On leaving the editorial chair, May 1, 1839, he returned to his newly purchased and agreeable residence at West Mendon village, now called Honeoye Falls, in Monroe County, N. Y., where he became, in 1840, the pastor of a prospering church which had recently been formed in that place. Six months before leaving the Palladium, he had announced the intention of being for a few years an evangelist. Speaking of himself in the third person, he said:
"His circuit will be principally within the following limits: From Quebec on the north, to Georgia on the south; and from Maine on the east, to Arkansas and Missouri on the west. To be at liberty to travel and preach the Gospel again, as in the days of his youth, is the height of his ambition; and this is his desire above all things of Heaven."
In his farewell address, April 15, 1839, he says:
"'And so, without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part.'
"I now take up my pen to address you for the last time, as Editor of the Christian Palladium, with a feeling of strong attachment to each and all of you, and a fervent desire for your present and future happiness. We have travelled a long journey and encountered many difficulties together, and at length have arrived at that point where that sacred relation we have sustained to each other is to end, and our connection as editor and patron is to be severed forever."
In reviewing the past, he claims to have used no disguise, to have spoken plainly and independently on all subjects, though at times, he concedes, a little too severely with certain opponents, it being necessary to regulate controversy with reference to the opponent one has to combat, and to answer some persons by Solomon's celebrated rule. These occasional severities he candidly regards as the greatest errors in all his editorial labors. He justifies the cool and unimpassioned tone of the Palladium during the high excitements of the abolition agitation, and expresses a willingness that his position and procedure on that subject should be put to the test, that on them he is willing to hazard his reputation, believing that the duties of the Palladium did not require it to enter the arena of the new political warfare.