Fourteen. I'm going to begin reading at verse seven, but the text that will be picked up later is the one from verses 15 to 24, but I'm going to begin at seven to give the context. So he told a parable to those who were invited when he noted how they chose the best places, saying to them, When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him, and he who invited you and him come and say to you, Give place to this man. And then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may say to you, Friend, go up higher. Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Then he also said to him who invited him, When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Now when one of those who sat at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. And he said to him, A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, Come, for all things are now ready. But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a piece of ground and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused. Another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused. Still another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor, and the maimed, and the lame, and the blind. And the servant said, It is done, as you commanded, and still there is room. Then the master said to the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper. Well, we'll pick up that portion there in Luke 14, the parable of the invitations to the wedding feast, when we look at a sermon that Asahel Nettleson preached in 1821. But first, before I begin, I'm going to go through right now some questions we looked at, or at least I gave two weeks ago, and I have some extras. And who does not have a copy of the questions? I have six, so. We will hope they go around. Anybody else? Must be a more efficient way of getting these around. And before I do that as well, I want to pass out, these are the questions for two each today, Lord willing. Next week I have to be away. And these questions are on Charles Finney. And I just want to go through them very quickly to explain the questions. I thought the questions when I drew them up were fairly easy, but then I was told, no, they're kind of hard. And one forgets when you've read this stuff for a long time that it might seem easy to you, but what seems plain to you is not necessarily as plain to others. And so I have a series of questions here on Charles Finney for two weeks from today, because Finney is the I'm not sure I want to say the great nemesis of Athel Middleton, but they certainly did not see eye to eye. And they disagreed radically on how to conduct evangelism and what God is doing in revival. And Finney's perspective would eventually win out, as we will see. But let me just read the questions so that you're clear on what I'm asking. Really the questions relate, there are three questions here. The first one is, I assume all of you have computers, and so you have access to go online. And that little article, you could read it in three minutes, if that, maybe five minutes maximum, written by a man named Garth Roussel, who's... I'll refer to him in two weeks. He's done a critical edition of the autobiography of Charles Finney, which is very, very revealing. And, well, we'll talk about that. So that's just a little Just to get the details of Phinney's life. And then the next question deals, there are four quotes there. And I want you to read the quote and then think about it from a biblical perspective. The quotes are the following. Is Phinney right, biblically? It is a monstrous and blasphemous dogma that a holy God is angry with any creature for possessing a nature with which he was sent into being without his knowledge or consent. Original or constitutional simpleness, physical regeneration and all their kindred and resulting dogmas are alike subversive of the gospel and repulsive to human intelligence." What that is arguing is that original sin does not, it's a fiction. And he says it a lot harsher than that, but he did not believe in original sin. The second one is, sin is always a voluntary and responsible choice and a phenomenon of the will. That is, when sin is in you, it's got nothing to do with any sort of nature. You're a sinner because you sin. It's not because you're a sinner you sin, you're a sinner because you sin. Becoming a sinner is a result of acts of the will. What he actually is implying there, it is possible to live a perfect life. Thirdly, it is certain that men are able to resist the utmost influence the truth can exert upon them, and therefore have ability to defeat the wisest, most benevolent, and most powerful exertions which the Holy Spirit can make. That's a denial of what we call irresistible grace. Behind all this, by the way, Finney was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of America. He was a Presbyterian. And the standard of the Presbyterian Church is the Westminster Confession, which is a Calvinist document. And you know a little bit about Calvinism. You can figure out that this guy really has confessed himself, part of a church, that he doesn't believe the core of it. And then, whenever a Christian sins, he comes under condemnation, he must repent