A Gypsy Finds Jesus - Part 2

part 1

part 2 - as told by Gypsy Smith in Gypsy Smith - His Life and Work

My father was now terribly in earnest. There were a great many gipsies encamped in the forest at the time, including his father and mother, brothers and sisters. My father told them that he had done with the roaming and wrong-doing, and that he meant to turn to God.

They looked at him and wept.

Then my father and his brothers moved their vans to Shepherd's Bush, and placed them on a piece of building land close to Mr. Henry Varley's Chapel. My father sold his horse, being determined not to move from that place until he had found the way to God. Says my father "I meant to find Christ if He was to be found. I could think of nothing else but Him. I believed His blood was shed for me."

Then my father prayed that God would direct him to some place where he might learn the way to heaven, and his prayer was answered. One morning he went out searching as usual for the way to God. He met a man mending the road, and began to talk with him - about the weather, the neighbourhood, and such-like things. The man was kindly and sympathetic, and my father became more communicative. The man, as the good providence of God would have it, was a Christian, and said to my father, "I know what you want; you want to be converted."

"I do not know anything about that," said my father, "but I want Christ, and I am resolved to find Him."

"Well," said the working-man "there is a meeting tonight in a mission hall in Latimer Road, and I shall come for you and take you there."

In the evening the road-mender came and carried off my father and his brother Bartholomew to the mission hall. Before leaving, my father said to us, "Children, I shall not come home again until I am converted"

I shouted to him, "Daddy, who is he?" I did not know who this Converted was. I thought my father was going off his head, and resolved to follow him.

The Mission Hall was crowded. My father marched right up to the front. I never knew him look so determined. The people were singing the well-known hymn ––


"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains."
The refrain was, " I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me."

As they were singing, my father's mind seemed to be taken away from everybody and everything. "It seemed," he said, "as if I was bound in a chain and they were drawing me up to the ceiling." In the agony of his soul he fell on the floor unconscious, and lay there wallowing and foaming for half an hour.

I was in great distress, and thought my father was dead, and shouted out, "Oh dear, our father is dead!"

But presently he came to himself, stood up and, leaping joyfully, exclaimed, "I am converted!" He has often spoken of that great change since. He walked about the hall looking at his flesh. It did not seem to be all quite the same colour to him. His burden was gone, and he told the people that he felt so light that if the room had been full of eggs he could have walked through and not have broken one of them.

I did not stay to witness the rest of the proceedings. As soon as I heard my father say, "I am converted," I muttered to myself, "Father is converted; I am off home." I was still in utter ignorance of what the great transaction might mean.

When my father got home to the waggon that night he gathered us all around him. I saw at once that the old haggard look that his face had worn for years was now gone, and, indeed, it was gone for ever. His noble countenance was lit up with something of that light that breaks over the cliff-tops of eternity. I said to myself in wonderment, "What marvellous words these are –– 'I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me.'"

My father's brother Bartholomew was also converted that evening, and the two stopped long enough to learn the chorus, and they sang it all the way home through the streets.

Father sat down in the waggon, as tender and gentle as a little child. He called his motherless children to him one by one, beginning with the youngest, my sister Tilly. "Do not be afraid of me, my dears. God has sent home your father a new creature and a new man." He put his arms as far round the five of us as they would go, kissing us all, and before we could understand what had happened he fell on his knees and began to pray.

Never will my brother, sisters, and I forget that first prayer. I still feel its sacred influence on my heart and soul; in storm and sunshine, life and death, I expect to feel the benediction of that first prayer.

There was no sleep for any of us that night. Father was singing, "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me," and we soon learnt it too. Morning, when it dawned, found my father full of this new life and this new joy.

He again prayed with his children, asking God to save them, and while he was praying God told him he must go to the other gipsies that were encamped on the same piece of land, in all about twenty families.

Forthwith he began to sing in the midst of them, and told them what God had done for him. Many of them wept. Turning towards his brother Bartholomew's van he saw him and his wife on their knees. The wife was praying to God for mercy, and God saved her then and there.

The two brothers, Bartholomew and my father, then commenced a prayer meeting in one of the tents, and my brother and eldest sister were brought to God. In all thirteen gipsies professed to find Christ that morning.