Samuel Chadwick was born in Burnley, Lancashire in the industrialised north of England into a devout Methodist family.
After a major awakening and deepening of his faith in his late twenties via a personal epiphany after which he burned all his early sermons, he moved on to larger congregations and greater popularity.
After a few years preaching in Edinburgh and at a new chapel in Glasgow he was ordained in 1890 and returned to England as Superintendent of the Leeds Mission.
In 1904 Chadwick began lecturing weekly at Cliff College, a Methodist lay training centre, commuting from Leeds.
Chadwick was strongly influenced by the Arminian stance of Wesleyan Theologian William Burt Pope.