When the meeting was over he returned to his room, and when night came he walked out into a field and seriously reasoned with himself on the all-important subject of religion. He asked himself: “What shall I do? Shall I embrace religion, or not?” He weighed the subject and counted the cost. He concluded that if he embraced religion he would then incur the displeasure of his relatives and lose the favor and company of his companions: become the object of their scorn and ridicule; relinquish all his plans and schemes for worldly honor, wealth and preferment, and bid adieu to all the pleasures in which he had lived. He asked himself, “Are you willing to make this sacrifice?” His heart answered, “No, no.” Then there loomed before him a certain alternative, “You must be damned.” This thought was so terrible to him that he could not endure the thought, and, after due deliberation, he resolved from that hour to seek religion at the sacrifice of every earthly good, and immediately prostrated himself before God in supplication for mercy. In accordance with the popular belief, and the experience of the pious in those days, he anticipated a long and painful struggle before he should be prepared to come to Christ, or, in the language of that day, before he should “get religion.” This anticipation was fully realized. For a year he was tossed about on the waves of uncertainty, laboring, praying and striving for “saving faith,” sometimes desponding and almost despairing of ever getting it. He wrestled with this condition until he heard a sermon on “God is love,” which so impressed his mind that he retired to the woods alone with his Bible. There he read and prayed with various feelings, between hope and fear, till the great truth of the love of God so triumphed over him that he afterward said: I yielded and sunk at his feet, a willing subject. I loved him, I adored him, I praised him aloud in the silent night, in the echoing groves around. I confessed to the Lord my sin and folly in disbelieving his word so long, and in following so long the devices of men. I now saw that a poor sinner was as much authorized to believe in Jesus at first as last; that now was the accepted time and the day of salvation. From that time he looked forward to preaching, and in the spring of 1796 applied to the Presbytery of Orange, N. C., for license to preach. In describing the proceedings of the presbytery, he says: “Never shall I forget the impression made on my mind when a venerable old father addressed the candidates, standing up together before the presbytery. After the address he presented to each of the candidates the Bible (not the Confession of Faith), with this solemn charge, ‘Go ye unto all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’” He was assigned to a certain district, but soon became much discouraged, and contemplated seeking regions where he was not known and turning his attention to some other calling in life.