One quality that was manifest in Brother Warner's early religious life as well as throughout his entire career was earnestness. He was sincere and intense in his devotion and his Christian work. We shall find as we read the notes from his diary that his words breathe a spirit of love and devotion, evincing a deep spirituality. When he yielded to God, he meant it as the decision of his very soul, and his conversion was for him an actual change for time and eternity. Old things were passed away. New propositions and prospects arose to occupy his thoughts. [Illustration: D. S. Warner a student at Oberlin College] ATTENDS OBERLIN COLLEGE What ideals and plans were his immediately after his conversion we do not know. It was not long, however, until he decided that a more advanced education was needful. Nothing will give a young person nobler ambitions and greater desire to rise to all that is good and associated with usefulness than Christianity. On the 5th of September of the same year of his conversion he started to school at Oberlin College and enrolled for an English preparatory course. The details of his study at Oberlin and just how long he remained have not been learned. An old memorandum of his accounts indicates that he attended there only two months at first, and then taught school through the winter at Corunna, Ind., returning to Oberlin in the spring, and that he started again with the new school year in September, 1866. It is known, however, that his excellency of character shone while he was at school and was the subject of remark. He did not attend college as long as he had expected to; for it was while he was there that he began to feel God's hand upon him for the ministry. When he saw how long it would take to complete his college work and the need of laboring in the Lord's harvest while it was day, he felt impressed that God wanted him to cut short his college course and to prepare at once for the ministry. He accordingly went home, arranged for a room in his father's house, and spent one season there in applying himself to prayer, Bible-study, and those other things which he believed were directly necessary to his ministerial preparation. Preparation for the ministry is more successful when, along with it, there can be more or less of actual practise. We can believe that Brother Warner was spiritual enough to keep in touch with God and to discern the divine leading in the important matter to which he had committed himself. At any rate, in connection with his work of preparation he began to engage in ministering the gospel. He preached his first sermon on Easter night, 1867, in a Methodist Episcopal protracted meeting in the Cogswell Schoolhouse, not far from where he lived. Text, Acts 3:18--"But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled." FOOTNOTE: