In November 1830, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney faced an audience of merchants, master craftsmen, and their families at Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. The people at Third Church were inheritors of New England Calvinism, and they knew that the world was beyond their con- trol. In 18 15, the town's Presbyterians had declared themselves impotent before a God who "foreordained whatsoever comes to
Copyright @ 1978 . Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang.
The Wilson...