Just before he entered the academy the students had been greatly stirred by James McGready, a Presbyterian preacher, and Stone was not a little surprised to find many of the students assembled every morning in a private room before the hour for recitation to engage in singing and prayer. This was a source of uneasiness to him, and frequently brought him to serious reflections. He labored diligently to banish these serious thoughts, thinking that religion would impede his progress in learning, thwart the object he had in view, and expose him to the ridicule of his relatives and companions. He therefore associated with those students who made light of such things, and joined them in the ridicule of the pious. For this his conscience severely condemned him when alone and made him so very unhappy that he could neither enjoy the company of the pious nor that of the impious. This caused him to decide to go to Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, that he might be away from the constant sight of religion. He determined to leave at once, but was prevented by a violent storm. He remained in his room all day and reached the decision to pursue his studies there and to attend to his own business, and let others do the same.
Having made this resolution, he was settled till his roommate asked him to accompany him to hear Mr. McGready preach. Of the deep impression made on him by the discourse he heard on that occasion he says:
His coarse, tremulous voice excited in me the idea of something unearthly. His gestures were the very reverse of elegance. Everything appeared by him forgotten but the salvation of souls. Such earnestness, such zeal, such powerful persuasion, enforced by the joys of heaven and miseries of hell, I had never witnessed before. My mind was chained by him, and followed him closely in his rounds of heaven, earth and hell, with feelings indescribable. His concluding remarks were addressed to the sinners to flee the wrath to come without delay. Never before had I comparatively felt the force of truth. Such was my excitement that had I been standing I should have probably sunk to the floor under the impression.
When the meeting was over he returned to his room, and when night came he walked out into a field and seriously reasoned with himself on the all-important subject of religion. He asked himself: “What shall I do? Shall I embrace religion, or not?” He weighed the subject and counted the cost. He concluded that if he embraced religion he would then incur the displeasure of his relatives and lose the favor and company of his companions: become the object of their scorn and ridicule; relinquish all his plans and schemes for worldly honor, wealth and preferment, and bid adieu to all the pleasures in which he had lived. He asked himself, “Are you willing to make this sacrifice?” His heart answered, “No, no.” Then there loomed before him a certain alternative, “You must be damned.” This thought was so terrible to him that he could not endure the thought, and, after due deliberation, he resolved from that hour to seek religion at the sacrifice of every earthly good, and immediately prostrated himself before God in supplication for mercy.
In accordance with the popular belief, and the experience of the pious in those days, he anticipated a long and painful struggle before he should be prepared to come to Christ, or, in the language of that day, before he should “get religion.” This anticipation was fully realized. For a year he was tossed about on the waves of uncertainty, laboring, praying and striving for “saving faith,” sometimes desponding and almost despairing of ever getting it. He wrestled with this condition until he heard a sermon on “God is love,” which so impressed his mind that he retired to the woods alone with his Bible. There he read and prayed with various feelings, between hope and fear, till the great truth of the love of God so triumphed over him that he afterward said:
I yielded and sunk at his feet, a willing subject. I loved him, I adored him, I praised him aloud in the silent night, in the echoing groves around. I confessed to the Lord my sin and folly in disbelieving his word so long, and in following so long the devices of men. I now saw that a poor sinner was as much authorized to believe in Jesus at first as last; that now was the accepted time and the day of salvation.
From that time he looked forward to preaching, and in the spring of 1796 applied to the Presbytery of Orange, N. C., for license to preach. In describing the proceedings of the presbytery, he says: “Never shall I forget the impression made on my mind when a venerable old father addressed the candidates, standing up together before the presbytery. After the address he presented to each of the candidates the Bible (not the Confession of Faith), with this solemn charge, ‘Go ye unto all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’” He was assigned to a certain district, but soon became much discouraged, and contemplated seeking regions where he was not known and turning his attention to some other calling in life.
In the midst of much doubt and perplexity, he turned westward and finally reached Caneridge, Bourbon County, Ky., where he remained for a few months, then returned to Virginia.
ORDAINED TO THE MINISTRY
In the fall of 1798 he received a call from the united congregations of Caneridge and Concord, through the Transylvania Presbytery. He accepted, and a day was appointed for his ordination to the ministry. Knowing that at his ordination he would be required to adopt the Westminster Confession of Faith, as the system of doctrine taught in the Bible, he determined to give it a very careful examination. This was to him almost the beginning of sorrows. He stumbled at the doctrine of the Trinity as therein taught, and could not conscientiously subscribe to it. Doubts, too, arose in his mind on the doctrines of election, reprobation and predestination, as then taught. He had before this time learned from those higher up in the ecclesiastical world the way of divesting those doctrines of their hard, repulsive features, and admitted them as true, yet unfathomable mysteries. Viewing them as such, he let them alone in his public discourses and confined himself to the practical part of religion, and to subjects within his depth. But in re-examining these doctrines he found the covering put over them could not hide them from a discerning eye with close inspection. Indeed, he saw that they were necessary to the system, without any covering.