Robert Herbert Story

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Robert Herbert Story (1835-1907), Scottish divine, principal of the University of Glasgow, was born on the 28th of January 1835 at Rosneath, Dunbartonshire. He was educated at the universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Heidelberg. In 1859 he was assistant minister at St. Andrew's Church, Montreal, and in February 1860 was inducted as minister of Rosneath in succession to his father.

In 1887 he removed to Glasgow as professor of church history; he had also been appointed in 1886 to a chaplaincy to Queen Victoria. In 1898 he became principal of the university in succession to John Caird. He was moderator of the General Assembly in 1894, and its principal clerk from that year until his death on the 13th of January 1907.

Story was a staunch supporter of his Church, and had little sympathy for schemes of reunion with the other Presbyterian communities. He vigorously opposed the action of Bishop Welldon, then metropolitan of Calcutta, in excluding Scottish chaplains and troops from the use of garrison churches in India because these had received episcopal consecration. He was characterized by an absolutely fearless honesty, which sometimes gave offence, but at the basis of his nature there was a warm, tender and sympathetic heart, incapable of meanness or intrigue. In addition to lives of his father (1862), Professor Robert Lee (1870) and William Carstares (1876), he published a devotional book Christ the Consoler; a volume of sermons, Creed and Conduct (1878); The Apostolic Ministry in the Scottish Church (Baird Lecture, 1897), and several pamphlets on church questions.