00 Gypsy Smith: His Life and Work by Himself
Gipsy Smith: His Life and Work By Gipsy Smith This work is in the Public Domain. Copy Freely More Freeware From Bennie Blount Ministries International Table of Contents Introduction by Rev. Dr. Alexander Maclaren Note To My Readers Chapter 1. Birth And Ancestry - With Some Notes Of Gipsy Customs Chapter 2. My Mother Chapter 3. A Mischievous Little Boy - With Something About Plums, Trousers, Rabbits, Eggs, And A Circus Chapter 4. The Morals Of The Gipsies Chapter 5. My Father, How He Found The Lord Chapter 6. Old Cornelius Was Dead Chapter 7. Christmas In The Tent - A Story Of Three Plum-Puddings Chapter 8. The Dawning Of The Light Chapter 9. Learning To Read And Write - Preaching To The Turnip-Field - Singing The Gospel In Tile Cottages
Chapter 10. I Become An Evangelist - The Christian Mission And Rev. William Booth - My First Frock-Coat And My First Apartments Chapter 11. Growing Success - Work At Whitby, Sheffield, And Bolton - Meeting My Future Wife - Roman Catholic Riots Chapter 12. Ballington Booth - My Marriage - The Chatham Fossils Chapter 13. Hull And Derby - A Great Success And A Partial Failure Chapter 14. Hanley - My Greatest Battlefield Chapter 15. Dismissal From The Salvation Army Chapter 16. Hanley Again Chapter 17. My First Visit To America Chapter 18. The Manchester Wesleyan Mission Chapter 19. My Second Visit To America Chapter 20. With The Children Chapter 21. My Mission To The Gipsies Chapter 22. America Again Chapter 23. Glasgow Chapter 24. Australia Chapter 25. My Father And His Two Brothers Chapter 26. London, Manchester, And Edinburgh Chapter 27. My Fifth Visit To America Chapter 28. Some Fresh Stories About Peter Mackenzie Chapter 29. As The National Council’s Missioner
Postscript The Tahoma Rescue Mission
Photos
<http://www.biblebelievers.com/gypsy_smith/index.html>
Note To My Readers A little over three years ago this story of my life was sent to the printers, at the request of many of my friends, but much against my judgment; I thought the time was not ripe for its publication. I knew tens of thousands had listened to the story from my lips, but whether they would read it, and feel its grip, in cold type, was quite another thing. But my fears soon vanished when the story was published; the reviewers and the public were all kind and treated it better than I had ever hoped. I have no doubt now that the advice of my friends was right. The story has reached people whom I shall never see, and from whom I have had letters of thanks. From all parts of the world have they come, telling of blessing received while reading of the power of the Cross over the Gipsy tent.
And, now, as the book has reached its fiftieth thousand, I desire most gratefully to offer my thanks to all who have helped to make the story, in book form, such a splendid success.
GIPSY SMITH ROMANY TAN, CAMBRIDGE.
Introduction by Rev. Dr. Alexander Maclaren
There is little need for any introduction to this book, but my friend Gipsy Smith having done me the honour of asking me to prefix a few words to it, I gladly comply with his request. I have at least one qualification for my present position, namely, my long and close knowledge of the man who here tells his life-story, and I can say with absolute confidence and sincerity that that knowledge has discovered to me a character of rare sweetness, goodness, simplicity, and godliness, and possessed of something of that strange attractiveness with which popular beliefs have endowed his race. But the fascination is explicable on better grounds than magic spells; it is the charm of a nature which draws others to itself, because it goes out to meet them, and is loved because it loves. The life told in this book has its picturesque and its pathetic sides, but is worthy of study for deeper reasons than these. It witnesses to the transforming power of Jesus Christ, entering a soul through that soul’s faith. A gipsy encampment is the last place whence an evangelist might be expected to emerge. Almost alien to our civilisation, with little education, with vices and limitations inherited from generations who were despised and suspected, and with the virtues of a foreign clan encamped on hostile ground, the gipsies have been all but overlooked by the Churches, with one or two exceptions, such as the work of Crabbe half a century since among those of Hampshire and the New Forest. But the story in this book brings one more striking and welcome evidence that there are no hopeless classes in the view of the Gospel. We are accustomed to say that often enough, but we do not always act as if we believed it, and it may do some of us good to have another living example of Christ’s power to elevate and enrich a life, whatever its antecedents, disadvantages, and limitations. Gipsy or gentleman, "we have all of us one human heart," and the deepest need in that heart is an anodyne for the sense of sin, and a power which will implant in it righteousness. Here is a case in which Christ’s Gospel has met both wants. Is there anything else that would or could do that? For another reason this book deserves study, for it raises serious questions as to the Church’s office of "evangelising every creature." Gipsy Smith has remarkable qualifications for that work, and has done it all over the country with a sobriety, transparent sincerity, and loyalty to the ordinary ministrations of the Churches which deserve and have received general recognition. But what he has not is as instructive as what he has. He is not an orator, nor a scholar, nor a theologian. He is not a genius. But, notwithstanding these deficiencies in his equipment, he can reach men’s hearts, and turn them from darkness to light in a degree which many of us ministers cannot do. It will be a good day for all the Churches when their members ask themselves whether they are doing the work for which they are established by their Lord, if they fail in winning men to be His, and whether Christ will be satisfied if, when He asks them why they have not carried out His commands to take His Gospel to those around them who are without it, they answer, "Lord, we were so busy studying deep theological questions, arguing about the validity of critical inquiries as to the dates of the books of the Bible, preaching and hearing eloquent discourses, comforting and edifying one another, that we had to leave the Christless masses alone." This book tells the experience of one man who has been an evangelist and nothing more. May it help to rouse the conscience of the Church to feel that it is to be the messenger of the glad tidings, first of all, whatever else it may be in addition! May it set many others to bethink themselves whether they, too, are not sufficiently furnished "for the work of an evangelist" to some hearts at least, though they have neither learning nor eloquence, since they have the knowledge of One who has saved them, and desires through them to save others!
ALEXANDER MACLAREN
November, 1901