Part 10

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I was at a home for limbless men the other day—there are over one hundred and eighty of them in that home. I held my hand out to shake hands with the first two men I met, and they laughed at me. I looked down for their hands—they hadn’t got one between them! I took the face of one of those dear boys and I patted it. I wanted to kiss it with gratitude. I wonder how you feel!

I walked round amongst those boys—one hundred and eighty limbless! I found one boy without legs and without an arm. He was just a trunk, and his comrades, those who could, were carrying him around. He was the sunshine in the whole place—not a grouse. They are doing no grousing—your boys there. When they see you they just say, “Cheerio.”

A friend of mine, a minister, went to see one of these boys, and he was wondering what he could say to him; he thought he had got to cheer him up. The boy looked at the padre and said,

“Guv’nor, don’t get down-hearted. I am going to make money out of this job. Why, I shall only want a pair of trousers with one leg, and I shall only want a coat with one sleeve, and I shall only want a pair of boots with one boot.”

It reminds me of the question I once asked: “Sonny, what struck you most when you got in the trenches?” and the reply came sharp,

“A bit of shrapnel.”

Another of your boys, just picked up in the trenches by those tender fellows, the stretcher-bearers, those men with the hands of a woman and with the heart of a mother—God bless them!—called out as they came to him, “Home, John.” And when he was passing the officer and they were carrying him into the Red Cross train, he cried, “Season.” He had two gold stripes already. That’s the spirit of your boys.

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There was a dear old Scotchman from Aberdeen. A telegram had come to that granite city to say that his boy was badly wounded, and he ran all the way to the station and jumped into a train without stopping to put on a collar. You don’t think of collars when your boys are dying. I saw him when he landed. It was my job to help him. The dear old fellow was just in time to see his boy die—and afterwards he came and laid his head on my shoulder and he sobbed. And I wept too. He was seventy.

Presently he said, “It will be hard to go home and tell mother that her only boy has gone, but I’ve got a message for her. ‘Father,’ my boy said, ‘tell mother I am not afraid to die. I have found Jesus. Tell mother that.’”

There are some people who think you are not doing Christian work unless you have a hymn-book in one hand and a Bible in the other and are singing, “Come to Jesus.” I am glad I haven’t to live with that kind of people. I call them the Lord’s Awkward Squad.

If you take “firstly,” “secondly,” “thirdly,” out to the front with you, by the time you get to thirdly the boys will be in the trenches. I never take an old sermon out with me to France. I write my prescription after I’ve seen my patients.

I was talking to a thousand boys one day. “Boys,” I said, “how many of you have written to your mother this week?”

Now, that’s a proper question. I wonder what would happen if the preacher stopped in his sermon next Sunday morning and said, “Have you paid your debts this week?” “In what sort of a temper did you come down to breakfast this morning?”

If a man’s religion does not get into every detail of his life he may profess to be a saint, but he’s a fraud. Religion ought to permeate life and make it beautiful—as lovely as a breath of perfume from the garden of the Lord.

The boys have given me the privilege of talking straight to them. “If you don’t write, you know what you’ll get,” I said, and I began to give out the note-paper. I can give boys writing-paper and envelopes and sell them a cup of coffee or a packet of cigarettes with as much religion as I can stand in a pulpit and talk about them. Why, my Master washed people’s feet and cooked a breakfast for hungry fishermen. He kindled the fire with the hands that were nailed to a tree for humanity. There are no secular things if you are in the spirit of the Master—they are all Divine.

I went on dealing the note-paper out, and presently a clergyman came to me and said, “Gipsy Smith, a man in my room wants to see you.”

When I got there, I saw he was crying, sobbing.

“I am not a kid,” he said; “I am a man. I’m forty-one. You told me to write to my mother. Read that,” he said, throwing down a letter; and this is what I read:

“My dear Mother,

“It’s seven years since I wrote you last. I’ve done my best to break your heart and to turn your hair grey. I’ve lived a bad life, but it’s come to an end. I have given my heart to God. I won’t ask you to believe me, or to forgive me. I deserve neither. But I ask for a bit of time that I may prove my sincerity.

“Your boy still, “Jack.”

“Shall I put a bit at the bottom for a postscript?” I asked. “But first of all, let us pray.”

We got on our knees, and I said, “You begin.”

“I’m not used to it,” he replied.

“Begin; never mind how. Did you ever pray?”

“Yes,” he said; “I prayed as a child.”