[2] With scholarly interests that were scientific as well as theological, Dale was librarian of Sion College in the City of London from 1851 to 1856.
[2] In 1861, with Bishop Tait, Elizabeth Ferard (see 18 July in Church of England calendar) and two other women, Dale founded the North London Deaconess Institution based in King's Cross.
Originally an evangelical, Dale came to believe that ritualism was specifically appropriate to deal with the nature of secularism and forces hostile to Christianity of the time.
Opposition to Dale crystallised around his ritualism, especially after he offered locum tenens ministry in 1875 to the congregation of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn, whilst the Revd Alexander Heriot Mackonochie was suspended for ritualist practices.
He died on 19 April 1892 (on the eleventh anniversary of the death of Disraeli (one of the architects of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874) and was buried in Sausthorpe churchyard.