlooked the plain principle, that genuine faith always results in good works, and is itself a good work.” (Pages 9–10)
- Title: Lectures to Professing Christians
- Author: Charles Grandison Finney
- Publisher: Fleming H. Revell Company
- Publication Date: 1878
- Pages: 468
Charles G. Finney (1792–1875) was a widely popular evangelist, organizing and preaching at numerous revivals and meetings throughout New England. Finney studied law, but after a dramatic conversion experience at age 29, his plans changed.
Finney became pastor of the Free Presbyterian Chatham Street Chapel and later the Broadway Tabernacle. He traveled and spoke around New England and England and as many as one million people heard Finney preach. Finney often spoke about social issues and was involved with the abolitionist movement. In 1835, Finney was appointed as a professor of theology at Oberlin College and became its president in 1851 where he remained until 1866.
The Charles Finney Collection (6 vols.) includes all of Finney’s lectures on revivals, including his Lectures on Revivals of Religion and two volumes of his sermons, including Sermons on Important Subjects and Sermons on Gospel Themes.
