- Sundown

Over a period of about two years preceding his death Mr. Simpson’s activities tapered off by degrees and his hold upon his work relaxed slowly. It was good that it was so, and providential. Had he fallen unexpectedly in his full strength, he might have left the work with no one to carry on. As it was, the shift from his shoulders to those of younger, stronger men was gradual. The transition from his leadership to that of the men who succeeded him was accomplished naturally and without a jar.
As his strength declined he turned over more and more of his duties to the men whom he affectionately called his “brethren. “ They took from his heart the burden of business cares that had harassed his soul for so long. His assistants filled the pulpit at the Tabernacle, and subordinate officers began to preside at the various official meetings of the Society. Simpson sat and watched with patriarchal calm the deliberations of the body he had led so brilliantly for over a quarter of a century. The people became used to seeing someone else in the chair. Mr. Simpson was getting ready to go away, and his “brethren” would have to learn to get along without him.
When the poet Longfellow lay in his casket, among others who came to pay their respects was the aged American essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He walked into the room with that air of serenity which always characterized him, gazed down for a moment upon the face of his friend, and then said reverently, “I do not recall who it is that lies there, but he was a beautiful soul.” A shadow had fallen across his mind, a mind among the most brilliant which the New World has ever produced.
Something like this also was experienced by Mr. Simpson in his last days. His exhausted brain refused to maintain its wonted thought patterns. He seemed to be living “out of the body” a large part of the time, becoming more and more absent-minded as the months wore on. He would greet his friends with warm cordiality, but they felt that he did not know always just who they were.
For a little time he went under a spiritual cloud also. He felt that the face of the Lord was hidden from him, and he mourned as one who had suffered the loss of his last and dearest treasure. It was then that he felt the need of his “brethren,” and they stood by him loyally, tenderly, in the hour of his sorrow. One after another of the men who had been his friends through the years, missionaries, preachers, came to kneel beside his bed while he tried to sleep, or to walk arm in arm with him along the winding paths near his home. After a few weeks of this he recovered again the lost sense of the presence of the Well Beloved, and his happiness was child-like and full. After that there were no more spiritual shadows, only the dimness of a mind burnt out by a lifetime of unremitting toil.
While his body was weak and his mind clouded his affectionate heart continued to overflow like a fountain. The two-year-old daughter of a missionary who stayed for a time in his home was the particular object of his affection. The mother tells how Mr. Simpson used to draw the baby up to him and, because he could no longer see clearly, feel her soft little face and smile tenderly. Ministers and other Christian workers would come to visit him that he might lay his hands upon their head and pray. And they went away feeling that they had been in the presence of God.
In the spring of the year 1919 he suffered a slight stroke of paralysis. He recovered from this sufficiently that for the rest of the summer he was able to be around the house freely and to see friends occasionally. On Tuesday, October 28, while sitting on his front porch, and just after engaging in a long season of prayer for all his missionaries he went suddenly into a profound state of coma, from which he never rallied. His family watched by his bed till the next morning, when the labored breathing ceased and the weary frame rested at last.
After that he slept—the deep, honest sleep of one whose life of toil had earned him the right to sleep. Margaret, his wife, lingered a few years to walk about and cherish memories and dream again the hours she had never fully treasured while they were hers to enjoy. Not till he was gone did she know how much he had absorbed her life. She never quite lived again after he had left her. Often she would point out to some visiting friend the places about the home that had been made sacred by his presence. “There on that chair he sat—on that path there by the rose bush he walked sometimes when he was tired and could not go further—by that arbor he stood in the twilight only an evening or two before he went away. She never bothered to explain who “he” might be. It never occurred to her that anyone could ask.
Just before it reaches Nyack the mighty Hudson, moving in slow majesty down to mingle with the sea, becomes prematurely ambitious and swells out to many times its normal width. The broad expanse of water that results men call the Tappan Zee. Across that blue bulge the sun will sometimes of a summer morning paint a streak of blazing scarlet as it rises in fire out of the hills above Tarrytown, and on many a clear winter night the watcher, gazing down, may see the sharp outline of a river steamer rippling the gale gold of the water as it creeps across the pathway of the moon. Half way up the towering hill that slopes westward from the river they laid Albert Simpson to rest.
And so he sleeps among the tall old trees that nod and sway above the lazy sprawling little village of Nyack. Along the path that runs near his grave, each day of the school year the students pass on their way to the classrooms, or it may be to sing and pray at the chapel service. He rests well there and the tramp of feet does not disturb his slumber. The education of Christian youth had been one of the dearest labors of his life. The cheerful shouts of the young people on the sloping campus of The Missionary Training Institute would be grateful music to his ears could he but hear them now.