and do his first works or be lost. And I want you to think about those statements biblically. That's the second question there. The third one deals with revival. It's going to be a bit more difficult. First of all, you read the following statement on revival by Finney. Is he right from the standpoint of the Bible? Why or why not? And so I want you to reflect on that, not to stay in your mind and say, oh yeah, he's wrong. But why is he wrong? And do you think that Finney's views on revival, given that they were influential in his day, would help reduce the situation in mid-19th century America where revivals came to be understood less is the mighty acts of God than is the achievement of preachers who won the consent of sinners." And in that little statement is packed a whole change of perspective about revival and evangelism. And it has shaped what happens here in the 19th century in America, has shaped North American evangelicalism down to the present day. And why or why not? And the statement is this, a revival is the result of the right use of the appropriate means, the means which God has enjoined for the production of a revival, doubtless of a natural tendency to produce a revival. But means will not produce a revival, we all know, without the blessing of God. No more will grain, when it's sown, produce a crop without the blessing of God. A revival is as naturally a result of the use of the appropriate means as a crop is the use of its appropriate means. And what he's saying there is if you do the A, B, C, D, then revival should result. If you don't do A, B, C, D, it's your fault and you've done something wrong. And it's a very profound shift as we will see. Anyway, going through that will give you some idea of what I'm looking for in two weeks. So, you've got two weeks to ponder those questions and they're of a nature that you could spend a bit of time on it or you could go through them within an hour or so I hope. But I would encourage you to do it before we come two weeks so you have some idea of where I'm going because there's no way I can cover everything that I would like to cover about Finney and I want to focus on certain things. Well today we want to really kind of conclude in one sense looking at Nettleton. Nettleton will come into the story again with Finney. Because when we look at Finney, we'll actually look at a very important conference that took place in the 1820s, late 1820s, between Finney and Nettleton in New Lebanon, New York. And it's kind of a showdown between two remarkable men, and I don't want to deny that Finney was remarkable in his own way, I've got major problems with him. But as a result of that, there would be certain consequences that would flow out for North American evangelicalism. So, we're not done with Finney when we finish today. Nettleton, rather. I really want to finish looking at Nettleton in terms of his own right as an evangelist. The last day when we began looking at Nettleton, I set him in his background. Very quickly, the background is one in which, subsequent to the American War of Independence, which ended in 1783, churches throughout the United States found themselves in a very low spiritual state. Often war is a quickener of men's and women's concerns about the world to come. But in this case, the American War of Independence actually had the opposite effect. Many congregations were vastly disrupted by the armies marching back and forth. Many pastors and, generally speaking, Baptists and Congregationalists supported the Americans, if I can describe it that way, and the Episcopalians or Anglicans and the Methodists supported the British, which would have impacts upon them after the war. One of the reasons why Episcopalianism has never done well in the United States is because, right from the get-go, They found themselves on the losing side. It's interesting the Methodists, though, were able to swing over because, as we will see in a few weeks, Methodism is the fastest growing body in the United States. One out of every four Americans in the 1850s is a Methodist. In fact, one out of every three people living in Ontario in the 1850s will be a Methodist. So, it's interesting how Methodism was able to make the transition, whereas Episcopalianism was not, and we'll see reasons why that was so. Anyway, it was a very low time spiritually, and churches that had been flourishing in the 1740s and 50s, because of the first Great Awakening, the first period of great revival in the United States, what would become the United States, found themselves in dire states. Churches disrupted, pastors, some of them joined the various forces as chaplains, some of them found themselves simply having to flee. And Samuel Hopkins, one of Jonathan Edwards' students, a man he had mentored, had been in Rhode Island. He came back to his congregation to find it completely dispersed. The church building had been used as a stable for seven years by British cavalry. And the church was, the frame was still there, but the interior was completely gutted and filthy. And he never really did, for the next 20 years, he died in 1805, he never really did recover that corrugation. And that's typical of many. And