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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
[Illustration: ELI JONES.]
[Illustration: SYBIL JONES.]
ELI AND SIBYL JONES:
THEIR LIFE AND WORK.
BY
RUFUS M. JONES.
"Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine."
_In Memoriam._
PHILADELPHIA:
PORTER & COATES.
COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY PORTER & COATES.
TO
THE SWEET AND SHINING MEMORY
OF
PLINY EARLE CHASE,
WHOSE SCHOLARSHIP AND CHRISTIAN MANHOOD INSPIRED
YOUNG MEN TO RICHER AND PURER LIVES, AND
WHO AS TEACHER POINTED STUDENTS
TO THE
GREAT MASTER,
THIS BOOK
IS
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY HIS PUPIL.
PREFACE.
In our busy and material lives we all need to be reminded at times
that there have been and still are among us those who have deadened
love of self, whose struggle on earth, far from being to amass any
kind of treasures, is to bring before as many human beings as possible
the great plan of salvation, the means of elevation from degradation
to lofty Christian individuality, and the source of a power and a love
which are making all things new in proportion as submission is given
thereto.
We are not always conscious of the strength exerted around us by
seemingly trivial forces, but their work is no less important in the
development of the globe than the violent upheavals which overawe us
by their stupendous might. So, often, quiet lives extend a wider
permanent influence for the welfare of man than do those of men and
women who receive the unstinted praise of their contemporaries.
ELI and SYBIL JONES have done valuable service, and have lived lives
full of teaching to those who wish to enter upon a course of devoted
obedience to the same Master. I have prepared this sketch of their
lives and work from the love which I feel for them, and in the hope
that it will interest and profit others. I am conscious that the stamp
of youth is on the work, but I am certain that it has been undertaken
and accomplished in the spirit of sincerity.
The visit to Liberia was wonderful in many ways, and should have been
published after their return, so that their work might have brought
forth more decided fruit. The letters from Palestine and Syria were
written for the _Friends' Review_ by Eli Jones and Ellen Clare Miller
(since Pearson). Extracts have been chosen to give their descriptions
of the country and the nature of their work there.
The book has been prepared in the midst of other work, and that must
in part be the apology for its imperfections. Having as a young man
received invaluable help from these two Friends, and feeling that
their words and lives have done much to throw light on the true path
which broadens into the "highway of holiness," it is my hope that this
simple recital may in a measure repay what I owe them and find a place
of usefulness in the world.
3d mo. 13, 1889, FRIENDS' SCHOOL, Providence.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
EARLY YEARS, 9
CHAPTER II.
AT SCHOOL AND AT HOME, 18
CHAPTER III.
MARRIAGE WITH SYBIL JONES, 27
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST VISIT, 40
CHAPTER V.
EAST, WEST, AND SOUTH, 54
CHAPTER VI.
VOYAGE TO LIBERIA, 60
CHAPTER VII.
WORK IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND, 108
CHAPTER VIII.
NORWAY, GERMANY, AND SWITZERLAND, 127
CHAPTER IX.
WINTER IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE, 141
CHAPTER X.
IN THE MAINE LEGISLATURE, 160
CHAPTER XI.
IN WASHINGTON, 169
CHAPTER XII.
MISSION-WORK, 185
CHAPTER XIII.
LETTERS FROM SYRIA, 199
CHAPTER XIV.
SECOND VISIT TO THE HOLY LAND, 251
CHAPTER XV.
SYBIL JONES: HER LIFE-WORK AND DEATH, 268
CHAPTER XVI.
ALONE AT HOME, 285
CHAPTER XVII.
LATER VISITS TO THE EAST, 292
CHAPTER XVIII.
AS A FRIEND, 299
CHAPTER XIX.
HIS PLACE AS A WORKER, 307
ELI AND SYBIL JONES.
CHAPTER I.
_EARLY YEARS._
"Man is the nobler growth our soil supplies,
And souls are ripened 'neath our northern skies."
The man whose early life was passed in the isolation of primeval
forests, and who grew to manhood carrying on an unceasing struggle to
turn the rough, uncultivated soil into productive fields, gardens, and
pasture-lands, has worked into his life something which no coming
generation can inherit or acquire. He has missed the broad culture of
the schools and universities, he cannot gain the intellectual skill
which long study gives, but he has had a training which lays a
foundation for the keenest judgment and for prompt decision in
complicated circumstances, and his soul in solitude has taken in
truths of God which often escape men lost in the tumultuous world of
business and pleasure. The men who were born during the first quarter
of a century after our national life began have nearly all been
characterized by special traits which will perhaps not appear again in
the more developed growth of the nation. It has not astonished us to
see a man leave his little cottage after twenty-five years of toil
and go through all the grades of honor, reach a position from which he
could hardly go higher, and finally depart from a life unspotted,
respected by mankind.
But in this development there is no chance: he mounts by a law which,
if we knew it, is as unvariable as that of gravitation. The powers of
the mind and soul seek a field in which they may be put to work at
profit. It cannot be uninteresting to follow the course of a man who
has shown--at least to those who have known him well--that there was
something in him of value to the world. In measuring the worth of any
man, we must not be dazzled by the glare of earthly glory, but calmly
inquire what he has done that has built itself into other lives, and
we must look beyond outward things to see in how far he has been the
honored tool of the Supreme Worker.
