Joseph A. Alexander

Alexander, Joseph Addison, D.D., brother of Dr. J. W. Alexander, and a minister of the Presbyterian Church, born in Philadelphia, April 24, 1809, graduated at Princeton, 1826, became Adjunct Professor of Latin, 1833, and Associate Professor of Biblical Literature, 1838, died at Princeton, Jan. 28, 1860. Dr. Alexander was a great Hebraist, and published Commentaries on Isaiah, the Psalms, &c. His poem, “The Doomed Man,” was written for, and first published in, the Sunday School Journal, Phila., April 5, 1837. It has striking merit, but moves in one of those 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, No. 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. Unknown to English collections. [Rev. F. M. Bird, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 39 (1907)