But this gain in bodily strength was not to profit him long. He had been bred in the Methodist faith; his stepfather was a minister of wide reputation in this denomination, and the youth, with his studious disposition and gift for speech, turned naturally to the ministry. He has said of himself that an inward conflict between his predisposition to literary work and the tendency to religion and philanthropy began in boyhood and has continued throughout his life. There were times in his youth when his love for literature seemed an idolatry, and once in a repentant mood he destroyed his youthful manuscripts and resolved to abandon literature. He was now launched upon the Methodist circuit rider’s life of hardship and peril, covering a four weeks’ itinerary in the county of which New Albany is the capital, and performing his duties with such diligence that in six months he was again a wreck. He therefore removed to Minnesota, and continued in the ministry, save for intervals of physical prostration, until, in 1866, he accepted the editorship of _The Little Corporal_, a popular juvenile periodical published at Chicago, and from that beginning was irresistibly drawn to the business of making books. In 1874, he became pastor of a church in Brooklyn, to which he gave the name of the Church of Christian Endeavor, and which sought to make sunshine in shady places. It was, indeed, the “Church of the Best Licks,” of the “Hoosier Schoolmaster,” slightly conventionalized. Dr. Eggleston continued in the pastorate for five years, devoting himself to his work with his accustomed zeal and enthusiasm, which resulted in another collapse. He then retired finally from the ministry; but the phrase, “Christian Endeavor,” first applied by Dr. Eggleston to his Brooklyn church, is widely known as the name of a society of young people.