Who Was Phoebe Palmer? The Mother of the Holiness Movement
Phoebe Palmer was an American Methodist teacher, writer and revival speaker who lived from 1807 to 1874. From her home in New York City she led a weekly gathering called the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness, and her book The Way of Holiness taught thousands how to give themselves wholly to God. She is often called the mother of the Holiness movement. She spoke at camp meetings and churches across the United States, Canada and Britain, and she edited the magazine Guide to Holiness for the last ten years of her life.
Her message was simple. Lay everything on the altar, which is Christ. Believe God's promise that the altar makes the gift holy. Don't wait for feelings to tell you it's done. Here's her story, and where to start with her books.
A Methodist girl in New York
Phoebe Worrall was born in New York City on December 18, 1807. Her father, Henry Worrall, had come to faith in England during the Methodist revival before he crossed to America, and the family held daily prayers in the home. Phoebe joined the church young. In the notes of The Way of Holiness, writing about herself in the third person, she says she publicly owned herself a seeker of salvation at about thirteen.
But for years she was troubled. She wanted assurance and couldn't find it, because she was waiting to feel something before she would believe. In the preface to Faith and Its Effects she says few people had been more perplexed about faith than she was in early life.
In 1827 she married Walter Palmer, a young doctor and a fellow Methodist. They were partners in everything for the rest of her life, and later he traveled and spoke with her.
Sorrow at home
The Palmers' first children died young. It nearly broke her. Later, writing to a friend, she looked back on those losses with hard honesty:
My precious little ones, whom God had taken to himself, were then brought to my recollection, as if to admonish me relative to making the sacrifice. I thought how fondly I had idolized them.
Faith and Its Effects, Letter IX: To Mrs. W——
She came to believe God had been teaching her that He must have the first place in her heart. Through that grief she resolved that nothing, not even her husband, would stand between her and full surrender to God.
July 26, 1837
The turning point came on July 26, 1837. That evening she set herself to pray until she knew she was wholly given to God. She found that she didn't need some great struggle or a new feeling first. She needed to give herself, all of herself, and then to take God at His word. Years later she wrote of it in a letter:
… how far more memorable, is the 26th of July, 1837, when Jesus became the Bridegroom of my soul
Faith and Its Effects, Letter XXVII: To Bishop and Mrs. H——
What she had found she called "the shorter way" into holiness. Many sincere Methodists, she believed, spent years seeking sanctification, waiting for a feeling that never came. But God commands present holiness, and what He commands He makes possible now.
The Tuesday Meeting
In 1835 her sister, Sarah Lankford, had begun a weekly prayer meeting for Methodist women in the house the two families shared. Phoebe soon became its leader, and it took the name of the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness. From 1839 men came too. In time ministers, bishops and lay people of many churches crowded into the Palmers' parlor every week to hear testimonies and to seek a clean heart. The meeting went on for decades, and similar meetings sprang up in other cities.
The Way of Holiness and the altar
In 1843 she published The Way of Holiness. She wrote it as a traveler's account, telling her own story in the third person as "the sister" who found the shorter way. Its center is a simple argument from Scripture. Christ is the Christian's altar. Under the old covenant, whatever touched the altar was holy, because "the altar sanctifieth the gift." So the believer who lays body, soul and spirit on Christ may believe, on God's word, that the offering is accepted and made holy.
The altar, thus provided by the conjoint testimony of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is Christ.
The Way of Holiness, Section IX
And she was firm that faith comes before feeling:
Faith is taking God at his word, relying unwaveringly upon his truth.
The Way of Holiness, Section V
She also taught that the blessing must be kept the way it was received, by a sacrifice offered every moment, and that those who receive it should say so. Some Methodist leaders thought her teaching made the way too short. She answered by going back to the Bible again and again.
The book went through many editions. Other books followed: Faith and Its Effects, letters answering people who wrote to her for help; Present to My Christian Friend on Entire Devotion to God, a small book to put in a friend's hand; and, in 1859, The Promise of the Father, her defense from Scripture of women speaking in the church. Catherine Booth, later co-founder of the Salvation Army, wrote in her defense when Palmer was attacked for speaking in public.
For more of her sayings, see our collection of Phoebe Palmer quotes.
Faith that works
Palmer didn't think holiness meant sitting still. In 1850 she led a society of Methodist women in starting the Five Points Mission in one of New York's worst slums, with a chapel, a school and help for poor families. She visited prisons and the sick. She also edited The Useful Disciple, the story of Mary Gardner, a New Jersey widow who lost her whole family and then gave her life to starting schools and Sunday schools for poor children. Palmer dedicated the book to the afflicted, and said Gardner had been chosen "in the furnace of affliction."
Revival in Canada and Britain
In the 1850s the Palmers began to travel widely, holding meetings at camp grounds and churches. In 1857 a meeting they led in Hamilton, Ontario, grew into a revival that spread to other towns. In 1859 they sailed for Britain and stayed four years, holding meetings in England, Scotland and Ireland.
After the Civil War, Palmer helped the holiness camp meetings that were spreading through the country. In 1864 the Palmers bought the Guide to Holiness, a monthly magazine, and she edited it until her death.
Her last years
Palmer kept writing and speaking into her sixties. She died in New York on November 2, 1874, at sixty-six. Walter Palmer carried on the magazine after her.
Why she's still read
Phoebe Palmer shaped the whole Holiness movement of the nineteenth century, and through it many churches and missions that came after. Readers still go to her for the same reason her first readers did. She takes the promises of God seriously, and she won't let you put off obeying them. If you've been waiting to feel holy before you trust God, she'll tell you plainly to lay it all on the altar and believe Him today. Our guide to the best Christian books on holiness puts her beside others who wrote on the subject.
Where to start
TheWay Library has four of her books. Start with The Way of Holiness, her own story of finding "the shorter way," about four hours of reading. If you want her teaching in a short, direct form, read Present to My Christian Friend on Entire Devotion to God. For her counsel to real people with real questions, read Faith and Its Effects. And for a moving story of usefulness in sorrow, read The Useful Disciple.
Our guide to Phoebe Palmer's books says more about each one. You'll find all her books on the Phoebe Palmer author page.