 His literary labours, especially in the lives of Knox and Melville, combined with his extreme care that every idea which he gave forth to the public, and every sentence in which it was embodied, should be worthy of those important subjects in which he dealt —- all this, connected with the daily and almost hourly avocations of his ministerial office, and the numerous calls that were made upon him, in consequence of his interference with the great public movements of the day, had reduced him to the debility and bodily ailments of "threescore and ten," while as yet he was ten years short of the mark.But his was a mind that had never rested, and that knew not how to rest.In 1827, he had enjoyed the satisfaction, after much labour and anxiety, of seeing a union effected between the church party to which he belonged, and the body who had seceded from the Burgher and Antiburgher Synods in 1820, under the name of Protesters; and, in 1830, his anxieties were excited, and his pen employed, in endeavours to promote a union between his own party, now greatly increased, and the Associate Synod of Original Burghers.