Introduction

Biography

Joseph was the bro­ther of James Al­ex­ander.

A min­is­ter of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, he gra­du­at­ed from Prince­ton in 1826, be­came Ad­junct Pro­fes­sor of La­tin in 1833, and As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal Li­te­ra­ture in 1838.

Alexander was a great He­bra­ist, and pub­lished com­men­tar­ies on Isai­ah and the Psalms. His po­em, The Doomed Man, was wri­tten for, and first pub­lished in, the Sun­day School Jour­nal, Phi­la­del­phia, April 5, 1837.

It has much mer­it, but moves in doc­trin­al cir­cles which hymns ge­ne­ral­ly avoid. Parts of it are found as hymns in a few Cal­vin­is­tic col­lect­ions, as, There Is a Time, We Know Not When, in the New York Church Praise Book, 1881, num­ber 288. This is some­times giv­en with the se­cond stan­za, There is a line, by us un­seen, as in Na­son’s Col­lect­ion, and Ro­bin­son’s Songs for the Sanc­tu­ary, 1865.