Noah Worcester

In September 1778, he moved to Plymouth, New Hampshire, where he taught, and in February 1782, settled at Thornton, filling several local offices, and was chosen to the legislature.

In 1802 he was employed as Thorton's first missionary in the New Hampshire society then organized, and in that capacity preached and traveled extensively through the northern part of the state.

Three years later, in 1813 he accepted an invitation to edit The Christian Disciple, a Boston-based periodical founded by the eminent Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing and others, and moved to Brighton, Massachusetts.

Physically, Worcester presented the remarkable contrast of robust man "of uncommon strength", combined with unusual mildness of manner.

Another brother, Samuel (1770–1821), also a clergyman, was corresponding secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810, and in 1815 engaged in the Unitarian controversy, his immediate opponent being William Ellery Channing.

In December 1814, he published A Solemn Review of the Custom of War (under the pen-name Philo Pacificus), still considered one of the best pieces of anti-war literature ever committed to print, and as relevant today as then.

Some measure of Worcester is gained by the following tribute by his friend and co-laborer Channing: He was distinguished above all whom I have known, by his comprehension and deep feeling of the spirit of Christianity; by the sympathy with which he seized on the character of Jesus Christ as a manifestation of Perfect Love; by the honor in which he held the mild,- humble, forgiving, disinterested virtues of our religion.