Asahel Nettleton Revival Preacher — E.A. Johnston

Studying Revival History and Revival Leaders

In the study of revival and spiritual awakenings, it is of great importance to be familiar with men whom God has used in former times in revivals of religion. It's worthy of our attention to study historical extracts of revival and revival men.

And our subject today is Azahel Nettleton. One of the most accurate examples of Nettleton's theology is given by Heman Humphrey, who had labored with him in revival. It is also a critical look at Azahel's abilities in the pulpit as well as his effectiveness with awakened sinners.

The observations are an unbiased look at Nettleton and provide us with an honest appraisal of his preaching skills. Therefore, please listen with interest to Dr. Humphrey's observations on Azahel Nettleton during the Second Great Awakening in America.

Nettleton's Independent Calvinist Theology

In his theology, Dr. Nettleton was neither a high or low Calvinist. While he admired the illustrious Genevan Reformer and subscribed ex amino to all the leading doctrines of his immortal institutes, he called neither Calvin nor any other man master.

He was an Edwardian rather than a high Calvinist, and yet profound as his veneration was for that greatest of theologians, as Dr. Chalmers styles President Edwards, he thought it his duty to investigate every subject for himself.

With his little Duodecimo Bible or his Greek Testament always in his hands, he was one of the most independent thinkers that I have ever known. He was, I might almost say, the last man to be captivated with visionary theories or fanciful analogies and interpretations.

Upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone he stood like a pillar upon the everlasting rock. Nothing could shake him. Whether he drew out of his system on paper, I do not know, but if he did, it will be found eminently scriptural, lucid, and symmetrical, nothing more, nothing less than sound, well-digested, and well-guarded New England orthodoxy.

Nettleton's Plain and Solemn Preaching

As a preacher, Dr. Nettleton had many superiors in what commonly goes under the name of pulpit eloquence. There was nothing particularly captivating in his voice, in his style, or his delivery, nothing to make you admire the man or his writing or his speaking or in any way to divert your attention from the truths which he uttered.

His prayers were generally short and always fervent, scriptural and appropriate. When he rose to speak, there was a benign solemnity in his countenance which awed the most thoughtless into seriousness while at the same time it exerted an unwanted desire to hear what he had to say.

He had a voice of more than ordinary compass and power, and though there was nothing harsh or repulsive in its modulations, you sometimes regretted that he had not enjoyed better early advantages for training it.

He always commenced on a low key, enunciating every word and syllable so distinctly, however, as to be heard without difficulty in the remotest parts of the house. So simple were his sentences, so plain and unadorned was his style, and so calm was his delivery that, for a few moments, you might have thought him dull and sometimes even commonplace, but for the glance of his piercing eye and an undefinable something in his whole manner which insensibly gained and riveted your attention.

As he advanced and his heart grew warm and his conceptions vivid, his voice caught the inspiration, his lips seemed to be touched with a live coal from off the altar, his face shown, every muscle and feature spoke, his tones were deep and awfully solemn, his gestures, though he never flourished off of prettiness in his life, were natural and at times exceedingly forcible, but his eye, after all, was the master power of his delivery, full and clear and sharp, its glances in the most animated parts of his discourses were quick and penetrating beyond almost anything I can recollect ever to have witnessed.

He seemed to look at every hearer in the face, or rather to look into his soul, almost at one and at the same moment. You felt that you were in the hands of a master, and never stopped to inquire whether he was a good or a bad pulpit orator, whatever the critics might say, in one thing you could not be mistaken, he arrested your attention and made you feel, for the time at least, that religion is indeed the one thing needful.

Self-Control and Directness in Revival Preaching

Dr. Nettleton's delivery was always solemn, always earnest, and not seldom even vehement. This was particularly the case in the height of those numerous and powerful revivals in the midst of which he labored for so many years.

The action of his mind was intense, the yearnings of his soul over the impenitent were irrepressible, his countenance, his voice, everything showed it, and yet, incredible as it may seem, in his most impassioned appeals, there was not a particle of enthusiasm.

By this I mean that he was never hurried away into any extravagance of language or emotion, he never for one moment lost the balance of his mind, he was always perfectly self-possessed. I have seen him in circumstances of overpowering interest, when the movements of the spirit were like a mighty Russian wind, and could never perceive any wavering in his judgment or his prudence.

He was ever the same, in the pulpit, in the lecture room, and in the inquiry meeting, always earnest and solemn, but never carried away by his feelings beyond the bounds of propriety. Dr. Nettleton's sermons were plain, solid, evangelical, instructive, and directly to the purpose, he always knew what he aimed at, and he seldom, if ever, missed his mark.

