Joseph Addison Alexander

Joseph Addison Alexander was an American Presbyterian minister and scholar born in Philadelphia on April 24, 1809. The brother of James Waddell Alexander and son of Archibald Alexander, he graduated from Princeton in 1826 and went on to distinguished service at the institution. He became Adjunct Professor of Latin in 1833 and Associate Professor of Biblical Literature in 1838, earning international renown as an accomplished Hebraist and author of celebrated commentaries on Isaiah and the Psalms. He died at Princeton on January 28, 1860.

While primarily focused on biblical scholarship, Alexander wrote a notable poem titled "The Doomed Man," first published in the Philadelphia Sunday School Journal on April 5, 1837. Exploring intense solemnities of divine judgment and grace, the poem was rarely used in congregational worship due to its stern Calvinistic tone. However, selections from the work were adopted as hymns in select American collections, often beginning with the line "There is a time, we know not when" or the second stanza "There is a line, by us unseen."