It had been dark to me; it had been
something strange and repulsive, and even unreal,--something conjured
up by fear and superstition. I came to see it as the divinest, the
sublimest, and the loveliest reality, and I burned with a desire that
others should see it.

This "divine call" I had, whether or not it answers to what is commonly
meant by that phrase, and I am glad that I obeyed it.

But now, how was I to prosecute this design? how carry on the
preparatory studies, when my eyes did not permit me to read more than
half an hour a day? I hesitated and turned aside, first to teach a
school in Sheffield for a year, and next, for another year, to try
a life of business in New York. At length, however, my desire for my
chosen profession became so irrepressible, that I determined to enter
the Theological Seminary at Andover, and to pursue my studies as well as
I could without my eyes, expecting afterwards to preach without notes.
[41] At Andover I passed three years, attending to the course of studies
as well as I was able. I gave to Hebrew the half-hour a day that I was
able to study; with the Greek Testament I was familiar enough to go on
with my room-mate, Cyrus Byington, [FN] who since has spent his life as
a missionary among the Choctaws; and for reading I was indebted to his
unvarying kindness and that of my classmates and friends. Still, I was
left, some hours of every day, to my own meditations. But the being
obliged to think for myself upon the theological questions that daily
came before [42] the class, instead of reading what others had said
about them, seemed to me not without its advantages.

[FN Byington was a young lawyer, here in Sheffield, of good abilities
and prospects, but under a strong religious impression he determined
to quit the law and study theology. He was a man of ardent temperament,
whose thoughts were all feelings as well, which, though less reliable
as thought, were strong impulses, always directed, consecrated to
good ends. A being more unselfish, more ready to sacrifice himself for
others, could not easily be found. This spirit made him a missionary.
When our class was about leaving Andover, the question was solemnly
propounded to us by our teachers, who of us would go to the heathen--I
well remember the pain and distress with which Byington examined
it,--for no person could be more fondly attached to his friends and
kindred,--his final decision to go, and the perfect joy he had in it