Biography
Phoebe Worrall was born on December 18, 1807, in New York City, the daughter of Henry Worrall, a devout Methodist and a man of means, who had come from England. She grew up in a pious home and was a thoughtful girl. She was educated at home and at school, and she was a keen reader. At the age of nineteen, she married Walter Palmer, a physician, who was also a Methodist. The two shared a deep faith and a deep partnership that lasted for fifty years. They had six children. Three of them died in infancy, and a fourth, a daughter, died in a fire. The losses were a great sorrow to her.
After the death of her third child in 1832, she went through a time of religious distress. She took the loss as a sign of God's displeasure, and she thought that she had loved her children too much. She searched for a deeper relationship with God. In 1835, she had an experience in which she gave herself wholly to Christ. She said that she had been led to a place of full surrender. Her sister, Sarah Lankford, had already begun a weekly prayer meeting in their home, for women who wished to pursue holiness. Phoebe took over its leadership in 1836. It was called the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness.
The Tuesday Meeting became one of the most important gatherings in American religious history. It was open to men and women of all denominations, and it drew many leading figures of the church, including bishops and ministers. It met in the Palmer home in New York for decades. It was a place where people could testify to the experience of entire sanctification and seek it for themselves. She taught that holiness was a gift that was open to all believers, and that it was received by faith. She said that the believer should lay himself entirely on the altar of Christ and believe that the altar sanctifies the gift. This teaching became known as the altar theology.
She also spoke and wrote widely. In 1843, she published The Way of Holiness, which set out her doctrine in a simple and clear way. It was widely read and went through many editions. She wrote a number of other books, including Faith and Its Effects and The Promise of the Father, in which she defended the right of women to preach. She argued from Scripture that the gift of the Spirit was given to women as well as to men, and that they should be free to use it. It was a bold claim, and it was one of the first major works to argue for the ministry of women. She was a friend of Catherine Booth, who was influenced by her views.
She became a traveling evangelist. She and her husband went on tours of the United States, Canada and Britain, holding revival meetings. From 1859 to 1863, they were in Britain, where they held a series of campaigns that drew thousands. She was an effective speaker, though she was small and quiet. She was a woman of great poise. She preached in churches and halls and led many to faith and holiness. She was also the editor of the Guide to Holiness, a journal that carried her teaching to the nation.
She had an influence on a wide range of movements. The holiness movement, the Salvation Army, the Keswick movement and later Pentecostalism were affected by her thought. She also had a concern for the poor. She was involved in the founding of a mission in the Five Points district of New York, one of the worst slums, which was a place where many lived in misery. It was an early example of an urban mission. She gave to the cause of the poor and of the freed slaves.
She was criticized by some who thought that her doctrine made holiness too easy and that it ignored the need for a process of growth. She was also faulted for her stress on the act of faith, without regard for the feelings. She was a woman who sought to hold to Scripture. She also faced the opposition of some who objected to her role as a woman in public. She died on November 2, 1874, in New York, at the age of sixty-six. Her life shows the force of a woman who made her own home a center of a movement and who opened the way for others.