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.”

“Start with that, then—­He loves cradle faith.”

It took him some time, but presently he began with his mother’s prayer, “Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me.”  When he got to the third line there was a big lump in his throat and one in mine, and then he gave me a dig with his elbow and said, “You’ll have to finish”—­and I finished.

I put my postscript to that letter.  “God has saved him,” I wrote.  “Believe him.  Write and tell him you forgive him.”

And when that mother got that she knew that giving out note-paper was religion.

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I was in a cemetery just behind the lines, walking among the graves of our dear lads who have fallen, and weeping for those at home who weep over graves that they will never see.  There I found an old soldier who had been to the woods and had cut a big bundle of box trimmings.  He was setting a little border of box round the graves.