GIPSY SMITH.

Gisborne Times, Volume LX, Issue 9801, 10 May 1924, Page 6

GIPSY SMITH.

NOT AN EMOTIONALIST.

MEMBER. OF PREACHING FAMILY AT AUCKLAND.

MISSIONARY AND SOLDIER

“There are seven of the name ot Gipsy Smith,” said Captain Gipsy Pat Smith in an interview at Auckland. “All or us are true Romanys, but 1 was born in Glasgow, in my lather’s tent, and, as far as I know, I have no relations with the other six. There is Gipsy Rodney Smith, so famous as an evangelist, also his son, Gipsy Smith junior, who is now a preacher in the United States. Then there is another, Gipsy S. Smith,_ cousin of the one preaching in America, and Gipsy Ezekiel Smith, his uncle, who was a preacher before the famous Gipsy Smith, started his work as an evangelist, and then there is myself. BORN IN A TENT. “You see the Romany people give “the title “Gipsy” to any member who takes up work out of tho ordinary run. I was born in a gipsy tent m Glasgow, and lived with my parents till I was 16 years of age. .1 was the only lad in the tribe who could read, and I had but eleven months at school, anc 1 , looking back, I often wonder at the work I have been able to do since I first started pleaching vihen IS-} years old. When 1 was converted, my father turned me out because I refused to tell fortune**.” ON THE SOMME. The future evangelist had experience of a stricken field on the Somme. Relating his war experience, the evangelist said: “I volunteered on August sch, 1914, the day after war was declared against Germany. I joined. Lord Lovat’s Scouts. Ten months later .1 got niv sergeant’s stripes. Then 1 was sent recruiting, and got 1500 men,, mostly from places where I had been preaching before the war. Later 1 received a commission. “Sometimes I am asked what struck me most while I was at the front, and I reply the machine-gun bullets at the Somme, in the battle of July, 1916. I had a pretty good run till that fight, hut it was the roughest bit of work I ever was in. I got wounded by machine-gun fire, an arm and a leg being fractured. My leg is ail right now, but my arm is two inches shorter.” NOT AN EMOTIONALIST.

“Being a Presbyterian,” he said, “I need hardly add Lam not an emotionalist in my evangelistic mission. l think a great deal of harm lias been done by emotional evangelism, as the backwash is serious. Ido not believe in working up the emotiono by such hymns as ’Tell Mother I’ll ho There, or ‘Where is my Wandering Boy Tonight?’ “A preacher should just give a straight message, and leave tho rest in higher hands. An evangelist whose method makes it harder for tho ordinary pastors afterwards does not know his work.”