in other words, there was a great need for spiritual awakening that you find in the early Republic. In addition to that, we looked at the fact that in these early years there was a vast spread of unbelief about Christianity. America had never known, and obviously it had people who were not believers, that's a given, but it had never known men in high public office or in the press to critique the Christian faith. But one of the impacts of the war was that the Americans, the French had sided with America fighting the British, taking any opportunity to hit the British, and they had been kicked out of North America, so to speak, and they asked the Americans if they wanted aid. The Americans gladly took their aid, and then, in the view of many, many godly men and women later, regretted it, because many of the French troops that came over had had 50 to 100 years, well, about 50 to 80 years of atheistic philosophy floating around France. and they began to sow the atheism in America. And so it was, a number of men in high political office, like Thomas Jefferson, who would become the third or fourth President of the United States, was really a non-believer in Christianity. He tolerated Christianity, but privately, and well, not so privately, was very critical of it. Other men went even further. One man, Thomas Paine, wrote a book called Common Sense and the Age of Reason, in which he made what appeared to be major attacks, and were major attacks on the Christian faith. And so the situation was one in which was ripe for revival, and probably the place that was worst hit were the colleges. These schools like Harvard and William and Mary College in Virginia that were set up as godly institutions, became hotbeds and seedbeds of infidelity. And many of God's people began to call out upon God to turn that scenario around. And we have then, following that, God answering those prayers in what is known as the Second Great Awakening. And it starts in 1792. And it runs, scholars and historians of the period debate about exactly when it ended, but it's still running in the 1830s and Charles Finney's ministry we'll look at next week or two weeks, it comes at the end of that period and he believes that God, as we will see, put his stamp of approval on his ministry because of this latter period of revival. Prominent in the early years of the revival is this man, Asahel Nelson, who grew up in a farm in Connecticut, grew up in a very godly home, did not come to conversion until his latter teens. Subsequently went to study at Yale College under Timothy Dwight, who was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards. He saw Dwight as the president of Yale, roused infidelity in the college. There were many in the college who were committed to godless atheism or what is known as deism, that there is a God, He's made the world, And that's it. No commitment to the Bible. And for seven years, Dwight went through in daily chapels that the students were required to attend, the whole framework of Christianity. And it was in the course of that that a revival took place on the campus and impiety and infidelity were routed under the ministry, by God's grace, of Dwight. And Nettleton was there at that time. He went as a believer. He would have been in the minority in the early years as a believer, but would have been delighted. We don't have any personal remarks of his about his time there, but he would have been obviously delighted by what God did. He was not a brilliant student. It's interesting, you see this frequently in the history of the church. It's not academic brilliance or even necessarily natural gifts so much as character. and determination to walk with God. And Dwight was deeply impressed by Nettleson as a young man and said on one occasion that he expected God to do great things for this young man. Nettleson wanted to be a missionary. This is the beginning. We looked at the second Sunday School lesson we had, looked at William Carey. Well, Carey's lifetime is in this period. Many in the United States who are Christians are beginning to think of missions. Some had already been engaged in mission right there in terms of evangelization of the North American First Peoples, the Indians, so-called, of North America. But many in North America now, their attention is galvanized by the life of Cary to other parts of the world. And Nettleton wants to go overseas. But in the providence of God, he is not led that way. But in the providence of God, he is led to become an itinerant evangelist. He never marries and he would go from church to church at the invitation of the pastor and he'd come and he'd spend normally anywhere from three to four months in a church where he'd preach along with the pastor a number of services a week in hopes of bringing revival and evangelizing a neighborhood. In the questions that I handed out two weeks ago, I had a number of quotes there about Nettleton. And let me read the first of the quotes. These are quotes from a man named Francis Wayland. Francis Wayland was the president of the oldest Baptist institution in America called Brown University. The Congregationalists founded Harvard, and then Yale, and then