Robert Herbert Story

Story was born on 28 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.[2]

In 1887, he removed to Glasgow as Professor of Church History; 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 13 January 1907.[2]

Story had been appointed in 1886 to a chaplaincy to Queen Victoria, and was appointed a Chaplain-in-Ordinary in Scotland to King Edward VII in October 1901.[3]

He received the honorary degree Doctor of laws (LL.D.) from the University of St Andrews in 1900.[4]

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.[2]

Robert Story Memorial Window by Douglas Strachan, in the Bute Hall of Glasgow University

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.[2]

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

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Story, Robert Herbert". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

• Works by Robert Herbert Story at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Robert Herbert Story at Internet Archive