John Wood Oman, the philosopher of religion and theologian, was a Scotsman from the Orkney Islands. After being educated at Edinburgh and Heidelberg universities and serving for seventeen years in a rural pastorate in Northumberland, he taught for twenty-eight years at Westminster College, Cambridge, the seminary of the English Presbyterian Church. The chief influence on his developing thought was that of Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose Reden Oman translated into English.