Charles Finney's Conversion: The Woods, the Office and the Spirit
Charles Finney was converted on October 10, 1821, in Adams, New York, where he was a young man studying law. That morning he went into the woods north of the village to pray, promising he wouldn't come back until he had given his heart to God. He came out about noon with a deep, quiet peace. That evening, alone in the law office, he says he met Christ "face to face" and then received what he called "a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost." By the next morning he had given up the law to preach.
He tells the story himself in chapter 2 of the Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney, and it's best heard in his words. Here it is, step by step. You can read the whole chapter free in the reader.
Before that week
Finney had been reading the Bible for two or three years, first because his law books quoted it and then because he couldn't let the questions go. He went to prayer meetings and argued with the pastor, George W. Gale. By the fall of 1821 he was sure the Bible was true. What he hadn't done was act on it.
So on a Sunday evening he resolved to settle the matter. He spent Monday and Tuesday reading his Bible and praying, but he was ashamed to be seen doing it. He whispered his prayers. When someone came into the office, he threw his law books on top of his Bible. He says he was "very proud without knowing it."
By Tuesday night he was afraid. He felt as if he might die, and he knew where he'd go if he did.
The voice on the way to the office
Early Wednesday morning, walking to the office, he was stopped in the street by questions that seemed to come from inside him:
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?
Memoirs, chapter 2
Right there, he says, the gospel opened up to him. He saw that Christ's work was finished, and that he needed no righteousness of his own:
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.
Memoirs, chapter 2
Then came another question, and his answer:
“Will you accept it now, to-day?” I replied, “Yes; I will accept it to-day, or I will die in the attempt.”
Memoirs, chapter 2
Into the woods
Instead of going to work, he turned toward a piece of woods over a hill north of the village, where he liked to walk. Even then, he admits, his pride showed. Afraid someone would guess he was going off to pray, he "skulked along under the fence" until he was out of sight. He found a spot where some large fallen trees made a kind of closet, crept in and knelt down. On the way up he had said:
I will give my heart to God, or I never will come down from there.
Memoirs, chapter 2
But he couldn't pray. Every rustle in the leaves made him stop and look up to see who was coming. He began to despair and to think it was too late for him. Then, once more, he thought he heard someone, and he saw that his fear of being seen was the very thing standing in the way:
“What!” I said, “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 a sinner like myself, find me on my knees … The sin appeared awful, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord.
Memoirs, chapter 2
"I take thee at thy word"
Just then a verse came into his mind. It's from Jeremiah:
Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:12-13
Finney took hold of it:
I instantly seized hold of this with my heart. I had intellectually believed the Bible before; but never had the truth been in my mind that faith was a voluntary trust instead of an intellectual state.
Memoirs, chapter 2
I cried to Him, “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.”
Memoirs, chapter 2
Other promises followed, from both Testaments, and he says he "fastened upon them with the grasp of a drowning man." He prayed so long he lost track of time. When he got up and started back toward the road, he hadn't even asked himself whether he was converted. But he remembers saying, with great emphasis:
If I am ever converted, I will preach the Gospel.
Memoirs, chapter 2
A quiet afternoon
Walking back to the village, he was surprised by how calm he was. At first that frightened him. He had lost all his conviction of sin and wondered if he had grieved the Holy Spirit away. He had gone into the woods right after an early breakfast and came out at dinner time, though it seemed only a short while. "It was on the 10th of October, and a very pleasant day," he remembers.
The repose of my mind was unspeakably great. I never can describe it in words. The thought of God was sweet to my mind, and the most profound spiritual tranquillity had taken full possession of me.
Memoirs, chapter 2
He couldn't eat. In the office he picked up his bass viol to play and sing some sacred music, as he often did, and started to cry. "It seemed as if my heart was all liquid," he writes. That afternoon he and the lawyer he worked for moved their books and furniture to a new office.
That evening in the office
By dark the new office was in order. Finney built a fire, and the lawyer went home. As he shut the door behind him, Finney says, "the utterance of my heart was, 'I want to pour my whole soul out to God.'" He went into the dark back room 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.
Memoirs, chapter 2
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.
Memoirs, chapter 2
He wept at Christ's feet and confessed his sins as well as he could. Later he understood it as a state of mind rather than something seen with the eyes, but at the time it was entirely real to him. When he came back out to the front room, the fire had nearly burned down. Then, he says:
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.
Memoirs, chapter 2
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.
Memoirs, chapter 2
He wept aloud with joy. It went on until he cried out, "Lord, I cannot bear any more," though he had no fear of death. Late in the evening a young man from his choir came in and found him weeping:
“Mr. Finney, what ails you?” I could make him no answer for some time. He then said, “Are you in pain?” … “No, but so happy that I cannot live.”
Memoirs, chapter 2
The young man brought one of the church elders, and a friend of Finney's who came in fell to the floor crying, "Do pray for me!" That night doubts came back. But each time Finney fell asleep, the love of God in his heart woke him again.
"Will you doubt?"
In the morning the sun was pouring into his room, and the same baptism of the Spirit came back over him:
“Will you doubt?” “Will you doubt?” I cried, “No! I will not doubt; I cannot doubt.”
Memoirs, chapter 2
He says that in this state he was "taught the doctrine of justification by faith, as a present experience." All sense of condemnation had left him the moment he believed in the woods:
My sense of guilt was gone; my sins were gone; and I do not think I felt any more sense of guilt than if I never had sinned.
Memoirs, chapter 2
The next morning's case
That same morning a church deacon came into the office. Finney was his attorney, and the deacon's case was set for trial at ten o'clock. Finney's answer is one of the best-known lines in the Memoirs:
I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and I cannot plead yours.
Memoirs, chapter 3
The deacon went away, settled his suit, and gave himself to prayer. Finney went out to talk with anyone he met about their souls. He says he knew, past all doubt, that God wanted him to preach the gospel and that he must begin at once. He never practiced law again. His promise from the woods, "If I am ever converted, I will preach the Gospel," became the rest of his life. That story is told in Who was Charles Finney?, and the whole book is outlined in the Memoirs of Charles Finney summary.
Read the story in full
Chapter 2 of the Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney tells all of this in more detail, and chapter 3 picks up the next morning. J. Gilchrist Lawson also retells Finney's conversion in Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, alongside similar turning points in the lives of Bunyan, Wesley, Moody and others. For more of Finney's own words, see the Charles Finney quotes.