From 1826 to 1838, he was an editor of the "Christian Spectator" (New Haven). In 1843 he was one of the founders of the "New Englander" (later the "Yale Review"), and in 1848, with Richard Salter Storrs, Joshua Leavitt, Joseph Parrish Thompson, and Henry C. Bowen, he founded " The Independent", a magazine designed primarily to combat slavery extension; he was an editor of the "Independent" until 1863. From 1866 until his death he taught at Yale: first, until 1871, as acting professor of didactic theology in the Theological Department; and from 1871 as lecturer on church polity and American church history. He has traveled to the Middle East (then "Greater Syria") in the middle 1800s to visit holy sites, and gave lectures on his experiences, at least one of which was published in the New York Times.