LAST winter, hearing of a gipsy who had been converted to God, and who was camping in a neighboring village, I was so strongly impressed with the feeling that I ought to go at once and see him, which I could not enter into what was going on around me. A friend accompanied me, and we started for the gipsy's tent.
It was a bright frosty night, and we found G. before an open fire, with a number of young men around him, whom he was exhorting to come to Christ, the alone Saviour of sinners. He assured them, from his own experience, that the world would lose its charm for them, did they but once know the Saviour, who was so precious to him.
After his first concern of soul, our gipsy friend had tried what religiousness would do for him. But it had given him no peace of mind, no power over indwelling sin. After he had tried religiousness, the happy moment came when (I say it reverently) he tried Christ—he believed His word.
This was at a time when he was brought to the very extremity of bodily weakness: God raised him up from his illness, and then, as he said, "I could sing, I am washed in the blood of the Lamb." Being brought to God, G. sought His glory; the love of Gist constrained him, he broke with his old worldly companions, took up the cross, and followed Jesus.
He had been for two years in a fighting booth, a ringleader in, sin, and his gains had arisen chiefly from late fiddling at beer houses. This will give some idea of what it cost him to obey these, words, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord; and touch not the unclean thing?'
Our friend testified with cheerfulness of the goodness of God, in having kept and preserved him, and in having used him in the conversion of many of his former companions. One of them learning that he was going to preach in a cottage, was prompted by curiosity to go and listen at the window to what gipsy G. had to say.
“That's gipsy G.'s voice, sure enough, and praying too, "said the young man;" this is reality, it's no sham." Even as he listened God spoke to his soul, and he went away rejoicing in the knowledge of forgiveness of sins.
Before we left his tent, one of us drew a loaf or two out of a basket we had brought with us, and said to the poor gipsy, though unaware how tried the man was, "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”
Then he told us that he and his family had come to an end of their food, and had no means of procuring any more; they knew not where to look for a breakfast the next morning. His wife was anxious and distressed, for she had several little hungry children; but her husband had told her he was confident that the Lord would supply their need, according to His promise, and that they should have their breakfast as usual. And now God had answered his prayers, and supplied him with his daily bread.
Bidding them good night, we returned home, thankful for the lessons taught us, of the blessedness of trusting God, and of His faithfulness to His people. T. D.