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  WINGSPREAD
  by A. W. Tozer
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A biographical sketch of A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and
Missionary Alliance, exploring his life, ministry, and enduring influence on the
evangelical and missionary movements.

  Chapters: 20

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. - Publishers Page
    2. - Introduction
    3. - A Child Is Born
    4. - As The Twig Is Bent
    5. - Out Of The Paw Of The Lion
    6. - He Chooses Smooth Stones
    7. - He Leaps Over  A Wall
    8. - He Feeds His Father’s Sheep
    9. - He Takes A Short Flight
   10. - The Humble Hear A Voice
   11. - This Dreamer Cometh
   12. - The Shadow Declineth
   13. - He Finds The Fountain Of Youth
   14. - By the Cloud and the Fire
   15. - Branches Over the Wall
   16. - He Goes Out and Comes In
   17. - He Dances Before the Ark
   18. - Down To Earth
   19. - "Hallelujah! I’m tired"
   20. - Sundown

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  CHAPTER 1: - PUBLISHERS PAGE
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Christian Publications 3825 Hartzdale Drive, Camp Hill, PA 17011 Faithful,
biblical publishing—since 1883 ISBN: 0-87 509-2 18-7 © 1943 by Christian
Publications All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 94 95
96 97 98 12 11 10 9 8 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the HOLY
BIBLE, AUTHORIZED KING JAMES VERSION.


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  CHAPTER 2: - INTRODUCTION
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Introduction Any man who has reason to hope (or to fear) that someone may
someday write the story of his life would do well to pray that he may not fall
into the hand of an enemy, a disciple, a rival or a relative. Of all men, these
make the poorest biographers. Their relationship to the subject places them
where they cannot see him as he actually is, so the picture they paint, however
interesting it may be, is never true to the original. Our enemies seldom know us
well enough to write about us. The person they think they know—and hate—is not
the person we are. For that reason an enemy is likely to draw a caricature, and
not a true likeness. He is sure to sketch in his prejudices and animosities, and
may casually leave upon the forehead little careless projections which could not
be proved to be, but might easily be mistaken for, horns. A disciple will
usually do as poor a job, from an artistic point of view, as an enemy, though
for an altogether different reason. Instead of horns he may, with as little
fidelity to the facts, sketch in a harp, but the result will be no better in the
end. “Leave the warts in” said Lincoln when about to sit for his portrait, and
to the everlasting credit of the artist he had the courage to do it. But true
disciples never see warts, or if one is called to their attention, they will
argue that it is only a callous anyway, caused by a halo that had slipped down.
George Washington has the misfortune to be respected by everybody and loved by
nobody. Parson Weems saw to that. He wrote a life of Washington that fixed a
great gulf between him and every downright American from that day forward. The
pretty boy with the cherry cheeks, the innocent little hatchet and the
sententious manner of speech which Weems gave to the world can never excite the
affections of sincere men and women. But I wonder whether Lincoln’s warts and
his uncurried hair may not have created a secret bond of sympathy between him
and two generations of American boys. No one wants a hero who is too perfect.
And where is that man who can write a fair biography of an acknowledged rival?
It is not in human nature to do it. No matter how valiantly we may try, we
cannot force ourselves to say all the good that ought to be said about man when
we know that every feather we put in his cap we must first take out of our own.
That is why it is hard to get a fair appraisal of a public figure by a
contemporary in his own field. Our relatives know us better than anyone else
does, but they are not safe biographers nevertheless in the first place they are
likely to be stone blind with pride and affection, (not to mention their
uncomfortable habit of referring to us by little nicknames we hoped had been
forgotten)· The knowledge that one of their own blood and kin has actually
attained to eminence acts like a draught of heady wine rendering them incapable
of anything like sober judgment. By a well-known law of the human mind they
praise themselves in their illustrious relative, so that what we get is a lot of
left-handed boasting that does not come within shouting distance of the truth.
The best biographer comes from a far country. He can see the subject as he is,
and being free from the handicap of a close personal relation, he will, if he
have a fair amount of intelligence and enough patience to make himself familiar
with the facts, be in a position to present a reasonably accurate picture of
what he sees. We feel that we bring to the task of writing this sketch of the
life of Albert B. Simpson, if nothing more, a sympathetic heart and an objective
mental approach. We belong to another generation than his, and thus stand back
from the subject far enough to gain better perspective. We are not, and have
never been his disciple, though common gratitude requires us to testify that we
have received from his life and teachings, and more especially from his
“spiritual songs, such immeasurable benefits that we feel forever bound to thank
the thoughtful God who gave him to the Church. Meditation upon his trials and
triumphs easily brings tears close to the surface and disposes us to reverent
prayer. Indeed it is hard to write dispassionately of one possessing the
tremendous emotional appeal of A. B. Simpson. The sheer spiritual weight of the
man crushes in upon us till we are overcome with it and, like Daniel, we “sit
down astonied.” But in spite of this we shall try to maintain a fair objectivity
in our treatment of the subject matter which his life affords. In preparing this
work we but loose his shoe latchet, and acknowledge ourself blessed in the doing
of it.


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  CHAPTER 3: - A CHILD IS BORN
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The world’s great men usually enter incognito. Emerson was wont to put his hand
reverently upon the head of any urchin that might come his way. “Who knows,”
said he, “but I may be patting the head of a future president.” The tough
youngsters who gathered in Jesse’s back yard of a summer afternoon to play the
ancient equivalent of piggy-move-up would not have shoved Jesse’s youngest boy
around quite so freely if they had had a touch of second sight to let them see
that they were taking liberties with the greatest king Israel was ever to know.
But their blindness made possible many a glorious day of fun for the boys in the
neighborhood, and it also guaranteed to David an uninhibited and normal
childhood. Such are the ways of God when He prepares His saints and heroes: He
leaves them unrecognized by the world until the day of their “showing unto
Israel.” About all we know of the circumstances of the birth of little Albert
Simpson is who his parents were, and that it was a bitter cold day the day that
he was born. For he was born in Bayview, Prince Edward Island. Canada, December
15, 1843, and any day in December is cold on Prince Edward Island. The plain,
stove-heated room where was heard his first baby cry—that strange frightening
sound, like nothing else in nature, and having no human quality about it—was
made snug against the outside chill by the honest toil of the baby’s father,
hard-working James Simpson, the merchant, miller, and ship builder. Jane
Simpson, the mother heard that cry and smiled, and when they told her the child
was a boy she may have wept a little, too, but her tears were tears of
happiness, and not of sorrow. Her first baby had been a boy, and when he was
just old enough to toddle over the floor and to say “mama” and “papa,” he had
died, and the light had gone out of her heart, and not even the presence of her
other children. William Howard and Louisa, could bring it back again. So she had
prayed that God might send her another son to take the place of the one who had
gone, and her faith would have nothing less than that he become a minister or a
missionary, though with good Scotch caution she had made her prayer plenty
broad, “if the Lord so wills, and he lives to grow up, and is so inclined.” It
would not do to be too specific with the sovereign God, but, after all, He might
listen to a suggestion. And now what should the new boy be called? Well, plain
James Simpson looked over his glasses and, with singular lack of imagination,
announced quietly that he should be called Albert. James Albert had been the
name of the lad who had died, but Albert was a good name, and it saved a lot of
thinking, so Albert it was. And the dutiful little wife agreed, and then timidly
suggested that a second name be added, maybe a good Bible name such as Benjamin,
if the father think it well. Perhaps she could not tell her husband why—that
quiet, good man who worked every day, read heavy books on Calvinism, and had a
reputation for great evenness of temper—but she remembered Jacob, and she
treasured in her heart the hope that this boy should be her Benjamin, the son of
her right hand. So it was settled, Albert Benjamin Simpson should be his name.
And when the neighbors gathered in to see the new lad, they must have
remarked—with that friendly liberty we allow ourselves on such occasions—that
the big noble-sounding name was pretty heavy for such a sweet wee mite to carry,
and that if he lives a month with such a great fine name as that, he is as good
as reared! And the mother’s face shines with joy, and even the father allows
himself a considered smile. Right here we may as well see what history has been
at long pains to teach us, that if you get a good mother it will not do to be
too particular about your father; you cannot have everything. Give the boy a
superior mother, and he will make the grade somehow. The women know this well
enough, though they are not saying so in front of the men. Hannah looks down at
the floor modestly and says nothing, but she searches for her own features in
Samuel—and finds them there. And Manoah’s wife, and the mother of Zebedee’s
children, and Monica, and Suzanna Wesley; what do all these teach us but the
same thing every scientist knows, that greatness follows the maternal line? The
men have impressive voices, they look knowing, and claim credit for every sign
of intelligence in their offspring, but their masculine pride takes a terrible
beating from biology. There can be no doubt about it, Dr. A. B. Simpson, boy and
man, can never be explained apart from his mother, Jane Clark Simpson. She gave
him wings. Of a fine Scotch line she came, a line that could trace its history
back to the old heroic days of Scotia’s grandeur, of the persecutions, and the
Covenanters and the fight to keep alive the faith once delivered. High strung
and temperamental, with more than a dash of high romance, she had a soul too
large for her small body. Straight from mother to son, following the laws of
life, went this great soul, sensitive, poetic, beauty-loving, lofty. By the
miracle of inheritance there appears again in him her ambitions, her
aspirations, her soaring imagination. She had been accustomed to the refinements
of the best society, and she never accepted the drab life of a Canadian farm
wife as her own. A “guid wife” and mother she undoubtedly was to her unpoetic
husband and her brood of boys and girls, but there were times when the dullness
and monotony of her existence drove her almost to distraction. Then it was that
her children, when she thought them fast asleep, would hear her sobbing out her
disappointment and frustration long into the night. But these times were not
many, and they seldom lasted long, for she had a mounting fancy, and she had her
friends, and they would come to her even there in the ice-locked farm house. The
poets, they were her friends, and she entertained them all (except those wicked
geniuses, which no nice women would read). But there were many good ones, Milton
and Scott and Cowper and Dryden and Pope and Thompson; these and scores of
others she loved, and to them she went for comfort when her heart was
overwhelmed within her. Then she could dream her dreams, and live in fancy the
life she had hoped to live, and be what she had wanted to be. Not that James
Simpson, the father, was not a good man. He most certainly was that. “Clean,
capable, and industrious” they said he was, and religious, too. He probably had
more religion than his temperamental little wife. Did he not pray every morning?
And whip his children for laughing on the Sabbath? And believe in the shorter
catechism and the five-point star of Calvinism? But imagination he had not. And
poetry? Well, it was to be tolerated, and especially the metrical psalter was
good, but he was busy, and after his daily portion of Baxter’s Saint’s Rest and
Doddridge’s Rise and Progress, he had little time left for poetry. But he was a
kindly man and only looked mildly amused when he came in of an evening and found
his wife nursing the baby with Milton’s Complete Works propped up in front of
her. He lived a quiet life and did well by his family, and was an elder in the
Presbyterian Church for half a lifetime. Louise Simpson, writing at a very
advanced age, recalls that there was “sunshine” in her father’s life, but Albert
apparently saw little of it, and the picture he presents of his father is
certainly not marked by sunshine. Albert remembers something else much more
vividly; severe discipline, those endless Sunday afternoon drills in the
catechism which began with the philosophical poser, “What is the chief end of
man?” and concluded twenty-four pages and 105 questions later with, “What doth
the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer teach us?” That was the shorter catechism,
but not a boy or girl standing in line in the dimly lighted parlor of the
Simpson farmhouse while the sun shone soft on the flowers outside would believe
there was anything “shorter” about it.


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  CHAPTER 4: - AS THE TWIG IS BENT
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And the child grew, and his mother stole many an admiring glance at him, for she
saw that he was a proper child, and his sweet, tender face, with great shining
eyes that reminded people of Shelley, was good for a mother to look upon. But
religion must come first, and the Simpson household was nothing if not
religious. The parents had set themselves to bring up their children after the
manner of their Scottish forbears. Sharp discipline, stern rules, severe
restraint upon conduct, all these young Albert knew, with big chunks of theology
which he confessed later he could not understand crammed into his head daily.
Then there was church, family prayer, the catechism, and long dry books by the
reforming fathers, more prayer and church again. Strange it is that in the midst
of all these religious calisthenics no one remembered to tell the sensitive,
eager boy how to be saved. The love that gave all, even life itself, for its
enemies, was tragically overlooked in the boy’s education, and it nearly proved
to be the undoing of him. While the rigorous religious training which the boy
received did not bring him to a state of grace it did instill into his
impressionable young mind the all-importance of religion to the race of men. By
the time he was ten he already had a secret yearning to become a minister, and
while still short of his teens he was struggling with the idea, desiring to be a
minister, but unwilling to pay the price. The preachers he knew in those days
must have been a dour and artificial lot, for the sum of his testimony is that
he wrestled with himself over the question of whether to become a minister or to
flee the service of the church and remain a human being. After several rounds
with death when the old Leveler came so close that the boy felt his cold breath
on the back of his neck he finally decided to renounce his humanity—and he felt
that it would mean nothing less than that—and preach the Gospel. Duty dictated
this, and it is to his credit, and to the everlasting honor of his parents, that
he could muster enough courage to make his decision to “do right though the
heavens fall.” Imperfect as it all was and as tragically lacking in the accents
of grace it yet revealed a heart that was feeling after God, and more than all
it showed that God had not forgotten Jane Simpson’s timid request, “that the boy
might be a minister or missionary, if he live to grow up, and is so inclined,”
nor yet the impassioned prayer of inspired John Geddie, the Apostle to the South
Seas, who had baptized the lad and dedicated him to the ministry shortly after
he was born. So are the ways of God with men. The facts are there to prove it,
no matter how our sleek orthodoxy may kick against the pricks—Albert Simpson was
called to the ministry before he was converted, and God said of him, “I have
even called thee by thy name though thou hast not known me.” If God could—and
would—ordain Jeremiah to the ministry before he was born, then he could call
Albert Simpson to preach, the lad being yet unregenerated—and he did just that.
As far as the boy was concerned he would preach the Gospel somehow, that was
settled for him. About this time James Simpson called one of those painful
family councils where solemnity is so thick you can cut it with a knife and the
atmosphere is heavy with a wholesome chastening misery, and with the wife and
mother sitting by proceeded to charge his two pre-adolescent sons with their
respective duties and to map out their future for them. He was a good man, a
product of his times and a faithful son of his stern religion, and he is not to
be censured that he did not know a swan when one appeared among his brood of
ducklings. David’s father had made the same mistake, had tried to push every son
he had under the prophet’s oil except the one whom God had chosen. Howard, the
eldest son, is to prepare to enter the ministry, and Albert is to stay at home
on the farm and help with the chores! If the good man had only crossed his arms
like Jacob he would have been right in his decisions, but he failed to do so,
and was one-hundred percent wrong. The blindness that would hang up such genius
as young Albert’s along with his torn straw hat on the wall of the farm kitchen
is too deep and dismal to excite anything but pity. But we have all done as
badly at some time; we have all failed to recognize the prophet behind his
disguise, so modesty dictates that we pass over this mighty error with no
cocksure comment. Even at that tender age the boy had pretty well learned to
discipline his feelings, so apart from a few impulsive and eloquent gulps, he
made no remonstrance as his father pronounced the words that meant the end of
all his secret hopes. Then a glance at his mother and courage comes to him: He
rises and stands respectfully before his father with clasped hands and, with
“broken words and stammering tongue,” he pleads for permission to enter the
ministry, provided he can get his education at his own cost and make all
necessary preparation, with no expense to the family exchequer. It must have
been a moving plea, for it took something to unmake the made-up mind of a Scotch
Presbyterian elder. When the boy is done and has sunk down exhausted into his
chair, his father rises, stands a moment to get control of his voice, and then
in trembling tones gives his consent and a “God bless you, my boy.” So it is
finished. The boy will be a minister. God has willed it and the lad is so
inclined.


