Charles G. Finney | An Influential Woman Converts, 1830
Women were among the earliest converts in the Reverend Charles Finney's revivals in Rochester, New York. Many then persuaded friends and relatives to seek salvation. In describing the conversion of Mrs. Selah Mathews, Finney reinforces conventional ideas about female subordination while recognizing Mrs. Mathews's influence among local elites. Mrs. Mathews later joined a short-lived female antislavery society and worked on behalf of moral reform.
The wife of a prominent lawyer…was one of the first converts. She was a woman of high standing, a lady of culture and extensive influence….
Mrs. M[athews] had been a gay, worldly woman, and very fond of society. She afterward told me that when I first came there, she greatly regretted it, and feared [that]…a revival would greatly interfere with the pleasures and amusements that she had promised herself that winter. On conversing with her I found that the Spirit of the Lord was indeed dealing with her…. She was bowed down with great conviction of sin…. I pressed her earnestly to renounce sin, and the world, and self, and everything for Christ…. [W]e knelt down to pray; and my mind being full of the subject of the pride of her heart…I very soon introduced the text: “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”…[A]lmost immediately I heard Mrs M[athews]…repeating that text:
“Except ye be converted and become as little children—as little children—Except ye be converted and become as little children.” I observed that her mind was taken with that, and the Spirit of God was pressing it upon her heart. I therefore continued to pray, holding that subject before her mind….
…Her heart broke down, her sensibility gushed forth, and before we rose…, she was indeed a little child…. From that moment she was out-spoken in her religious convictions, and zealous for the conversion of her friends.
Source: Charles G. Finney, The Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney, Written by Himself (New York: F. H. Revell, 1876), 287–88.