He spent the latter part of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, engaged in literary and ministerial work.

He was the first to suggest the idea of the World Evangelical Alliance, which he did in a letter to Rev John Angell James, of England, in 1843.

He was an earnest opponent of slavery, and for forty years a member of the executive committee of the American Home Missionary Society.

In the pulpit he was characterized not so much by breadth and accuracy of scholarship, finish of style, or elegance of delivery, as by his strong grasp upon his subject, his simplicity, directness, aptness, and freshness.

Besides editing President Jonathan Edwards's work on "Revivals" and Charles G. Finney's "Lectures on Revivals" (London, 1839), preparing the American editions of The Cottage Bible, of which over 170,000 copies were sold, and The Village Testament (New York, 1833), and assisting in editing The Christian Psalmist (1836), he published The Laws of Fermentation and the Wines of the Ancients (1871); The Judgment of Jerusalem , Predicted in Scripture, Fulfilled in History (London, 1879); Jesus of Nazareth (1878); and Bible Principles and Bible Characters (Hartford, 1879).