Mr. Ripley prepared for the ministry at the Cambridge divinity school; in 1826 accepted a call to be pastor and preacher of the church, organized but eighteen months before, and within two months worshipping in their new meeting-house on Purchase street, Boston. The ordination took place on Wednesday, Nov. 8th, of the same year. "Under his charge," said his successor, Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, in 1848, "the society grew from very small beginnings to strength and prosperity. As a preacher, he awakened the deepest interest, and as a devoted pastor, the warmest affection, which still survives, deep and strong, in the hearts of those who were the objects of his counsel and pastoral care. After the lapse of almost fifteen years, the connection was dissolved, for reasons which affected not the least the relations of friendship and mutual respect between the parties. It has been a great satisfaction to me, as I have passed in and out among you, to hear again and again the expressions of love and interest with which you remember the ministry of your first servant in this church." That this was not merely the formal tribute which the courtesies of the profession exacted, is proved, as well as such a thing can be proved, by the published correspondence between the pastor and his people, by the frank declarations of the pastor in his farewell address, and by a remarkable letter, which discussed in full the causes that led to the separation of the pastor and his flock. In this long and candid letter to the church, Mr. Ripley declared himself a Transcendentalist, and avowed his sympathy with movements larger than the Christian Church represented. The declaration was hardly necessary. Mr. Ripley was known to be the writer of the review of Martineau's "Rationale of Religious Enquiry," which raised such heated controversy; his translation of Cousin's "Philosophical Miscellanies," with its important Introduction, had attracted the attention of literary circles; a volume of discourses, entitled "Discourses on the Philosophy of Religion," comprising seven sermons delivered in the regular course of his ministry, left no doubt in any mind respecting his position. The controversy with Andrews Norton on "The Latest Form of Infidelity," was carried on in 1840, the year before Mr. Ripley's ministry ended. The calmness of tone that characterized all these writings, the clearness and serenity of statement, the seemingly easy avoidance of extremes, the absence of passion, showed the supremacy of intellect over feeling. Yet of feeling there must have been a good deal. There was a great deal in the community; there was a great deal among the clergy of his denomination; that it had found expression within his own society, is betrayed in the farewell sermon; that his own heart was deeply touched, was confessed by the fact that on the very day after his parting words to his congregation were spoken--on March 29th, 1841--Mr. Ripley took up his new ministry at Brook Farm.