Biography
Oswald Jeffrey Smith was born on November 8, 1889, in Odessa, Ontario, Canada, in a family of Methodist background. He grew up in a farming community and was a thoughtful boy. At the age of nine, his family moved to Toronto. He was brought up in a home of moderate means. As a youth, he was converted at a church meeting and joined the Presbyterian church. He was a serious and gifted young man, who loved to write verse. He felt a call to the ministry and went to a Bible school, studying at the Toronto Bible College and then at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. There he came under the influence of R. A. Torrey, who was dean of the school.
He returned to Toronto and served as an evangelist and a pastor. He became interested in missions, and he was moved by the plight of the unreached peoples of the world. He was a man of burning enthusiasm. In 1915, he organized a missionary convention at a church in Toronto, which stirred a great deal of interest. Then he began to hold his own meetings. In 1921, he founded the Alliance Tabernacle, which was later called the Cliff Street Baptist Church. In 1928, he started the Peoples Church in Toronto, a nondenominational congregation, with a strong emphasis on foreign missions. He served as its pastor until 1959.
The Peoples Church became one of the most missionary-minded churches in the world. It held an annual missionary conference, in which the people pledged to give to missions by faith promise. In this system, each member promised to give a sum of money, as God enabled him, over and above his regular giving. In its first year, the church raised around ten thousand dollars. Over the years, the amount rose to hundreds of thousands, and the total given to missions was tens of millions of dollars. The church supported hundreds of missionaries. He was known for his saying that no one has the right to hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once.
He was a prolific writer. He wrote more than thirty-five books, including The Enduement of Power, The Passion for Souls and The Work God Blesses. He wrote about twelve hundred hymns and gospel songs. Among them was Then Jesus Came, which was sung widely, and The Song of the Soul Set Free. He composed songs on missions, such as Deeper and Deeper and Saved. His hymns were popular in his day. He also was a friend of many of the leading evangelists. He traveled widely, to over sixty countries, and preached in many of them. He was a major influence on Billy Graham, who came to speak at his church in 1940s and who said that he learned much from him.
He had some personal disappointments. In his youth, he had hoped to be a foreign missionary, but his application to the Christian and Missionary Alliance was turned down because of his health. He was a man who suffered from nervous disorders, and he was disappointed. He spoke of this later as a blessing, since it led him to find another way to serve. He was also a man who found it hard to get on with others and who was often at odds with his colleagues. He had a strong will and was somewhat autocratic.
He retired as pastor in 1959, and his son Paul took over. He continued to preach and to write until he was in his nineties. He died on January 25, 1986, in Toronto, at the age of ninety-six. His life shows the effect of a man whose own dream of going overseas was turned into a ministry of sending. A pastor in Toronto helped to send hundreds to the field.