It was also decided, that Messrs.

Riggs and Ladd, turning from the Greeks to the Armenians, should acquire the use of the languages spoken by the latter people; that Mr.Calhoun should be authorized to visit Syria, with a view to an opening for him in connection with the projected seminary on Mount Lebanon; that Mr.Temple, then too old to learn either the Armenian or Turkish languages, ought to be authorized, in view of the discontinuance of the Greek department, to return to the churches whose faithful messenger he had been so long; and that the native Armenian agency should be put upon a footing on which it would be more likely to be sustained ultimately by the people.
There was reason afterwards to believe, that it would have been better for Mr.Temple to remain in Turkey, in the exercise of his eminently apostolic influence upon his brother missionaries and the native Protestant community, Greek and Armenian.

Yet his own opinion was in favor of the course he pursued.

"I am too old," he said, "to think for a moment of learning a new language, and no opening invites me here in any language I can command." After a farewell visit to his brethren in Constantinople, he set his face homeward, and arrived in Boston in the summer of 1844.

He was usefully employed as an agent of the Board, or in the pastoral relation, until his health broke down.