John Campbell was born on June 18, 1840, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He was a Presbyterian minister, educator, and author. He studied at Roxburgh House Proprietary School, London. In 1854, he studied French and German with a minister in Germany. After his return, he joined the publishing firm Thomas Nelson and Sons and later moved to New York City, where his father James Campbell (also the company’s employee) helped set up its branch. Soon afterwards the family settled in Toronto, Ontario where his father started his own publishing business. In 1860, he enrolled at the University of Toronto. He graduated in 1865 with honours, the Prince of Wales Medal, and two gold medals. In 1866, he entered theological studies at Knox College. He became a sergeant in the 2nd Battalion, Queen’s Own Rifles, and was present at the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866. He was also a co-founder of the Toronto branch of the Y.M.C.A. In 1868, he became a minister at the Charles Street Presbyterian Church. He was appointed to the senate of the University of Toronto and served as a university examiner in history, English, and metaphysics and later a professor in natural history. In 1871, he began to teach church history at Knox. In 1873, he was given the professorship of church history and apologetics at the Presbyterian College of Montreal. During most of the next 31 years, in addition to teaching, he served as the college’s registrar and as secretary of its senate. In the early 1870s, Campbell was editor of the Canada Presbyterian Church’s Home and Foreign Record. He published numerous scholarly and polemical articles in various journals, e.g., the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, the Canadian Naturalist, the Princeton Review, and the Canadian Journal. Under the pen-name J. Cawdor Bell he published a novel “Two knapsacks” (1892). His major publication was a two-volume study "The Hittites" (1890). He was a representative of the Société d’Ethnographie de Paris, honorary local secretary of the Victoria Institute, London, and corresponding member of the Société Américaine de France and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. He was also a member of the Canadian Institute, the Natural History Society of Toronto, the Celtic Society of Montreal, the Philhellenic League of Turin, Italy, Punjab Society of Lahore (Pakistan), and the Society of Biblical Archeology in London, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1881, he was awarded the gold medal of the Société d’Ethnographie de Paris. The University of Toronto conferred an LL.D. degree on him in 1889, in recognition of his anthropological research and his achievements in philology and linguistics.

In 1875, he married Mary Helen Playfair (1853–1926). He died on July 30, 1904, in Gravenhurst, Muskoka, Ontario.