eventually Princeton. And the Baptists were not to be outdone. They needed a place. And so they founded Brown in Providence, Rhode Island. And Francis Wayland was called to be the president of that in the 1820s. And he would be there over 30 years and was a very remarkable and very influential man in his own day, and radically shaped Baptist thinking. He heard Nettleton quite a number of times as a young man, and was deeply impacted by Nettleton's preaching. And he got to know Nettleton, and so his remarks are not simply of somebody who saw him on a few occasions, but actually got to know him fairly intimately as a friend. And Nettleton was probably about 25 years older than Wayland. Actually, sorry, 13 years older than Wayland. So there was not a huge discrepancy there in age. But anyway, he was among the most effective preachers I have ever known. I suppose no minister of his time was the means of so many conversions. He rarely visited a place where a rival did not follow him. In preaching, his whole aspect was that of a man who had just come from intimate communion with God. He never used notes. In tones varying but little from those of earnest conversation, he would sway an audience as the trees in the forest are moved by a mighty wind." What connection do you think there is between his style of preaching and his usefulness as a preacher? What do you think from that quote? and we're assuming it's accurate, why do you think he was useful as a preacher? What is it that I think that stands out in that particular quote? Yeah, the phrase there where it says, His whole aspect was that of a man who had just come from intimate communion with God. And it wasn't so much his gifts as the fact that he was a man who once sensed immediately had been in the presence of God. One of the men that we'll look at later is Robert and Bernie McShane, a Scottish preacher. Born at the same time, 1813, died in 1843 when he was 29, and a woman who heard him preach, who would eventually become the wife of a man named Andrew Bonner, a very close friend, would say it was nothing he even said. M'Chayne was a remarkable preacher. It was not so much anything he said, but it was just the sense of the man, his presence, of what he radiated. And here you get that from Nettleson. It was not so much his style of preaching as just the sense that here was a man who knew God and walked with God. Harry? Thank you. Yes, taken, yes. Right. Very good. Yes. That's not the only thing by which we judge the effectiveness of an individual's ministry. Thank you. I'm not sure Benny has that, but be that as it may. But that's a very important balancing statement that lest we be that all of this is simply a matter of feeling and sense, that there is a rational side to this. And I think Nettleton would have affirmed that as well. The remarkable elements of his ministry also are linked to his character as well as a person. And the next quote there is from Wayland again. His manner of life was consistent with his appearance in the pulpit. His residence was generally the minister of the parish in which he was labouring. So, he'd come, and as I said, he'd stay for three, three and a half months sometimes. In other words, he wasn't, when we come to Finney, it's interesting, Finney, Finney will come, he'll preach up an area for two or three weeks, and then he's on his way. But, Nettleson's way of ministry was very different. He would come to an area and stay there, so he got to know people. And they got to know him. The time, not employed in preaching or conversation with inquirers, was devoted to secret prayer and the reading of the scriptures. He was never seen in what is called general society. His whole time seemed devoted to the labor for souls. He was unmarried and, to avoid remark, never rode or walked with a lady alone. He was wholly insensible to the influence of money. His dress was plain and well-worn. When money was offered him, he would either return it all or would accept only what was wanted for his present necessity. A number of things kind of come out of that statement. Number one, it's quite clear he was a person of prayer and the Word. And that's what he was focused on, and that's why he was invited to a church to preach for. That was the area in which he was in terms of focusing his life. Secondly, the use of time. And I'm assuming that that statement, he was never seen in what is called general society. That's more a statement of he didn't waste his time in terms of his interaction with people in the congregation. Wisdom in regard to women, that was maybe not as much of a problem in that day as it is in our day, but it's still a very, very important aspect of his ministry, Wisdom in terms of his involvement with those of the opposite sex. And then wisdom regarding money. He obviously didn't have anybody else to provide for. He only got himself, and so that would shape the way he dealt with money to some degree. But it's interesting the number of things that are focused on here. They're describing his usefulness as a man of God. walk with God, focused on prayer and the Word, and then the use of time, relations with the opposite sex, and money. And if you