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Kirk was educated at Princeton Theological Seminary under Dr. Archibald Alexander, and after graduating worked as an agent for the Board of Foreign Missions. In 1824, he helped to create the Chi Phi Society, a semi-religious, semi-literary organization, which ceased activity the following year when it merged with the Philadelphian Society. In 1827 he was appointed assistant pastor of the Second Presbyterian church in Albany, New York, where William Sprague later ministered, and in 1828 he organized the Fourth Presbyterian church in Albany, after controversy at Second church resulted in a church division partly due to the revivalism techniques then being popularized by Charles Grandison Finney. With Dr. Nathan S.S. Beman of Troy, New York, Kirk established a training school which taught theology for aspiring evangelists. After a time preaching in London and Paris, Kirk returned to the United States and took up the pastorate at Mount Vernon which he held for nearly 30 years.

Dr. Edward Norris Kirk was author of the following publications;

• "Memorial of the Reverend John Chester, D.D." (Albany, 1829)
• "Lectures on Christ's Parables" (New York, 1856)
• "Sermons" (2 vols., 1840; Boston, 1860)
• "Canon of the Holy Scriptures" (abridged, 1862)
• Translations of Gaussen's "Inspiration of the Scriptures" (New York, 1842)" and Jean Frederic Astie's "Lectures on Louis XIV. and the Writers of his Age" (Boston. 1855).
• "Lectures on Revivals ", edited by Reverend Daniel O. Mears (Boston, 1874).