- He Feeds His Father’s Sheep

Knox Church, Hamilton, was one of the finer churches of Canada, very well-to-do and respectable, with more than twenty years of colorful history behind it, having a large congregation, and equipment the best that money could buy. It had a reputation among the churches, and when for any reason its pulpit became vacant the greatest preachers of the Presbyterian ministry were called to fill it. Such are the ways of churches. The ones that have, to them shall be given, and they shall have more abundantly, and the largest churches take it for granted that they should be able to command the biggest preachers. And ministers, being still human, are too often ready to agree with them.
In the summer of 1885 the pulpit of Knox Church was left vacant by the resignation of the brilliant Dr. Robert Irving, and a call was extended to A· B· Simpson to became the new pastor. Here was news indeed and material for a world of small talk among the church people and the ministers as they gathered here and there for the Monday autopsies. True, young Simpson is an eloquent speaker and bright as they come, but after all he is only twenty-one years old and without pastoral experience; and Knox Church is one of the most important in the whole Dominion of Canada. Its pastors have been of the cream of the Presbyterian ministry. They have established a tradition for brilliancy in the pulpit next to impossible to maintain, altogether impossible for a mere boy just out of school. So went the friendly gossip. And it is easy to believe that the boy from the farm near Chatham, Ontario, was willing to admit that there might be some truth in it.
About this time a small church in the little town of Dundas, Ontario, also extended Mr. Simpson a call to become its pastor. A drowsy delightful little hamlet was Dundas, made up of respectable, well-to-do people who were pretty well satisfied with themselves and not much given to overdoing their spiritual activities. Yet they were a religious people, too, and maintained a quaint and sleepy little church which they loved and attended once or twice a week without fail. They had heard the eloquent young Simpson while he had been still a student at Knox College, and, knowing a rising star when they saw one, they wanted him for their pastor.
This complicated things for the young man. Years later he tells of the confusion that was in his mind over the problem before him. Ambition said, take the large church. Morbid humility said, take the small one. Like Solomon the young preacher was being tested here, though he knew nothing of it at the time. If he had been just one inch shorter in spiritual stature he would have taken the small church to keep himself humble, or he would have taken the large one to satisfy his ambition. But being who and what he was, he sat down and reasoned like this: If I take the small church it will demand little, and I will give little. Result, stagnation; I will get soft and cease to grow. If I take the large church I will be compelled to rise to meet its heavier demands, and the very effort will develop the gifts of God which are in me. The small church may break me; the large church will certainly help to make me. So he notified Knox Church that he would accept.
Now, A. B. Simpson, for all his humility, had a flair for the dramatic. He loved to surround himself with a multitude of activities, to do things in a big way. So he planned a gala week for himself, to be replete with events so important that any one of them might have been enough to fill a week for the average man. But A. B. Simpson was not the average man. So on September 11 he delivered his maiden sermon as the new pastor of Knox Church, Hamilton. The next day in the afternoon he appeared before some of the local luminaries and was solemnly ordained to the ministry by prayer and the laying on of hands. That same night he caught a train for Toronto, and the next day he was married! Then followed a short honeymoon trip down the St. Lawrence, a swift journey back across the country to Hamilton and a rousing reception for the bride and groom given at the manse by the members of Knox Church.
He is four years away from the farm, and three months out of school, but he is already the pastor of a large city church, an ordained minister, and—a married man!
The woman who became his wife was Margaret Henry, daughter of an influential elder in Dr. Jenning’s Church in Toronto. They had been acquainted for about four years and had been engaged for the better part of that time. Temperamentally Margaret was the exact opposite of her sensitive, poetic husband, and there is reason to believe that she never quite fully understood him. Until his death, more than fifty years later, he continued to be something of a puzzle to her. She did not always sympathize with his religious convictions, but for more than half a century she remained a faithful wife to him, devoting herself unselfishly to the care of their family of six children. In her later years she became a very earnest Christian worker, and proved to be a real help to her husband in his public ministry.
Mr. Simpson remained with Knox Church eight years, and enjoyed an eminently successful ministry throughout the entire time. The figures show that he actually added to the church during that time a total of 750 members—and all without the aid of evangelistic meetings or any other special efforts; he did not believe in them!—paid off an indebtedness of $5,000 on the church property, organized a Woman’s Aid Society (the grandmother of all Alliance Prayer Bands), started a number of prayer meetings within the program of church activities, and sparked his people on to such fervent missionary giving as they had not dreamed possible.
What he was able to do for Knox Church is of interest to a considerable few, but what Knox Church and the grace of God did for him during those years is of far greater importance to the whole Church of God and the work of Christian missions. He began his work there a boyish looking young man just short of twenty-two, possessing tremendous capacities, but still untried and undeveloped. He left that church eight years later a mature, experienced, traveled minister of wide reputation, in constant demand as a preacher and lecturer both in Canada and in the United States.
A photograph taken toward the close of his Hamilton pastorate shows an impressive looking—if somewhat camera-conscious—clergyman, intelligence written all over his handsome countenance, dressed in a long black robe done with many shirrs and pleats, and with a white ascot hanging from his chin eight inches down over his bosom. It is of interest to observe that the plague of baldness had attacked him early, for even at that time there are unmistakable evidences that his hair had started to go. He resembles somewhat the Rev. Charles G. Finney at that age, only a bit less self-assurance, and a whole world more of worry in those troubled eyes. And the worried look is not imaginary. It had good reason for being there. The man had not yet come out into the sunlight. The eagle was still chained to the hard earth, but he had begun to catch sight of blue patches above the mountains and he heard within him the call of the heights, a call to which he did not yet kmow how to respond. The look of mild distress is seen on most of his pictures until the crisis experience that brought the Holy Spirit into his life in joyous fullness; after that it is seen no more, but falls away like the scales from the eyes of Saul.
Two years before the termination of his Hamilton ministry his church generously granted him a four-month furlough and sent him to Europe. This trip is of little interest to us now, for it must be admitted that the fashionable young clergyman went simply because it was the custom for really big ministers to see Europe or the Holy Land, or both. In the days before the earth had shrunk to the size of an orange and any small town Babbit might “do” Europe, it was a grand thing for a preacher to go abroad. The prestige it gave him was worth a year’s salary at least. Any chance member who had the temerity to disagree with the minister after that, could be quickly set in his place with the effective squelch, “Why, our minister has been abro-ad!” And the minister himself could squirm out of many a tight spot in his sermon by clearing his throat impressively and saying, “When I was abro-ad lawst time.” Verily , all things have their uses.