Dodging was of no avail, his style was perfectly unadorned, tropes and metaphors he never sought for, and I am not aware that they ever obtruded themselves upon his imagination. What he aimed at was to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to his hearers in the plainest and most forcible language he could command.

The great power of his preaching consisted in its perspicuity, its directness, its fearless exposition of the most unwelcome truths of the Bible, and its earnest, solemn, and often terrible appeals to the conscience.

No preacher that I ever heard could make the law thunder louder in the sinner's ear, the great sword of the Spirit was his only weapon, and he wielded it with extraordinary dexterity and effect. A few ministers, I believe, have ever studied the windings of the natural heart with more diligence and success than he did, hence those masterly analyses which he used so often to stir his hearers as if all their thoughts had been suddenly laid open to the public gaze.

Nettleton and Whitefield's Distinct Revival Callings

In reviewing the history of Dr. Mendelton's life and labors, it is clear to me that God raised him up to spend his best days in promoting revivals of religion, that he raised up Whitefield for the very same service on a wider theater.

They were unlike in many respects as any two great revival preachers could be, but they had one Lord and one faith, the same love for souls, and the same irrepressible desire to win as many of them as possible to Christ.

Each was fitted for the age in which he lived, and the work to which he was called, Whitefield, to blow the trumpet over the dead and buried formalism of the churches, both in Great Britain and America, Mendelton, to strengthen the things that remained and were ready to die in destitute churches of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, and to help the brethren in gathering their spiritual harvests.

Having no pastoral charge to confine him and no family to provide for in living, I may say for years in the midst of these mighty works he was under better advantages for observing all the diversities of the operations by the Spirit which are disclosed in times refreshing than any of his immediate predecessors or early contemporaries, and his master had endowed him with the requisite gifts, both intellectual and moral, to make the most of these advantages.

A shrewd part of the epithet, as no other word would so exactly express it, observing, cautious, discriminating, and at the same time fervent in spirit and mightily constrained by the love of Christ, he was most happily guarded against feverish impulses on the one hand and antinomian presumptions on the other, enjoying as he did for so many years the best possible opportunity for studying the theory of revivals, his benevolent, inquisitive, and ardent mind would not allow him to rest satisfied without putting it to the most rigid test of scripture, experience, and observation.

Herein, he was, in the truest sense, a Christian philosopher, and his philosophy was strictly Baconian. It consisted in observing phenomena and recorded facts. I have long thought, and it is still my deliberate conviction, that he understood the whole subject of revivals better than any man with whom I ever conversed or labored.

He had studied it more profoundly. Indeed, no man could well be a more perfect master of his business or profession, and neither Caesar nor Napoleon ever studied the art of war with greater acidity than did the heavenly art of winning souls to Christ.

This may seem extravagant. I presume it will to some, but why should it? He had not far higher a grade of modus for bending all the energies of his mind to learn how to save men than they could have had for learning how to destroy them.

Nettleton's Practical Method of Conducting Revivals

But you wish me to say something of his manner of laboring in revivals, and of their general character under his preaching and management. This I am the more ready to do, from having had the best opportunities to observe and judge in one of them, which I have often since heard him speak, as among the most powerful he ever witnessed.

He was with me three months day and night, during which I saw and heard everything. I was anxious to learn all I could from one whose labors had been so eminently owned and blessed by the divine head of the church, and not being, if I may say it, of an enthusiastical temperament myself, I think I was enabled to form a pretty correct judgment of his preaching, of his daily intercourse with sinners in every stage of awakening and conversion, and of the effect of those measures which he had been testing in scores of other revivals.

It has been said that in such seasons we ought to look to God continually in fervent belief and prayer, just as if he was the sole agent in carrying on the work, and at the same time to labor with all our might, just as if we had to do it all ourselves.

This was Dr. Nettleton's view of the matter, and no man, perhaps, ever more fully carried it out in practice than he did. In his creed, the whole process of awakening, conviction, and regeneration was by the sovereign and special agency of the Holy Spirit.

For this he prayed, and exhorted others to pray without ceasing, while at the same time he labored with as much assiduity for the conversion of sinners as if his master had devolved the whole responsibility upon him.

His theory was that, while the excellency of the power is all of God, he works by means no less in the moral than in the natural world. This led him to study the economy of grace and revivals with the deepest interest, and as the result of it, to adopt measures and use those means which seemed to him best adapted to the end.

