“‘Because,’ was the ringing answer, ’I think less of the price of a horse than of my own soul.’”

About that time father began teaching school in neighboring districts, which he followed for several years.  But all of his spare time was spent in studying the Bible, church history, the writings of A. Campbell, and other religious books.  It was at that time that he began committing the New Testament to memory.

Grandfather Butler and Samuel Green were the leaders of the new organization, as they had been of the Baptist Church, in Eld.  Newcomb’s absence—­for he was away evangelizing much of the time.  They called on the young people to take part in their social meetings on the Lord’s day, at first only asking them to read a passage of Scripture, afterward to talk and pray, and, as they gained confidence in themselves, they were asked to lead the meetings.  Thus there grew, in that church, one after the other, within a few years, eight preachers:  A. B. Green, Wm. Moody, Holland Brown, Leonard Brown, Philander Green, B. F. Perky, Pardee Butler and L. L. Carpenter.

A. B. Green had been preaching a year or more before father was baptized, but I do not know which of the others began first, nor do I know the exact time when father began to preach, but it was about 1837 or 1838.  He was not ordained at Wadsworth, for the church at that time doubted whether there was any Scriptural authority for ordination.  He was ordained some six or seven years afterward, in 1844, at Sullivan.

In such times of religious excitement it was not necessary for a man to have a college education, to become an acceptable preacher.  But father saw the advantages of a good education, and resolved to attend A. Campbell’s school, then known as Buffalo Academy, but which was soon changed to Bethany College.  But the means to acquire an education must be obtained by his own exertions.

About the year 1839 grandfather sold his place in Wadsworth, and moved to the Sandusky Plains, a level, marshy prairie, in northwestern Ohio.  Part of the Plains belonged to the Wyandotte Indian Reservation, and was opened to settlement, a few years afterward, by the removal of the Indians to Wyandotte, Kansas.

Father and grandfather made sheep-raising their business while there.  Father herded sheep in summer and taught school in winter.  And, while herding sheep, he finished committing the New Testament to memory.  He could repeat it from beginning to end, and even in his later years he remembered it so well that he could repeat whole chapters at once.  I never saw the time that any one could repeat a verse in the New Testament to him, but that he could tell the book, and nearly always the chapter in which it was found.

He and his father’s family put their membership into the church at Letimberville, some miles distant; and there he occasionally preached.

He sometimes went back to Wadsworth, and on the way back and forth stopped and preached for the little church at Sullivan, Ashland Co.  There he made the acquaintance of Sibjl S. Carleton, the daughter of Joseph Carleton, one of the leading members of the church.  They were married August 17, 1843; and he never had cause to regret his choice, for she proved to him a helpmeet indeed.