GIPSY SMITH IS PETER PAN, HE TELLS CHILDREN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18014, 26 November 1926, Page 3

GIPSY SMITH IS PETER PAN, HE TELLS CHILDREN.

SAYS MANY FOLK THINK THEY'VE RELIGION. BUT IT IS A BILIOUS ATTACK WOULD SOONER CONVERT BOYS AND GIRLS THAN GREY HEADS, HE AVERS. Throwing his hands Heavenwards in characteristic fashion and bringing them down with a resounding bang on the rail before him. Gipsy Smith told several thousand young people at King Edward Barracks last night that he was Peter Pan and that he would never grow up. “I don’t want to,” he said, and he told how he was converted when a boy, how he had returned to the gipsy camp with a new light in his eyes and with a determination to learn more of God; he told, too, of the conversion in later life of his two sons and his sweet little gipsy daughter of seven and implored the thousands of young folk present to give themselves to God. From a Distance. He read a telegram at the commencemen of the service stating that fifteen people would be attending the mission that night after travelling thirty-five miles to hear him.

“Stand up and let me look at you, stand up,” said the Gipsy, and as fifteen young people rose in their seats the missioner clapped them heartily and a wave of applause swept the barracks.

“Shake hands with yourselves, now,” he said, addressing the fifteen; “I like to give visitors a welcome, especially visitors who have come a long way.” Then a hymn was sung, and when it was finished, the Gipsy turned to the congregation and declared that he must ask them to sing it again. He felt that he must sing it on tip-toes like a man wanting to get off the mark in a race, and that was how they all ought to sing it, he declared. Procrastination.

Taking his text from the tenth chapter of St Mark, reading from the thirteenth verse, the Gipsy said that the best people in the church had come to Christ before they had attained the age of twenty years, and that was why he asked the young people at the service that night to make the decision then, and not to put it off from day to day. He drew an analogy between a piece of beautifully polished furniture in which nails had been driven and a little boy or girl who had procrastinated until touched by the black paw of the devil, and he said that that night wast the time for them to give themselves to Christ, for though they might plaster up the holes left by the nails in the piece of furniture, and though it might look as if it had never been damaged at all, they would always know that the holes had been there, holes that had been plastered up. In the same way, though the mark left by the devil m.ght be removed by the cleansing influence of God the memory would always remain. “Until It Ached.” “So give yourselves to Christ while you are young,” he bade them. He told them that young people did not have as much to give as old people as far as the collection plate was concerned, but they gave more of what they had; old folks had had it longer and they held on to it longer; they held on to a threepenny bit sometimes until the head on the coin almost ached. (Laughter.) That was young people’s night, a service specially for folk to the age of twenty-five years, but there were a number of old-fashioned twenty-fives in the gathering, and when the collection plate was handed round they must pay double, for the were occpying the seats of the young people. “Before I go any further, there is a little matter that I want to attend to,” said the Gipsy. “This is my pay night. It is the night on which I give my staff their wages. I choose the young people’s night because they help me to pay my debts. My staff has been helping me so well since I started last Wednesday and I have been bubbling over with thanks. I want you to help me pay them.” An Interjection. Then the Gipsy called for applause for the individual officers connected

•with the mission—that was their wages, he said. “Let’s have ’When the Roll is Called up Yonder,’ ” interjected a thick voice from the side of the barracks when the applause had subsided. Gipsy Smith turned to the interjeotor. “What’s that?” he asked in uncompromising tones. “What do you say? Remember this is young people’s night.” “I would sooner have a thousand boys and girls converted than a thousand grey-heads,” Ijhe Gipsy declared with fervour, and casting his eyes along the front row, he asked each their age. Ten, eight, nine, eighteen, fourteen, twenty, fifteen, fifteen, twelve, the young voices rapped out, and the congregat.on smiled. “Yes, you smile,” said the Gipsy, “but this is no smiling matter. You forget. This is a profound argument. The best people who have given themselves to Christ have done so before they were twenty years of age. Laughter. He told of Bernard Holloway, a friend of his, whose love of Christ had made a profound impression upon the students at Oxford. He was a courageous fellow who had said “no” when he had meant “no,” and “yes” when he I meant “yes.” “And as a young officer said to me i after he had been killed in France— Here a wave of laughter swipt j through the barracks, and it was evident that the young people had picked a flaw in the Gipsy’s grammar. "Yes, after Bernard Holloway had been killed in France,” said the Gipsy, obviously perturbed. “Bernard Holloway, mind you. Don’t be quite so fast. Wait a minute now.” And the laughter having subsided, the Gipsy told of how the young officer had extolled the good war kof Holloway and how hundreds of appreciative letters were received by his mother telling her of his work. Not a Kill-Joy. “No, don’t think that Jesus is going to rid you of anything worth hav.ng,” the evangelist said. “He is not a Killjoy. He will bring all Heaven to you. He wants to save you from sin. You should live with me. You would have few dull moments. I would get you going. I am as lively as any of you. You will say: 'Well, I know some folks who are awfully miserable.’ They are miserable for the lack of it. They have not got religion. They have only got a bilious attack.” Then when the decision cards had been handed round and signed, the evangelist asked all who had given themselves to Christ to stand, and he announced that more than two-thirds of those present had made the decision. “It’s the best night since the mission commenced,” he said. “Now go home and tell your folks about, it. That's what I did. Don’t be afraid.”