At Glasgow he devoted much energy to the development of Episcopacy, and raised funds wherewith to remodel and endow his church.
He was a pioneer in effecting the removal of ruinous tenements and slums in the neighbourhood, thus initiating the movement which resulted in the Glasgow Improvement Act of 1866.
His "High Church" tendencies sometimes led to friction in his own denomination; but his earnest philanthropic work brought him general admiration.
[2] Gordon led at the same time a strenuous literary life, closely studying the history of the Catholic and the Episcopal churches in Scotland, and the antiquities of Glasgow.
His chief publication was The Ecclesiastical Chronicle for Scotland (4 volumes, Glasgow, 1867), which Alexander Hastie Millar calls "an elaborate and erudite work, which displayed much research"; the first two volumes, entitled Scotichronicon, contain a sketch of the pre-Reformation church, and an extended version of Robert Keith's Catalogue of Scottish Bishops; the third and fourth volumes, entitled Monasticon, give the history of the Scottish monasteries, and biographies of the Roman Catholic bishops of the post-Reformation mission.