His somewhat impaired strength led him to think of a livelihood through little jobs of monumental stonework in a style superior to that introduced as yet into the countryside, and to this period of observation of the Scottish character acquired through living in the vicinity of farm-houses, villages, churchyards, as the varying means of lodging were afforded him, he ascribed much of the knowledge which he turned to so good an editorial account. In the company, too, of the parish minister Stewart he was happy, for, according to his own conviction and the testimony of many others, he was a man of no ordinary acuteness and of unquestioned pulpit ability. Indeed, Miller never hesitated to declare that for the fibre of his whole thinking he was more indebted to Chalmers and to this almost unknown Cromarty minister than to any two other men. Stewart's power seems to have lain in the detection of subtle analogies and in pictorial verbal power, in which he resembled Guthrie. In an obituary notice in _The Witness_ of Nov. 13, 1847 he dwells with affection on the man, and illustrates admirably the type of intellect and its dangers. 'Goldsmith,' he observes, 'when he first entered upon his literary career, found that all the good things on the side of truth had been already said; and that _his_ good things, if he really desired to produce any, would require all to be said on the side of paradox and error. Poor Edward Irving formed a melancholy illustration of this species of originality. His stock of striking things on the side of truth was soon expended; notoriety had meanwhile become as essential to his comfort as ardent spirits to that of the dram-drinker; and so, to procure the supply of the unwholesome pabulum, without which he could not exist, he launched into a perilous ocean of heterodoxy and extravagance, and made shipwreck of his faith. Stewart's originality was not the originality of opening up new vistas in which all was unfamiliar, simply because the direction in which they led was one in which men's thought had no occasion to travel and no business to perform. It was the greatly higher ability of enabling men to see new and unwonted objects in old familiar directions.' For sixteen years Miller sat under his ministry, and for twelve was admitted to his closest intimacy.