look at the history of those in vocational ministry, those are challenges. Especially use of time. Well, they're all challenges, but use of time is Well, most people you've got a job to do and you're there in the morning and you're finished in the evening and so on, but those in ministry are self-employed and it's very easy to waste time. Nobody's checking up on you. Very interesting, the things that are highlighted, they're of great importance today. The money is critical as well because He did not want to seem to be doing his ministry primarily for the sake of money. He obviously needed money to live, but this ministry was not primarily designed to make him affluent and rich. In his ministry, there were challenges and the next long part of the quote there runs into that. I have given you, there's another quote there, is there not? I don't have the actual page in front of me. Beginning, notwithstanding all this. Okay. Notwithstanding all this, I've rarely known a man who was for a great part of his time more thoroughly abused. It was generally admitted his appearance in the town was the precursor of a revival. This fact aroused all the virulence of men at enmity with God. His mode of conducting meetings was somewhat peculiar, and his preaching singularly bold and uncompromising. Thus, he greatly excited against them, those professors of religion. Professors means people who profess to be Christians, who did not like anything new in the mode of preaching. And it's not clear. I mean, I've read through a number of his sermons and comments about him. It's not clear what Wayland is saying here about the newness of what he did. It's not clear to me. But there was obviously something different in the way he preached. It wasn't in accord with the way others had preached. Hence, at first, good men would frequently turn aside from him, and too readily give heed to the slanders of wicked men. I knew very well a physician of eminence, a pleasant kind man, though utterly destitute of religion, residing in a village where Mr. N. Nettleton was laboring, who circulated a falset about him, retaining a conversation which he said Mr. Nettleton had with him in his office, when the fact was Mr. Nettleton had never been in his office. And it subsequently appeared the doctor was wholly ignorant of his person. To such attacks Mr. Nelson never deigned to make a word or reply, nor did he ever intimate that he knew of their existence. He considered a man's character as the best defense of his reputation, and he left it to time and to the province of God to refute the slanders." A positive and a negative thing about this. A positive thing is that he recognized time is too short to get embroiled in all kinds of controversies about your own particular person. And he knew that when he would come into a town where he had been asked, invited by the minister, to priest in a local congregation, that there would be some in that congregation who thought they were Christians. It would become very obvious to them in his early stages of his preaching, they were not Christians. And he would find opposition. And he knew that he couldn't be putting out every fire that would be raised by attacks on his person and most of them he would let, obviously as described here, let go and the whole danger of needless controversy. I recently was online and saw and also received in the mail some literature attacking the ministry of a man who's been in this congregation, Dr. Donald Carson. And I know Dr. Carson to some degree and was shocked by what I read. I was amazed that these people could think this often. And when an individual becomes fairly well known, those sorts of things are simply par for the course. And Dr. Carson would waste an enormous amount of time trying to respond to all of these attacks. And likewise with Nettleton. Nettleton realized it would just show up too much time and he was going to be in a congregation for three months, the congregation would get to know him and would realize what these men were saying about him was baseless and groundless. The negative side of that is that there are times in which you do need to face opponents and we'll see that When we get to the story of Nettleson and Finney, Nettleson should have been, when we get to it, more forthright in responding to Finney, and should have set the stake more firmly in the ground, as it were, where Finney was wrong. But we'll look at that. There are reasons for that which we'll actually touch on at the end. And then Wayland, and I'm not giving you this quote, Wayland can say, although there is no way of knowing how many were brought to salvation through his preaching, A conservative estimate would be 25,000. That's a conservative estimate. Now, the population of America at this point in time is 9 million. That's a sizable proportion of men and women brought into faith or living faith through his ministry. His name, as I said, is – you might have come to these last week, the Sunday school lesson and today, Who is this man? Never heard of him. He was any big cheese, so to speak. Why haven't I ever heard of him? He was the leading evangelist of his day, but he is being completely overshadowed