GYPSY SMITH PLEADS
WITH 12,000 AT HALL.
MORE THAN 500 PROFESS FAITH
AT GREAT REVIVAL.
Persons Who Practice Religion Only
on Sunday Charactarized as
Walking Frauds -- Cen-
sure for Parents.
With the choir of 1,000 voices softly singing "Won't You Come," and Gypsy Smith, pleading, beseeching, urging them to come, more than 500 persons stood up and professed the faith and followed the ushers into the "inquiry room" at Convention hall last night. Despite the inclement weather, it was estimated that more than 12,000 persons attended last night's meeting.
Rev. H. D. Baily of the Central Presbyterian church announced that only $400 had been taken in the collection at the first meeting Sunday night, and contrasted this with the showing made at St. Louis on the evangelist's first night there, when $1,000 was given. He said "that poor St. Louis should be ahead of Kansas City is deplorable. Let us get together, and let's make a record here tonight. Let us beat St. Louis."
Gypsy Smith followed, declaring that he was not going to say anything about the money, and launched at once into the subject, "Following Jesus." "Are you following Jesus?" he asked. "Are you doing as He would have done, as He did?"
CHRISTIANS DON'T NEED BADGES.
"There are some of us who think that to attend the church once on Sunday is sufficient for the whole week, and these same people call themselves Christians. These walking frauds are the churches' greatest curse. You needn't wear a badge if you are a Christian."
"If I were your minister it would make little difference to me whether you were this or that, you would be obliged to be born again to have a place in my church. You may be a Sunday school teacher, or a superintendent, but you wouldn't be if I were your minister."
The evangelist went into a dissertation on the subject of the examples set their children by the majority of parents. He declared that the example of most of them was sending their children to Sunday school, and if not staying away from church entirely, a perfunctory attendance at the morning service sufficed.
"Mothers and fathers, I say to you that inconsistencies like this will not bring your children to love you and reverence you, and to fear God as they should, but it will make them despise you, despise you. I say it again, despise you.
"The Lord said 'suffer little children to come unto Me,' but this kind of parent are not apt to add a word. They say suffer little children not to come unto me, and if they do come, you don't want them.
HARD TO GET WORKERS.
"How hard a matter it is to get teachers in the Sunday schools. They do not want the little children to come unto them, and yet they think they are following Jesus. I want to ask every teacher and superintendent here if this is not true. Isn't it?"
A feeble response came from the audience.
Gypsy Smith insisted, "Don't you have trouble to get teachers; don't you speak up?"
To this a rousing "Yes" went up, and the audience laughed.
"This is no laughing matter," the speaker indignantly asserted. "If I have only succeeded in touching the giggles in you, I am ashamed.. You who laugh are shallow, and the shallows in your lives will always show when you laugh on an occasion like this.
"Don't call yourselves Christians and say that you are following Jesus unless you are doing what Jesus did, giving your heart's blood if necessary for His sake. That is following Jesus."
SCORES OF INACTIVE CHRISTIANS.
He asked how many had gone out in the morning and knocked on someone's door, and asked, when it was answered, if Christ was a member of that household. He wanted to know if anyone had done this and said, when the door opened, that his desire for the spirit of Christ to enter there had been the reason for his knocking.
"Have you gone and invited anybody to come with you and give their hearts to Christ? No! But you will go out and invite them to other things, and you will get excited about other things, but do you get excited about following Jesus? You call yourself a church member and Christian, but if the preacher asks you to close your eyes for five minutes, you won't do it."
Following his sermon, Gypsy Smith asked his audience to bow their heads in prayer, and asked: "Are there not of us here tonight many who are ashamed of ourselves and ashamed to confess to the Father? Are there not of those who feel thus many who are thinking, 'By Thy grace, Lord Jesus, I will make an honest attempt to follow in Thy ways.' " Then he asked them to stand. As each one stood, he acknowledged it by saying: "That's right, brother," or "I thank you, sister."
He admonished the audience not to look about and made the way for those who wished to profess their faith easier by doing so.
