“I cannot tell you that the sacrifice will be light: it is a serious thing to stand against the whole current of an age; it is a serious thing to be despised and hated by the generality of one's fellow men. Yet that is increasingly the lot of the truth Christian today. He will not, indeed, be inclined to complain; for he has something with which all that he has lost is not worthy to be compared; and he knows that despite temporary opposition the ultimate future belongs to him and to His Lord. But for the present he is called upon to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It can hardly be said that unworthy motives of self-interest can lead a man to enter into a calling in which he will win nothing but reproach.”
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Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he came from a wealthy and well-educated background. He studied at John Hopkins University and then went to Princeton Theological Seminary, receiving an M.A. in philosophy. He studied in Germany and returned to teach New Testament at Princeton. He received his B.D. in 1905 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
In 1929, he left Princeton Seminary when the institution capitulated to the liberal faction, and he, along with others, founded Westminster Theological Seminary. In 1934 he was censured by the Presbyterian Church for his actions in relation to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, the liberal bias of which he opposed. In 1935 he was defrocked by the Presbyterian Church over major doctrinal issues. Machen then established the Orthodox Presbyterian Church as a reaction to the liberalism of the Presbyterian hierarchy. He died at age 55, of pneumonia.