by Finney, which I think, as we'll see in two weeks, is something of a shame and has had disastrous consequences. Let me give you two examples of is ministry. The first one is in New Haven, Connecticut in the year 1820. And he had been invited to preach in a local church there. New Haven is where Yale College is. And the college had generally gone through a period of reformation, if you recall, and revival under Timothy Dwight in the first decade of the 19th century. And so this is about 12 or so years after that. This is a description by Nettleton himself. He wrote this in a letter of what took place at the time. There are three or four points I just want to focus on, but I'll read his letter and then go back and focus. I must give you a short account, he's writing to a friend, of the revival in this place. Meetings are held every evening of the week. They are crowded, still, and solemn as eternity. Every Monday evening we meet the anxious ones in a large ballroom. We've had from 60 to about 300 assembled at these meetings, all solemn, and many in deep distress of soul. The cloud of divine influence has gone rapidly over our heads and covered us with awful solemnity. There is the sound of abundance of rain, the fields have whitened everywhere, and we are in danger of losing much of the harvest because we cannot reap everywhere at once. We visit by appointment and make a number of visits in a day at a given hour. We sometimes meet 10 or 15 and sometimes 30 at once. We converse a little of each one and speak a word to all in general, pray and pass on to another circle. And so we spend our time. Our visits are generally short. I'm going to read a little more in a second, but just a note, a couple of things here. Number one is the type of meetings that took place. They were characterized by a sense of solemnity, characterized by a sense of reverence, characterized by a sense of the awfulness of being outside of Christ. They were not characterized by Nettleton trying to stir up emotions. You remember in the quote by Waylon, what kind of preacher was he? Well, he preached in like normal tones of conversation. Nettleton was not an overly, he could be emotional in his preaching, but he was not primarily an emotional, outwardly, in his preaching. This will be very different from Finney. And Finney will lay it upon preachers, it is your role, you, as the preacher, to arouse emotion and lay hold of the will. But Finney, if Nettleton came into preaching realizing, this is not my work, I'm the instrument through whom the gospel is to be proclaimed, but revival is God's work. And he was very careful of stirring up emotion. He was in the same train as Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was also very cautious about the danger. When crowds of people get together, things can happen that wouldn't happen if you had people individually. And crowds can be moved by emotion. And Nettleson was very careful about that whole area. Secondly, he would meet individually with people who were concerned about their soul. He would meet them in small groups. He would converse with them personally. By the way, this is something that makes him a correspondent to a man named George Whitefield. It was often his life, compared to Whitefield as a preacher, But there was one remarkable difference. Whitfield rarely met with people individually, unless they came to him personally. He didn't lay it down as a rule. When Nettleton, though, went to a town and he was preaching there for a period of time, he would say, this particular night, if you're in concern about your soul and you're not a Christian, you can come and I will meet with you. Anyway, and the meetings, notice, were not long. Phinney will argue on the other side, you've got to break down a person's will. And he would keep meetings going all night. But Nettleton again, very wise in this, it's God's work. It's not the preacher's work. It's God's work. And the danger of the preacher becoming, as it were, the one who elicits the response and not God. And so the meetings normally were very short, except for one or two, and he describes one of them in this particular time of revival. Our visits are generally short, except one which will never be forgotten. This was August the 25th, this is 1820, at 2 o'clock p.m. at the house of Mr. B. And one of the bad things that 19th century writers did is they just give you the initial and leave out the rest of the name. I can understand when it's published at the time the person's alive, but for those who are studying it later, it's absolutely frustrating to the nth degree. You might be able to trace movements of people, but you can't. We entered the house at the time appointed and found about 20 persons sitting around the room in silence. All had been more or less anxious for a number of days, and one was in awful distress. This one I address more particularly and urge the duty of immediate repentance. That's one of the things that characterized Nettleson's preaching was that the first duty that you have as an unbeliever is to repent and believe. It's not to go through a whole host of things to prepare yourself to repent and believe. You are to