In the summer of that same year, while the wheat in the Manchester fields was still green, and the maize had attained but half its growth, while the ox-eyed daisies still stood a happy crowd in the unmown meadows, and pink and yellow orchids blazed in unfrequented dells, the preacher Finney, after long absence, chanced to be again travelling on the Palmyra road.

As was his habit, he sought entertainment at the house of Deacon Croom in New Manchester.
The preacher remembered always that his citizenship was in heaven.

From the thought he drew great nourishment of peace and hope, but as far as his earthly affairs were concerned the outlook was at present grievous.
He was returning from a long and dreary religious convention held in an eastern town, where one, Mr.Lyman Beecher, had stirred up against him the foremost divines of New York and Boston.

They had asserted that Finney's doctrine, that the Spirit of God could suddenly turn men from following evil to pursuing good, was false and pernicious; that his method stirred up the people to unholy excitements which were productive of great evil.

Now the accusations of these divines (who, thinking that a man's change of mind must needs be so slow a thing, some of them, gray-haired, had not as yet produced this change in a single sinner) were in many points wholly false, in many exaggerated, and where the article of truth remained in the accusation there was much to be said in defence of work that had resulted, if in some evil, certainly in much palpable good.