He was ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by the Carlisle Presbytery on May 19, 1887, having served the Second Presbyterian Church at St. Louis, Missouri for a brief period previously. His next charge was at the Falling Spring Presbyterian Church at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he remained four years. A throat ailment forced him to give up preaching and he went to his alma mater as an instructor in logic in 1891. He received a Ph.D. degree in 1893 with a dissertation on "The Relation of Ethics to Jurisprudence," became assistant professor in 1894, and Stuart Professor of Logic in 1907. In 1912 he was elected fourteenth president of Princeton, succeeding Woodrow Wilson, and retired in 1932 on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation.