"This hasty note, my dear Eliza,[42] which will no doubt be an unwelcome message, will inform you that I am pressingly urged to return immediately to Boston. The call is irresistible. And my agreeable home must for the present be abandoned, as the care and conflict of the Boston church are continually upon my mind."
The main element of success in any calling for which one has suitable capacity, was his, namely, a deep interest in the station he had taken.
In a letter addressed to Mrs. Badger, February 4, 1827, he narrates very affectingly his visit to Farmington, the sacred memories of the heart that revived in his mind as he visited that place, and Gilmanton, where, with relatives and many former friends, he enjoyed the bliss of a friendship to which years of time had added a new degree of sacredness. It is impossible to read these passages, which were the spontaneous and unstudied utterances of his mind thrown into his domestic correspondence, without seeing a sincere wealth of heart, which his light and buoyant manner in the world was often calculated to conceal rather than to express. In addressing the Luminary, May 9, 1828, he says:
"I intended in this number of my Journal, to have given a general account of all the religious societies in Boston, but other things have prevented my giving that attention to the subject which would be necessary in this case; I must therefore omit it till some future period. The Calvinistic Baptists, the Methodists and the Unitarians, have made many disciples to their several parties the year past; a number of whom we hope are experimental and practical disciples of Jesus Christ. Four new chapels have been opened in Boston the winter past, and while other societies have been favored with revivals through the goodness of God, the Christian Society, which has withstood all opposition for more than twenty years, has of late experienced some of the rich mercy-drops. I have been laboring among them some over six months, and have been enabled with divine assistance to gather up the fruits of my brethren's labors who went before me. The names of Clough and Morgridge were mentioned by some whom I baptized, as the means, under God, of calling up their attention to the concern of the soul. I will name one instance: I baptized a very respectable young lady who had always attended a Unitarian meeting until a few months since, when she found in a pew of her chapel Clough's letter to Mr. Smallfield, which excited her inquiry and finally became the means of her awakening. Thus a good thing may come out of a despised and persecuted Nazareth.