Before Adoniram Judson became the pioneer of American foreign missions he was a rebel. He finished at the top of his college class and headed to New York City to seek fame and fortune as an actor and/or writer. He had renounced his father's belief in a personal God; his education had taken him beyond such primitive notions. Prayer, of course, was meaningless to him.

But by the age of 20, Adoniram didn't feel right about his life. Disillusioned, he headed back to his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, stopping for a night at a wayside inn. Adoniram had trouble sleeping that night, because a man in the next room was critically ill and moaning and groaning in pain. Obviously, his neighbor in the next room was dying. In the darkness of his room, Adoniram thought about the possibility of his own death and whether he was prepared for it. At times during the long hours he thought about returning to the Christian beliefs of his father, but then he imagined what his college chum Jacob Eames would say about his father's doctrines. He waited for morning to come so that the terrors of the night would be forgotten.

Early the next morning, Adoniram went to the innkeeper. "That poor old man in the next room. How is he?" he asked.

"He passed away early this morning," came the reply. "And he wasn't old at all. He was a young man, about your age."

For some reason, Adoniram asked, "What was his name?" It was a rather stupid question, because Adoniram certainly didn't know anyone in that section of the country.

The innkeeper replied, "His name was Jacob Eames."

There was no mistaking the name or the identity. It was the young college friend whose religious skepticism had turned Adoniram against the religion of his father.

Dazed, he returned to Massachusetts and to his father. Echoing through his mind was the word lost. But it took three more months of intellectual struggle before he "made a solemn dedication of himself to God."