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  CHAPTER 5: - OUT OF THE PAW OF THE LION
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His determination to enter the ministry never left the boy, and we see him at
fourteen, physically weak, but possessing a mind far beyond his years, studying
Latin, Greek and higher mathematics under a private teacher, as a step in the
direction of his goal. But the stripling was attempting the impossible. Remember
that up to this time he had had no satisfying experience of grace, and he was
trying to do as a son of Adam what can only be done by a son of God. He was
preparing for a ministry in the Spirit, and his troubled heart told him that he
was yet in the flesh. And temperamentally he was at cross purposes with himself
by his very nature and upbringing. No matter how hard his intellect tries it
cannot keep up with his racing soul, his soaring imagination. Already the poet
and the theologian are at war within him; John Keats and John Calvin are having
it out to the finish, and young Albert is both of them, taking a brutal slugging
no matter which one wins. His teachers have tried hard to make him into a good,
solid, logical young man, staid and conventional, with his two feet firm on the
hard ground; but nature will not work along with them. She will be forever
singing to him, forever tempting him away from the sullen earth and bidding him
stretch his wings to the blue heaven. When just short of fifteen he leaves his
private teacher and enrolls in Chatham High School, which is located nine miles
from the Simpson home. Of course, this necessitates a daily trip of eighteen
miles through all kinds of weather—and they have all kinds in that part of
Canada. He rode a horse as often as one could be spared from necessary work on
the farm, but it seems that he still had to commute on foot more frequently than
a boy of fifteen should have done, especially one of his delicate constitution.
Now that other mysterious change begins to take place. The trusting boy is
passing away and the seeing man is emerging, first the one and then the other
taking the ascendancy. Physical maladjustments add themselves to the
temperamental conflict already raging within him. Hard study has weakened his
nerves and predisposed him toward despair. Suddenly the accumulated terrors of a
multitude of books and sermons on total depravity and the damnation of the
non-elect roar out upon him like a lion from the thicket and throw him into
mortal panic for his dying soul. He cries out in anguish, but there is no one to
help him. The proud man within him will not permit him to go to his mother with
his fears, and the timid boy dare not go to his father. How can a boy talk to a
somber Presbyterian elder about anything as painfully intimate as that,
especially when that elder is your father, and you remember how solemn and awful
your father used to look at you when you missed one question in the catechism or
smiled on the holy Sabbath? And you remember how he used to sentence you to a
whipping in the evening, and then wait till morning to carry out the sentence;
and you can still feel the cold chill that would come over you when you woke for
the hundredth time in the night, and at last saw gray light which you shuddered
to think was the herald of the dawn, and the trouncing. Well, the human organism
can take only so much, and the distressed boy had had enough. Suddenly came that
“fearful crash,” of which he later wrote so movingly, when the very heavens
seemed to be coming undone before his terrified eyes; a blazing light shines
above him, and his familiar earth crumbles away from beneath his feet, plunging
him down into the center of spinning worlds and crashing ruin. He comes out of
this physical spin only to go into a worse mental spin a second later. He leaps
up in mortal agony and stands impaled upon the point of a fixed idea like a fly
upon the point of a pin; he is to die in a few minutes, when that clock there on
the table is on the hour, and it is four minutes of the hour now! Any help will
do at this moment. His pride and fear give way before a greater terror, and he
cries aloud for his father to come and pray for him. The father does not fail
him. Beneath an exterior of cultivated austerity is a great Scotch heart, full
of tenderest affection. His boy is dearer to him than “the ruddy drops that
visit his sad heart.” It may be a bit irregular, and he cannot just remember
where such a thing is found in the Scriptures, but father love overcomes
doctrinal objections, so down he goes to his knees to pour out his heart for his
darling lad with all the strength there is in him. God has mercy on them both,
and the boy is able to relax a little, though for days he cannot sleep unless
someone is near to assure him, and he will go into nervous spasms as the fatal
hour approaches—the torture hour fixed like a sharp stake in his exhausted
mind—and will hardly believe he is alive when the hour has passed. And still no
one could tell him the simple gospel story. Strange no one remembered the story
of the prodigal boy and the kind, trembling old father who received him back
again from the far country with the touching, tender words: “For this my son was
dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” Such is the power of
loveless doctrine to freeze the heart and dull the mind. So the stripling had to
struggle back to health again as best he could without the consolations of
divine forgiveness. Well, as God would have it, when he had recovered enough to
be about again, though still in terrible distress for his soul, he was one day
browsing among the books in his old minister’s library when, all unexpectedly,
the big moment came for which he had waited so long. He flipped a page in an old
musty volume, called Marshall’s Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, and suddenly
his eyes were fixed on a passage that stood out like fire from the rest: “the
first good work you will ever perform is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Until you do this, all your works, prayers, tears, and good resolutions are
vain. To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is to believe that He saves you
according to His Word, that He receives and saves you here and now, for He has
said: ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.’” That was enough. A
heart as hungry as his and a mind as keen, needed no more. With rapture he slid
to his knees and closed with the promise, and there came to his soul such a
sweet, restful knowledge of sins forgiven as swept away his fears like a flood.
God had delivered him out of the paw of the lion.


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  CHAPTER 6: - HE CHOOSES SMOOTH STONES
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It is significant as well as amusing to see how many Biblical prophets kept
sheep before assuming their prophetic office, and how many modern prophets
taught school. The schoolhouse has been the vestibule to the church house for a
multitude of successful ministers. And it was so with Albert Simpson. He knew he
needed the money and God knew he needed the experience, so when only sixteen and
looking much younger, he sat with boyish dignity and drilled into a room full of
over-age students from the Canadian prairies the fundamentals of education. Some
of these students were nearly twice his age, and yet they obeyed him like lambs.
He wondered why, and with characteristic modesty fails to see that they are but
paying tribute to his inherent gift of leadership. They felt something—and none
of them could have told what it was—that made them want to follow that
intelligent, self-assured youngster. Their instinct was sound; he was a born
leader, and with his ability to influence the masses he could have been a
dangerous man if he had fallen into other ways than the ways of God. During
these days of teaching and study his spiritual life grew like grass by the water
courses. His testimony at this time abounds with phrases that show how the
stripling was thriving in his new life of faith: “The promises of God burst upon
my soul with a new and marvelous light. The glowing promises of Isaiah and
Jeremiah were clothed with a glory that no tongue can express.” He must have
literally devoured the Scriptures, and with what he calls “unspeakable ecstasy”
he marked his favorite passages. No giant has appeared as yet, but with one
spiritual intuition he is choosing smooth stones from the brook. He will need
them later on. At seventeen he decides—as a result of reading again his father’s
old favorite, Doddridge—to confirm his spiritual experience by a solemn
covenant, God, as the party of the first part, and himself, as party of the
second part, being the high contracting parties. The dead seriousness of the boy
is apparent here. He sets aside a whole day for fasting and prayer, and then at
the close of the day draws up and signs and seals the covenant. This covenant is
one of the most remarkable things produced by any boy—Christian in any period of
the Church’s history. Artificial and stilted in language it admittedly is, but
back of the old-fashioned language and borrowed mode of speech a great soul is
discoverable. The covenant itself runs into about nine-hundred words, and
follows an unconscious parallel with a Sunday morning service in the
Presbyterian Church in Chatham or any other town of that day. It begins with the
Sunday morning prayer, “O Thou everlasting and almighty God, Ruler of the
universe, Thou who madest this world and me Thy creature upon it, Thou who art
in every place beholding the evil and the good, Thou seest me at this time and
knowest all my thoughts.” A little later comes the hymn, where he says he would,
“Come before Thee as a sinner Lost and ruined by the fall.” From there he
launches into a Calvinistic sermon that would have warmed the heart of any
Scotch Covenanter, but that no boy would ever have thought of by himself: “Thou,
O Lord, didst make Adam holy and happy, and gavest him ability to maintain his
state:’ (From a boy of seventeen!) “The penalty of his disobedience was death,
but he disobeyed Thy holy law and incurred that penalty, and I, as a descendent
from him, have inherited this depravity and this penalty. I acknowledge the
justness of Thy sentence, O Lord, and would bow in submission before Thee.”
Several “points” are developed in the same vein, and then he announces the
closing hymn. “I am now a soldier of the cross, A follower of the lamb.” After
that comes the benediction, “Now give me Thy Spirit and Thy protection in my
heart at all times, and then I shall drink of the rivers of salvation, lie down
by still waters, and be infinitely happy in the favor of God.” This “covenant”
is done, of course, in ordinary prose, but the music is in the background plain
enough to be heard by any keen ear. The whole thing is an astonishing piece of
work, revealing a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures for a boy of
seventeen, and evidencing a psychology entirely dominated by the Church. It is a
solemn and beautiful song in the creation of which Paul and Calvin collaborated
on the words, and King David wrote the music. In all this—his school teaching,
his eager study, his religious vows and spiritual adventures—there is seen a
dual purpose leading him on. There was the over-all purpose of God, of which the
boy was but dimly conscious, weaving in every thread of providential
circumstance to make a mantle for this prophet; and there was the firm conscious
purpose of the boy himself. For there was something sweetly deceptive about this
smiling gentle youth. Underneath his mild exterior there lay a will like an iron
beam. He had a purpose in his heart that completely controlled him. Once he had
settled his call to the ministry this mighty purpose took over and drove him
like a benignant master for the rest of his days. If ever there was a man who
knew why he was alive that man was A. B. Simpson. He is preparing to answer the
old question, ‘“What is the chief end of man?” in deeds as well as in words. No
other kind of answer would do for that kind of man.


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  CHAPTER 7: - HE LEAPS OVER  A WALL
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The news that “Brother Simpson’s son, Albert” had been called to the ministry
got around pretty fast up Chatham way and out among the country folk in Kent
County, Ontario. But the aspiring prophet soon learns that a call from God is
not sufficient; he must secure the approval of the senior prophets of the
Presbytery before he can hope to make his voice heard in any Presbyterian pulpit
in the land; and that approval is not an easy thing to obtain. The Presbyterian
Church of that day had built a wall around its pulpit too high for any but the
most heroic to leap over, and what is a green country boy to do? The sponsorship
of the highly respected Rev. William Walker, and the reputation of the boy’s
father, James Simpson, the elder, brought him to the attention of the proper
church authorities, so in the fall of the year 1861, while still two months
short of his eighteenth birthday, he appears with a number of other candidates
before the formidable and awe-inspiring Presbytery at London, Ontario. After
sitting in silence for several hours, during which time they were studiously
ignored by the members of that august body, they are subjected to an examination
that singes their pride and roots out any conceit that might have survived that
long siege of letting alone they had endured earlier in the day. The members of
the examining board undoubtedly were one and all men of genuine Christian
principles, and it is not hard to believe that they must have had good hearts
about them somewhere, but this was no time to be soft, so they proceeded to take
the boys apart piece by piece to see what made them run, and they examined the
“parts” to see whether they were the stuff of which ministers are made. We smile
with sympathy for the country boy as he stands before his judges, and we could
wish that they had been a bit less exacting in their demands, but in the light
of the history of Protestant Christianity on the North American Continent over
the last hundred years we cannot but admit the stern wisdom of their actions if
the men of that day erred it was on the side of right, and their error was
inspired by a lofty conception of the sacredness and dignity of the Christian
ministry. The wave of amateurism that swept over the American pulpit a
generation ago with such tragic results would not have been possible if the
Christian churches had maintained a higher standard of requirements for the
ministers of the sanctuary. Protestantism has been in the Book of Judges for
three quarters of a century where “every man does that which is right in his own
eyes,” and the evil consequences are beyond computing. Well, that class of
candidates must have been a well instructed lot, for they passed their
examinations without any casualties, and were all recommended by the Presbytery
for admission to Knox College to study for the regular ministry. In less than a
month after this Albert Simpson entered Knox College, Toronto, and began his
course of studies there. From the first day it was apparent that a youth of
unusual powers was among them. Whenever he arose to speak the eyes of everyone
were upon him. Speaking came as easy to him as singing to a bird. As a preacher,
he was a “natural”; he never had to learn how. The friends back home have been
hearing good things of the boy away there in the big city. They know that he is
a lad of parts, a keen and knowing lad who will go far in the learned world; but
can he preach? That is the question these friends are asking. It was hoped that
young Albert would prove to be a good speaker as well as a brainy student, but
these cautious Scotch neighbors were not doing any wishful thinking. They would
wait and hear for themselves. When the Christmas holidays came around and it was
known that the young man was coming back for a short vacation the interest ran
so high that the church at Tilbury, near his home, arranged to have him preach
at a Sunday morning service. A prophet hath no honor in his own country and
among his own people, and who are these that crowd the little church that
Sabbath morning but his own neighbors and kin folk? The skeptical are there, and
the curious, and the whole Simpson family is there, all sitting in a row, hoping
desperately that he may do well by himself, but getting braced for the shock in
case he forgets his place and breaks down. When the vestry door opens and the
preacher walks in the silence is so deep the worshipers can hear each other
breathe. There is many a suppressed smile as he takes his place in the pulpit,
for he is but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. At the proper
moment the boy preacher rises, announces a text and launches into his memorized
sermon. He is soon speaking without effort, speaking not with his rich musical
voice alone, but with his whole graceful body, every part of him alive and in
tune with the melody of his words. It is a great sermon, an unbelievably great
sermon for a youth of eighteen: For orthodoxy it is blameless, for clarity and
logic it is of the first order, and for beauty and effectiveness of delivery it
beats anything these old sermon lovers have heard for many a long day. After
this there is no more doubt about Brother Simpsons’ son, Albert. He has proved
his right to the prophet’s mantle. These stoical listeners say nothing, but they
bless him with their eyes and adopt him with their hearts; they are proud of
him. The boy is not only smart, he is a natural born preacher as well, a little
young yet, but mighty good to listen to. Reputations are hard to make among
people such as these, but once made they travel far and fast. After that first
sermon at Tilbury Albert Simpson had no trouble to get a hearing. Preachers were
never too plentiful anyway, and preachers of the caliber of this young man were
rare indeed, so there came to him many invitations to preach in churches large
and small. Back at college, Albert studied hard and made rapid progress—if
indeed it is accurate to say that a young man studied hard who literally ate up
his subjects without trying; He was gifted with such superb mental equipment as
made anything like real grinding study unnecessary. The ease with which he
carried forward his studies made it possible for him to accept quite a number of
preaching engagements throughout the school year. This meant a bit of financial
assistance—badly needed we may be sure—and it meant also opportunity to gain
increased skill in the exercise of the art to which he was born, the art of the
public speaker. His fame as a boy preacher—just turned eighteen when he first
came to public notice, and looking much younger—spread throughout the churches,
but in spite of all they had heard of his extreme youth the steady-going
Presbyterian congregations were seldom prepared to receive such a mere boy into
their pulpits when he arrived to preach of a Sabbath morning. The good Scotch
elders wrestled long with their scruples when they were compelled to hand the
huge old pulpit Bible to this handsome stripling before the service could begin.
They did na’ like it at a’, though for the life of them they could not tell what
rule the lad was breaking being so “unco” young. But seeing that he had been
sent out by the seminary there was nothing to do but swallow their fears and
allow the service to proceed. And when the service was ended their qualms had
given way to cautious smiles, as bright as becomes men in the hoos o’ God who
are nevertheless mighty well pleased with the way things have turned out. With
the financial aid he received from his family plus the small amounts he could
earn as supply preacher here and there and an occasional windfall in the form of
a small scholarship earned in competitive examinations he managed to stay on in
college until he had completed the required work. In April, 1865, he was
graduated from Knox College. It must have been a big day for him, for in some
sense it was the last payment on the promise he had made to his parents there in
the parlor of the old farmhouse that memorable afternoon when be had humbly
begged permission to enter the ministry and preach the Gospel provided he could
manage to secure the necessary education. The regular education he received did,
without doubt, contribute much to the total of his greatness as a man and as a
minister of Christ, but it did not in any sense make him what he was. Indeed he
wore his collegiate honors lightly, accepting them casually and by the way. He
was always bigger than his books. Happily for the church he was too much of an
individualist to take the academic stamp. Saul’s armor was an interesting thing
to have around, and maybe occasionally to try on for size, but when he went out
after giants he asked for nothing more than his sling and five smooth stones
from the brook. Two months after graduation from Knox College Mr. Simpson was
called to appear with a number of other candidates before the Presbytery at
Toronto for examination with a view to their being licensed as ministers of the
Canada Presbyterian Church. They called the examination “public probationary
trial” and they tried to live up to the name. They went over the minds of these
young men with a fine comb and searched their hearts with a candle. Biblical
Hebrew and Greek, Theology, Church History and Church Government: The examiners
would find out how much the candidates knew about these subjects (and they must
know a great deal or they would be rejected). After that they were subjected to
a searching examination concerning their personal religious experience. That
they had already given proof of the genuineness of their spiritual experience as
a necessary qualification for their admission to Knox College did not matter.
Those old-time Christian scholars knew what they wanted, and they believed they
knew what God wanted. They were not going to license an ignoramus or a sinner if
they could help it. And they thought they could. So there followed a number of
tough papers of various kinds to be prepared and read before the Presbytery,
including a Latin thesis, an excursus, a popular sermon and a lecture, all given
in cold blood as samples. It is not recorded that they also performed a sample
marriage ceremony and baptized a baby, but we would not be too much surprised if
we discovered that they did. Anyway everything turned out for the best, and in
due time Albert Simpson was licensed to the Presbyterian ministry. He has
cleared the barrier. He is a minister at last.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: - 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.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: - HE TAKES A SHORT FLIGHT
========================================================================

