- 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.