He was educated at the Protestant theological faculty of Montauban as well as at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg.

[1] After holding the pastorate at Aubenas in Ardèche from 1864 to 1868, he was appointed professor of reformed dogmatics at the Protestant theological faculty of Strasbourg.

[1] After five years' effort he succeeded in establishing a Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris (today: Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris) along with Eugène Ménégoz, and became professor and then dean.

[1] In 1886, he became a teacher in the newly founded religious science department of the École des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne.

In 1901, Sabatier was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by French historian Gabriel Monod for his Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'après la psychologie et l'histoire ("Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion based on Psychology and History", 1897).