After eight years with Knox Church Mr. Simpson began to feel a stirring toward a
new field of labor. Calls were coming to him from many places in both Canada and
the United States. One such interested him particularly, a call to become the
pastor of the large and important Chestnut Street Church in Louisville,
Kentucky. No one who knows even a little of the life and labors of A. B. Simpson
can fail to see that God was here going ahead of him to make the way straight
before his face, but it is true nevertheless that certain motives entered into
his decision to accept the pastorate of the Louisville church that do not appear
to be directly spiritual. God was answering his heart’s yearning for “better
things,” but He was compelled by the very nature of the man to lead him by such
means as He could find in the circumstances. We do Mr. Simpson no favor by
insisting on reading into his life (and especially at this stage of his
development) a degree of , spiritual perfection which he himself did not claim.
In the first place, his health was suffering from the effects of the harsh
climate of Ontario, and a change to some region where milder weather prevailed
would be a welcome relief to the flesh. Then the salary of $5,000 per year
offered by the Chestnut Street Church looked mighty good to a harried young
husband with a wife possessed of expensive tastes, and a family of six to
support. Add to this the further fact that Louisville was a much larger city
than Hamilton, affording almost limitless opportunities to a wide-awake
minister, and it is not hard to see how attractive the proposition looked. He
decided to move to Louisville. He resigned from the pastorate of Knox Church,
Hamilton, about the middle of December, 1873, and began his work in Louisville
the early part of January, 1874. It may be of no consequence and hardly worth
mentioning, but it is at least a curious fact that Mr. Simpson’s life revolved
around the fall and winter season as the Dipper around the North Star. He was
born December 15 and died October 29. He was married in the middle of September,
and took his first pastorate also at that time. Each change of pastorate was
made around the time of the winter holidays, and so far as we can learn nearly
every spiritual crisis came to him and almost every major life decision was made
by him at the cold season of the year. Was there something in the constitution
of this winter-born organism that reached its highest peak of aliveness when the
sun was low down in the sky and the winds blew chill? Science may some day
answer a question like that. As yet we can only wonder, and turn away without
reply. Chestnut Street Church belonged to the Presbyterian Church North, which,
a traveler from another planet might be shocked to learn, means this: that years
after the Civil War had been lost and won, and Grant had clicked his heels and
handed back to Lee his officer’s sword as a generous gesture toward a gallant
but defeated foe; after the silver-lipped Grady had come north from Atlanta and
thrown his arms around both the North and the South and hugged them close
together in that great oratorical classic, “The Old South and the New”; after
Lincoln had gone down in blood to the immense sorrow of a whole united people;
after the gray-clad soldiers had put down their guns and gone back to raising
sweet potatoes on the river bottoms of Georgia and Tennessee; after the senators
from down south were back in Washington holding forth on the glory of southern
manhood and the virtues of southern fried chicken, and getting applause from the
galleries, and the country was getting back to normal again, the churches were
still fighting the Civil War. The world fights and forgets; God’s people fight
and remember. The bitterness between the churches—even churches of the same
denomination, distinguished only by that pugnacious countersign, “North” or
“South”—was chilling the religious life of those cities lying near the line of
Mason and Dixon, and freezing every sporadic attempt at revival put forth by any
of them. Louisville was a northern city in a southern state, or a southern city
in a northern state (depending upon which way you hold your map, and whom you
are talking to) and the smouldering animosity between the churches was
particularly marked there. The new pastor of Chestnut Street Church felt this
the moment he arrived. At first it lay like a heavy burden upon his soul but
gradually he began to sense that he had been called to Louisville for just such
a time as this. Here was he, a neutral Canadian from far up beyond the Yankee
frontier. He could not possibly have any Civil War feeling one way or the other.
The people sensed this and the prejudices of both factions were set at rest.
They accepted him simply as a gifted and eloquent minister of the Presbyterian
Church—no odious geographical directions included—and they were ready to listen
to him. Here was his opportunity, and he did not fail it. After a few months of
surveying the field and getting acquainted he launched his quiet campaign of
reconciliation. He sent out a call to all the pastors of all denominations in
the city of Louisville to meet in the Chestnut Street Church to consider a
matter of vital importance to the spiritual life of the city. When they had
assembled he laid before them a plan to hold a city-wide union revival campaign
for all the churches at some central auditorium, and appealed to the pastors
present to get behind the effort. Then, knowing that if they were permitted to
start talking they would talk their bristles up and the meeting down, he
suggested that they now get on their knees and call upon God for revival. It
worked. Down they went, that crowd of preachers, and the fist stage of the
campaign was won. As they prayed the fire grew so hot that everyone was melted
except one old die-hard who ground his teeth shut, scooped up his hat and
stalked out for keeps. It was a fine thing. The others had gotten such a
spiritual uplift that they were ready to bring the Civil War to a close without
further bloodshed and get down to the business of winning men to Christ. Amid
tears and smiles and handclasps that crowd of happy preachers sat down to plan
their winter revival. They had their big names in that day even as we have in
ours and as they had in the days of John the Baptist, names that had about them
a magic power crowds and focus public attention. Among the greatest was Major
Whittle, a tender personality with mighty pulpit gifts and a consuming passion
for the souls of men. Him the pastors of Louisville secured for their winter
campaign. The meetings were held in Public Library Hall, a huge auditorium in
the heart of the city. There, night after night for weeks, upward of two
thousand people from every level of society from the gutter to the colonial
mansion gathered to hear the message of life. Whittle preached and P. P. Bliss
sang. The city was moved to its depths and hundreds were converted. At the close
of the campaign large numbers were received into the churches, scores joining
Chestnut Street Church, the church which had taken such an active part in the
revival campaign. The success of this campaign was a revelation to Mr. Simpson.
Up to this time be had been very much of a church man, visualizing the whole
religious picture as an adventure in respectability. The minister would be doing
what he once called with much dignity “the regular work of the ministry,”
serving all who came within the sphere of his proper interest, but stooping to
nothing novel, nothing that would in any way compromise the godly gravity of the
office. He had been willing to slave his heart out within the proper framework
of approved church activities, but, like Peter, he had been such a child of his
ecclesiastical upbringing, that he needed a special revelation to make him see
that people were dearer to God than forms, that the “lesser breeds without the
law” were the objects of God’s present love and anxious care more than all the
rules and regulations of the Presbytery. Though it had been his vision that
brought the meetings to the city, the meetings themselves so greatly enlarged
that vision that A. B. Simpson was never the same again. He had become—though he
did not yet realize it fully—an evangelist to the masses. The cry of the
millions was coming to him, the bleat of the other lost sheep. From here on he
belongs no more to one church, but to all who need him, not to his parish only,
but to all the lost world. However, a spiritual preparation was necessary in the
life of A. B. Simpson before his dream of world-evangelism could be realized. It
is remarkable how great a man can be, how faithfully he can labor in the gospel
ministry, how much, indeed, he can appear to accomplish in the work of the
church, and still be far short of the rich, power-driven service possible to the
Spirit-filled servants of God. Mr. Simpson began to see this plainly, and the
knowledge was not comforting to him. Until he came into contact with Major
Whittle he had not realized how much of pride and self there was within him, and
how little of the power of Christ. As he listened night after night to the
preaching of the great evangelist a vast uneasiness came over his heart; the
hyphenated self-qualities, self-love, self-confidence, self-seeking, all that
Adam-begotten brood of illegitimate soul children which inhabited his life,
began to make him sick utterly. There was something about Whittle, some overtone
of power, some fragrance of Christ, some hovering Presence that melted the
brilliant young Presbyterian minister like a vision of God. A thousand flaws
appeared to him, galling, painful, Christ-dishonoring; and worst of all a
constant gnawing emptiness within him, a desperate sense of spiritual
suffocation. He must have more of God. He must be filled with the Spirit. It was
characteristic of the man that he must settle everything with God alone. From
the first he had been a lone eagle. Others could inspire him, could help to
create spiritual desire within him, but when the crisis came it would be—indeed,
for him, it must be—when he was shut in with God in lonely wrestling like Jacob
by the side of Jabbok. His struggle was wholly internal. Outwardly he was the
same poised, gifted and highly respected minister of the church, but inwardly he
felt himself a dying man, forsaken and alone. The time appears to have been some
days after the close of the Whittle meetings. There in the privacy of his own
room, with not one soul to understand or to sympathize, his Gethsemane came to
him; old Adam stood on him and weighed him down till he was crushed as olives
are crushed in a press. He yielded himself to God in utter surrender, “Not
knowing,” he says, “but it would be death in the most literal sense before the
morning light.” And death it was in a most literal sense too, but death to the
old man, to the old self-asserting ego. God accepted his offering and blessed
him in a degree he had never known before, had hardly dared to dream possible.
From that hour he was turned into another man. He would live from that time on,
in his own words, “a consecrated, crucified, and Christ-devoted life.” All that
happened that night is known only to God and A. B. Simpson. Indeed it is
doubtful whether Mr. Simpson himself knew the full implications of that mighty
work of dying he accomplished there in the divine Presence. But things were
different after that. The eagle had broken loose and was stretching his wings.
It was a great triumph in the spirit, and was prophetic of lofty flights to
come.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: - THE HUMBLE HEAR A VOICE
========================================================================

Whatever others might do Mr. Simpson could not settle back to follow the
prescribed duties of a pastor, and nothing more. He must evangelize. It was in
his blood now and nothing could stop him. He suggested to the pastors of
Louisville that work which had started under Major Whittle be continued every
winter by the churches of the city uniting in a great Sunday evening
evangelistic campaign to be held in Public Library Hall. They were sympathetic
with his zeal but they were not prepared to give up the security of the regular
Sunday evening services to which they had been so long accustomed. For one
campaign of a few weeks yes, but every year, and for long periods, well, you
see, it would interfere with the habits of good church people and work a
hardship on the local treasuries. Then it did smack of religious excitement, of
enthusiasm a little out of hand; everything should be done decently and in
order. On the whole they felt it would not be wise to agree to such a proposal,
so they voted no, and the proposition was rejected. Rev. A. B. Simpson, pastor
of Chestnut Street Church, would not be stopped by the cautious, if kindly,
arguments of his brethren in the ministry. There was a lot in what they said, to
be sure, but what was it all and what did it amount to when set over against the
terrible fact that thousands walked the streets of Louisville who were without
any hope of salvation, and who would be forever without that hope if the
churches continued on in their regular groove? They had not reached these
thousands, and just now they had voted not even to try to reach them. Mr.
Simpson called his people together and laid the matter before them. The new
blood circulating through their veins had come like a transfusion. They had come
to like the sight of new converts and the sound of fresh testimonies. They were
ready to hear their pastor. In a few weeks the Sunday evening meetings were
discontinued at Chestnut Street Church, and the whole congregation went in a
body to Public Library Hall for their evening services. The news spread like
fire, and soon the auditorium was packed with men and women of every sort from
all Louisville and vicinity. Simpson preached the Gospel to lost sinners with a
tender grace unknown to him before, and unknown to most of the church people who
heard him. He appealed directly to the hearts of the people and made no bones
about it. They were lost, God loved them, Christ had died for them and now
invited them to come home. They ought to come at once, no delaying, no waiting.
He accepted as a foregone conclusion the truth of Christianity and refused to
turn from his ministry of reconciliation to engage in argument with the
half-persuaded or the unbelieving. What mattered one objection to the seven-day
creation period, or a dozen objections to the inspiration of the Scriptures for
that matter, or any other objections, when one hundred people were waiting to
turn to God as soon as the way was explained to them? He was familiar with
religious polemics, but he was too wise to engage in it before a congregation of
lost men. So he went directly to the people’s hearts and sought to win them to
Christ by any means that lay within his power. The daily papers took up the
story of the Sunday evening evangelistic effort and gave it first page
publicity. It may be that they were fed up on church dignity and relished a
glimpse of simple humanity in the pulpit, or it may be that as newsmen they
recognized a good story, but whatever the reason, they adopted Mr. Simpson and
his Sunday evening meetings as an object of particular attention. Every Monday
his sermon of the day before—at least a large part of it—appeared in the
Louisville papers. No amount of paid advertising could have done as much as this
did to boost the attendance. Indeed the attendance was no problem; frequently
the problem was to find room for the crowds that flocked to the services. Mr.
Simpson had learned from Whittle and Bliss the value of good gospel music. The
crowds that came each Sunday night to Public Library Hall heard music, lots of
it, the best that could be obtained; they enjoyed vocal combinations of every
sort from solos to a chorus choir, and they joined in mass singing of old time
church favorites and the more recent Gospel songs, composed by Sankey, Bliss,
Crosby and others of the gospel musicians of the day. Popular? Sure it was
popular, and it was frowned on by many of the sterile scribes of the synagogues,
but to Mr. Simpson the word “popular” carried no terrors. It meant “of the
people” and it was people he was interested in. The dignity of the clergy could
take care of itself; it would never lack defenders, but the people, the sinful,
friendly, seeking multitudes: they mattered more than the opinion of some
austere guardian of decadent orthodoxy. So the singing went on and the crowds
loved it and kept coming back week after week to enjoy it. The heart of A. B.
Simpson was delighted with what his eyes were beholding. He felt more than ever
that this was to be his work. The scales were falling away and he was beginning
to see clearly. The old idea of a little flock fed and comforted and bedded down
for the night without a thought of the lost ones out of the wilds became
unbearable to him. He must evangelize. His church must be an evangelistic church
first and everything else only after it had done its work of evangelization. And
now he comes forward with a brand new plan and lays it before his people. It is
to build in the center of the city a plain but commodious tabernacle, built not
after conventional church lines, but for utility, and located where the crowded
ways cross each other, where the rag tag and the outcast, the poor and him that
hath no helper may feel free to come and never worry because their clothes are
ragged and out of fashion; where the common man with his middle-class wife and
large family can come and not be uneasy if the baby makes a bit of a disturbance
during the service. In short he proposes that his church become a center of
evangelism for the whole city; that it change its psychology and think no more
of its reputation, but rather of the lost of Louisville. Chestnut Street Church
was already well out along that path and needed little prodding. With the
exception of a few who could not see it, and left the fellowship, the members
agreed to the radical step. A lot was purchased and the work of building begun.
The winter following, Chestnut Street Church sought again to obtain Public
Library Hall for their Sunday evening meetings, but found the way blocked. There
was a little politician in the wood pile somewhere and the city authorities
would not rent the hall. The new tabernacle was still in process of building;
the Sunday evening mass meetings must go on. Result, the daring Mr. Simpson went
straight to the owner of Macauley’s Theatre and requested the use of the theatre
(one of the largest and most popular amusement centers in downtown Louisville at
that time) for Sunday evening services. It must have been a bit of a surprise to
the gentleman who owned the theatre, for he was too painfully aware of the low
esteem in which he and his worldly business were held by the church people. But
business is business and the deal was made. When opening night rolled around and
the multitudes flocked to the theatre to a religious service, there was a
rending and splintering sound heard throughout all the churches: it was the
wholesale smashing of religious precedents by Chestnut Street Church and her
lovable but over zealous pastor! Many a stiff and proper saint that night drew
his robes close to him and wondered in hollow tones what Christianity was coming
to. This was carrying things too far! Nothing good could come of it! We who live
nearly three-quarters of a century removed from those times may find it hard to
understand why there should have been any objection to the holding of gospel
meetings in a theatre. The explanation is simply that we have had two
generations to get used to such meetings and it was new to them. We are no
broader, no brighter than they were; we merely have custom on our side, and they
had custom against them. We have seen it done before, and they had not. On such
a matter as this, religious people do not think anyway, they merely react. Their
emotions decide the verdict, and any thinking they may do is of very low
wattage, and is brought in mostly to support their prejudices. Now, after we
have discounted the objector’s reasons ninety-five percent as pure
rationalization of religious taboo-reaction, there still remains something to be
said in favor of his position. Worldly plays are given in the theatre every
night; irreligious and unwashed actors and actresses speak their profane lines,
sing their spicy songs and dance their suggestive dances to the great delight of
the graceless mobs that attend. The place, then, must be bad, altogether bad,
and no child of God should go in the theatre. It cheapens the Gospel to take it
to a theatre; it lowers the prestige of the Christian religion to go to a place
of worldly amusement to pray. This was the line of attack on the meetings, and
it sounded pretty convincing to the staid church people who wanted to be
convinced. The newspapers (which had no inhibitions about the matter) defended
Mr. Simpson against these critical attacks, and a few church leaders came to his
side of the controversy, but the “best” people remained irrevocably opposed to
such low-brow goings on. As for the pastor and his people, they smiled and went
their way. They knew the answers. A place is good or bad, said they, depending
upon who is in it and what they are doing. Things are never bad in themselves;
they are merely neutral, becoming bad or good only as they used for purposes
either right or wrong. The theatre itself—the floors and walls and seats—is not
bad per se, and when a crowd of people enters it bound on a holy errand, it
becomes good, better than any consecrated shrine could be where men approach it
in loveless duty or unbelief. And as for the prestige of the church: they had
never heard that a shepherd loses prestige by going out into the mountains to
bring the wandering sheep back to the fold again. The new tabernacle went up
slowly and—as is often true—the cost went up rapidly. What had started out to be
a modest building costing about $65,000 was blown up by the mounting ambitions
of the trustees into a magnificent edifice running well over $100,000. About
half of this was subscribed; the rest was church debt. Mr. Simpson fought this
to a standstill, but the people won. He had fired their zeal, and now he was
unable to direct it. He had wanted a plain building, tailor-made for the uses of
mass evangelism, but low in cost and out of debt. They had given him a beautiful
and imposing structure comparing favorably in appearance with the finest
buildings in the country, but in debt to the tune of nearly $50,000. The new
building—to be called Broadway Tabernacle—was at last ready for occupancy, and
the Chestnut Street Church people moved in and went to work. But there was no
dedication. Mr. Simpson flatly refused to dedicate debt. He made no effort to
hide his feelings. “Church debts,” he told the people grimly at the opening
service, “are properly called church bonds, and a church with bonds is not
free.” At the conclusion of his sermon he called upon his people to rise in one
brave, final sacrifice and clear off the debt then and there. ‘“This morning,”
he cried dramatically, “I desire to place on this pulpit the simple standard,
Broadway Tabernacle Free! free from debt, free to God, free to all.” But the
good people of the congregation were not equal to the occasion. They just could
not muster heroism enough to meet the challenge, and the debt was allowed to
remain. For the two years that Mr. Simpson remained in Louisville after the
erection of Broadway Tabernacle he continued to preach to the multitudes that
crowded in to hear the message of salvation. The dream of his heart was being
fulfilled; Louisville was hearing the Gospel and hundreds were turning to God.
But a shadow remained over the tabernacle and over the heart of the pastor—the
ugly shadow of debt—and he was not completely happy even though there were
unmistakable evidences of God’s favor upon the work. For those who like to toy
with the riddles of history we record the following fact: A year after Mr.
Simpson had left Broadway Tabernacle, and only about three years after the
structure was built, the indebtedness was suddenly and unexpectedly paid out in
full. Two months later the building went up in a roaring fire that destroyed it
completely! All this presents a tangle of divine providence and inscrutable
purpose too badly snarled for me to unravel. Anyone can work on it who has the
time.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: - THIS DREAMER COMETH
========================================================================

