Gipsy Smith

“ I can give boys writing-paper and envelopes and sell them a cup of coffee or a packet of cigarettes with as much religion as I can stand in a pulpit and talk about them. Why, my Master washed people’s feet and cooked a breakfast for hungry fishermen. He kindled the fire with the hands that were nailed to a tree for humanity. There are no secular things if you are in the spirit of the Master—they are all Divine. ”

“ If a man’s religion does not get into every detail of his life he may profess to be a saint, but he’s a fraud. Religion ought to permeate life and make it beautiful—as lovely as a breath of perfume from the garden of the Lord.
The boys have given me the privilege of talking straight to them. ”

“ You should have heard the boys all over that hut whisper, “Yes, sir—Jesus.”
“Well,” I said, “I want every man that is anxious to take Jesus with him into the trench to stand.”
Instantly and quietly every man in that hut stood up. And we prayed as men can pray only under those conditions. We sang together, “For ever with the Lord.” I shall never sing that hymn again without a lump in my throat. My mind will always go back to those dear boys. ”

“ Religion’s too big to be confined within our four little walls. If our Church rules are so rigid that they won’t let us come together, then our Church rules are wrong. God never made rules which divide men—all God’s laws unite. Christ died that we might be one, and it is time we got together. Your boys are bigger than your Churches. ”

“ When they had gone I collected the postcards that had been written and censored—and there were 575. To keep the boys in touch with home is religion; to keep in their lives the finest, the most beautiful home-sentiment that God ever gives to the world is a bit of religion—pure and undefiled. ”

“ The best things that the old Book talks about are the things the boys love in one another. They don’t always think of the Book, but they love the fruits of the Spirit in one another. They love truth, honour, courage, humility, friendship, loyalty. ”

“ It is the flowers that you have made grow in unlikely places that will tell—not how much money you have made, not how big a house you have lived in, not how popular you were in the world of letters, of science, of finance, but—how many burdens have you lifted? ”

“ We loved him. We were with him when he was killed, for the shell that killed him wounded us. Every man in the battalion would have laid down his life for him.”
This old world’s dying for the want of love. There are more people die for the want of a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don’t stifle it—let it out.
“I am afraid,” said a padre to me once, “the boys are sceptical.”
“Come with me to-morrow,” I answered. “I’ll prove to you they are not sceptical.”
We were half an hour ahead of time and the hut was crowded with eight hundred men. ”

“ One hundred and fifty-two thousand cups of tea and coffee are given away monthly at one railway-station. I once happened to be at a railway-station on the main lines of communication. There are women working there, women of position and means, working at their own expense. I have seen rough fellows go up to a British woman behind a counter—the first time they have seen a British woman for months—and I have heard them say, “Madam, will you shake hands with me?” ”

“ Woe be to the man who goes into the hut and tries to preach sectarianism. The Y.M.C.A. is creating a spirit of unity amongst the boys, and that is going on all the time. I want the limitations to vanish at home. I want the ecclesiastical barriers to go. When you get to Heaven the Lord will have to give Gabriel a job to introduce many Christians to one another. You should see your boys, how they mix up. They come in—the Roman Catholics, the Church of England, and the Nonconformists and Plymouth Brethren and Salvation Army, and all sorts—you don’t know who’s who. ”

“ You can imagine what eight hundred Munsters shouting “No” sounds like. They were all attention instantly. I wonder what would happen if the Vicar went into church next Sunday morning and asked the question, “Are we down-hearted?” I knew it would cause a sensation, but I’d rather have a sensation than a stagnation.
Those boys sat up. I said, “We are going to talk about gipsy life.” I talked to them about the origin of my people. There’s not a man living in the world who knows the origin of my people. I can trace my people back to India, but they didn’t come from India. ”

“ Hundreds of those Canadian boys stood up to say, “God helping me, I am going to lead a better life!”—hundreds of them. And then I put another test to them. “I want you all to promise,” I said, “that you’ll kneel down and say your prayers to-night in the billet, and those of you who will promise to do that come up and shake hands with me as you go out.” I was kept one half-hour shaking hands. ”

“ He has been a water-carrier for the British force in German East Africa, and Gipsy Smith has just come from the trenches in France.
You would not expect the two books to be similar, but they are: they are both about “Jesus.” This devotion to “Jesus” binds all time Christians together, and one day will bring us all more visibly together than we are now. I love this breezy little book of Gipsy Smith’s; it is not only full of the love of “Jesus,” but love of our “our boys.” They are splendid. ”

