Garrison was one of the ordained priests of nature, one of the order of natural prophets who feel themselves to have a message to society, which they must and will deliver. He began sending anonymous articles to the paper on which he was employed, which were well received, and which, consequently, he had more than once the pleasure of setting up in type. Encouraged by their favorable reception, he gradually began to offer articles to other journals. A series of articles for the Salem _Gazette_, under the signature "Aristides," attracted particular attention, and were commended by Robert Walsh in the Philadelphia National _Gazette_, who attributed them to Timothy Pickering; a compliment of no small significance to a young mechanic. In 1824, his employer, Mr. Allen, was obliged for a long time to be absent from the charge of his paper, when Mr. Garrison acted as editor of the Newburyport _Herald_, of which he had been previously printer. In 1826 he became proprietor and editor of a paper called the _Free Press_, in his native town. He toiled at it with unceasing industry, and that patient cheerfulness of enthusiasm which made every labor light. He printed his own editorials, _without previously writing them_, a fact which more than anything else shows how completely he had mastered the mechanical part of his profession. But with all this industry and talent, the work of keeping up a newspaper of so high a moral tone as that to which he was always aspiring, was simply beyond the ability of a poor man, and he was obliged to relinquish it. He went to Boston and engaged as a journeyman printer for a time, till in 1827 he became the editor of the _National Philanthropist_, the first journal that advocated total abstinence, and in 1828 he joined a friend at Bennington, Vt., in a journal devoted to peace, temperance, and anti-slavery. On the 4th of July, 1829, he delivered an address in Park Street church, Boston, on the subject of slavery. At that time the subject had taken a deep and absorbing hold upon his mind. He then regarded the American Colonization Society's as the most practical and feasible issue in the case--an opinion which he afterwards most fully retracted. At this time he visited the leading orthodox ministers and editors in and about Boston. Being himself a child of the church, he desired to stir up in behalf of the slave that efficiency of church activity that was effecting so much in the cause of temperance. Burning with zeal, he sought the then active leader of the orthodox party, and begged him to become leader in the movement, and command the forces in a general anti-slavery crusade.