God had found a man after His own heart, a man too great to keep shut up in one
parish or in one city. The world would be his parish, as Wesley had phrased it,
and A. B. Simpson was beginning to sense his high destiny. Yet there can be
little doubt that Mr. Simpson, at this point in his life, was as unaware of the
great career that lay before him as Moses had been at the burning bush. He kept
hearing “a strange and secret whisper like a dream of night that told him he was
on enchanted ground.” There remained within him still a strong love for the
established church, a wish to carry out his large purposes while yet continuing
to serve his denomination. It is no reflection on that honored body that he
could not do it. He was walking softly, seeing only a little way ahead, letting
each providential step explain the one preceding it. Unknown to him he was
taking the prescribed Way of the gospel witness, “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and
the uttermost parts of the earth.” Hamilton had been his Jerusalem for eight
years; his Judaea had been Louisville, and now he is feeling himself stirred to
move on to Samaria. From there it would be “the uttermost parts” in a degree
known to few men in the history of the Christian Church. But he did not know
this yet. He did know one thing, however: the call of the unevangelized was upon
his heart. He felt a strong tug toward some larger field of service; maybe it
would be New York, he was not sure, but he wanted to get near to a center of
missionary activities, and New York looked like the place. To some extent Mr.
Simpson had always been interested in foreign missions. His father had been a
warm friend of the missionary cause and he had heard missions talked around the
table as early as he could remember. While still a mere boy he had been stirred
to the depths of his heart by the story of Rev. John Williams, the missionary
martyr, and he had wanted then to become a missionary. All through the years
there had been times when he felt, or imagined he felt, the holy hand of John
Geddies upon his brow. He had been too young to remember that scene there at his
baptism when the great Apostle to the Islands had dedicated him to God, but his
mother had never let him forget the fact or the circumstances, and the knowledge
of it remained as a charge and a benediction. The new missionary impulse felt
currently among the churches on both sides of the Atlantic, personal contacts
with missionary minded Christians, and, above all the new anointing which he had
received from God sharpened up his missionary interest till it glowed like a hot
point. A world of reasons, of information, of practical missionary truth broke
around him, sweeping away apathy, answering every objection and compelling him
to be a missionary. And still he would not say “yes.” It was the way of this
God-possessed dreamer. His call must come direct from the Throne. Logic would
not do. Reasons were not enough. There must be a spiritual experience concerning
the matter or there would be no response. So one night he lay down to sleep, not
consciously thinking about the lost world, but subconsciously very much
troubled. By intellectual conviction he was a missionary, but he was not
satisfied. Everything was so human yet, so mental, so much a matter of texts and
statistics. It was all only half-way down in his heart. But he was waiting, and
suddenly it happened. “I was awakened from sleep,” he says, “trembling with a
strange and solemn sense of God’s overshadowing power, and on my soul was
burning the remembrance of a strange dream through which I had that moment come.
It seemed to me that I was sitting in a vast auditorium and millions of people
were sitting around me. All the Christians in the world seemed to be there, and
on the platform was a great multitude of faces and forms. They seemed to be
mostly Chinese. They were not speaking, but in mute anguish were wringing their
hands, and their faces wore an expression I can never forget. As I woke with
that vision on my mind, I trembled with the Holy Spirit, and I threw myself on
my knees and every fiber in my being answered, ‘Yes, Lord, I will go.’ “ When
the Book of the Chronicles of the Holy Ghost is written, that night will mark
the beginning of a new chapter, for then was born a movement which has proved to
be one of the greatest missionary agencies of modern times. A missionary must
had come to a Spirit-filled man, a man big enough to do something about it, a
man great enough to make himself heard to the farthest corners of the earth. The
cold-hearted will frown on the words “vision” and “dream,” the timid will
wonder, the psychologist will look interested, reach for his book on abnormal
psychology, and leaf over to the section that treats on religious delusions, and
smile knowingly. But the years tell another story. A. B. Simpson had become a
world-missionary, whatever men may think of it, and he had come through in the
only way a man of his temperament could. For better or for worse that was the
way he moved. He would first get an idea, a concept, then must come a heart
experience to set it off, to detonate the charge it contained. Until the
explosion came, he could wait, sometimes for years, mulling his idea over, half
forgetting it, burying it under a mountain of work; then the great day would
come and he would be prostrated, almost slain under the impact of that idea, his
and yet God’s idea, leaping up now, and powerfully compelling as it came out at
him like a blast of creative force. To the earth-walking Christian, ankle-deep
in dust, who has never seen heaven opened or beheld a vision of God, this will
seem all out of order, too emotional, too extreme. But it is the way of the
strong eagles of the kingdom, the prophets, the apostles, the reformers and
revivalists. These fly high and see far, and that they are not understood is no
great wonder. The sky-loving eagle, screaming in the sun may be a puzzle to the
contented biddy scratching in the yard, but that is no good argument against the
eagle. The years, I say, tell their own story. Nowhere else in the field of
human endeavor can so little pass for so much with so many as in religion. It
affords unlimited opportunity for men to rise like a rocket—and come down like
the stick. And the catch is that those who saw the Pseudo-Moses go up are seldom
around when he comes down, so no one notices it anyway. But time puts the
correct price tag on everything. The true test of spiritual greatness is
permanence. By this test A. B. Simpson stands triumphant. It is now sixty-seven
years since he dreamed his dream of world-evangelization, and fifty-six years
since was formed the society that arose at his call to give realization to that
dream. The work he founded has stood up under the strain of two world wars and
three major economic depressions, and is going stronger with each passing year.
It has lived through how many moral revolutions in society, philosophical
about-faces in learned circles, shifts in theology among the churches and
radical changes in religious methods everywhere? Yet the work goes on, turning
not to the right hand nor to the left, its original vision undimmed and its
initial purpose unaltered. The early months of the year 1879 were important
months in the life of A. B. Simpson. His world-call was becoming stronger, and
his plans were beginning to take shape. He was getting more confident now, surer
that his vision was from God, that the “uttermost parts of the earth” were to
constitute his field of service. His dream of multitudes, “in mute anguish,
wringing their hands,” was slowly interpreting itself to him, making itself
plain and he was not forgetting his promise, “Yes, Lord, I will go.” To dream,
in the language of Mr. Simpson, was not to sit in pleasant reverie within some
ivory tower mercifully apart from the harsh realities of the world. Rather it
was to reconnoiter, to search out the strength and position of the foe, to
decide strategy and to mass for the attack. Not that there had been no other
dreamers before him, no others who had caught a vision of world-evangelization.
Indeed, the work of foreign missions had lately come into greater notice than at
any time for centuries gone. There was quite a stirring among the dry bones in
those days; a respectable army of missionaries had stood up out of the dust of
generations of neglect of the Great Commission. God was laying sinews upon them,
putting breath into them, and they were going to hitherto forgotten parts of the
earth with the message of Christ. But their numbers were small and their efforts
were scattered; the field was wide and, at its best, the interest among the
churches was slight. Something was being done, to be sure, but it was only as a
drop of rain now and then on a thirsty desert, to be instantly, eagerly
swallowed up and lost in the parched vastness that was heathenism. A new all-out
effort was needed, a wider dissemination of missionary information, a
magazine—yes, that would be it, a magazine to promote the work of missions. Mr.
Simpson saw it now like a flash of light. He would launch a new kind of
magazine, one devoted wholly to the cause of world-missions, a digest of
missionary news, full of reports of work accomplished, interesting descriptions
of conditions among the heathen, a challenge to the churches, and a call. And
why not get into step with the modem trend toward pictures and illustrations? It
would be different, but that would be in its favor. Yes, he would illustrate his
new magazine with the newest type wood cuts, and maybe, later, engravings made
from actual photographs taken on the trail. Then the people could see, as well
as read about the tribes and tongues and peoples to whom the Gospel must be
sent. To carry out this plan it would be necessary for him to be close to some
center of missionary operations, some port from which missionaries sailed, and
to which they returned again brimming over with missionary enthusiasm. There was
just one such city in the United States; he was sure of it now. It would be New
York. He must locate in New York where he could see and interview men and women
who knew the fields, who could furnish fresh information to make his magazine
live. The various denominational boards stayed mostly each within its own little
half-acre; the work of one did not greatly help the others. Denominational
barriers interfered. What was needed was a journal that could serve as a
clearing house for missionary news of all the churches, that could toss the fire
across the fences and spread it everywhere. His heart glowed with the thought of
what might be done. But Louisville was not the city from which could be launched
such an ambitious undertaking. The good people of Chestnut Street Church, for
all their evangelistic zeal and their love for the lost, were not ready to
follow their pastor in his vision of world-missions. He must find more favorable
surroundings. Then suddenly the way was plain before him. A call came from New
York. Dr. Burchard was leaving the Thirteenth Street Church, and the church
officers were sure that no one but A. B. Simpson would do as his successor. He
had preached there some time before and was no stranger to the people. The call
that came was cordial and urgent. Would he come? And at once? It did not take
him long to put two and two together. An urge from within and a call from
without: He immediately resigned his Louisville charge and moved on to his new
field in the city of New York, beginning his work there in November, 1879. The
arrival of the new pastor marked a sharp upturn in the life and activities of
Thirteenth Street Church. A new spiritual impulse was evident at once. The
people were revived; church attendance increased rapidly; many were converted
and numbers were added to the church. As the months went on everything looked
good to the church officers, mighty good, if the pastor would only stick to his
parish and not show so much interest in the poor and the lost of the city
streets. Certainly someone had to labor for their salvation, but not the pastor
of fashionable Thirteenth Street Church. That church was not a rescue mission.
They hoped the pastor would keep that in mind. Its members were well-to-do
people, fairly along toward the top of the social ladder. They were real
Christians, and they would support any project as long as it was for the
strengthening of their own church. They welcomed any new member who was of their
own kind. But after all, the church is the church, and it must be protected from
the—well, inelegant influences of the commoner classes. Mr. Simpson sensed their
attitude, but he did not quite know what to make of it. His vision was bigger
than one church, his love deeper than one social stratum. He wanted his church
to give up its narrow exclusiveness and become a center for the evangelization
of the masses. The church officers could not see this. Definitely, Thirteenth
Street Church had its traditions to maintain and its prestige to protect. They
watched the pastor with considerable uneasiness, though for the time being they
spoke gently and kept their anxiety to themselves; they dare not risk losing
such a giant from their pulpit. He was young, and besides he was from the west.
He would learn. But when, one day, the pastor came before the session and asked
permission to bring into the church upwards of a hundred converts from the
Italian quarter, which he had won while preaching on the streets down in the
poor neighborhoods, they felt the time had come to lay upon the young man a firm
but kindly hand. They were more than pleased, they explained, that those poor
Italians had been won to Christ, but did the pastor think they should come into
their fellowship? They would not be the social equals of the rest of the
members, and would likely not feel at home anyway. Could he not find a spiritual
home for them among others of their own kind? Mr. Simpson said he thought he
could (and he subsequently did), but this experience opened his eyes to the
futility of trying to carry out his plans through the medium of a regular
church—at least that church. He accepted the rebuff graciously, but he began to
dream again, and his dream did not include Thirteenth Street Church.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: - THE SHADOW DECLINETH
========================================================================

When he had been in New York only a little more than a year Mr. Simpson’s labors
were suddenly interrupted by a break in his health so serious as to force him to
quit all pastoral duties, as he then thought, for good. He had never been
robust. At fourteen years of age he had been brought near to death when his
whole nervous system went into complete collapse. A few years later, during his
first pastorate, and while still a very young man, he had suffered another
physical breakdown so severe that he was compelled to drop all activities and
rest for a period of weeks. During much of the time he had been at Louisville he
had labored under the handicap of painful physical infirmities. “I labored on
for years,” he declared, “with the aid of constant remedies and preventives. God
knows how many hundred times in my earlier ministry when preaching in my pulpit
or ministering beside a grave it seemed that I must fall in the midst of the
service or drop into the open grave.” Now the strain of his many activities in
New York had done its evil work. The old trouble of heart and nerves came back
upon him with increased terror. So grave was his condition this time that a
prominent physician told him frankly that his days were numbered. Along with
brain weariness and weakness of nerves and body came a heavy visitation of
gloom, totally depressing all his powers and plunging him into a Slough of
Despond so deep that further work was impossible. He secured a leave of absence
from his church and left for the health resort at Saratoga Springs to try to
recruit his wasted powers. But nothing helped much. “I wandered about,” he later
wrote in describing his experience, “deeply depressed. All things in life looked
dark and withered.” And that from a man who had told of spiritual joys and
ecstasies and high flights into the realms of love and bliss. So it was, and so
it is; and once more the low flying Christian will find it hard to understand.
This work is trying to be what it set out to be; no defense, no uncritical
eulogy, but a fair and frank portrayal of a man whose common human nature made
him subject to all the temptations flesh is cursed with, and who yet deserves to
be studied as a thrilling example of what the grace of God can do for and
through human weakness. A. B. Simpson needs no gloss from us; he is well able to
stand on his own legs; his place in modern church history is secure.
Nevertheless, to sharpen our focus somewhat, and bring our picture into better
perspective, we point out that Mr. Simpson’s conflict with Giant Despair was
nothing unusual in one of his temperament. On those occasional descents which he
admittedly made into the nether regions, those Dantean visits through the dark
forest and into the blind world, he was not alone. The company he shared on
those painful journeys (if he could but have remembered it) was probably far
better than that he left behind him. For the great had traveled that way. David
had wandered there sometimes, his voiceless harp under his arm, all its strings
hanging broken and mute; Jeremiah had been often there, and the rough stones of
the way had been damp with his tears; even the mighty Elijah had spent a little
while in the shadowy vale in full retreat—we wince to admit—from an angry woman;
Luther had gone at least once down the dark road and—as if to balance
accounts—had been led by a woman back into the sunshine again. It is
characteristic of the God-intoxicated, the dreamers and mystics of the Kingdom,
that their flight-range is greater than that of other men. Their ability to
sweep upward to unbelievable heights of spiritual transport is equaled only by
their sad power to descend, to sit in dazed dejection by the River Chebar or to
startle the night watches with their lonely grief. A long list of names could be
appended here to support this statement; and it would be a noble and saintly
list indeed, for Moses’ name would be there, and Thomas Upham’s and Brother
Lawrence’s, and St. Francis’, and Madam Guyon’s and a host of others. It might
well read like a little Who’s Who in the Kingdom of God, if the whole truth were
told of the gloom of the great, which overtakes them sometimes on their journey
to the City of God. While at Saratoga Springs Mr. Simpson chanced to stroll out
to a religious meeting at a near-by camp ground. He was not greatly impressed
with what he saw and heard till a Negro quartette stood up and sang what has now
come to be known as a “spiritual.” It was one of those single-string affairs,
carrying but one idea, and repeating that idea over and over, English round
style, till the end of the song and the bottom of the page were reached: “My
Jesus is the Lord of Lords: No man can work like Him.” It was not much, but it
was enough. It took nothing more artistic than a braying ass to rebuke the
madness of a prophet, and the crowing of a barnyard cock turned the feet of an
apostle back into the narrow way. So it came to pass that a simple “spiritual”
was used of God to lift a future world—missionary from despair. There is a
compensating feature about the mystic temperament: that is its quick pick-up,
its astonishing ability to take off from a standing start. That quaint Negro
song acted like a catapult to launch A. B. Simpson into the air. “It fell upon
me,” he said later, “like a spell. It fascinated me. It seemed like a voice from
heaven. It possessed my whole being. I took Him also to be my Lord of Lords, and
to work for me. I knew not how much it all meant; but I took Him in the dark,
and went forth from that rude, old-fashioned service, remembering nothing else,
but strangely lifted up. Strangely lifted up: there you have it, the language of
deliverance, the voice from the heights. This was not imagination; it was real.
The wounded eagle had found his wings again and was soaring back into the sun.
Only slightly improved physically, but now altogether out from under the
spiritual cloud, he returned to New York to take up his pastoral duties again.
But there was no use telling himself that he could carry on; he was clearly a
sick man. The physician’s prediction seemed to be on its way to fulfillment. The
shadow was declining. It looked as if his sun was about to go down while it was
still day. There was every reason why Mr. Simpson should desire to live. His
family needed him. Two daughters there were, and three sons, the eldest boy
being still in his early teens and the youngest girl a mere baby. And he loved
these noisy youngsters, did their father, with an over-flowing tenderness of
devotion possible only to one of his torrid emotional nature. To leave them now,
and to leave their none-too-robust mother with the burden of their upbringing!
It was more than he could bear. And the call of the lost world, the
unevangelized masses who might never hear the Gospel if he failed them, what
could he do about these? What about the magazine, and the “Yes, Lord” which he
had said to foreign missions, had repeated as a bride repeats “I do” at the
altar? And the multitudes “in mute anguish wringing their hands?” The high
ambitious plans and the long dreams, what of these? It was a trusting, but
confused and frustrated minister who would walk slowly, painfully about the
streets of New York during those summer evenings, old, tired and through—at
thirty-seven.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: - HE FINDS THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
========================================================================

