In 1853 he was received formally as a member "on trial" in the New Jersey Conference, at that time embracing the entire State. His first charge as pastor was at North Belleville, later known as Franklin, now Nutley, where a handsome new church bears his name and commemorates his early ministry. His second charge was at a small suburb of Newark, then called Camptown, now the thriving borough of Irvington. His ministry from the beginning had been marked by an interest in childhood and youth, and a strong effort to strengthen the work of the Sunday School. At Camptown he established a definite course of Bible teaching for teachers and young people. Near the church he staked out a map of Palestine, marked its mountains and streams, its localities and battlefields, and led his teachers and older scholars on pilgrimages from Dan to Beersheba, pausing at each of the sacred places while a member of the class told its story. The lessons of that Palestine Class, taught on the peripatetic plan in the fifties, are still in print, showing the requirements for each successive grade of Pilgrim, Resident in Palestine, Dweller in Jerusalem, Explorer of other Bible Lands, and after a final and searching examination, Templar, wearing a gold medal. At each of his pastoral charges after this, he conducted his Palestine Class and constructed his outdoor map of the Holy Land. May we not find here the germ destined to grow into the Palestine Park of the Chautauqua Assembly? After four years in New Jersey young Vincent was transferred in 1857 to Illinois, where in succession he had charge of four churches, beginning with Joliet, where he met a young lady teacher, Miss Elizabeth Dusenbury, of Portville, N. Y., who became his wife, and in the after years by her warm heart, clear head, and wise judgment greatly contributed to her husband's success. He was a year at Mount Morris, the seat of the Rock River Conference Seminary, at which he studied while pastor in the community. For two years, 1860 and '61, he was at Galena, and found in his congregation a quiet ex-army officer, named Ulysses S. Grant, who afterward said when introducing him to President Lincoln, "Dr. Vincent was my pastor at Galena, Ill., and I do not think that I missed one of his sermons while I lived there." Long after the Civil War days Bishop Vincent expressed in some autobiographical notes his estimate of General Grant. He wrote: "General Grant was one of the loveliest and most reverent of men. He had a strong will under that army overcoat of his, but he was the soul of honor and as reverent as he was brave." After two years at Rockford--two years having been until 1864 the limit for a pastorate in American Methodism--in 1865 he was appointed to Trinity Church, Chicago, then the most important church of his denomination in that city.