I had one peculiar difficulty which, to many readers, will appear almost whimsical, but to me was most real. Our hope of ever regaining liberty, or even preserving our lives much longer, was but slight; yet my greatest difficulty in finding satisfactory religious consolation had reference to a possible release. I had been a diligent law student, and had managed to continue the study even in the army and in prison. But now it was impressed upon my mind, with daily increasing force, that I must submit the decision of my future career to God. If I took this matter into my own hands, I could not feel that I was completely true to Him. Underlying this feeling was the further conviction that if I made such a submission of my future profession to God I would be led into the ministry, and the thought of this was very repulsive. Yet the longer the struggle continued the plainer duty became. If I gave myself to Christ, it seemed a necessary consequence that I should accept any work He gave me to do. If I feared that He would guide me in a certain direction, this was sure proof that I was not resigned to His will, and, according to my views, not a true Christian. At last the choice was made,--I resolved to follow my sense of duty, no matter where that should lead,--to the ministry or anywhere else. When this conflict was over there was no great emotional excitement,--only a sense of peace and rest. I could wait calmly in the prison until led forth to die, if such should be my doom, and then go forth out of life feeling that I was loyal to God, and that I should remain His, into whatever worlds the gate of death should open. If, contrary to all probability, the prison-gate should open for my passage back into the free world, from which I seemed almost as effectually separated as if death had already intervened, I promised still to be loyal to Him. This was the essence of the inward change I date from that time. My standard of action before had been pleasure, inclination, the world's notion of honor and morality. Even this had not been held too strictly, as the reader of these pages has discovered. But afterwards, however imperfectly maintained, my standard became the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, and my own sense of duty as enlightened by His Spirit. No great joy, such as is often expressed in conversion, came at first. But it was even better than any joy to feel that I now had a strong arm upon which I could lean,--that there was one person to whom I could go at any time, and who was not indifferent to my fate.