Joseph Alden (January 4, 1807 – August 30, 1885) was an American academic and Presbyterian pastor.

Alden was born in Cairo, New York, on January 4, 1807, and he began there to teach school when fourteen years of age, in order to pay his way through college.

[1] He was tutor at the College of New Jersey, from 1831 to 1833, when was ordained to the ministry of the Congregational Church, July 3, 1834, and became a pastor at Williamstown, Massachusetts, from 1834 to 1836.

[4] Dr Alden besides his large work as an educator has been diligent in the use of his pen writing almost constantly for the periodical press and sending out at intervals instructive volumes for the benefit of his generation, were his earlier works were mostly for the young.

[3] Besides over seventy Sunday School library books, the most well known were Christian Ethics or The Science of Duty (1866), The Science of Government (1867), and Thoughts on the Religious Life (1879, with an introduction by William Cullen Bryant[1]).