ell 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,