After valuable experience as a teacher in the Exeter Academy, he pursued a theological course at the Andover Seminary, graduating in 1815. He had been twelve years pastor of the Congregational Church at Amherst when called to the presidency of Dartmouth, having been for some time a Trustee. In the intellectual strength and literary attainments of its people, this had been for a long period one of the leading towns in southern New Hampshire. Being the county seat, it was visited periodically by gentlemen eminent in the law, with whom professional men resident in the place would most naturally have frequent intercourse. At a period when the whole community was profoundly agitated, by the most earnest and important theological controversy in the history of New England, we can readily understand that the youthful preacher would have abundant opportunity to measure swords with skilled warriors, in the field of religious debate. That he wielded his weapons, in the discussions of that period, with a force indicating that he was a man of no ordinary mould, is a matter of history. When he entered upon his great work at Dartmouth, those who, as its guardians, had called him to it, cherished confident hope of his success. Seldom has there been so full a realization of such hope in the history of American colleges. President Lord brought to the accomplishment of his task a fine physique; a countenance serene, yet impressive; a voice rare both for its richness and its power; a pleasing, almost magnetic, dignity of mien; a mind most capacious and discriminating by nature, richly stored by severe application, and thoroughly disciplined by varied professional labor; and a heart always tender, yet always true to the profoundest convictions of duty. A deep, rich, and thorough religious experience well fitted the graceful and earnest man to be a graceful and earnest Christian teacher. The question of fitness for the position as an executive was soon settled beyond the possibility of a doubt. It required but a brief acquaintance with President Lord to teach any one, that he fully believed in the most literal acceptation of the doctrine, that "the powers that be are ordained of God."