Robert Herbert Story

Robert Herbert Story (28 January 1835 – 13 January 1907) was a Scottish divine and Principal of the University of Glasgow.^[1]

Biography

Story was born on the 28th January 1835 at Rosneath, Dunbartonshire, and 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, succeeding 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.

Character

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.

Works

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.

Coincidences

He and John Anderson, the eighteenth-century pioneer of vocational education and Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow, were both born in the town, and their fathers were both ministers of the parish church.

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Story, Robert Herbert". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.