repent and believe now. Not without some hope that relief would be obtained at that moment, for I felt sure the state of feeling this person in distress could not long be sustained. I detained them for the usual time, and then I advised them to retire home to their closets, that is, to take time by themselves. Some started to go out the door, and others still sat there with heavy hearts. Very soon, Emily returned, exclaiming, Oh, I cannot go home. I dare not go home. I shall lose my concern for Christ. What shall I do? And threw herself down on a chair, her head on a table in the deepest agony. All at once she became silent and gently raised her head with a placid countenance and was heard to say in a mild, tonal voice, Oh, I can submit. I can love Christ. Why did I not do it before? We sat in silent amazement. Every word she spoke sunk deep into our hearts. We felt the conviction God was there. She seized her next companion by the hand, and with all the tenderness, becoming a fellow sinner, began to press those very truths which had so distressed her own heart, the duty of immediate repentance and submission to God. Every word became an arrow. I felt the work was taken out of my hands, for I perceived God had made her a powerful preacher." Remember, it's just a small circle. All at once, A became silent, lifted her head with a countenance beaming with joy. The Saviour has come. This sent fresh alarm for every heart. Now, A and E, that's Emily, unite heart and hand and began with H, who had been in deep distress for some time, the urge of all the tenderness and firm decision of those who had felt the conviction, the necessity and reasonableness of immediate repentance and submission to God. The subject pressed harder and harder and harder still, when all at once H was brought out of darkness in a marvelous light. And these three now unite heart and hand, and with one voice bear testimony to the same heart-rending truth, that God is right and the sinner is wrong. Time would fail me to finish the story of this visit. We met at 2 o'clock p.m. and were detained more than three hours. Suffice it to say, I never saw or heard of such an afternoon visit before, for the one half has not been told. At the close, we began to look about us to see and inquire, what have God wrought? About 80, he would later go on and say, have been brought to rejoice and hope in this city during five weeks past. Besides these, about 25 students in Yale College have become the hopeful subjects of divine grace. What you've got there is Nettleson rightly, I think, emphasising it was God's work, it wasn't his work. He wasn't seeking to elicit some sort of emotional response. One of the things that was noted after Nettleson's ministry was how many of those who professed faith in Christ under his preaching stayed walking with Christ. It's very interesting. Forgive me for always contrasting this with Finney, Phinney, after his period of what he thought was revival in his ministry, in the late 1840s would write a letter complaining about how so many who came to Christ under his ministry were no longer walking with Christ. He didn't consider, it's very interesting, he didn't consider the problem was what was his ministry. And if you will read some of these letters, the problem he said was them, sinful. It's got nothing to do with me, it's got everything to do with them. But the contrast is remarkable with Nettleton and how God-owned Nettleton's preaching. I have one more section, but for sake of time, I'm going to jump over that. Let me read one of his sermons. And this sermon is on the passage I read, the one in Luke 14, the invitation to the supper, to the great feast. And then for the sake of time, I'm just going to read a very, very quick portion. It's amazing how in the middle of this revival preaching, he sometimes would preach sermons on election. And how God would own those sermons. This is part of his words, and he's talking about the excuses people are giving to the master of the feast. At length, the servant, whom the Master has sent out, begins to expostulate them. He speaks of the expensive entertainment which his Master has made. He tells them there is sufficient for all who will come. Everything is now prepared in the best possible manner. All things are now ready. My Master is liberal. The invitation is free. Whoever will may come and take without money. Finding no success, though, he tries a different method. He attempts to alarm their fears by pointing to them the consequences of their refusal. He informs them the master will be displeased. You are all so opposed to my master, he says. Not one of you will ever come unless my master comes and brings you. On hearing this, one of the persons invited becomes angry and begins to dispute with the servant. Did you not tell us, he says, we're all freely invited, whosoever will may come? I did, replies the servant, and so it is. You are all freely invited. Nay, you are commanded to come and threatened with a fearful punishment if you don't come. But since my master has made such large provision, he has determined it shall not be lost. And as all my arguments prove ineffectual and I cannot persuade