He was born at West Chester, Pa., the son of the Rev.

[1] He graduated from Marietta College in 1877 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1884; and studied at Berlin, Göttingen, and Gießen from 1884 to 1886.

He received an honorary PhD from Brown University in 1891.

[2] In the latter year he became Parkman professor of theology at Harvard, where he was university preacher in 1905–1906.

In 1914 he was elected president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.