It was at the rabbinical school in Zhytomyr that he was given a copy of the New Testament in Hebrew which had been produced by the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews.

[1] In 1854, he decided to emigrate to the United States, particularly New York City, where he connected with Messianic Jews but did not enter the church until 1855 when he was baptized by immersion and associated with a Baptist congregation.

After more than two years, he left to enter the Episcopal Church and the General Theological Seminary, where he found a mentor in the professor of Hebrew, Samuel H. Turner.

On 28 October 1860 Bishop Boone ordained him to the priesthood in the mission school chapel, later known as the Church of our Savior, Hongkew.

However, two years later, Schereschewsky accepted the call to that bishopric from the Episcopal House of Bishops, after receiving assurances of financial support for his dream of building a college to educate Chinese in Shanghai.

He served as Bishop of Shanghai until 1883, when he resigned his bishopric for health reasons (having become increasingly incapacitated after suffering a sun stroke in 1881).

However, Schereschewsky yearned to complete a new translation of the Bible into Wenli, China's classical language, finding the previous five attempts inaccurate and some even lapsing into paganism (1902).

[6][7] He continued his translation work, with the assistance of an amanuensis in Chinese and later Japanese, when he moved to Tokyo, Japan during his final decade.