R. W. Dale was born in London and attended with his parents Moorfields Tabernacle which had once echoed to the ringing voice of George Whitfield.

He became a school teacher at the early age of 14. It was at that age he read John Angell James' book, Anxious Enquirer After Salvation, little aware that within a decade he was to become that famous preacher's assistant, and a few years later his successor in one of England's most famous pulpits The boy was so deeply impressed when he read this book that he declared he waited impatiently every evening for the family to retire, so that he might read it undisturbed.

While teaching at Andover, Dale joined the Congregational Church. He preached his first sermon at the age of sixteen in a basket-maker's shop. He had decided on the ministry and sought to enter a Congregational college. He attended Spring College in Birmingham, a small school with but three professors. From there he went to the University of London, where he received his degree in 1853.

While still a student, Dale assisted John Angell James at Carr's Lane Church, and James, recognizing his ability, invited Dale to become his assistant, thus beginning an association with that church which was to last forty-two years. In 1859, when James died after fifty-six years at Carr's Lane, Dale succeeded him and served the congregation until his death in 1895.

When Dale came to Birmingham, the traditions at Carr's Lane were Calvinistic. The total depravity of man, an unconditional election, a restricted atonement, and a circumscribed will of God to save, were the doctrines acceptable to the congregation. Dale aroused opposition when he attacked the doctrines of total depravity and restricted grace.

When Moody and Sankey visited Birmingham they were opposed by the local clergy because of their methods. Dale not only defended them but cooperated with them and preached at some of their outdoor meetings.

Dale was above everything else a preacher. When A. M. Fairbairn was a young man, he once walked to and fro in front of Carr's Lane Chapel, saying to himself, "It is here that so great a preacher proclaims the everlasting Gospel." Almost everything Dale wrote had its origin in his weekly work for the pulpit. Even the lectures on the Atonement were all delivered at his Sunday evening service, when -- his son tells us in his biography of his father -- "week after week for nearly three months the building was crowded from end to end, without any diminution of interest."1

One great secret of Dale's power as a preacher was that he put his pulpit first, and made everything else subservient to it. His sermons were not merely the by-product of other and more serious labors; they were the ripe fruit of his best hours. As an instance of his thoroughness, before preaching the Centenary sermon of John Wesley's death at City Road Chapel in London, Dale read the complete works of Wesley which had been presented to him by the Wesleyan Bookroom.

He was a doctrinal preacher of necessity. His strong masculine intellect scorned to be satisfied with the vagueness of thought in the realm of Christian truth with which even intelligent people are often content, and which seemed to him a serious injury to the vigor of their religious life." The injury is the graver because of the increasing precision with which men are thinking about natural phenomena. In one region of the intellectual life there is granite, above it are clouds."