As an orphan, this promising student received financial help from a scottish wealthy family.
[2] He served with the Royal Army Chaplains' Department in the First World War on the Western Front from late 1915 to the end of the conflict, where on arrival he was attached to the British Expeditionary Force's General Headquarters, and was the Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's favoured chaplain.
At the end of the war he was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 New Year Honours.
[3] He was professor of biblical criticism at the University of St Andrews from 1919, and principal of its St. Mary's College from 1940, retiring from both posts in 1954.
[2] In the mid-1960s he wrote an account of his war experiences in World War 1, as a part of a wider apologia for Douglas Haig that comprises its text, whose historical reputation had suffered for his conduct of military operations in the conflict.