John Lorne Campbell was born on January 14, 1845, in Dominionville, Glengarry County, Ontario.

He was a Baptist pastor, educator, author, lecturer, apologist, mission advocate, and world traveller. He entered the Canadian Literary Institute (later Woodstock College) in Woodstock, Ontario where he converted to the Christian faith and in 1868, he was ordained at the Baptist church in Chatham, Ontario. He spent the next 16 years in several pastorates in Ontario and Quebec. In 1883, he received his B.A. degree in the classics from the University of Toronto. In 1884, Campbell left Canada for a pastorate in the United States at First Baptist Church of Nyack, north of New York City. In 1889, he accepted a call from the Lexington Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan in New York City which under his ministry began to flourish, becoming a leading Baptist church in the city. His final American pastorate was at the First Baptist Church of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had outstanding oratorical skills and frequently preached in London, England. He was a contributor to religious publications and a writer of several books, e.g., "Heavenly Recognition and Other Sermons" (1895). In 1901, he produced a treatise “Sanctification”, which was followed in 1908 by “The Patmos Letters”, a work dedicated to his wife. In 1915, he accepted the urgent call of the First Baptist Church of Vancouver, British Columbia. During the terrible influenza epidemic in 1918 when all public meetings were disallowed, he gave words of encouragement to members who gathered on Sunday mornings on the steps of the church. After leaving the Vancouver pastorate, he embarked on a remarkable ten-month missionary and evangelistic tour around the world (Japan, Korea, China, Burma, and India). He was a fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and Arts in London. Three institutions conferred on him the Doctor of Divinity degree - Central University of Iowa (1893), McMaster University (1907), and Temple University (1923).

In 1868, he married Margaret (Maggie) McIntyre (1845–1925). He died on December 6, 1928, in Manhattan, New York.