Unsatisfactory in many respects as was his religious experience, it seems to have been powerful enough to change his whole ideal of life. We hear no more of his becoming a sailor. He appears to have yielded to the inevitable, and henceforth studies with the ministry in view. That he became a minister, as did his brothers, by reason of the unswerving faith and prayer of the parents, is already well known. "Out of six sons not one escaped from the pulpit. My mother dedicated me to the work of the foreign missionary; she laid her hands upon me, wept over me, and set me apart to preach the Gospel among the heathen, and I have been doing it all my life long, for it so happens one does not need to go far from his own country to find his audience before him." Ushered into the preparation for the ministry by the parental faith, stumbling and discouraged and ready to give up the work, another hand was not wanting to open still more clearly the way, draw back the curtains, and let in the light: "I beheld Him as a helper, as the soul's mid-wife, as the soul's physician, and I felt because I was weak I could come to Him; because I did not know how, and, if I did know, I had not the strength, to do the things that were right--that was the invitation that He gave to me out of my conscious weakness and want. I will not repeat the scene of that morning when light broke fairly on my mind; how one might have thought that I was a lunatic escaped from confinement; how I ran up and down through the primeval forest of Ohio, shouting, 'Glory, glory!' sometimes in loud tones and at other times whispered in an ecstasy of joy and surprise. All the old troubles gone, and light breaking in on my mind, I cried: 'I have found my God; I have found my God!' From that hour I consecrated myself to the work of the ministry anew, for before that I had about made up my mind to go into some other profession." His early training school for effective preaching was well selected. It was, as is well known, one of the little villages on the banks of the Ohio River, where the wants of river bargemen and frontiersmen demanded his attention. It was there he decided what his life work should be.