Albert Benjamin Simpson

At age 21, he accepted a call to the large Knox Presbyterian Church (closed in 1971) in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.

Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.

In 1880, Simpson was called to the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City where he immediately began reaching out to the world with the gospel.

[9] By 1883, a formal program was in place and ministers and missionaries were being trained in a multi-cultural context (This school was the beginning of Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary).

In 1885, he was invited to the International Convention of Holiness and Divine Healing in London, by the American pastor William Boardman, author of The Higher Christian Life.

[12] The Fourfold Gospel is symbolized in the logo of the C&MA: the Cross (Savior), the Laver (Sanctifier), the Pitcher (Healer), and the Crown (Coming King).

Albert Benjamin Simpson was largely Keswickian, teaching the doctrine of entire sanctification heralded by the Higher Life movement.

Although such teaching isolated him (and the C&MA) from the mainline churches that either did not emphasize or outright rejected healing, Simpson was uncompromising in his beliefs.

In his 1890 book, A Larger Christian Life, Simpson discussed his vision for the church: He [Jesus] is showing us the plan for a Christian Church that is much more than an association of congenial friends to listen once a week to an intellectual discourse and musical entertainment and carry on by proxy a mechanism of Christian work; but rather a Church that can be at once the mother and home of every form of help and blessing which Jesus came to give to lost and suffering men, the birthplace and the home of souls, the fountain of healing and cleansing, the sheltering home for the orphan and distressed, the school for the culture and training of God's children, the armory where they are equipped for the battle of the Lord and the army which fights those battles in His name.

[23] While Simpson remained an ardent proponent of the doctrine of Spirit Baptism that was a central teaching in late nineteenth-century evangelicalism, he became publicly critical of various practices within the Pentecostal movement that he considered excessive.

[24] In particular, Simpson publicly challenged the emerging Pentecostal teaching that "speaking in tongues" was the sole acceptable evidence of baptism with the Holy Spirit.