Absalom Backus Earle

ABSALOM BACKUS EARLE
1812 - 1895

Earle was both a sanctified holiness advocate, and a Baptist. At the latter, he was also apparently a Calvinist. The fragrance of his sanctified spirit pervades this. Earle was born in Charlton, New York. He was converted at the age of sixteen and began preaching two years later. He spent the next three years studying and preaching and began his ministry the year of 1830. At the age of twenty-one he was ordained at Amsterdam, New York. After pastoring there for five years, Earle felt led by the Lord to enter the evangelistic ministry. The next fifty-eight years of his life were spent holding meetings in the United States (every state) and Canada. He held 39,330 services, traveled 370,000 miles, led 160,000 souls to Christ, and earned a total of $65,520 for his sixty-four years of ministry. He influenced 400 men to enter the ministry.

Earle authored the following books: Bringing in the Sheaves, Abiding Peace, Rest of Faith, The Human Will, The Work of an Evangelist, Evidences of Conversion, and Winning Souls. He died at his home in Newton, Massachusetts, March 30, 1895, at the age of eighty-three.

A writer in a leading British religious paper said concerning Mr. Earle: "His preaching was not eloquent. His delivery was not beyond the average. His voice had no special power. His large angular frame and passionless mouth were decidedly against him. His sermons seemed sometimes as though composed thirty years ago, before we so often heard, as now, the more clear and ringing utterances of free grace, and the name of Jesus in almost every sentence. He expressed his own emotions very simply, and did not often refer to them. His rhetoric was often at fault, and sometimes his grammar. Truly the enticing words of man's wisdom were wanting in his case."