[4] On 21 December 1791, the Congregational Church and town of Harvard, Massachusetts extended the call to William Emerson to become their fifth minister.

Present at his ordination were ministers from Acton, Boxborough, Concord, East Sudbury, and Littleton, Massachusetts.

[6] While in Harvard, Emerson organized a social library club, serving as its custodian.

After this initial interest, his sermons appear to have roused no great enthusiasm, as George Ticknor noted in the Christian Examiner, September, 1849: "Mr. Emerson, transplanted to the First Church in Boston six years before Mr. Buckminster's settlement, possessed, on the contrary, a graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses, and the original resources that could command the few."

This publication was the forerunner of the North American Review, America's leading literary journal at the time.