Charles Grandison Finney

“ The proper guardians of the public conscience have, I fear, very much neglected to expound and insist upon obedience to the moral law. It is plain that some of our most popular preachers are phrenologists. Phrenology has no organ of free will. Hence, it has no moral agency, no moral law and moral obligation in any proper sense of these terms. A consistent phrenologist can have no proper ideas of moral obligation, of moral guilt, blameworthiness, and retribution. Some years since, a brother of one of our most popular preachers heard me preach on the text "Be ye reconciled to God." ”

“ True faith in Christ will always and inevitably beget a holy life. But I fear it has become fashionable to preach what amounts to an antinomian gospel. The rule of life promulgated in the Gospel is precisely that of the moral law. ”

“ Let our railroad rings, our stock gamblers, our officials of every grade hear from its pulpit, if they come within the sound, such wholesome Puritanical preaching as will arouse them to better thoughts and a better life. ”

“ So far as my knowledge extends, there has been a great letting down and ignoring the searching claims of God's law, as revealed in his Word. This law is the only standard of true morality. "By the law is the knowledge of sin." ”

“ The universal literature of the present day shows conclusively that the moral sense of the people needs toning up, and some of our most fascinating preachers have become the favorites of infidels, skeptics of every grade, Universalists, and the most abandoned characters. ”

“ I believe it is a fact generally admitted that there is much less conscience manifested, by men and women, in nearly all the walks of life, than there was forty years ago. There is justly much complaint of this, and there seems to be but little prospect of reformation. ”