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S'J /S' \ - WBl IN * 1 *'’ VOL. VIIIUnO. 17. GYPSY SMITH AND 808 JONES AT CARTERSVILLE OU can count on Cartersville to reach out after the best of earth. Bob Jones, him self who conducted the great meetings at the Sam Jones Tabernacle last year, HhehcbheM and who was called by a committee of Christian business men to manage the Sam Jones Taberna cle meetings from year to year, is quite enough as a leader to attract great crowds and stir any community, but when it conies to supplementing and surrounding Bob Jones with the influence of Gyspy Smith, acknowledged to be the great est evangelist today in the world, it seems that veri y the cup of Cartersville, Georgia, ought to be full to overflowing with thanksgiving and expectation. At the request of The Golden Age, Mrs. Lem Gilreath, thhe gifted and beloved “State Evan gel” of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, has written a sketch of Gypsy Smith that will quicken interest in his coming and doubtless cause a widespread preparation to at tend the Cartersville meetings. Mrs. Gilreath’s Story of Gypsy Smith. Surely in all the worl dthere is no other man before whom we can stand, and with heads un covered, say more reverently: “What hath God wrought,” than before Gyp y Smith, the fa mous English evangelist. In 1860 in the parish of Wanstead, near Epping Forest, the little brown gypsy baby be gan his eventful career. From the very mo ment he opened his eyes in the gypsy wagon, God seems to have marked him for his own, and began preparing him for what he had pre pared for him. In all of literature there is no more pathetic picture than Gypsy Smith’s account in hL auto biography of his mother’s death. A little boy scarcely 8 years old, he remem bers so distinctly the day a physician was sum moned to their wagon to see one of his sisters, who was sick. He remembers seeing the physician turn from his sick sister with the awful words. “Small pox.” Then he recalls so vividly the confus ion and sorrow’ in the family. One month later his mother died of the dread disease, leaving a little baby three days old. His father, living as he did in almost heathen darkness, yet believed in a God, and had some where heard of the Savior of the world. When he knew his wife was dying, he tried in his ignorant way to point her to Christ. “Polly,” he said, “can’t you pray; can’t you trust in Jesus?” and she said: “No, Cornelius, I can’t pray; a great black hand hangs over me, and I am only conscious of my sins, that stand be- WORLD-FAMOUS ENGLISH EVANGELIST WILL ASSIST 808 JONES IN GREAT MEETING AT SAM JONES’ TABERNACLE AT CARTERSVILLE BEGINNING AUG. 3. ATLANTA, GA., JUNE 19, 1913 tween me and God.” Then the evangelist tells us his father climbed down out of the wagon, and went off alone to pray for the soul so fast going out into eternity. The Saving Memory of a Song. Presently as he prayed and wept for her, in his own darkness, he heard her singing: “I have a father in the promised land — My God calls me and I must go To meet him in the promised land.” He tells us when his father went back to her there was a glorious light of peace and joy on the poor, sore, swollen face, and she said: “Cor nelius, I am not afraid to die; I feel that it will A’< life * . • ’ »k ■. ■ ■ aWa .■'"■Say.:?.- “GYPSY SMITH.” Famous English Evangelist. be all right and God will take care of my chil dren.” He said, “Polly, where did you hear that scng?” and she told him that twenty years before she had heard it in a mission Sunday school, and that in that hour of her dire need it had all come back to her, and she died in a full assurance of faith. Pathetic beyond description is his account of his mother’s burial, at the midnight hour his father, the cnly mourner, walking behind the wagon to the open grave in the cemetery grave yard. He tell s how the little motherless chil dren huddled, shivering over the camp fire, awaiting their father’s return from the new made mound —shivered yet more and waited, and wondered at the great mystery —wondered with hearts full of a great longing for the moth er who had gone. Then we learn how a few days later he and his sister, Tilly, wandered away three miles hunting their mother’s grave, and when they found it, they fell across it, in an agony of grief and tears, and how he took from his flt tle shirt a gold stick pin, the only thing he pos sessed of any value, and pushed it into the soft earth of the mound, trying to give it to his mother. I have read and reread this wonderful book, but my tears always come when I read of the lonely heart of this little brown gypsy boy, lonely for his dead mother. His wife’s wonderful death convicted Gypsy Smith’s father of sin, and for months the old man was very miserable. While camped near Cambridge, where a great revival was in prog ress he found peace and became a new creature in Christ Jesus. One by one, in order of age, the children were converted, until all save Rodney (Gypsy), the great evangelist, and his sister Tilly, had come into the kingdom. The Gypsy Boy Converted. It occurred to him one day that he was stand ing in his sister’s way by not seeking Christ. That she was waiting on him and-then and there he made a definite surrender to his Master and peace entered his soul. His father, together with two brothers, were then engaged in evangelistic work in England, and he tells us that from the very first it was borne in upon him that he, too, must preach. Tie could not read, was densely ignorant, but his heart was filled with a burnin gintense de sire to bring souls into the kingdom. His first sermons were preached to the trees in the depths of the forest, and he recalls one beautiful Sab bath morning when he preached to a field of turnips, and he says he “never had a more at tentive or respectful audience.” Tn those early days Gyp y Smith had a beau tiful voice, and as he went from town to town into different homes, selling his gypsy wares, he would sing of the love of God to the people he met. Finally he became known as “The Singing Gypsy Boy,” and so Gen. William Booth, foun der of the Salvation Army, heard of him and that he wanted to preach. Tn 1877 in one of Booth’s missions in London the gypsy boy sang a solo, and gave his first public talk. It was a simple talk, telling of the Savior’s love in his heart, and what he had done for him, and for his loved ones, but it touched every heart pres ent and from that hour it was an as ured fact that God had placed his hand upon him for the “work of an evangelist.” .■ (Continued on page S.WaW- ONE DOLLAR AND FI IT YCENTB A YEAR :: FIVE CENTS A COPY