He wrote of his "astonishment at your labors and learning", but criticized the recent lack of interest in reading, writing "the cry is all for action—for doing something, not moping over books as they say".

[2] Both Francis and Parker joined the Transcendental Club in the 1830s, an organization which included members such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller.

Preaching at a time when Unitarians were breaking into sometimes-hostile factions in New England, he wrote that "the condition of things with us in the religious world is anything but pleasant...

His books and writings include Christianity as a Purely Internal Principle, Life of John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians[4] and A Historical Sketch of Watertown (1830).

In May 1833, Francis delivered "Popery and its kindred Principles unfriendly to the Improvement of Man" as a Dudleian Lecture in Cambridge.