Grant thee thine heart’s wish and fulfil thy thoughts and counsel wise.”
He used to relate one memory of her, touching in its simplicity: how one day he entered the house with a big hole in his stocking which she perceived and drew him on to her knee to darn. As she pulled the repaired garment on she said, “My Jamie, when your mother’s away, you will mind that she was a grand darner.” He remembered the words as if they had been spoken but yesterday, and subsequently offered to a lady who had established a girls’ Industrial School in his native village a prize for the best darning.
The simple faith which beat in the life of the Bathgate baker’s household was ingrained into James Simpson; he went forth into the world full of it, and full of the determination that by his fruits he should be known.
The tender, loving care for his welfare of his sisters and brothers, particularly of Sandy, who never faltered in his inspired belief in James’s great future, kept alive in Simpson something of his mother’s affectionate nature, and kindled the sympathies and emotions which bulked so large in his character. His goodness was displayed in his kindly treatment of the poor, who formed at first the whole and afterwards no small part of his patients. When name and fame and bread were his, he did not turn his back on the poor, but 206 as we have seen, ever placed his skill at their disposal for no reward, as readily as he yielded it to the greatest in the land. As in his daily practice, so in his greatest professional efforts, the revelation of chloroform, the fight for anæsthesia, the introduction of acupressure, the crusade against hospitalism, one thought breathed through his work—that he might do something to better the condition of suffering humanity. He never attempted to keep discoveries in his own hands, to profit by the monopoly, but scattered wide the knowledge which had come to him that it might benefit mankind and grow stronger and wider in the hands of other workers.
In his domestic life he was a tender, loving, and companionable husband and father, a charming host, and a warm-hearted friend. “In this Edinburgh of ours,” says a recent writer, “there are familiar faces whose expression changes greatly at the mention of his name; there are men whose speech from formal and precise turns headlong and extravagant, as if it came from a new and inspired vocabulary.” In Scotland his personal influence was immense. As was afterwards written of him, “Great in his art, and peerless in resource, yet greater was he in his own great soul;” such a man stood in no need of the violent revolution in mode of life implied in conversion. A gradual process of development led to his feeling that although to labour was to pray, there was a need for more attention to the spiritual, even in his self-sacrificing life.
There is evidence that during a brief period of his career Simpson became affected by speculative doubts; indeed it would have been surprising if his mind had not been affected by some of the new schools of thought which sprang up in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, and appeared for a time to threaten a mortal antagonism to all that was dear to orthodox Christians. But these did not influence him long; true to his character he examined every new thought and finding it wanting remained firm in his old and tried faith, and ranged himself on the side of those who perceived nothing seriously incompatible between religion and modern science.
In his bearing, when the angel of sorrow afflicted his household with no unsparing hand, we find him always a religious-minded man. The first trial was the loss of the eldest child, his daughter Maggie, in 1844. Another daughter, Mary, was lost in early infancy. In 1848 his friend of boyhood and student days, Professor John Reid, was smitten with a painful malady and died after a prolonged period of suffering during which, knowing that the shadow of death was hanging over him, he devoted himself in retirement to religious thoughts. Experiences such as these made Simpson pause and question himself. Brimful of life and vigour, however much he came in contact with death in his professional rounds, the sight of it in his own inner circle powerfully stirred his emotional nature. His friend the Rev. Dr. Duns noticed in 208 him after these sad events a gradually increasing earnestness in his spiritual life, and a closer inquiry into the meanings of the Scriptures. He sought out the company, and placed himself under the influence of those among his patients whom he knew to possess fervid religious temperaments. The last mental stumbling-block was the question of prayer; he had seriously doubted in examining the question intellectually that human prayer could influence the purpose of the Deity. It is difficult, if not presumptuous, to inquire into the process whereby, under the guidance of spiritually minded friends, his doubts were satisfied.
“... One indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed.”