“ There are lots of people think you are not doing any spiritual work unless you are singing, “Come to Jesus.” Put more Jesus in every bit of the day’s business. Jesus ought to be as real in the city as in the temple. If I read my New Testament aright, and if I know God, and if I know humanity, and if I know Nature, then that is God’s programme. God’s programme is that the whole of life should be permeated with Christ.
God bless the women who have gone out to help your boys. Women of title, of wealth and position, serving God and humanity behind tea-tables. ”

“ Then a bright-faced soldier lad called out, “Guv’nor, she puts Jesus in the coffee.” That is what I mean when I say you have got to put Jesus into every bit of the day’s work.
I have never once been asked by your boys to what Church I belonged. They don’t stop to ask that if they believe in you. They want the living Christ and the living Message. It isn’t creed; it’s need. And don’t you get the notion that the boys can’t be reached, and don’t you think that the boys are hostile to Christianity. They are not. ”

“ How many dark hearts have you lightened? You can’t do too much for your boys. Remember what they are doing for you. Remember the lives that are being laid down for you.
I shook hands with a boy a little while ago in Scarborough, and he said, “I believe I hold the record for having lost most in the war. I have lost five brothers, my sister was killed in the war, and my mother died of a broken heart through grief, but,” he said, “I’ll give my next week’s pay, sir, towards this new hut.” ”

“ It is a beautiful language, full of poetry and music. Then I talked about the way the gipsies get their living—and other people’s; and for thirty minutes those Munsters hardly knew if they were on the chairs or on the floor—and I purposely made them laugh. They had just come out of the hell of the trenches. They had that haunted, weary, hungry look, and if only I could make them laugh and forget the hell out of which they had just climbed it was religion, and I wasn’t wasting time.
When I had been talking for thirty minutes, I stopped, and said, “Boys, there’s a lot more to this story. ”

“ I grew up, and I grew up my own way, and my own way was the wrong way. I go to church occasionally—if a friend is getting married. I know the story of the Christian faith a little, but it has never really meant anything to me.”
Then he continued slowly, “On the Somme, a few hours before I was badly wounded”—he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a little crucifix—“I picked up that little crucifix and I put it in my pack, and when I got to hospital I found that little crucifix on my table. ”

“ You can’t beat a British boy, he’s on the spot all the time—“the Middlesex!” Some of you haven’t seen the joke yet.
I once went to a hut just behind the line, within the sound of the guns. Buildings all round us had been blown to pieces. The leader of this hut was a clergyman of the Church of England, but he wasn’t an ecclesiastic there, he was a man amongst men, and we loved him.
“Gipsy Smith,” he said, “I don’t know what you will do; the boys in the billets this week are the Munsters—Irish Roman Catholics. ”

“ Many people at home don’t realise what is going on. Some are in mourning, some have lost boys, some have lost husbands, brothers, but we have not suffered as others have suffered. I was riding in a French train a few weeks ago. ”

“ We will arrange that.”
“Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why you are interested in me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, if you wish,” he said. “Men are writing home to their wives, mothers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a new power in their lives. ‘We have got something that is helping us to go straight and play the game,’ they write. And so,” said the General, “we should like to have a chat with you.”
I went the next night, and for an hour and a half I preached the Gospel to those officers. ”

“ The prayers of those boys would have made a book. There were no old-fashioned phrases. You know what I mean—people begin at a certain place and there is no stopping them till they get to another certain place. ”

“ They had been gone about five minutes when the other train from Blighty came in. We couldn’t hear them singing. They were quiet and subdued. We served them with coffee and tea, candles, bootlaces, and smokes, and then, as they had some time, they started having a wash—the first since they left Blighty. The footboard of the train was the washstand, the shaving-table, and the dressing-table. But they didn’t sing.
I saw in a corner of that little canteen a pile of postcards, and I said, “Who says a postcard for wife or mother?”
Somebody asked, “Who’s going to see them posted?”
I said, “I am. ”

“ Anything unreal, merely sentimental, washy, they detect in a moment. You must draw them “with the cords of a man and the bonds of love,” and those who read this book will find many a hint as to how to do it.
A.F. London.
Your Boys
I have just come back from your boys. I have been living among them and talking to them for six months. I have been under shell fire for a month, night and day. I have preached the Gospel within forty yards of the Germans. I have tried to sleep at night in a cellar, and it was so cold that my moustache froze to my blanket and my boots froze to the floor. ”

“ A telegram had come to that granite city to say that his boy was badly wounded, and he ran all the way to the station and jumped into a train without stopping to put on a collar. You don’t think of collars when your boys are dying. ”

“ He was more afraid of nobody than he would have been of somebody. Then just suppose the others came back and found him kneeling there!
“I funked it,” he said. “I got under the blanket, and tried to say my prayers under the blanket, but it wouldn’t work. Then I heard one man come into the room, then two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. And the eighth man was the champion swearer of the company.”
“Boys,” said this man, “did you hear him?” ”