The year was 1881. Throughout the Protestant world there was the sound of a
going in the top of the mulberry trees, strange stirrings and motions of
spiritual life, felt everywhere, but more distinctly noticed in independent
fellowships and outside the sacred precincts of conventional Christianity.
Laymen were awaking to the work which the clergy had been neglecting. The
Salvation Army, a laymen’s movement, had been founded in London some years
before by “General” William Booth, and was getting off to a running start in
most of the great cities of the English-speaking world. It was the church of the
humble, the army of the outcast and the friendless, but it had power, and with
that disconcerting persistence of all movements that are born rather than merely
organized, it knew where it was going and was on its way. The Holiness Movement,
a renaissance of John Wesley Methodism with a few additions of its own, was just
coming into notice in this country. Dwight L. Moody, the converted shoe clerk,
was traveling up and down the country swaying thousands with his blunt unadorned
eloquence, and winning hundreds of converts wherever he appeared. His success
was encouraging other gifted soul winners to launch out into huge campaigns of
evangelism. Rescue missions were springing up in all of the larger cities;
street meetings were common, and religious parades, all equipped with uniforms,
brass bands and drum majors, were becoming familiar sights in many places.
Taking it all in all things were moving in gospel circles. America was
responding to the urgings of the Holy Ghost, but her response must be after her
own genius and in a manner characteristic of the rough and robust spirit of a
generation whose fathers had conquered a continent. Out of the creative
spiritual yearnings of those times was born a religious phenomenon, fathered by
doctrine which, though never wholly approved by the guardians of formal
orthodoxy, has nevertheless been loved by countless eminent saints of every
shade of theological thought within the framework of evangelical Christianity
from Paul’s day to the present time. We refer to the doctrine of divine healing.
The sovereignty of God over the human body was being recognized by some
reputable Bible teachers, and the privilege of the believer to take his
sicknesses to God in prayer with expectation of relief was being taught by
increasing numbers both in Europe and in the United States. Reports of
supernatural healings were coming from widely separated parts of the world.
Pastor Blumhardt in Germany, with his triumphant battle cry, “Jesus Is Victor!”
was having amazing success in praying for the sick. Dr. W. E. Boardman in
England, and Dr. Charles Cullis in the United States were seeing remarkable
cures wrought in answer to believing prayer. Many less prominent persons were
going quietly about their mission of mercy, praying the sick back to health, and
humbly refusing to allow their names or their persons to be advertised. No
effort to understand the life and work of A. B. Simpson from this point on can
be a complete success if we overlook the part played by Dr. Charles Cullis, the
Boston physician. Dr. Cullis had been for some time head of a tuberculosis
sanatorium in the city of Boston. His sympathies were deeply stirred by the
distress and hopelessness of many of his patients, and being a sincere Christian
he was moved to pray for their deliverance. There followed recoveries so speedy
and unusual as to hint of the miraculous. Soon he discontinued the use of other
means and sought to bring his patients back to normal health through the prayer
of faith alone. The outcome was that he became convinced of the scripturalness
of this method, and began to teach it as a Bible doctrine. He soon gave up his
medical practice and went into full-time Christian work, preaching from place to
place and praying with the sick. His work became widely known and many flocked
to him for spiritual and physical help. In the summer of 1881 Mr. Simpson
visited Old Orchard, Maine, a famous summer resort and convention ground on the
Atlantic Ocean. Heart and nerves had failed him. He moved about slowly in great
weakness and bodily pain. Dr. Cullis was conducting a gospel meeting in an
amphitheatre near the ocean side, and Mr. Simpson felt a desire to attend. In
these meetings he experienced another of the great crises of his life, one of
such revolutionizing character that it may be said that his real world ministry
began there. All before had been preliminary. At the Cullis meetings he heard
men and women testify to supernatural healing. His own great need compelled him
to give close attention to these testimonies. Not the sermons, mind you, nor the
eloquence of the evangelist, nor the earnestness of the appeal, but the witness
of those who had been healed. “I heard a great number of people testify that
they had been healed by simply trusting the word of Christ, just as they would
for salvation.” Here was a sail on the horizon! A light, however dim, in the
darkness! With that fine co-ordination of head and heart which always marked the
man he went to work on the data before him. Those who testified, he reasoned,
had no motive for misrepresenting the facts. They stood to gain nothing by their
witness. All evil motive was ruled out. Of course, they could be mistaken, but
two facts there were which could not be hurdled on that hypothesis: They had
been ill, that was the worst one. They now stood upon their feet completely
sound, that was the second. They believed the Lord Himself had touched them and
delivered them from their afflictions. If they could be healed, why could not
he? He was beginning to hope. However, common sense advised caution. With all of
his propensity for quick intuition and swift flight he was a Scotsman still, a
son of canny James Simpson who had to be convinced. He would not be taken in by
the enthusiasm of these well-intentioned people. He must know for himself. “It
drove me to my Bible,” he testified. “I am so glad I did not go to man. At His
feet alone, with my Bible open, and with no one to help or guide me, I became
convinced that this was part of Christ’s glorious Gospel for a sinful and
suffering world, for all who would believe and receive His word.” He was running
true to form. He now had a conviction, he had discovered a doctrine, but he must
have spiritual confirmation or he could not go on. Reason was not enough. He
must meet God and experience the power of the doctrine. The Spirit must furnish
evidence that he understood the Scripture aright, that he was not mistaken in
his position. So one Friday afternoon he walked out under the open sky,
painfully, slowly, for he was always weak and out of breath in those days. A
path into a pine wood invited him like an open door into a cathedral. There on a
carpet of soft pine needles, with a fallen log for an altar, while the wind
through the trees played an organ voluntary, he knelt and sought the face of his
God. Suddenly the power of Christ came upon him. It seemed as if God Himself was
beside him, around him, filling all the fragrant sanctuary with the glory of His
presence. “Every fiber in my soul,” he said afterwards, “was tingling with the
sense of God’s presence.” Stretching his hands toward the green vaulted ceiling
he took upon himself the vow that saved him from an early grave, and—as
subsequent developments revealed—changed the entire direction of his ministry
and made him the greatest exponent of divine healing that the Church has seen in
a thousand years. Preacher that he was his vow must be divided into “points,”
three in all, and they summed up his faith in the Word and his willingness to
trust it forever. “It was so glorious to believe,” he said, and he made this
vow: 1. He would solemnly accept the truth of divine healing as a part of the
Word of God and of the Gospel of Christ. 2. He would take the Lord Jesus as his
physical life, for all the needs of his body until all his life-work was done.
3. He solemnly promised to use this blessing for the glory of God and the good
of others. All this he earnestly pledged himself to do, as he put it with
trembling awful devotion, “as I shall meet Thee in that day.” He left that piney
temple a man physically transformed. A few days later he went on a long hike
into the country, did this weakling minister for whom the grave had been eagerly
waiting, and climbed a mountain three thousand feet high. “When I reached the
mountain top,” he relates joyfully, “I seemed to be at the gate of heaven, and
the world of weakness and fear was lying at my feet. From that time I have had a
new heart in this breast.” The old trouble never visited him again. Facts are
glorious, tough, stubborn things, and they are fine criteria against which to
measure our beliefs. Wesley taught that any doctrine which was found untenable
in practice should come under suspicion of being erroneous and should be
carefully re-examined in the light of Scripture. If it would not work in real
life it was not likely to be the true teaching of the Bible. The converse is
also true. Here was a man, weak and broken and hardly able to get about, who
discovered in the Scriptures what he took to be a doctrine of hope for the
physical body. He could be wrong. But he trusts it and becomes instantly and
completely well. That may not be conclusive evidence of the correctness of the
doctrine, but it is presumptive evidence of sufficient weight to deserve
respectful consideration from every honest investigator. Simpson soon found that
he could not enjoy his new life unmolested. Many who had had no interest
whatsoever in the thin sickly young minister so long as he was sickly and thin,
leaped forward at once to protest his healing now that he was sound and well
again. They assailed him for his belief that God will heal the body, and brought
forward unanswerable arguments to show that He will do exactly nothing of the
kind. None of these objections did Mr. Simpson try to answer. He needed no
arguments. He had something infinitely better. He had abounding, overflowing
health, and he had it with hardly an interruption for the next thirty-five
years. Before his healing he had looked so frail as to excite pity. After that
experience there in the pine woods he took on much weight and looked the picture
of vibrant health. Furthermore, he had found the secret of sustained health, of
taking physical strength from the Lord day by day as he took oxygen from the
atmosphere. And it was no fancy religious notion. For half a lifetime after this
he was enabled to do a work so enormous as to stagger belief. Indeed I can think
of none except Paul and Wesley who compare with him for quantity of work turned
out. Year after year he kept at his mighty task, with hardly a day out for rest
or recreation, up to within a few months of his death. These are stout tenacious
facts. They are hard to circumvent. Whatever our beliefs may be the facts are
there challenging us, demanding to be explained. Maybe Mr. Simpson’s explanation
is as good as any: “I do not desire to provoke argument, but I give my humble
testimony, and to me it is very real and very wonderful: I know it is the Lord.”
In all candor, it must be said that not all who opposed him belonged to the
scribes and Pharisees. Many men of unquestioned sincerity and genuine Christian
character took issue with him. And it cannot be denied that as the years went by
much of the criticism he suffered was invited by his persistent support of the
doctrine of divine life for the body. For he did not forget point three of his
vow there in the pine woods. He would use the truth of healing to bless mankind.
For the rest of his life he preached divine healing. Always he subordinated it
to the greater truth of salvation through the blood of Christ, but always he
kept the charge he felt had been committed to him for the suffering bodies of
men. Whether he would or not the name of A. B. Simpson and the doctrine of
divine healing were wedded for life. The Irish have a proverb, “Whoever marries
a mountainy woman marries the mountain.” Mr. Simpson soon learned that in
embracing divine healing he had opened his arms to all of its relatives, good
and bad, for all time, past and present. The disadvantages went with the
blessings. Every believer in the doctrine was forced to carry the odium of every
fanatical excess which might have been practiced in the name of healing since
the dim dawn and abysm of time. Mr. Simpson was not so naive as to be surprised
by this. He rather expected it, but it hurt him, nonetheless. He never enjoyed
being a martyr. He was willing to be eaten by the lion if God willed it so, but
he never sought out a lion and made suggestions to it. He loved people too much
to enjoy their enmity. When he began to hold his great conventions criticism
rose like a cloud of locusts and hovered over every city where he appeared.
Editorial condemnation in current religious papers was scorching hot. Sarcasm,
invective, solemn stupid arguments buttressed by carefully misused texts of
Scripture, all were employed in an effort to discredit him in the eyes of the
public. Of course the effort succeeded to some extent. For the rest of his days
he bore the stigmata of what he called “questionable if not false, teaching.” By
many he was rejected outright. They had heard about those crackpot divine
healing people and they would have none of it. They are not to be blamed for
this. They were rejecting A. B· Simpson for the abuses practiced by others. They
could not discriminate. All believers in the doctrine were by them tarred with
the same stick. In spite of the obvious sincerity of the man himself, in spite
of the thousands won to Christ through his labors, in spite of the
Christ-centered, well-balanced message which he preached, and the dignity and
decorum manifested in all his public meetings, he still had to endure
misunderstanding and suspicion to the end of his days. And the Society he formed
has, to some degree, inherited his cross.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: - BY THE CLOUD AND THE FIRE
========================================================================

Upon his recovery Mr. Simpson returned immediately to his duties as pastor of
the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church. He felt like a man under sentence of
death who had received a full pardon. Hope returned like a sunrise and his plans
soared out again to meet the challenge of the unevangelized millions. The old
urge to reach the masses came back upon him with overwhelming force. Nearly two
years before this he had accepted the call to the pastorate of the Thirteenth
Street Church “with the explicit understanding on the part of the new church
officers that they would unite with him in a popular religious movement to reach
the unchurched masses.” These are his own words. The church had never made good
on that promise. They simply could not see it as he did. They had received a new
impulse of life from the ministry of the new pastor. Attendance had stepped up
and many members had been added to the rolls of the church, but the two
viewpoints were irreconcilable. “they wanted a conventional parish for
respectable Christians. What their pastor wanted was a multitude of publicans
and sinners.” So Mr. Simpson explained later. If he could not inspire them to
follow him, neither would he be hindered by them. He must follow his star. So he
determined to resign his pastorate and launch out on his own. This step was
taken only after a full week spent in earnest prayer. He would not trust to his
own wisdom. “The parting was most friendly,” he assures us. “It is pleasant to
look back to a crisis of so much importance passed without any strain whatever.
While the personal relationship between him and his church always remained warm
and kindly, there were two circumstances which led him to feel that he should
not only resign from the pastorate of his church but should retire from the
Presbyterian ministry altogether. One was his experience of divine healing a few
months before. His ministerial brethren were not unkind in their attitude toward
him, but he knew his presence might easily prove embarrassing to them. The other
was his being led to accept the doctrine of baptism by immersion as a scriptural
teaching. He had been immersed himself after his miraculous recovery. Then he
found that he could no longer in good conscience sprinkle helpless infants as
required by the rules of the Presbyterian Church. It is amusing to note that
during his seminary days he had written a prize-winning paper in defense of
infant baptism. Now he is withdrawing from his church because he no longer
believes in the validity of his old thesis. “A foolish consistency,” wrote
Emerson, “is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines.” A. B. Simpson was never a slave to consistency. He
could sometimes contradict himself with an elegant grace that made the
hide-bound “theologicians” wring their hands in impotent despair. For instance,
he believed in immersion, was himself immersed, would administer baptism after
no other mode. Yet he would receive into full membership in his church any child
of God regardless of his stand on water baptism. He might pause before immersing
a candidate long enough to ask a non-immersionist brother to lead in prayer! It
was all very puzzling to the ecclesiastical stickler. But Mr. Simpson never saw
anything incongruous about it. Neither was he always consistent in his
application of the doctrine of divine healing to the requirements of actual
life. The pitiful little syllogisms upon which some of his professed followers
sometimes stretch poor distressed believers as upon a rack would have been
summarily rejected by him. Kindness and love dictated his attitude toward the
sick. He was more concerned with the leading of the Spirit and the prayer of
faith than with rigid conformity to a doctrine—even his own doctrine. His
decision to quit his church and strike out alone into the work of evangelizing
the multitudes of New York City looked to everyone except A. B. Simpson like a
piece of rare folly. He had been earning five thousand dollars a year at his old
job. Now he has exactly no income at all, and a family of seven to support. It
looked like lunacy, and of course there was no lack of comforters to assure him
that it was indeed lunacy. There were clergymen in the city who frankly stated
their opinion that the brilliant young minister had lost his reason. To trust
God for his health was bad enough, but to trust for his daily bread as well—that
was sure proof of insanity! The elders of his church came down to the parsonage
the morning after the news broke, and offered their condolences to Mrs. Simpson.
They felt, they said, “as if they had come to his funeral.” “And it is
possible,” said Mr. Simpson afterwards, with dry humor, “that she may also have
felt that he might as well be dead.” The wife of a prophet has no easy road to
travel. She cannot always see her husband’s vision, yet as his wife she must go
along with him wherever his vision takes him. She is compelled therefore to walk
by faith a good part of the time—and her husband’s faith at that. Mrs. Simpson
tried hard to understand but if she sometimes lost patience with her devoted but
impractical husband she is not for that cause to be too much censured. From
affluence and high social position she is called suddenly to poverty and
near-ostracism. She must feed her large family somehow—and not one cent coming
in. The salary has stopped, and the parsonage must be vacated! She tries to keep
calm, but she is secretly frantic. And her husband’s placid, “Now Margaret
darling, don’t get upset. God will provide,” did not help too much. Mr. Simpson
had heard the Voice ordering him out, and he went without fear. His wife had
heard nothing, but she was compelled to go anyway. That she was a bit
unsympathetic at times has been held against her by many. That she managed to
keep within far sight of her absent- minded high soaring husband should be set
down to her everlasting honor. It is no easy job being wife to such a man as A.
B. Simpson was. Mr. Simpson lost no time in getting started upon his new
project. Through the newspapers (which for some reason were always interested in
him) he announced a Sunday afternoon meeting to be held in a cheap place on
Eighth Avenue known as Caledonian Hall where he would deliver an address on the
spiritual needs of the city. He had specifically instructed his former
parishioners not to attend the meetings. He did not wish to disturb the unity of
Thirteenth Street Church. Only two persons disregarded his wishes and came.
There was a fair crowd in attendance at that first meeting, though it must be
acknowledged that New York managed to stay away in considerable numbers. That
afternoon he announced his intention to launch a continuous campaign for the
evangelization of the masses of the city, and invited all who were interested to
meet him later for prayer and consultation. Only seven persons responded. But
they were not discouraged. They knelt down and actually thanked God that they
were poor and few and weak! And then they “threw themselves upon the might of
the Holy Ghost.” That was the rather inglorious beginning of what was to be one
of the strongest forces for world-evangelization since the days of the apostles.
Sunday services continued at Caledonian Hall, with mid-week meetings at the
Simpson home. Numbers increased greatly as the weeks went by, and scores were
brought into the fold. A little organization was formed with the simplest kind
of skeleton constitution. The new movement was on its way. The pastor had a
little flock and the flock had his own spirit. They were all out for evangelism.
Everyone went to work and sinners came flocking in. The crowds soon outgrew the
hall, and the meetings had to be moved to larger quarters. For the next eight
years, or until the completion of their permanent home on Eighth Avenue, this
band of peculiar people continued to move from place to place like the children
of Israel in the wilderness. They were attempting a work so radically different
that they had no precedent to guide them. They were compelled to learn by the
hard and expensive method of trial and error. There were mistakes made and
losses suffered as a result of bad business judgment or some unforeseen shift in
human population or change in real estate values in a given locality. But the
victories outweighed the defeats, and so they marched on. From hall to tent,
from tent to theatre or on to some abandoned church went this happy band of
soul-winners·. Always they were busy at the one task to which they believed God
had called them—that of bringing lost men to the Saviour, and always they were
learning, were getting experience, were winning souls and adding to their
number. A. B. Simpson was in his glory. He was seeing Christian democracy at its
simple best. No social lines separated his people from each other. His members
came from every level of human society from the gutter to the penthouse. Any
Saturday night “a brother of low degree” might be seen standing on a street
corner giving his testimony while a well-to-do and cultured believer stood
beside him holding his hat while he talked. It was a free church in the fullest
sense of the word. The old irritating conservatism that used to block so many of
his plans was gone. Gone were the paralyzing traditions that had stopped his
best efforts for so many years. No blessed antiques were there, sitting solemnly
about the church building to woo the minds of the worshipers back into the musty
past. With the past they had little to do. Most of them were glad to be rid of
it. The future allured them and the present kept them busy. There were no pew
rents and no assessments. The stranger and the poor were received with open
arms. Their eloquent and scholarly pastor was their undisputed leader by common
consent and joyful acclaim. The meetings were marked by deep spirituality and
mighty flowing power. Altogether they presented as strange and as wonderful a
sight as might have been seen anywhere in Christendom as they preached and sang
and prayed their way through the wilderness that was New York. As the years went
on Mr. Simpson and his people came to see the need for a permanent base of
operation, located near the center of the city and built to meet the needs of
their work. They had become weary of the hand-me-down buildings they had been
forced to put up with for so long. These were never satisfactory. A suitable
location was accordingly chosen at the corner of Eighth Avenue and West 44th
Street, only one block from Times Square, and plans were drawn up for the new
building. It was to provide a large auditorium for the public meetings, three
chapels for smaller gatherings, an educational building for the Training
Institute which was already established, a book store on the ground floor and a
Missionary Home, or Christian hotel, with accommodations for about one hundred
guests. The cornerstone was laid in the fall of 1888 and the completed building
dedicated in May 1889. There was great rejoicing as the congregation moved into
their new working quarters and set about the business to which they had given
their lives. The Gospel Tabernacle, as the place was called (too bad they could
not have thought of a name for it. But that was one rather unfortunate blind
spot in the luminous mind of Simpson; he was never happy at choosing names), was
the new home base, but it never became an end in itself. From there the busy
workers radiated out like spokes from the hub of a wheel. When the new work
began under Mr. Simpson eight years before, there had been no thought of forming
another church. They planned rather to carry on an aggressive evangelistic
effort, leaving the converts free to join the churches of their own choice. But
as the congregation grew, the clamor became insistent for a church home for the
new believers. “Some wanted to be baptized,” said Mr. Simpson later, “all wanted
the Lord’s supper and none wanted to be sent away.” That was the cause back of
the organization of a little church of less than twenty members. “At first there
were not men enough to go around and fill the various offices, so some of our
trustees had to be ‘elect ladies.’” That was about seven years be fore the
opening of the Gospel Tabernacle. By this time they had increased to a multitude
which swarmed about the new center like swallows around an old chimney at
sundown. The fame of the pastor and the wonder of his unique work had spread far
abroad. From that time on they never suffered for lack of men.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: - BRANCHES OVER THE WALL
========================================================================

There seems to be no satisfactory explanation for the astonishing activities of
the Gospel Tabernacle over the next twenty years. At least there is no
explanation on natural grounds. A veritable flood of spiritual energy appears to
have been released through the consecration and faith of one man, Albert B.
Simpson. It was as if a burning core of power had been tossed into the center of
New York, radiating heat and light in all directions. Evangelistic and
missionary zeal leaped out like fire. There was no want of workers. Everyone was
expected to help, and almost everyone did. The work accomplished was almost
beyond believing. Several evenings during the week bands of young people from
the Tabernacle held meetings on the streets. A number of rescue missions were
opened and hundreds of human derelicts fished out and salvaged from the flotsam
and jetsam of the lower classes. Groups of trained gospel workers visited the
hospitals and jails every week with the message of hope. Earnest efforts were
made to reach and rescue the fallen women that swarmed in certain sections of
the city. A free dispensary was maintained for the poor of that neighborhood
known grimly as “Hell’s Kitchen.” Special services were held for the sailors
that crowded the water fronts. An orphanage was opened for the poor of the city
streets, and other efforts made to relieve the destitute and the suffering
wherever they were found within the great melting pot that is New York. Several
organizations were formed from the teeming life of the Tabernacle fellowship,
each with a specific object in view and with a particular function to perform.
For instance there were no less than six young people’s societies, all going
full blast at one and the same time! There was no overlapping. They knew what
they were called to do, and they did it with enthusiasm. These many outside
activities were the overflow from the great public services held at the
Tabernacle every Sunday. At these services Mr. Simpson himself usually preached,
though many other celebrated preachers appeared in his pulpit from time to time.
A large Sunday School was maintained, and to supplement its work a class in the
catechism was held each week for all children who desired to attend. An early
morning service was held each Sunday in German. Rev. A. E. Funk, an assistant
pastor, who spoke the German language fluently, was in charge of this service.
Curiously enough, there was also an Episcopal service of Holy Communion
conducted each Sunday at the Tabernacle. Dr. Henry Wilson, an Episcopal
clergyman, officiated. He never left the fold of the Episcopal Church, but
obtained permission from his bishop to erect an altar in one of the chapels of
the Tabernacle for this service. He was a saintly character and a warm friend of
Mr. Simpson to the end of his days. Of a piece with these local activities, but
of greater importance than all of them, was the foreign missions enterprise
which sprang out of the zealous heart of A. B. Simpson. He had come to New York
with the express purpose of putting himself in a position to more effectively
prosecute the work of world evangelization. While still connected with the
Thirteenth Street Church he had launched a missionary journal, The Gospel in All
Lands—the first illustrated missionary magazine to be published on the North
American continent. He was forced by his physical collapse to relinquish the
editorship of this magazine, but under other management it continued for many
years, the model and inspiration for all similar publications which sprang into
print later. Soon after the opening of his independent work he began to publish
another missionary monthly called by the uneuphonious name, The Word, Work and
World. In spite of its name it was undoubtedly one of the finest missionary
journals ever published by any religious society anywhere. The sweep and range
of it are amazing. Its editor had taken the world for his parish. In its pages
his mighty earth-covering wing-stretch became apparent, probably for the first
time. It was partly through this magazine that A. B. Simpson began to attract
wide notice as a missionary leader. He kept it world-wide in its scope and
interdenominational in its interests. The affairs of the leading missionary
societies of the world were reported with warm sympathy and interesting detail.
News of the doings of the great evangelists and other popular religious leaders
appeared regularly. Every important gathering of spiritual leaders in all parts
of the world received friendly notice and intelligent comment. Illuminating
articles on almost every phase of life in missionary lands, well written,
scholarly, yet warmly evangelical, were regular features. And to focus attention
each issue of the magazine contained a generous number of carefully done
illustrations printed by means of the then-popular wood cut. In spite of the
advances made in the art of journalism since that time, the old brown copies of
The Word, Work and World which we possess today still remain excellent examples
of how to edit a missionary magazine. Interest in the work of foreign missions
was growing both in Europe and in North America. The dramatic success of great
men such as Livingstone and others had fired the imagination of the public.
Encouraged by the labors of others, but urged forward by his own impelling
vision of the lost world with its millions “in mute anguish, wringing their
hands,” Mr. Simpson determined to do something definite about the whole
thing—not simply to favor it, to write about it—but to engage in it, to make it
the work of his life. Indeed he must do this. The inward pressure was destroying
him. There was no escape. A missionary society was being born out of a heart big
with love for God and the perishing world. They tell deep stories of those days,
stories distilled from the restrained public utterances of the man himself, or
whispered reverently by some close friend who was permitted to look into his
heart for a brief moment it may be, stories of tears and long prayer vigils, of
lonely walks by the sea shore in the dead of night when others were in their
beds asleep, when the moan of the sea sounded like the cry of lost souls, and
every grain of sand along the shore appeared to be a dying man. These stories
concern the real history of A. B. Simpson and the work that grew out of his
strong passion. The colorful deeds of his public ministry were possible only
because of these little-publicized experiences of his inward life where the
Christ of Gethsemane came near to travail again through a man utterly yielded.
As far back as 1883, while still in the old Twenty-third Street Tabernacle, Mr.
Simpson had inaugurated a new type of meeting, which he called a missionary
convention. This was original only in the sense that it achieved for the first
time a synthesis of the best features of several other kinds of public meeting,
and succeeded in producing in one place and at once a Bible conference, a camp
meeting, an evangelistic campaign and a missionary promotional meeting. So
highly successful were these conventions that they soon spread to many cities of
the United States and Canada and drew to their platform some of the world’s
leading preachers and missionary leaders. By 1887 they had become famous.
Thousands flocked to them in the great cities of the North American continent.
One strong attraction was the teaching of divine healing and the practice of
praying for the sick. Another was the presence of returned missionaries. Real
live missionaries were sufficiently rare in those days to guarantee a crowd
wherever they appeared. At first Mr. Simpson was able personally to direct these
conventions. He carried a heavy preaching schedule at most of them for the first
few years, but he was too humble and too shrewd a leader to permit the success
of these gatherings to depend too much upon his own ministry. So he invited
workers from everywhere. The great, the famous, the gifted from all over the
world (and some who were neither famous nor great, but who were his personal
friends whom he delighted to honor) would be concentrated in one city and on one
platform for a great series of meetings lasting anywhere from two to ten days.
The number of workers assembled by the big-hearted Simpson often inspired
caustic comment or good-natured ribbing from the public. “You know, brother,”
said Mr. Simpson once when discussing this with a friend, “they say the number
of speakers on my convention platforms makes my announcements look like a
small-town telephone directory. But I have a good reason for all that. I want to
enjoy the broadest fellowship possible myself, and I want my people to receive
the benefit of the ministry of all God’s gifted servants, regardless of whether
they agree with me in everything or not.” As these conventions grew in
importance they quite naturally drew the fire of that large section of the
Christian public which was opposed to all the doctrines and practices for which
Mr. Simpson stood. And it must be admitted that they who were against him were
far greater in number (and usually in influence) than they who were for him. His
old friends, the newspapers, began to poke fun at his great conventions. Now and
again an artist, seeking a popular subject for a cartoon to fill his daily
schedule, would hit upon Simpson and his “Faith Cure Convention,” and the result
would be a picture, making merry at his expense. The religious journals of the
country were divided over him. Some of them published scorching denunciations;
others defended him vigorously. There were two points of attack. One was his
teaching on divine healing, the other his missionary zeal. Some of the leaders
could not forgive him for his ability to raise more missionary money in ten days
than they could do in ten years. The famous Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. A. T.
Pierson, once wrote an article in a religious magazine criticizing Simpson and
his method of raising missionary funds. A noticeable decline in missionary
receipts followed from the time the article appeared in print. A few months
later Dr. Pierson had a change of heart and wrote another article retracting his
first statements and giving Simpson a clean bill of health. Immediately the
missionary income zoomed back to normal! A beautiful example of the Christ-like
spirit of the man Pierson and fine proof of the tremendous influence which he
exerted over the Christian public. The unfriendly attitude of the rank and file
of church members toward what came to be known as the “Full Gospel” or the
“deeper life”—by which is meant the baptism of the Spirit and divine healing—set
A. B. Simpson to dreaming again. His dream concerned an alliance of like-minded
Christians the world over who were hungry for a better and more satisfying life
in Christ. It was not to be a split off of an existing body, not an organized
protest, neither a society to provide protection from some outside enemy. Rather
it was to be a fellowship, a communion of saints, a simple bond uniting
believers everywhere whose hearts were hungry for the deeper things of God. In
1885 Mr. Simpson attended a conference on the deeper life in Bethshan, London.
From that conference he came away convinced that the time had come to put his
dream into action. Two years later, after the necessary preliminary work had
been done, at the summer convention at Old Orchard, Maine, the Christian
Alliance was formally organized. The simplest form of constitution was drawn up
to give direction to the new society. The same convention that saw the birth of
the Christian Alliance saw also the beginning of another society, the
Evangelical Missionary Alliance. This society was called into being to provide a
more efficient means of carrying on the work of foreign missions to which Mr.
Simpson and his people were dedicated. The lack of any unified strategy for the
prosecution of the task was proving to be a source of embarrassment. A new
missionary zeal was spreading throughout the entire country, and it must have
intelligent direction. There was too much lost motion, too much that was merely
hit and miss. Something had to be done, and the time seemed to be ripe.
Something was done. Before the Convention had broken up that year at Old Orchard
the Evangelical Missionary Alliance had been launched. It was as simple as the
Christian Alliance. Its principles were brief but clear. It was an
undenominational society for the rapid evangelization of the most neglected
sections of the foreign mission field, using laymen and laywomen as well as
regular ministers to carry on its work. It pledged itself to rigid economy,
guaranteed no salaries, and required of its workers a life of simple faith. It
would be directed by a central board which would be elected annually. Two years
later the name was changed to the International Missionary Alliance. Mr. Simpson
was elected General Secretary. The two societies continued to operate separately
for matter of ten years, though the business meetings of the two boards might be
held in the same room on the same evening one after the other with scarcely a
member rising to leave upon the adjournment of the first meeting. The personnel
would hardly be changed. The secretary would simply open a different book! The
Christian Alliance supported the International Missionary Alliance though it
could have no voice in its affairs. As a member of one society Mr. Smith might
decide to undertake some missionary project, and then he would have to wait till
the board of the other society met—of which he was also a member—before he could
be sure that he would have his own consent to finance the project! It was very
confusing, but with the charming inconsistency which often marked both societies
this condition was tolerated till the year 1897. Then they got around to the
taking of an important step toward better management. That year the two
societies were formally joined in wedlock. The twain become one flesh and have
not been sundered since that time. Apparently neither society wanted to give up
its name, so they struck a compromise and kept both of them, which, with minor
omissions, they solemnly hung on the new one. The result is a wonderful society
with a name too long and awkward to handle without a pinch bar, The Christian
and Missionary Alliance. Asked what society they represent its members may be
seen to brace themselves, take a deep breath, and begin to recite. And worse
than all, nobody ever understands it the first time. Along about the fourth time
through the inquirer will take courage, smile, and begin timidly to repeat it
experimentally, a world of unbelief in his face. It requires no prophetic gift
to see that The Christian and Missionary Alliance represents magnificent triumph
of holy zeal over bad nomenclature. Mr. Simpson however considered the name a
happy one. “It expresses the genius of our movement.” said He. “We are an
alliance of Christians for world wide missionary work.” That would seem to
settle it. But we still wish the idea could be expressed without such a tax on
the memory and with less wear on the vocal cords.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: - HE GOES OUT AND COMES IN
========================================================================

The Christian and Missionary Alliance looms so large in the life of A. B.
Simpson that we dare not pass it over with a few paragraphs if we are to get
even a fair picture of the man himself. It was movement first—an organization
second, an organization at all only because some kind of track was necessary to
determine which direction the movement should take. It was loosely constructed,
with “just enough executive machinery to hold it together and make it
effective.” But it had movement first, motion. Indeed these had to be wherever
Simpson was. He never knew the meaning of static Christianity. His society is
himself grown large. It is the child of his heart, and it resembles its father
as all good children should. The same humility is seen in it to this day, the
same distrust of the flesh, the same preoccupation with the person of Christ.
And his faults appear in it too, his impatience with details, his lack of
organizational ability, his unwillingness to face things squarely and fight them
through. He would always rather pray and trust that everything would come out
all right—and usually it did. For thirty years he continued to lead the society
which he had formed, and never for the least division of a moment did he forget
or permit the society to forget the purpose for which it was brought into being.
Always, everywhere, through his writings and his public utterances he kept
driving home its objectives. “It is to hold up Jesus in His fullness, ‘the same
yesterday, and today, and forever!’ It is to lead God’s hungry children to know
their full inheritance of privilege and blessing for spirit, soul and body. It
is to encourage and incite the people of God to do the neglected work of our age
and time among the unchurched classes at home and the perishing heathen abroad.”
He never intended his society to become a denomination. Whether this proves
superior insight or the total lack of it, history will decide. He sought to
provide a fellowship only, and looked with suspicion upon anything like rigid
organization. He wanted the Alliance to be a spiritual association of believers
who hungered to know the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ,
working concertedly for the speedy evangelization of the world. Thus conceived
the whole thing was simple. But the law of growth is always from the simple to
the complex. The society hadn’t been long in existence before normal
developments within it began to upset the idyllic simplicity of the original
plan. “There were cases constantly arising,” admitted Mr. Simpson, “where it was
necessary to provide special and permanent religious privileges for little bands
of Christians who had either been converted in some evangelistic meeting or
pushed out of their churches by false teaching and harsh pressure and
prejudice.” Necessity forced the society to care for these orphans. They would
not be put off with idealistic sentiments. They wanted a church home in which to
bring up their families. They wanted to be baptized, to enjoy the privilege of
the Lord’s Supper, to have a place where they could be married, and from which
they might be buried when their summons came. The society had to meet these
demands or go out of business. This put Mr. Simpson and his people in a tough
spot. After much consultation they at last saw light. They would not leave their
first love. They would continue as they had begun, no denomination, but a
spiritual fellowship merely. However, in order that the various orphan flocks
throughout the country might enjoy the Christian privileges which were
rightfully theirs, gifted men should be appointed to care for them, and they
would call them not pastors, but Local Superintendents. So it was done. These
groups were placed under the care of qualified shepherds—not pastors, be it
remembered—they merely assumed all the duties, enjoyed all the privileges and
performed all the labors of pastors! They were Local Superintendents! After half
a century the society remains substantially as it was first created—a growing,
aggressive, dynamic movement for world evangelization, the only such body on the
face of the earth that does not know what it is. It gently but persistently
declares that it is not a denomination, and yet it exercises every spiritual and
ecclesiastical function of any Protestant body in the world—without one
exception. Sweet ignorance that can be entrusted with individual responsibility
for the evangelization of 79 million heathen souls, that can command over one
million dollars a year in cold cash toward the work of foreign missions, that
can continue each year to preach the Gospel in over one hundred languages on
twenty pioneer fields of the world, that turns out from its Bible schools an
ever increasing stream of trained and gifted missionary candidates for work in
the regions beyond! Maybe there is a Biblical explanation for all this: “For
whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for
your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us.” Mr. Simpson was a
premillenarian, but the doctrine would not lie quiet in his heart. Like the
other tenets of his creed it would take hands and feet and go to work at the one
mighty job of winning men to God. He held that the return of Christ depended
upon a world-wide proclamation of the Gospel. This belief was not merely
incidental. It became one of the great motivating forces in his missionary
endeavors. He preached it constantly and even set it to music and sang it: The
Master’s coming draweth near, The Son of Man will soon appear, His kingdom is at
hand. But ere that glorious day can be, This gospel of the kingdom, we Must
preach in every land. The teaching expressed in the closing lines of this stanza
is open to question. Careful exegetes will probably deny its correctness, and
some may, as a consequence, reject the whole missionary program with which it is
associated. But cutting through the pro and con arguments and stripping away all
fancy exegesis we come to two simple truths: First, Jesus Christ is absent from
the earth, and will return again in glory when His present work is accomplished.
Second, it is the imperative obligation of the Church to preach the Gospel to
every creature, and to keep on preaching it till He does return. That is what it
means to his society today, and that is all it ever meant in practice to Mr.
Simpson himself. And almost every premillenarian will agree with this position.
While the work of foreign missions was always Mr. Simpson’s first love, it did
not by any means absorb all the amazing energies of the man. There was his
Tabernacle, a great central factory, sending out its conveyor belts in all
directions. For all its activities he was almost wholly responsible. Then, he
usually had a new project brewing, a school or an orphanage or another mission.
Some of his plans succeeded, other failed, but win or lose he was sure to be
back the next week with another plan, patiently talking his board into
sponsoring it. Or, if they could not see it, he would be likely to launch out
alone, trusting God to help him through with it. The need for special training
for missionaries and home workers early led to the establishing of a Bible and
missionary training school. Under various names and in different locations this
school operated from 1883 on, ultimately settling down at Nyack, New York, in a
beautiful spot along the Hudson River, twenty-five miles above New York City.
There for forty-six years it has continued to flourish, turning out every year a
large class of trained workers for service at home as well as on the foreign
field. Another Project arose directly out of Mr. Simpson’s teaching on healing
for the physical body. He felt the need of some quiet place where sick and
discouraged persons might find a sympathetic atmosphere and opportunity to wait
on God for deliverance from their bodily ails. The burden became so great that
he finally turned his own home over for this purpose. This was done over the
protests of his wife. There were children in the Simpson household, and she
argued that they should be raised in a home, not in an institution. She was
undoubtedly right in her position. The difficulties Mr. Simpson later
experienced in bringing his children to Christ may be attributed in part to the
fact that they had been sacrificed altogether too far in the interest of their
father’s public ministry. We have every right to sacrifice ourselves, but that
we have any right to sacrifice our children without their consent may, with
reason, be vigorously denied. That he encountered bitter opposition from his
family at times must be admitted if we are to tell the whole truth. The idea
that he may have brought some of this upon himself by unwise acts cannot be
wholly ruled out. He may have sometimes forgotten that God had called him to be
a husband and a father as well as a minister of the Gospel. This Home for Prayer
and Physical Healing, as it was called, after it had been moved to several
different locations and its name had been changed to Berachah, was finally
settled at Nyack. There it proved to be a rare blessing to hundreds of suffering
persons for many years to come. We dare not pass over one project which,
fortunately, we believe, turned out to be a failure. Mr. Simpson at one time
fathered a plan to create near Nyack an Alliance center where persons in
sympathy with the doctrines and practices of The Christian and Missionary
Alliance might buy property, build homes, and live sequestered from the
contaminating influences of the world. A company was formed consisting of A.B.
Simpson, A.E. Funk, and David Crear. A large square of real estate was
purchased, lots were laid out and offered for sale to the members of the
society. Everything looked rosy except for one minor difficulty—nobody would
buy! Alliance people simply were not interested. After trying vainly to make the
plan work they at last abandoned it altogether. The conscientious Mr. Simpson,
scrupulously honest and self-sacrificing, as be always was, shouldered the
blame, bought out his partners, and took the loss himself. The failure of this
project was a great kindness from God to his servant. Love and zeal had inspired
the idea, but it had been a mistake, nevertheless. An honest mistake it had
been, but a big one. When Simpson succeeded it was in a big way. When he failed
he made great failures. It had to be so. Men of his caliber do not make little
mistakes. They fly too high and too far to steer their courses by city maps.
They ask not, “What street is that?” but “What continent?” And when they get off
of the course for a moment they will be sure to pull up a long way from their
goal. Their range and speed make this inevitable. Little men who never get
outside of their own yards point to these mistakes with great satisfaction. But
history has a way of disposing of these critics by filing them away in quiet
anonymity. She cannot be bothered to preserve their names. She is too busy
chalking up the great successes and huge failures of her favorites. All the
while that he was launching his various projects—and watching them sink in the
harbor or sweep out triumphantly on the bosom of the deep—he was promoting by
means of his conventions a highly successful continuous campaign of missionary
evangelism throughout the United States and Canada. At the same time he was
directing a growing army of missionaries on an ever increasing number of foreign
mission fields. The work was booming. No one could question that. Fortunately
the society preserved its flexibility under the strain of growth, and by means
of some nice footwork it managed to cope with every emergency that arose with
the years and the expanding work. Add to all this the editing of a top-flight
missionary magazine (which shuttled through a series of changes and became at
last The Alliance Weekly, as which it still flourishes), the managing of a
publishing concern, and the writing of innumerable songs, books and magazine
articles, and you get some idea of how much work A. B. Simpson managed to turn
out. And this, the emaciated, “cadaverous-looking” minister upon whom science
had tacked the death sentence a few years before! It is so, verily, explain it
as we may. Mr. Simpson never doubted what the explanation was. “It is the Lord,”
he had said after that pine forest experience, and the passing of the years
never brought him reason to change his mind about it.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: - HE DANCES BEFORE THE ARK
========================================================================

For thirty years Mr. Simpson served the church which his devotion had called
into being. It was during the long years of his pastorate there that his
greatest work was accomplished. The buildings next to the Tabernacle were called
“Headquarters, ‘ but the true headquarters for The Christian and Missionary
Alliance was the pulpit of the Gospel Tabernacle, where for more than a quarter
of a century the missionary pastor continued to pour forth his mighty sermons.
In the history of world evangelization Simpson’s Gospel Tabernacle must be
accorded a position out of all proportion to its size or physical appearance.
For sheer spiritual output and for far-reaching influence upon the whole
evangelical religious world it has probably never had an equal in the United
States. The building itself was the architectural embodiment of that verse which
was the life text of its founder, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,
saith the Lord of Hosts.” Whoever first named the Tabernacle the “Cave of
Adullam” had not only a fine sense of humor, but a nice eye for similarities as
well. Taking into account the building and all the circumstances that gave it
birth, no more accurate descriptive tag could have been found for the place. The
founder—so much like David in so many ways—had literally escaped from the cold
unfriendly religion of his time and had here gathered to himself a company of
adventurous persons who became his devoted followers and ardent backers of the
work he was called to do. Many who at first resorted to him were “in distress,
and discontented,” and they found in the Tabernacle fellowship a sweet refuge
from the past. Later the work came to be made up very largely of those who had
been converted through the efforts of the Tabernacle itself, but its first
beginnings ran a close parallel with the story of David and the cave of Adullam.
The building itself is so ordinary looking as to surprise and disappoint one who
sees it for the first time. It takes not too much imagination to picture this as
a cave in a wilderness, and to hear the sound of a harp floating out from its
somewhat dingy interior. Crushing in upon the Tabernacle building, shutting out
almost every ray of God’s good sunshine, are the Headquarters offices and the
Alliance Home. These are housed in a building six stories high which is served
by a pocket-sized elevator with a mean cruising speed of one or two floors
occasionally. As far back as the year 1907 Mr. Simpson is on record as stating
that he felt that they had outgrown their facilities and suggesting that another
and more suitable building be erected. For some reason nothing came of this. The
buildings remain today, except for minor changes, about as they were originally
built. It was never the building that interested the people. They accepted it as
a work shop in which the fine work of the Lord might be done, and out from which
skilled artificers might go to repeat the work in all corners of the earth. To
this gospel center for a generation came the leading preachers of all
denominations. Popular evangelists, leading Christian educators, pioneer
missionaries, famed pulpit orators from every part of the world gravitated to
this humble place either to preach in its famous pulpit or to slip in quietly
and listen that they might know for themselves whether those things were indeed
true which they had heard away there in London, or Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires.
The pulpit of the Gospel Tabernacle was open to any honest man who had a call
from God to preach the Gospel. The leading preachers of the world were heard
there from time to time, but so real was the humility of its pastor that he
would often sit quietly by and hear with appreciation men of very modest gifts
indeed. If they could win souls that was recommendation enough. “But they are
the Lord’s children,” he would say when some friend chided him for inviting
certain men into his pulpit. It never seemed to bother him that a speaker was of
inferior platform ability, and he appeared wholly innocent of the glaring
contrast between himself and his guest. No matter who entered his pulpit, he
overshadowed them without effort. He was not the most popular, but he was one of
the most gifted pulpit masters of his generation. “He was a minstrel,” said Dr.
Leon Tucker, “a spiritual minstrel; preaching was melodious and musical when it
fell from his lips.” “Ah, but you should have heard Jenny Lind,” some of the
old-timers were wont to say when someone praised another singer in their
hearing. They felt that they had heard the sum of all song incarnate when they
had listened to the incredibly beautiful voice of the “Swedish Nightingale.” The
preaching of A. B. Simpson often had some such effect upon those who heard it.
One coming into the Gospel Tabernacle or into any of the Convention halls where
he appeared up and down the country in the days of his greatness might have
experienced quite literally something like the following: The “preliminaries”
are finished and it is time for the sermon. Mr. Simpson steps forward, pauses
for a moment, and then in a low reverent tone announces his text. The tense
silence is broken only by the voice of the speaker. His early training has given
him a quiet reserve. He never acquired, or quickly rid himself of the stilted
manners and holy tones common to the pulpit. His manner is relaxed and natural
as he faces his hearers. Large framed, impressive and dignified, his very
appearance gives promise of a great message to follow. He begins to speak with
the Bible outspread on one hand and the other hand resting lightly upon his hip.
At first the words come slowly, spoken in a rich baritone of remarkable range
and power. As he warms to his theme the speed of utterance increases, his voice
takes on mounting degrees of emotional intensity while his body sways back and
forth rhythmically, a kind of human metronome keeping time to the music of his
words. His gestures are few, but when moved more than usual he lays his Bible
down, places both hands on his hips and shakes his great head to emphasize a
point. The effect of these gestures is tremendous. The lofty truth he is
proclaiming, the strong, magnetic quality of his voice, the swift flow of his
language, all combine to produce an impression so profound that when he is
through speaking and the benediction is pronounced the listeners sit in hushed
silence, unable or unwilling to break the spell of the sermon. The sermons
themselves were models of structural perfection, and his diction such that a
stenographic report of his messages might be published with little or no
editing. This was a result partly of his ability to “think on his feet,” and
partly of his early habit of writing out his sermons in full before delivering
them. As to what type of preacher he was, he seems to have been a blend of many
types. There are those who insist that he was primarily an expository preacher.
Some say he used the topical method, and others insist that he was a textual
preacher pure and simple. The truth seems to be that he was sufficiently
versatile to use any method the occasion might require. His printed sermons show
a flair for symbolism in their theology. No man could compare with him in making
the Bible illustrate itself. He could make theology sing as few men have been
able to do. He never uttered a cold fact of doctrine. In his mouth doctrine
became warm and living. He was pre- eminently a Christ preacher. He believed the
Bible existed to show forth Jesus, and the face of the Lord of Glory might be
seen peering out from almost any sentence or paragraph of the Old Testament or
the New when Simpson was doing the preaching. Greater expositors than Simpson
there have been, but few have equaled him in his ability to reach the human
heart. His utter love for the person of Jesus was responsible for this. After
his experience of the anointing of the Holy Spirit he was for the rest of his
days an enraptured Christian. His enjoyment of the presence of the indwelling
Christ almost literally transported him. His was a ravished heart which seemed
to know no limit in its ardent devotion to the person of the Saviour. It was
inevitable that a heart so ecstatic should sing, that the thoughts proceeding
from a mind so enchanted should dance before the ark of God. There seemed to be
at the time Simpson began his work no hymnody expressing his particular type of
mysticism. Wesley was happy in having ready at hand a poet who could catch his
spirit and set his movement to music. Simpson had no such poet. No lyric medium
existed for the expression of his spiritual raptures. He must create one for
himself. So he wrote songs, and sang them, and did very well everything
considered. His first songs were written not as songs, but as poetic conclusions
to his sermons. He liked to close a message gracefully with a stanza or two of
verse, summing up in a few lines the burden of his message. Later he ventured to
have these verses set to music and sung either as a solo or by the congregation
at the close of the sermon. As he grew surer footed in this unaccustomed field
he began to one-finger out the melody himself and call in his song leader, Mr.
J. H. Burke, May Agnew or his daughter Margaret to complete the harmonization.
Another musician who composed the music for some of his songs and who did much
to help create the hymnody which came to be a part of the Alliance, was Captain
R. Kelso Carter. He was a naval man, an instructor at Annapolis, and an
outspoken Christian. He was a man of strong but eccentric character whose songs,
while marked by traces of superior gift, were nevertheless too militant and
boisterous for the average Christian to enjoy. The hymnal which has had the
greatest influence within the Alliance movement is Hymns of the Christian Life,
compiled about the year 1905 by Simpson, Burke, Stebbins and others. The book
has its weaknesses, but for all that we are willing to go out on a limb and say
that there was never another like it since the art of printing was invented. For
glowing spiritual power, for warmth of devotion, for rapturous preoccupation
with the loveliness of Jesus, for passionate outreaching toward the ends of the
earth it has never had, and in my estimation is not likely to have, an equal
under the sun. Here as nowhere else the almost incredible wingspread of the man
Simpson is seen. In that book he literally brooded over the whole earth with
love and tears and pity. We promised at the beginning to “leave the warts in.”
Simple truth requires us to state that A. B. Simpson does not rate high as a
writer of hymns. The effort on the part of some of his admirers to place him
along with Watts and Wesley is simply absurd. A hymn, to be great—to be a hymn
at all—must meet certain simple requirements. 1. It must have literary
excellence. 2. It must be compact enough to be sung easily. 3. It must express
the religious feelings of the Universal Church. 4· The music must have dignity
and reserve. On none of these counts could Mr. Simpson’s compositions qualify.
His poetry lacked literary finish. The central idea might be poetic, but his
craftsmanship was not equal to the task of expressing it. His singing heart
sometimes betrayed him into attempting to sing things that simply were not
lyrical and could not be sung. The virtue of brevity also was lacking in most of
his songs. He sometimes rambled on into eight and ten verses, and if by happy
chance he got through before the eighth verse he was sure to append a chorus
that would run down over the next page. The minister in him overcame the poet,
so that when he attempts to write a song the sermonic division is apparent at
once. With few exceptions his songs are simply sermons in verse, the whole thing
being there before us in plain sight, the introduction, the various “points,”
and the conclusion. But it is in the music that his songs suffer the most. A few
of his compositions can be sung, but the most of them can be negotiated by none
except trained singers. The transitions are too abrupt and the range too great
for the ordinary congregation. There can be no doubt about it, Mr. Simpson wrote
too much poetry, or at least too much of it has been published. He could produce
good strong, if ordinary, verse, and it is to be regretted that so much got into
print which is not only very poor but is certainly far below what he was able to
do at his best. In rushing into print with certain of his casual poems his
friends have done him no small disfavor. Much is said there in bad verse which
he could have said in beautiful prose at a great saving to his reputation as a
writer. “Scorn not the sonnet,” wrote Wordsworth, “with this key Shakespeare
unlocked his heart.” “The less Shakespeare he,” replied the forthright Browning.
The less Simpson for some of his poetry. Only a big man could live down such a
failure. And he has done it triumphantly. After saying all this I would yet
confess that hardly a day goes by that I do not kneel and sing, in a shaky
baritone comfortably off key, the songs of Simpson. They feed my heart and
express my longings, and I can find no other’s songs that do this in as full a
measure. Of his songs—there are 155 of them in the old Hymns of the Christian
Life alone—only about three have attained to anything like wide popularity, and
not above a dozen are heard even in the gatherings of The Christian and
Missionary Alliance. Yet it is my sober judgment that Simpson has put into a few
of his songs more of awful longing, of tender love, of radiant trust, of hope
and worship and triumph than can be found in all the popular gospel songs of the
last hundred years put together. Those songs are simply not to be compared with
his. Simpson’s songs savor of the holy of holies, the outstretched wings of the
cherubim and the Shekinah glory. The others speak of the outer court and the
milling crowd. For all their technical flaws, the songs of Simpson—the few
singable ones—became a powerful factor toward the success of The Christian and
Missionary Alliance. They helped tremendously to impart that intangible
something we call flavor to the meetings of the Society. There is a triumphant
quality about some of them scarcely to be found in any other hymns. They have
been used to inspire young men and women to wonderful acts of unselfish
devotion. The wail of the lost world and the yearning sorrow of Jesus over the
“other sheep” are heard in the missionary songs. No wonder the altars were
always crowded with missionary volunteers. And how they sang! After all the
years, the singing of “Alliance hymns” by a congregation of self-sacrificing
ministers and work-weary missionaries at some conference or convention still
comes as a revelation to my heart. Simpson’s songs were more than songs; they
were slogans. Their value to the Society lay in their power to compress into a
single sentence a cluster of dynamic ideas and to set those ideas singing in the
hearts of believing men. Simpson—consciously or unconsciously, I am not sure
which—was a master sloganeer, the greatest ever called to the service of the
Church. He could take a Bible phrase, or a phrase adapted from the Bible, shape
it into what he loved to call a “watchword,” and set multitudes to singing it.
In a few of these musical slogans you can read the doctrines and policy of The
Christian and Missionary Alliance: “Jesus Only,” “The Same Yesterday, Today, and
Forever,” “Himself,” “Christ in Me,” “The Fullness of Jesus,” “I Will Say Yes to
Jesus,” “I Take, He Undertakes,” “Nothing Is Too Hard for Jesus,” “Launch Out,”
“Go and Tell Them,” “To the Regions Beyond,” “Jesus Giveth Us the Victory,” “I
Am Living in the Glory,” “Even as He.” There in concentration you will find the
genius of the man and his movement.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 18: - DOWN TO EARTH
========================================================================

