GIPSY PAT SMITH MISSION

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 220, 11 June 1924, Page 10

GIPSY PAT SMITH MISSION

TARANAKI STREET CHURCH CROWDED ENTHUSIASTIC SINGING

All seats were taken early for Captain Gipsy Pat Smith’s last evening service in the Methodist Church in Taranaki Street, and the singing throughout the service was remarkably spontaneous and hearty. The “jissioner’s favourite hymn, Be Like Jesus,” is now well known, and is sung with great effect. . . A feature of the service was the duet, “In the Garden” (Arthur Miles_) sung by Captain Gipsy Pat Smith and Mrs Smith, both fine voices blending ‘ ' perfectly, and the accompanist, Miss Chudleigh, doing her part sympathetiCa Captain Gipsy Pat Smith took as his text last night Timothy i, 17, the title of the address being “Shipwrecked.” . ’ - • There was something about the restless spirit of the sea that, drew him, as it drew everybody, despite its dangers, he said, and' he was never happy very far away from it. There were many dangers to ships at sea, as there were dangers to souls in the sea of life. . “The captain of a ship does not often take the bridge when away from the land,” he said, “and I was once surprised to miss the captain for the better part of a day and a night while we were still some 500 miles from the American coast. When I found he had been on the bridge all the time I asked him the reason, and he told me that while we were far. from the coastal rocks, there was a chain of sunken rocks there that he never felt safe about. Supposedly all charted, they were not far from the surface in the case of so big a ship, and he preferred to take the ship himself. “Of the sunken rocks on which souls are shipwrecked, bad temper is one of the most frequent, and it renders testimony worthless. I would not give '■ anything for a boy or a girl without a temper, but it can be held in check . and chained. “Another rock in human life is pride. At a service in a large church in Scotland there came a woman wellknown as a bad character, bringing with her a little girl 15 years of age. All the good women in that seat gov up and went to other seats, leaving .her by herself. Her name was Meg, known to all as a woman who kept a house of ill fame, and who managed a number of. girls who earned money for her on the streets. At the close of the service the minister went for--7 ward to her and said.: “Meg, lam glad to see vou here.” , ‘You need .not talk religion to me? she said, smiling as though at the idea of her coming to church at all, “but my girls when they were out last night \ found this child, who has run away from her mother. She has not started yet. I’ll leave her with you.” That woman will be rewarded better for that act in the next world than the women for turning their backs on her. “In life’s sea there are also the sunken derelicts that shipwreck souls, and one of the greatest of these is indif- ■ ference. How many ministers are crucified, not by the people who have no time for Christ or religion, but bv the indifference of the people- of their own church. They have sent forth burning, glowing words, but they have been met . by indifference. It was indifference that alone had prevented the closing of the liquor traffic in New Zealand. Unbelief is another of the derelicts. “Some ships miss the rocks and derelicts, and yet. are wrecked on the icefields. One night immediately after the, armistice on the old Corsican in the Atlantic I put all the clothes I could find over me,; but I was still cold. Then the engine room bell rang, and the ship was reversed. I ran up to the captain, who said; 7 We are in the ice. and I cannot see the way out.” We were in the centre of an icefield. Daylight showed the dangers more plainly. How many a [ Christian has been wrecked on. the icebergs of want of love to Jesus Christ? When I find myself getting into a formal way of carrying on these meet fags because I have done it a long time, and because the people expect it, I pray and read the Scriptures earnestly until I feel fit again to give the Gospel to others. “It was eas.y to gradually drop the acts and thoughts that formed one’s chief joy when converted. That was the appearance of grey hairs without the wearer’s knowledge, the beginning of soul shipwreck. Was there any greater tragedy than to watch an ocean greyhound, that- could laugh at the . storm, battered to pieces in a storm op a sand bar? What were the spiritual sand bars? One is called ‘fear of man.’ How many a Christian’s life has been dimmed by that sand bar ? Once in a sermon I made reference to the liquor traffic, and I found the minister walking about muttering ‘That was a great mistake.’ ‘How do you mean?’ I asked. ‘The man who gives 75 per cent, of the church’s offerings is the richest brewer in the countryside,’ he replied, ‘and he has threatened to pull out of this church if any reference is made to the liquor traffic, and if he does the church is damned.* It’s a poor church that ... gets 75 ner cent, of its offerings from one man. Some Christians miss that sand bar and get wrecked on others, like over-sensitiveness. Every Christian should be sensitive, but you can be over-sensitive. There are what they call ‘touchy’ Christians, horns all over, and you are afraid to touch anv horn lest they explode. In the West Indies I was shown a plant that curled up when touched. I merely touched it and it did the same thing, but 1 was told it would recover, though there was another kind, genus mimosa, that curled up and died when touched. There are genus mimosa Christians who curl up and die when their sensitive places are touched. Sunday school teachers who do not like the superintendents and make that an excuse for going back to the world are over-sensitive in just that way. Their own feelings weight more with them than the soults of others. ‘Great peace have they that love Thy law, and nothing shall offend 'them? ” The missioner concluded with the story of a man who had succumbed to drink to such an extent that he left .his family and wandered away, to sink to the uttermost abysses of shame in a big city. But there he was drawn by the warmth into a rescue mission, fed and warmed, and converted. _ He returned to his home, and looking in through the open door, saw his wife and two 'daughters, the former grey-haired and sad, and a wave of compunction coming over him cried: “Mary, will you"’ forgive me?”’ The old lovelight came back to the wife’s eyes, and she said: “I wih never forgive you while you stand outside.” “Christ will never forgive you so long as you stand outside His door.” concluded Captain Gipsy Pat. “Will you come back now?” The subject at the evening service to-night will be “Three Steps Down in Every Young Man’s and Young Wefiaan’s Life.” AFTERNOON MEETING. The three o’clock mission by Captain Gipsy Pat Smith in the Vivian Streot

Baptist Church was crowded yesterday afternoon at 3 p.m. The lesson was read by the Rev. R. H. Catherwood, and the Rev. Dr. Elliott led in prayer. The Subject of the missioner’s address was: “The Vine and the Branches,” the story of John 15.