The contents of this convicting book are from Finneys unpublished lecture notes. Topics include personal qualifications for the study of theology, advantages gained from this study, things to be avoided, primary and secondary departments of the mind, immortality, rules of evidence, proofs for the existence of God, natural and moral attributes of God.

In teaching theology, it is no part of my design merely to lecture to you, and help you to truth without your own efforts. This would do you little good, nay, it might greatly injure you. I would merely help you to study, help you when you...

Whenever, in the development of any particular science there has been a misapprehension of its appropriate sphere, and especially when wrong principles have been introduced in development, a reconstruction of the whole science is of course demanded. The following treatise has been prepared in view of the assumption, that both these defects exist in important forms in the common treatises on this subject.

Every one is aware, that any given intellectual process having for its object the establishment of truth, may fail of its end for one or more of the three following reasons: 1. The process...

With this treatise, Mahan attempts to do justice to the subject of moral philosophy and, therefore, challenge the student who tries to fathom the depths and ascend the heights of thought.

In the judgment of the author of the following treatise, the time has now arrived when the questions at issue between Theism on the one hand, and the various forms of Antitheism on the other, may be permanently settled, and that upon scientific grounds. All these questions now, in reality, stand out before the world in visible dependence upon a single issue, the validity of the human Intelligence as a faculty of world-knowledge. Antitheism, in all its forms, has openly based itself upon the assumption, and this is its final stronghold, that all our world-knowledge, subjective and objective,...

When editors have been changing Finneys words in their republications of
his works over the last one hundred and thirty years, it is essential in
understanding the man and his success that republications without changes be
given once again to the public. This new edition does that. While the text
is from the final 1868 revised edition, numerous footnotes are added that
show the changes Finney made from the original 1834 and 1835 editions of
these lectures. Many of the changes made in more recent republications are
also noticed.

From Finneys Preface:

In revising [these lectures] for a new...

While the text in this edition is from the final 1868 revised edition, numerous footnotes are added that show the changes Finney made from the original 1834 and 1835 editions of these lectures.

These lectures contain as full an outline of Theological Study as we have hitherto been able to fill up in our discussions and investigations, during the three years allotted to Theological Instruction in this Institution Oberlin, 1840]. . . My design was at first, not to publish, but barely to print a small number of copies exclusively for the use of the students. But as it was supposed that others would desire to possess them, I have consented to their publication, reminding my readers that they are a bare skeleton of the course of Theological study here pursued. The skeletons of these...

These lectures contain as full an outline of Theological Study as we have hitherto been able to fill up in our discussions and investigations, during the three years allotted to Theological Instruction in this Institution Oberlin, 1840]. . . My design was at first, not to publish, but barely to print a small number of copies exclusively for the use of the students. But as it was supposed that others would desire to possess them, I have consented to their publication, reminding my readers that they are a bare skeleton of the course of Theological study here pursued. The skeletons of these...

During my religious life, I have had a very intimate association with the various religious, moral, social, and political questions and movements which have agitated and moulded thought in America and the world at large, and with many of the leading minds who gave form and direction to these great movements. As a student of theology and Biblical science, and of all the sciences, as a preacher of the everlasting Gospel, and as a Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Theology, I have had occasion to ponder, and weigh, and determine, with great care and circumspection, the various...

Believers in Jesus, as we read in the Scriptures, are "all children of the light, and children of the day," and are privileged to "walk in the light, as God is the light," God Himself being "their everlasting light, and their God their glory." Thus "walking in the light," they "have fellowship one with another;" and more than this, "with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." Abiding in this light and in this fellowship, their "joy is full," "out of weakness they are made strong," in all conditions of existence they find perfect content, and are "more than conquerors through Him that...