one of you to come, he has determined to exert his power on a certain number and make them willing. You wouldn't think you'd preach particular redemption or election in a context like this, but he did. The servant replies, No, then one of the certain people says, your master is partial and he does not give us all an equal opportunity to come to the feast. The servant replies, you just acknowledged you were all freely invited and whosoever will may come. Have you any reason to find fault because you're left to your own choice? Will you find fault even when my master is not determined to make you willing to come? The other replies, I do not believe your master has determined to make any willing. I believe all are left to their own choice. Why then, replies the servant, do you not come? If no special power is necessary to make you willing, why do you stand making excuses? Why do you not come now? I tell you again, you are so opposed, you'll never come unless my master exerts his power to make you willing. And there is but one way for you to prove my declaration false. Now, come. And then he quotes a number of them pleading excuses and then The servants reply, if you cannot come unless my servant makes you willing, then what I said is true, that you never will come unless he makes you willing. Remember, your opposition is all that hinders. You labor under no other inability. But says another, if your master is not determined I shall come, I cannot and I'm not to blame. No, it is your duty to come. Whether he is determined to make you willing or not, thousands have been invited who have never come. Nor has my Master made them willing, and He has punished them for not coming. He'll deal that way with you, and I leave you to settle the matter with Him." Interesting that he would preach on a sermon like that in the middle of the context of revival, but laying out why men and women don't come. It's their sin that prevents them from coming. A powerful ministry. One that God owned richly to the blessing of His church. And God brought great revival through that ministry. In the 1820s, shortly after this, Nettleton contracted typhus fever. And it was a turning point in his own life. He survived. He was 40 days close to the grave. He never fully recovered his strength. And his days as a preacher of what we've described here, the power that God had used him with, was significantly diminished in later days. He would live another 20 years, but his ministry was severely hampered because of the ongoing impact of that typhus fever. It often came back on a number of occasions to hinder his physical ability to sustain the sort of schedule he had had. This is one of the reasons, by the way, when we come to his showdown with Finney, he is not able to stand against the man because of his own physical challenges. And yet a man who, as we look at his life, God used him greatly. It is a great shame that his name today is hardly known. A parable of his life is, he would found a college in Connecticut at which time, in the 1830s, when you came into the central entrance of the main building of the college, there was a massive portrait of Nettleton there, because he was the benefactor and founder of the school. That portrait went missing for many years, the college still exists. John Thornberry, who wrote The Life of Nettleton, when he went searching for the portrait, found it stuffed in an attic in one of the buildings gathering dust. And it's a parable, I think, of the reputation of Nettleton and how he has been largely forgotten, but needs to be remembered as one who knew how to preach rightly and how biblical evangelism is to be done. Very quickly, the hordes are at the door. Very quickly, any questions or comments before we close? I didn't name it because I'd forgotten it. Forgive me, I'll get it next week. I think it's not Hamilton College. The place still exists. It's about an hour south of the... I'll get it next week. You mean on a university campus? Well, I think a man like Nettleton, well, he'd probably be horrified at aspects of our culture. On the other hand, he saw all that. I mean, America in the early Republic was sunk to a pretty low degree, and he saw God turn much of that around. And he'd be encouraged that God could still do a great work. Well, let me close then in a word of prayer. Father, we thank You for that saying of Your Word that the memory of the just is blessed. And we thank You for the memory of this man, one of Your saints, who is in glory with You. And we thank You for this remembrance and record of his ministry. Our prayer is that You might do in our day what You did in his. Our great need is for You to come in our midst with great power and bring those who are outside of Christ to a living faith in the Saviour. Our prayer is that we might see this even today, that by the power of Your Word and by the presence of Your Spirit, the Spirit of Your Son, You would bring sinners to a living faith this day here in our midst. We pray the same for other congregations and pray that as we worship You this day, Your name would be exalted and our Saviour delighted in and praised and adored. We ask these things in His name. Amen.