[citation needed] He was a Presbyterian minister at Geneva, N. Y. in 1887–89, then taught church history at Princeton Theological Seminary (1889–92).
He wrote The Age of the Renascence (1897), volume seven in a ten-volume series titled "Ten Epochs of Church History".
[2] In 1905, he published his book Renascence Portraits, which "...tries to illustrate the Renascence by describing three men who were affected by it and who were all living at the same time in Italy, England and Germany"[3] (the three men are Pietro Aretino, Thomas Cromwell, and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor).In 1921–22 and 1928–29, Van Dyke directed the Continental division of the American University Union in Europe, which was based in Paris.
[4] At Princeton Theological Seminary, he taught classes using the German "seminar" method.
[5] When he joined the faculty of Princeton College in 1898, he was Chair of History and Political Science.