John Chase Lord, AM (9 August 1805 – 21 January 1877) was an American Presbyterian minister, lawyer, writer, and poet well known for his involvement in the nativist and anti-Catholic movements in Upstate New York during the mid-1800s.

[1]After two years at Hamilton, Lord's growing disaffection with college life caused him to suddenly move to Canada with a friend, where he became editor-in-chief of a national newspaper, The Canadian.

[1] He quickly became a popular figure, and well respected by Buffalo society, and was chosen to represent the city in the United States semi-centennial celebrations.

[1] To supplement his income, he started an academy on Main Street for one winter, and, because of his respected status, it was quite successful, producing many of Buffalo's important citizens at the time.

However, Lord's biography reports that he truly "converted" to the Christianity for unknown reasons, and offered public prayer at services one day.

He quickly became more popular than the Pearl Street Church, offering praise for Buffalo and its citizens, but also criticism of their common sins, that other preachers overlooked.

A general gloom spread over the city; men looked anxiously in each other's faces; those who were in full health to-day were coffined on the morrow.

As the soft substance of clay, receiving the impression of the waters and marking their motion, course and flow, becomes at length a rock, whose imperishable engravings are read by succeeding generations; and as the growth and products of trees and plants, and the anatomy of animals at different ages, make their impressions on earth, which, anon, hardening into stone, reveals their forms and characteristics to subsequent periods, so the tablets of time passed, retain and reveal the actions, the passions, the events, which are to be fully disclosed when the strata shall be broken up, and the deposit of different ages, and every race, shall be read in the great day of final revelation.

Who would think that the yielding things, in which the foot-step of the passer-by leaves its impression, should reveal that foot-print a thousand years afterward, to the men of a remote generation?

Who would believe, unless it had been so abundantly proven, that the figures, wrought in the soft clay made in sport, which the next rain might be expected to wash away, should appear in another age, graven in a rock as with a pen of iron?

With what importance does this view clothe the life that now is; with what power of things, which we are apt to regard as idle dreams, which seem to perish as they pass, but whose shadows, falling on the curtains of eternity, are fastened forever.

What an event is the beginning of a new year, in which we are to write for the world to come on the strata of which—to pursue our [geology|geological] figure—all actions are to be graven, as with the point of a diamond upon a tablet of adamant, for an everlasting record.

How do these thoughts dignify the passing moment, and the passage of the years of time, on whose fleeting sands are written the enduring records, which, for good or ill, we are to read throughout the cycles of our endless existence.By now a nationally famous figure in theology, his lectures titled "The Land of Ophir," "The Progress of Civilization," "The Star Aldebaran," "The War of the Titans," and "The Romance of History" were published as a collection in 1851.

After years serving as a delegate, John Lord was chosen as the Moderator of the 63rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1852, which took place in Charleston, South Carolina.

The city's mainly Protestant and nativist leadership, of whom John C. Lord was the de facto leader did not adequately address the healthcare needs of the rapidly growing and mostly Catholic working class, partly due to prejudice.

The event was still fresh in the minds of the people of New York, and the Protestant men of Buffalo felt threatened, increasing their strong objection to the educated, Catholic females who were running a now-state funded hospital.

[7] Buffalo's elite began speaking out against the Sisters Hospital and its state funding, criticizing its all-female leadership, lack of physicians' influence in decision making, and small staff.

In the Christian Advocate, a Protestant newspaper at which Lord was editor, he questioned why anyone who defends the Constitution "will be willing to be taxed to build up an institution the control of which is beyond the votes of a free republican people.

O'Reilly responded with a letter the next day reminding that the hospital existed to provide "corporeal mercy" for the sick and injured and that "the doors of that institution are as free to the clergy of one denomination of believers as they are to that of another.

[7] In reality, Bishop Timon, carefully recognizing the risk of proselytizing in such a hostile area, specifically forbad the Sisters of Charity from ever mentioning religion to Protestants unless one initiated the topic independently.

He reported that Lord offered him clothes and enough money to travel to Canada, where he was relocating, if he would tell the "emigrant agent office" that he was treated poorly by the Sisters of Charity.

Bishop Timon abruptly ceased responding to Lord's public letters; he was too busy with his efforts procuring additional state funding to expand the hospital.

[7] In 1850, after months of public feuding between the Catholic and Protestant leaders of Buffalo, the New York State Legislature passed multiple bills denying additional funding to Sisters of Charity Hospital.

[1] By now an older man, and with the difficult task on ministering to a large church without any help, Lord felt the need to leave the position of pastor to someone else.

[1] Following his retirement, Lord had the honor of traveling to Cleveland, Ohio as Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

The philosophy of Locke and his followers, and of Hobbes and Bentham, who have superadded the utilitarian scheme to the materialism of the former, are thought by their admirers to have disenchanted the universe of the spiritual and supernatural.

'A strong critic of Islam, in his lecture "The Romance of History," Lord defended the Crusades and harshly condemned the control of the Holy Land by Muslims, and also encouraged the conversion of the Jews: How is it that the Christian, and the Hebrew have alike suffered the soil sacred to both, to remain cursed by Mahomedan hordes, and all her sacred places dishonored, and blasphemed by the sign of the crescent?

There is no other explanation than the prophecies of the Bible, which declare that Judea must remain in the hands of the spoiler, and the abomination of desolation continue in the holy place, until the set time for the return of the Hebrew, when he shall acknowledge him whom his fathers crucified; and so to-day, the Mosque of Omar stands on the site of the temple, and the Christian pilgrim must pay a price to behold the sacred places of Jerusalem; he must undergo the scrutiny of a bearded Turk before he can kneel at the sepulchre of the Saviour.Lord publicized his view opposing slavery during the early 1850s, with a sermon published in newspapers in which he concludes that although God does not condone the practice, citizens have no right to oppose it as a legal and constitutional institution.

[1] The sermon caused a national controversy, as some incorrectly interpreted Lord's view as being that the government can essentially make any sinful action legal or mandatory, including murder and theft, among others.

J. C. Lord, My Dear Sir: "The cares of state" leave me no time for general reading, and it was not till this evening, that I found leisure to peruse your admirable sermon on the "Higher Law and Fugitive Slave Bill."