Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

By the time he was 21 Alexander was a preacher of the Presbyterian Church. Charles Hodge a famous student and successor of Alexander named his son Archibald Alexander Hodge after his mentor. Family
On April 5 1802 Alexander married Janetta Waddel the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher James Waddel (1739–1805) whose eloquence was described in William Wirt's Letters of a British Spy (1803).

Archibald Alexander (April 17 1772 – October 22 1851) was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary.