The Boy Who Was Afraid of
God
A. B. Simpson
Young Albert Simpson cast an envious glance at the strip of sunlight seeping through the transom. Then he cautiously tiptoed toward the door and with one hand on the door latch, he cast a wary glance over his shoulder. His father was not watching. Quickly he pulled the latch and scampered outside.
A few moments in the warm Ontario sunshine was enough to make him forget that this was the Sabbath. But a shout from the doorway brought him back to reality.
"Boy!"
His father's beckoning hand sent a chill racing along his spine. He had been caught, and now he would be punished.
"Today is the holy Sabbath," the old Scot thundered. "But you'll not get the rod today."
Young Albert heaved a sigh of relief.
"Tomorrow morn, ye can be prepared."
The cloud of gloom moved over Albert again. He shuffled inside, knowing that at the crack of dawn, the whip would crack on his back.
Albert's back was still smarting the next day, when
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his older brother passed along a secret tip. The next time Albert had a whipping coming in the morning, he followed his brother's advice.
He arose a few moments before his father, lit a candle, and sat down in a corner of the living room. He opened the Bible and pretended to be reading. Then, as his father entered the room, Albert stared at the Bible with the most penitent and pious look he could summon. Just as the older brother had predicted, Albert's father did not even mention the whipping.
But a short while after this incident, Albert Simpson was in no mood for fooling his father. At fourteen he had had a nervous breakdown from the strain of studying too hard. His doctor had told him not to look at a book for another year.
Following his collapse, Albert called for his father. "Pray for me," he begged. "I'm dying, and I'm afraid to face God."
Later Albert Simpson wrote of this experience, "I had no personal hope in Christ. My whole religious training had left me without any conception of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. The God I knew was a being of great severity."
After his father prayed, Albert tried to pray also but with little faith. That night he feared to go to sleep lest he should lose a moment in his search for God.
Slowly his health returned, but the peace of God continued to elude him. His father read the Bible to him and prayed but never explained that salvation was free for the asking. The old Scot Calvinist held firmly to the belief that God must act in some dramatic way if Albert were to be saved.
Finally Albert stumbled upon a musty old book in
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his minister's library, Marshall's Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. His eyes fell upon a life-awakening sentence: "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 in vain."
The light dawned! Albert Simpson fell to his knees crying, "Lord, I dare to believe that Thou wilt receive me and save me because I have taken Thee at Thy Word."
A few days later he wrote out a long and detailed covenant which he called, "The Dedication of Myself to God." In it he said, "Thou hast subdued my rebellious heart by Thy love. Take it now and use it for Thy glory." At that time, January 19, 1861, Albert Simpson was barely seventeen years of age.
Before his conversion, Albert had felt he must enter the ministry to please God. Now he wanted to preach the gospel because of the joy that filled his heart.
He entered Knox College in Toronto and graduated as a brilliant and gifted minister at the age of twenty-one. Immediately, the Knox Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ontario extended a pastoral call. The church had a seating capacity for twelve hundred worshipers, and soon the boy preacher was attracting capacity audiences.
After eight successful years in Hamilton, Albert was called to become the minister of the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, which at the time was one of the largest churches in North America.
His preaching again attracted capacity audiences. On Sunday evenings he moved the church services to
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the public library hall which seated more than two thousand.
More spiritual success followed Albert Simpson when he moved to become pastor of the great Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church of New York City. But after two years there, he told the congregation, "You want a conventional church for respectable Christians. I want a multitude of publicans and sinners." Whereupon he resigned, rented a hall in a needy section of town, and began preaching to his "publicans and sinners."
Only seven were present at the first service, but from this group grew the great Christian and Missionary Alliance. Albert B. Simpson is honored today as the founder of this great missionary fellowship.
In 1963, the C.M.A. celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. The records showed slightly less than one hundred thousand members in the United States supporting 876 full-time foreign missionaries. No other evangelical denomination has as many missionaries in ratio to members, on the foreign field.
