R. Bruce Taylor

Robert Bruce Taylor was born at Cardross, Scotland, in 1869. He was educated at Sherborne School and Glasgow University, where he took the A.M. in 1890 and, later, the D.D. He then studied law, and became an Examiner in Economics in Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities. He had a keen mind and might have gone far as an economist, but he became interested in religion and turned away to study theology.

He specialized in Semitic languages and taught Hebrew for some years; but the urge to join the ministry was very strong in him, and he became a Presbyterian clergyman serving successively in Loudoun, Aberdeen, London, and Montreal. In the First World War he was commissioned chaplain and major in the British Expeditionary Force, and served with the Forty-second Royal Highlanders of Canada in Belgium and France. After the war he became Principal of Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, and he held this position many years.

Dr. Taylor was thoroughly a Scot. He had the patience of the Bruce, the energy of John Knox, and the logical mental processes of Hume. He studied at Marburg and at Göttingen when these universities were setting the intellectual pace for Europe, and he came to have a profound understanding of the function of education and its relation to God and man.

He was [nearly] thirty-five years a member of the Century, but in the last two decades he made his home in France and, so, he was not often in the Club.

George W. Martin
1955 Century Association Yearbook