Rev. A. B. Simpson was a great preacher. “The greatest whose voice has been
heard in New York City in twenty-five years,” Dr. Marquis said of him when that
voice had been stilled by death. But he was no business man. In the light of the
plain facts, Thompson’s remark, “Had business been his calling, some think he
would have been one of the large financiers,” deserves no more than a smile. To
succeed in business requires that a man have a sympathy with the earth, an
affinity for, and keen understanding of, the rough and tumble life of the world.
These Mr. Simpson assuredly had not. He could come down to earth sometimes when
necessity was thrust upon him, but he belonged on the wing, and he trod the
earth but awkwardly when be was forced down. Even the eagle must descend
occasionally to secure her food, but the earth is not her element. She is at her
best only when she has a thousand feet of clean air beneath her broad wings.
Simpson had not the tough, fibrous mind necessary to fight his way to success in
the business world. He was too idealistic, too gentle. He was so trusting that
he would not watch out for sharp practices in others, and it never occurred to
him that anyone should doubt him. When reminded once that a note would fall due
at a New York bank the next day be turned to an assistant and said casually, “Go
tell them to hold it a week.” He could not see the humor in such a remark. He
would have been willing to “hold it a week” for others; why should they not do
the same for him? Though illy equipped to manage a paying business he early took
a stand that made some kind of secular income necessary to him. He determined to
imitate Paul who at one period in his life preached the Gospel “without charge”
and worked for his own living. He refused to accept any salary, either from his
Tabernacle or from the Society of which he was the head. So popular was he with
a certain devoted stratum of the Christian public that he might easily have had
anything he chose to command by way of monetary reward. His followers were
generous almost beyond believing. (Even today The Christian and Missionary
Alliance stands year after year at or near the top for per capita giving among
all religious bodies.) He could with perfect justice have accepted a salary
large enough to amply support his large family. He chose not to do this. Every
cent that came into his coffers by way of contributions went to support the work
of the Society. Mr. Simpson’s personal income was derived from various business
enterprises which he conducted in New York City. One of these was a restaurant,
the actual management of which was in the hands of his son, Howard. This was a
perpetual headache, and never netted him anything but grief. He also ran a book
store which proved to be a fine outlet for promotional literature for foreign
missions but which brought in almost nothing by way of profits. In addition to
these he also maintained a commercial printing concern in the city. This
business was a fair success in a small way, and managed to bring in enough
income to enable him to support his family in modest comfort. A. E. Thompson, in
his Life of A. B. Simpson, says, “There can be no question that his business was
the great burden that finally proved too heavy for him.” This may be disputed,
for Mr. Simpson lived to be seventy-six years of age—a good old age for anyone,
business or no business. However, the statement is valuable in that it is the
opinion of a close friend of Simpson’s with whom he must often have discussed
his personal affairs. To finance one after another of his religious ventures he
would sometimes borrow sums of money ranging anywhere from a few dollars to
several thousand. For many years he managed to pray his way out of these
financial holes, meeting every obligation fully; but in his declining years he
found himself so deeply in debt that he was forced to turn to friends for
assistance. All his undertakings had been entirely in the open. His own life had
been free from any taint of covetousness or fraud. His debts represented the bad
breaks which he had encountered in attempting to save the lost or minister
relief to the suffering and the poor. He had meant only to do all he could to
lift the weight of human suffering from the hearts of men. His judgment had not
always been sound. Of his heart there was never any doubt. Knowing the man and
the circumstances a few of his well-to-do friends chipped in and paid him out in
full. This enabled him to die solvent, but he left nothing of any value to his
family. His inability to provide for his family as sumptuously after he gave up
his five-thousand-dollar salary, as he had been able to do before, did not make
for peace in the Simpson home. Mrs. Simpson was not at first able to see her
husband’s vision. She could not sympathize with his radical stand on money
matters. Her practical nature would not be content with anything as intangible
as faith. On more than one occasion she found herself without a cent to meet the
heavy demands of the household. At such times Mr. Simpson would commit the whole
affair to God in prayer and then go blithely about his business. His wife would
stay home, look after the children, and do the worrying. He was much criticized
for refusing to accept the salary which was rightfully his, but he steadfastly
refused to change his position. He felt that he knew what God expected of him
and his peace lay in doing God’s will as he understood it. Not until his old age
did he receive one cent from his spiritual labors, and then only because the men
of his board issued a good natured ultimatum and compelled him to agree to
receive a small allowance for his last days. We do not want to create the
impression that Mr. Simpson was a visionary, a man wholly impractical. When
necessary he was capable of sharp judgment and swift action. On one occasion a
low character came into his office and attempted to extort money from him by
blackmail. Secure in his conscious innocence he refused to enter into argument
with the man. He simply lay hold of the back of his neck, marched him out into
the hall, and tossed him downstairs! This seems so out of mood with the gentle
character of the man of God that some may doubt the veracity of the story. But
the incident is well attested. The force of gravitation may have aided somewhat
the blackmailer’s descent to the street, but that the original impulse to
descend came from Mr. Simpson himself has been established beyond a reasonable
doubt. He was, from his childhood, possessed of unusual physical charm. His few
photographs—he was shy of the camera most of his life—indicates that, while his
appearance naturally changed with the years, he remained through every stage of
his development a most strikingly handsome person. There is reason to believe
that he was in his early years a rather natty dresser, something of a Beau
Brummel, indeed, or the clerical equivalent of it. With the deepening of his
spiritual life he lost interest in outward appearances, and though his presence
was always impressive when on the platform, in his later years he showed some
evidences of preoccupation. His oversize sack coat appeared to have been cut out
originally for Goliath, his vest just would not stay buttoned and his straight
black tie had a deplorable habit of creeping over to the right or left shoulder
and hanging there cheerfully through the entire course of a sermon. The
listeners usually forgot within five minutes the unbuttoned vest and the tie
askew. They were hearing a master engaged in the supreme art of interpreting
Christ, and clothes did not matter. He had little time for recreation, but did
manage to put in a few care free hours sometimes puttering around in a little
wood-working shop which he had fitted up in the basement of his home. There is
no evidence that he ever made anything worth preserving, but his little hobby
helped him to relax, and his efforts enabled him to indulge in a practical way
his incurable yen to create. He lived for many years at Nyack within easy
walking distance of The Missionary Training Institute. His days were usually
spent in New York in his office, directing a thousand and one activities,
ranging anywhere from the hiring of an assistant janitor to deciding the size of
a native church building in China or the Congo. Always at night he would return
to Nyack in time for a late supper (it was supper in the Simpson household). He
was not a heavy eater, but liked his food tastily prepared. He drank no coffee,
but could take on unlimited amounts of English tea. He was never a faddist. He
had no religious scruples about food, but allowed his personal tastes and common
sense to decide what he should eat. A trace of his Scottish origin may be
glimpsed in this, that for breakfast every morning he enjoyed a big bowl of—yes,
that’s right—oats! Around home he was quiet and preoccupied. It is said that he
never raised his voice, but spoke habitually in a low, conciliatory tone. He was
sparing of words, except when someone did some little act of kindness for him.
Then he would overflow with expressions of gratitude. He seldom retired before
one or two o’clock in the morning, the hours after supper being spent in his own
room in prayer and study or in writing the numerous books and articles which
came from his heart in a steady stream for half a lifetime. “O Mrs. Simpson,”
said a friend one day, “I’m curious. Tell me why your bedspreads are spotted all
over with ink.” Mrs. Simpson had grown patient with the years. “It’s the
Doctor,” she explained. “You see, he writes in bed, and sometimes he nods, and
his pen falls onto the bedspread and leaves a spot.” He was always up the next
morning bright and early and on his way to New York by time six o’clock train.
How he managed on four hours sleep is one of those minor mysteries we run into
sometimes when we examine the lives of the world’s great. We do not try to
explain it. Mr. Simpson had convictions about medicine, and never used remedies
at any time after he had come out into the light of divine healing. He was wise
enough to hold to his convictions as being personal matters between himself and
God. He never tried to screw them down upon the consciences of others. He had no
phobia concerning doctors as some of his followers have had. “If you cannot have
faith for your healing,” he used to tell inquirers, “then get the best physician
you are able to afford.” He occasionally let down the bars on remedies on one
count—if the word remedy does indeed describe the lowly cough drop. He did carry
cough drops with him sometimes to ease the troublesome tickle in his throat.
Once when preaching in Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh he reached into his pocket
for his handkerchief and, along with the ‘kerchief came out a handful of cough
drops. They rattled like marbles all over the platform! Mr. Simpson accepted the
situation with smiling gravity and came off without loss of face, no mean
achievement when it is remembered that he constantly had following him hecklers
who would have paid good money to prove that he was not living what he preached.
There is some difference of opinion on the question of whether or not Mr.
Simpson had a sense of humor. The facts are probably that he did originally have
a good fund of native humor, but that his rigorous Calvinistic upbringing either
destroyed it or made him so ashamed of it that he never indulged it except when
caught off guard. Certainly, he had nothing of the good-humored fun in him that
Spurgeon had, or Luther or D. L. Moody, though he could laugh heartily in his
weak moments. He was heard on at least one occasion roaring with laughter like
any plebeian at the side splitting stories of the Episcopalian rector, Dr. Henry
Wilson. Once in the Gospel Tabernacle he was sitting with a number of other
ministers listening to a sermon by his friend William T. MacArthur. Suddenly the
audience broke out into gales of laughter. MacArthur waited for them to quiet
down, but the volume of laughter grew and continued so long that he finally
turned to ask Mr. Simpson, who was the chairman, to do something to restore
order. He was further dismayed to see Simpson slumped down in a heap on his
chair, rocking with uncontrollable mirth! Those who have heard Mr. MacArthur in
his prime will easily find it in their hearts to forgive Mr. Simpson! The office
staff at Alliance headquarters knew the privilege of working for a man who
managed to act like a Christian all day long, who was thoughtful, fair, tolerant
and quiet spoken; but they also knew the difficulty of working for a human
dynamo who never knew his own strength, and who judged everybody by himself.
Curiously enough Mr. Simpson did not always pick his help from among his own
followers, but often had working for him Catholics, Jews, and persons of no
faith whatsoever. He treated them all alike. His extreme modesty led him to
refuse the degree of Doctor of Divinity offered him by a southern college in
recognition of his scholarship and outstanding accomplishments. His reason was
simply that he did not want any honor “that would exalt him in any measure above
the lowliest of his brethren.” His friend, Rev. Kenneth Mackenzie, who was
responsible for this story, seemed to feel that this was a mistake on Simpson’s
part. He believed that a degree might have given him certain useful prestige
before a religious world which sets much store by such things. On that subject,
I do not risk an opinion. But he could not escape a degree. The grateful
Christian public, by a kind of spiritual instinct, conferred a degree upon him,
which, in spite of his reluctance, he carried to the end of his days.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 19: - "HALLELUJAH! I’M TIRED"
========================================================================

The rapid expansion of The Christian and Missionary Alliance laid upon Mr.
Simpson an ever growing weight of toil and responsibility. Like David, he had
around him his “mighty men” to whom he delegated much of the actual labor, but
for all that the demands of the work required that he be constantly on the move.
No one could quite take his place. He was not only the elected head of the
corporation, he was also the spiritual father of the movement, and as such he
carried every detail of the work on his own heart. He was a prolific writer,
producing more than seventy books, thousands of printed sermons, scores of
songs, and literally uncounted thousands of magazine articles and editorials. He
traveled constantly, appearing for at least a few days at most of the large
conventions throughout the United States and Canada, often stopping a night or
two enroute to fellowship with some other church or society, then racing back to
his own pulpit or to his office to dig out from under a mountain of accumulated
business before leaving again for some other part of the country. He was the
recognized head of The Missionary Training Institute, as well as of all other
schools that sprang up within the Society during the years. He taught at the
Institute, managed his secular business as best he could, presided at the Board
meetings and keynoted almost every conference and Council as long as he was
able. Among other duties that devolved upon him was that of steering his Society
through the dangerous places she encountered as the years went on. These were
usually doctrinal, though they sometimes affected policy. No more distasteful
job could have been found for one of his temperament. He hated controversy and
shrank from polemics, but he recognized the necessity for fighting when the Lord
was leading the battle. Though admittedly a mystic and a dreamer Mr. Simpson had
a salty common sense which served him as a constant guide and mentor. His
glimpses of the glory did not inflame his judgment nor unfit him for cool
thinking. Consequently the waves of extreme teaching and questionable practices
which swept across the United States about the turn of the century did not upset
him in the least nor serve to deflect him from the path of sound doctrine and
sane practice. His prophetic fervency and his prominence made him a natural
magnet, not only for those of sober mind who honestly sought to follow the way
of truth, but for a host of others as well who were anything but sober minded.
Crackpots and fanatics made his life miserable. His very terminology was against
him at times, serving to encourage those of extreme views who sought to
capitalize on his popularity. Just as the Seventh Day Adventists tried to claim
Moody because he observed Saturday as a day for rest in preparation for his
heavy day on Sunday, so various extremists hailed Simpson and embarrassed him
with their attention. The Pentecostal movement which sprang up in the early part
of the Twentieth Century gave him no end of trouble. Doctrinally they were very
close to Simpson’s own position, so close that they could quote him to support
their teachings, conveniently forgetting that the one tenet which distinguished
them from all other groups was the very one which he consistently rejected. They
held that the baptism of the Spirit must always, without exception, be
accompanied by the physical manifestation of supernatural tongues. This belief
became with them such an overpowering thing that it absorbed their interests and
determined the whole character of their meetings. Not to win men to Christ, but
to lead believers into “their baptism,” became the ruling passion of their
lives. To achieve this end they would do anything, even going so far as to
practice bodily manipulation upon seekers, hoping in this way to produce
“tongues.” This led to some sad and shameful demonstrations in some of their
gatherings. From such crass manifestations the cultured heart of Simpson
revolted. Into the Gospel Tabernacle at the time of the “tongues” excitement
would come troops of these overheated souls, confidently believing that, as
Aquila and Priscilla had brought the mighty orator Apollos into clearer light,
they were to be privileged to do the same thing for the great Dr. Simpson. But
they never succeeded in ruffling the holy calm of the man. Under his keen eyes
they felt themselves rather taken aback, and what had been planned as a
concerted barrage usually fizzled off into a few sporadic amens, strangely meek
and quiet for these people, and the service went on with a world of deep power,
but with unimpeachable decorum. After a number of such attempts they finally
gave up the struggle, though to his dying day they would come up every now and
again with a report that at last Simpson had received his “baptism.” The simple
fact is that Mr. Simpson was miles out ahead of these people in his spiritual
experience. He did not need anything they had. He had found a blessed secret far
above anything these perfervid seekers after wonders could ever think or
conceive. There were many good people in the Pentecostal movement, and many
admirable qualities about its adherents. Mr. Simpson did not want to pass
judgment upon them till he had sufficient evidence, so he appointed Dr. Henry
Wilson to visit Alliance, Ohio, a hot-bed of the new phenomenon, to study the
meetings and report back. After a careful study Dr. Wilson made the following
report, and it stands today as the crystallized utterance of the Society: “I am
not able to approve the movement, though I am willing to concede that there is
probably something of God in it somewhere.” When he felt the time was ripe,
Simpson published a manifesto setting forth his position and renouncing the
doctrine that all must speak in tongues. His utterance was kindly, but firm.
From here on no one could doubt his stand. The result was that a number of
prominent men withdrew from the Society and joined the new movement. In a few
cities whole Alliance congregations went over to Pentecostalism, taking their
church property with them. The grand total of churches going out in the general
exodus was large, and the blow was hard for a young movement to bear. But the
Society never forgot its early call. After a few uncomfortable years in which
she was battered and bruised considerably by this controversy she shook off her
aches and pains and launched forward stronger than ever in her initial task of
world-evangelization. Another question Mr. Simpson had to settle very early in
the development of his Tabernacle and his missionary Society was whether divine
healing was to be permitted to become an end in itself, or whether it was to be
presented as a privilege which any child of God might enjoy, but which was not
by any means central in the wide sweep of the gospel plan. Should healing or
salvation take first place in the message of the Alliance? John Alexander Dowie,
a Scottish preacher who had come to the United States from Australia, forced the
hand of Simpson and indirectly did him a great favor in compelling him to clear
up the whole matter of divine healing as it related to himself and his
Tabernacle. Dowie could see nothing but healing. He felt it to be of such
supreme importance as to deserve his almost undivided attention. He proposed to
Simpson that the two of them join forces and stump the country in the interest
of divine healing. Mr. Simpson demurred. “No, Brother Dowie,” said he, “I have
four wheels on my chariot. I cannot agree to neglect the other three while I
devote all my time to the one.” Impulsive and violent as he always was Dowie
promptly turned against Simpson and set out with the express intention of
discrediting him in the eyes of the public. He arranged throughout some of the
principal cities of the United States a series of lectures in which he would
tear Simpson to shreds and then tramp on the shreds! Simpson refused to fight
back. Pittsburgh was the place chosen for the opening of the shredding campaign.
Crowds filled the huge auditorium to hear the famous John Alexander Dowie. That
evening, an hour or so before time for the opening lecture, Dowie was eating a
fish dinner when a tiny bone became lodged cross-wise in his throat. The crowds
waited, time went on and the speaker did not appear. He never showed up. It must
have been an eloquent piece of bone, for it completely changed the plans of Mr.
Dowie. He canceled his series of lectures and crept back home to lick his
wounds. When Simpson was informed of the turn things had taken, he said simply,
“Oh, Dowie. Yes, I committed that man to God long ago.” Mr. Simpson was often
made to suffer untold embarrassment through the honest but ill-advised, conduct
of some of his followers. His missionary appeals were often so powerful that
people came forward and laid valuable gifts on the altar to be converted into
cash for the work of missions. This was wholly a voluntary act, no constraint or
coercion being practiced upon the donors at any time. It was a beautiful
expression of love as long as it remained free and spontaneous. But the
head-long saints could not let well enough alone. They would make this a law and
bind it upon the consciences of the people. Many of them refused to wear on
their persons anything more valuable than iron, and soon the inevitable button
appeared bearing the words, “Gold for Iron,” and every good consecrated soul was
sure to be wearing one for the eyes of all to see. The men bought iron watch
cases and the women substituted iron for gold on their clothing. At the large
conventions baskets were filed to overflowing with watches, rings and other
ornaments which were donated to the cause of missions. Many a man not himself
particularly interested in the Lord’s work was known to blow up with a
resounding echo when his wife came home from an Alliance Convention stripped of
every valuable thing she possessed including the ring he had given her at the
altar! The newspapers fastened on this with eager delight. It was right down
their avenue, and they made the most of it. Hypnotism was just then becoming
popular with the masses and this new pseudo-science served as a cue to the
phenomenon. Mr. Simpson was a hypnotist practicing his art upon his audience to
extract money from them for his own uses! Huge vats of printer’s ink boiled and
bubbled up and down the country, and there “was a deal of throwing about of
brains,” and then it all suddenly ceased. Reporters found something else to
amuse them, and Simpson was forgotten. Mr. Simpson was bothered by this
outburst. The whole “gold for iron” fad had about it a slightly disquieting
savor, and he wanted to keep his movement wholesome and free from taint. So he
took steps to discourage the idea, and little by little the excitement died
away. Iron slowly disappeared from the ranks of the faithful and the girls got
their wedding rings back. But for a long time after that the faces of some of
the leading Alliance men would turn a bright red when the subject was brought
up. These are some of the problems with which Mr. Simpson had to wrestle as his
work grew in scope and power. And he was not built for this kind of thing. It
irked him and wearied his spirit and made him old before his time. In the midst
of all his numerous activities, Mr. Simpson somehow managed to find time to make
several trips abroad. When a young minister of the Presbyterian church he had
visited England. In the year 1885 he again visited London. In 1893 he made his
longest journey, leaving New York in January and returning to the United States
seven months later, after having completely circumnavigated the globe. On this
journey he touched most of the Alliance mission fields, including the Holy Land,
India, China and Japan. In 1910 he visited South America. This journey proved
very wearing upon his strength. When returning through Panama he became ill with
a tropical fever. He recovered after a while, and managed to spiritualize
everything as usual. He claimed that his experience helped him to sympathize
more fully with the sufferings and trials of the workers on the fields! His last
trip abroad was made in 1911 when he was 68 years of age. He went to the British
Isles to fulfill a series of speaking engagements arranged for him by Pastor F.
E. Marsh, of Bristol, England. How he managed to pack into one lifetime all
these manifold activities is his secret and God’s. I do not pretend to know. And
for all those years he never rested, had scarcely a day to himself. Vacations
were unknown to him. Once he tried to take a few days away from his work but
became so restless that he finally gave up the attempt and hurried back to his
office to recover from the strain! He had to be doing something. Had he nursed
himself along a bit more carefully he might have lasted a few years longer than
he did. But who would have wanted it that way? Certainly not he. He must live
his life after the pattern shown him in the mount. If he overworked it was for
the love of God and men. If that is a fault it is not a common one. The years
after seventy were tired years for him. For the next four years he was as active
as ever, but there came into his eyes and upon his frame more than a suggestion
of deep fatigue. He had done five men’s work, and he was feeling the weariness
of five men. Nature had been good to him, and God had been better, but there is
a limit to all things human. In one of the early issues of The Word, Work and
World Mr. Simpson tells about a thirteen-year-old Sudanese Christian girl who
was compelled to carry a heavy load on her head for three days straight with
hardly any time for rest between treks. She became pitifully weary, but, being a
Christian, she would not complain. She felt she must continue to praise the Lord
no matter how tired she was. At last she could take it no longer. Down she sank
in a discouraged heap, burst into tears and wailed, “Hallelujah, I’m tired.” A.
B. Simpson was tired. But he would not complain. His heart was still dancing
before the ark though his body would not respond as gracefully as it had done in
his younger yesterdays.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 20: - 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.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/wingspread/
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