As a result of poor health, asthma and bronchial problems, preaching was not feasible, and he turned instead to journalistic and literary work as a profession.
In 1806, on the death of his friend Hugh Miller, whose biography he wrote, he succeeded Millar as editor of the Edinburgh magazine Witness.
For more than 20 years his peculiar combination of broad-minded progressive liberalism with earnest and eager evangelicalism gave a distinct colour to the religious, social, political, and literary teaching of this influential paper.
He found here the main work of his life; but wrote independently much on the history of England in the seventeenth century, many essays in literary criticism, and a biography of Martin Luther.
He died at Norwood on 10 February 1896, and is buried in Harlington churchyard, Middlesex, where he resided during the earlier half of his London career.
His second wife, Anna Katharine, daughter of Herbert Mayo of Oakhill, Hampstead, whom he married in 1869, died in 1882 after a life of devotion to the welfare of his children.
[2] Besides many uncollected magazine articles, several pamphlets, and part of the fourth volume of the National History of England (1877), Bayne's chief works are: He also wrote an essay on English Puritanism ; its Character and History, prefixed to George Gould's Documents relating to the Settlement of the Church of England, 1862.