I do not say that his manner of conducting revivals was in all respects to the best that could have been adopted, much less that it would be best for every minister, but I have yet to learn that a better and safer system of measures has been devised.

Taken as a whole, it commends itself to my judgment and observation as eminently wise and guarded and scriptural. It was characterized by a deep and profound knowledge of human nature, as I think might easily be shown did my limits permit.

Warnings Against Reckless Revivalism

Let those who come after improve upon it, or devise it better if they can. While I am far from believing that nothing remains to be learned in the heavenly art of winning souls to Christ, quite sure I am that few, if any of those professed revivalists who have succeeded Dr. Nettleton and made the most noise in the churches are the men to show us a more excellent way.

They have done what they could with strong lungs, startling appeals, new measures, and sweeping denunciations, and the blighting effects are truly mournful. In some wide districts which they have overrun, it is feared the churches will not recover from the desolating eruption for half a century.

Most unwarrantable is the appeal which sometimes make to Dr. Nettleton as their forerunner and exemplar. Nothing gave him so much concern during the later years of his life as the manner in which revivals were corrupted and brought into discredit and run down by noisy, rash, and impetuous evangelists.

It grieved him to the heart that so many churches and land were ready to countenance them, and he earnestly protested against their errors and extravagances to the day of his death, though he would not deny that there might be some real conversions in the great excitements which attended their preaching.

It was his solemn and painful conviction that multitudes were deceived with false hopes who, under different instruction and measures, might have been brought to a saving knowledge of the truth. In his own management and times revivals, by preaching and personal intercourse, nothing was more deserving of being studied and imitated than his thoroughness, caution, and discrimination.

In these respects, there was a heaven-wide difference between Dr. Nettleton and some of the most noted of his professed imitators. Being thoroughly rooted and grounded in the truth himself, his presentations of it were clear, pungent, and searching.

Nettleton's Doctrinal Preaching and Conversion Tests

His revival topics were systematically and admirably arranged in his discourse as he began at the beginning. A full believer in the total depravity of the human heart, he arranged sinners, whether young or old, as rebels against God and made the threatenings of the law thunder in their ears as but few preachers have power to do.

With him, acting as an ambassador of Christ, there was no such thing as compromise. The rebels must throw down their arms and submit unconditionally, or he would give them no hope of pardon. Hundreds, if not thousands, can witness what a terrible dissector he was of the joints and marrow.

At the same time that he showed the impenitent they were lost, he made them feel that they had destroyed themselves. It was difficult to say which he made plainest, the danger, or their guilt, their immediate duty to repent, or the certainty that without being drawn and renewed by the Spirit of God, they never would repent.

It was in vain for them to retreat from one refuge to another. He was sure to strip them of all their vain excuses and deliver them over to their consciences to be dealt with according to law and justice.

He preached what are called the hard doctrines such as divine sovereignty, election, and regeneration with great plainness, discrimination, and power. His grand aim was to instruct, convince, and persuade.

To this end, his appeals were constantly made to the understanding, the conscience and the heart, the passions he never addressed, nor were his discourses at all calculated to excite them. Any outbreak of mere animal feeling he was always afraid of, as tending to warp the judgment and beget false hopes, his grand aim was to instruct his hearers as thoroughly and point out difference between true and spurious conversion so clearly as to make it difficult for them to get hopes at all without good spiritual evidence on which to found them.

Knowing how apt persons are to cling to their hopes, whether good or bad, he depended much more upon holding them back till they had good evidence than upon shaking them from their false foundations. As might have been expected under such a course of instruction, the great majority of these who came out and professed religion, so far as I have had opportunity to observe, have worn well.

They have proved intelligent, stable, and consistent Christians. The revivals under Dr. Nettleton's preaching always strengthened the churches and strengthened the pastors where they had them. I do not believe that an instance to the contrary can be induced from the whole wide field of his labors, nor that a single church can be pointed out which does not to this day feel their blessed influence.

The Fruit of Revival Must Be Tested

How different are the sad experiences of hundreds of churches, congregations, and ministers under the sway of bold and reckless and disorganized revivalists. How many once united and flourishing churches have been divided or broken up, and how many worthy pastors have been undermined and driven away by them.

By their fruits ye shall know them. The fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. Brought to these tests, all the great revivals under Dr. Nettleton's labors will stand on the records of the church in striking contrast as to many bright evidences of his wisdom, fidelity, and eminent usefulness.