body, or in a trance; and at last walked home crying, and wishing he
knew what, now that he was a Christian, he should do, and how he was to
do it. Ah! well, there is a world of things in children's minds that
grown-up people do not imagine, though they, too, once were young."

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