John Griffin's biographer writes: "It were a comparatively easy task to give good advice to children, and to say something which, if attended to, would, or ought to do them good. This perfunctory sort of dealing with the young of the flock did not satisfy him. He considered that there was a science of skill to be exercised in the nursing of tender lambs. He did not merely fondle them in his arms, but he knew that it was his duty to feed them with food convenient for them. His sermons to children, therefore, discovered much thought, and displayed a ready and lively fancy adapted to the illustration and explanation of truth. His style was singularly perspicuous, simple and child-like."

An outlook that Doudney himself was to adopt in later years when he entered the ministry and commenced the editing and publishing of the popular magazine Old Jonathan. He had, however, at that time not the least intention of entering the Christian ministry. His interest lay in the printing industry. It fascinated him. From being a young boy upwards he had no desire to do anything other than be a printer. His father desired him to follow in the family business which seems to have been the manufacture of soap, but to no avail, he was determined to enter upon an apprenticeship to learn the printing trade, and at the age of thirteen, that is, in 1824, he undertook what was then the long journey from Portsmouth to Southampton where he was articled to the printing industry.

He received wise counsel from his mother, "Read your Bible if it be but a few verses, read it every day." "I did so," he says, "and each evening or every favourable opportunity found me with my Bible in my hand. When thus reading it, there came a desire to understand what I read, such as I had never experienced before."

He states that even though he still attended a place of worship - Above Bar Independent Church, Southampton - such was the nature of his business - he had by this time joined the staff of The Hampshire Advertiser - that he had free access to the theatre, and frequent were his visits to that place of amusement. The theatre was a place of debauchery in those days and he came to be sicked of it by his attendance at one particular play. The work of God was continuing in his heart. There had been stirrings in his childhood but, as is often the case with children, these were of a transient nature.

He tells us, "Yet at this time I was in great darkness and acting very inconsistently, for the nature of my business was such as to give me a free admission to the theatre, and I went to it. However, I was to be sickened of this as I shall presently mention. With the inclination to read and understand the Word of God came a desire to know how others had been led."  At that time he saw nothing inconsistent with a desire to know the Word of God and his attendance at the theatre.