The family of Jones is a large one, and its genealogical table would
make a long story. Welsh John succeeded Welsh John, and was called
John's son until time wore the name down to Jones. Generation after
generation they held their place and did their work among the Welsh
hills, until one of them was called upon to steer the Mayflower with
its precious load to Plymouth. Eli Jones writes in a letter dated 1st
mo. 9th, 1888: "I have been reading Bonvard's _Plymouth and the
Pilgrims_, from which I learn that Isaac Robinson, son of the Rev.
John Robinson, pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, was an early settler at
Plymouth, and that he became a Quaker. Our grandmother Jepson was a
Robinson, and, for aught I know, great-great-great-grandniece of this
very Isaac Robinson. The captain of the Mayflower was a Jones. With
him we claim kindred, and that claim is readily allowed. Now, if our
great-great-great-grandsire was the venerable patriarch who led in
prayer and gave the memorable parting charge[1] to the Pilgrims, and
if his son, our great-great-greatuncle, was, as history relates, a
trading man in the colony and a 'convinced Friend,' it is certainly
fitting that we should take a lively interest in what occurred among
our kin in 1620."
[1] John Robinson's charge is as follows: "I charge you, before God
end his blessed angels, that ye follow me no further than ye have seen
me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has more truth yet to break
forth out of his holy word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition
of the Reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, and
will go at present no further than the instruments of their
reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their
times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. I
beseech you remember it--'tis an article of your Church covenant--that
you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from
the written word of God."
Much later, after many settlements in different parts of New England
had failed, and the Pilgrim and Puritan colonies were in prosperous
growth, three brothers bearing the name of Jones came to this
continent. One of them found a forest home on the bank of the
Androscoggin River, six miles from Brunswick, in the township of
Durham and District of Maine. Quite a large number of friends
collected here, and a meeting-house was built not far away. There was
a large Friends' meeting at Deering, near Portland, and the name of
Jones was common among its members. The monthly and quarterly meetings
at each place were frequently visited by Friends from the other,
necessitating a foot-journey of fully forty miles through almost
pathless woods. The house is still standing in which Abel Jones was
born. He determined to leave his home and go farther north. He
travelled on horseback up the Kennebec River as far as Vassalboro',
and then rode ten miles east to the north-eastern end of what is now
China Lake, in earlier times often called the "Twelve-mile Pond,"
because it is twelve miles from Augusta, the State capital. His young
bride, Susannah Jepson, rode on horseback from North Berwick, a
distance of one hundred and fifteen miles. She was attended by her
brother alone, and brought only what a pair of saddlebags could hold.
Here in a little house, in the year 1807, their first child was born
and named Eli. A letter was at once sent to the young child's
grandfather and grandmother at Durham. The letter came to the nearest
post-station, twelve miles away, and was taken in charge by an elderly
Friend who lived there. He volunteered to start out at once to carry
the letter to its destination, thinking it might contain valuable
information. As he listened to its contents at the end of his journey
he made the significant remark, "Is that all there is in it?" and
jogged back home.
One's first thought would be that if a child was to be brought up in
the Maine woods, it would make very little difference in what part of
the State the spot happened to be; but it is not at all so. As a young
life is very susceptible to outward scenes and every-day events, we
can hardly estimate the moulding influence of little things.
The life of the few families in the early history of China would be
exceedingly interesting if we only had a graphic sketch from the pen
of one of its settlers. Owning the acres they cleared and tilled and
the houses in which they dwelt, they called no man master, but they
bowed in reverence before their heavenly King and obeyed His
commandments. They did their day's work week after week, little
thinking that a generation would come which would wish to follow the
story of their trials and triumphs, their joys and sorrows; and now
almost all that is left us is the inherited strength from their sturdy
lives and a few stories of their sufferings.
Without doubt, nothing in nature had more influence on the bent of Eli
Jones's mind than China Lake and its beautiful shores. A boy placed on
the bank of a lake stretching off seven miles becomes inheritor to a
domain more vast than the acres of water it contains. He feels that he
owns so much of this world's glory, and this feeling of ownership
lifts him out of the common, dull round of life. Year by year he owns
more in proportion as his soul expands and he sees more of God's work
and God's love in the painted sunsets beyond the western shore and in
the forests above and below the placid waters. No one who has not
experienced it can appreciate the worth of a lake to a boy. It is not
simply because he can fish there, or can swim there, or can make a
rude boat and so float on its surface. That is its chief worth to the
thoughtless boy, but it was not all to the keenly perceptive child who
was father to the man Eli Jones. It was his great playmate whom he
loved. It was at the same time his teacher, whose "various language"
spoke a Father's presence and His love.
It is very monotonous toil changing a rough forest to a productive
farm, but a youth becomes a familiar friend to stumps, hillocks, and
rocks; to him the mounds are Indian graves, the tall stones mark the
final resting-places of mighty chiefs, and his imagination fills the
round of work with marvellous scenes. Very many, doubtless, see only
their work and the fruit of it, but there are a few who see mysteries
and learn lessons wherever they are placed, so that monotony is
changed to endless variety. Eli Jones was one of those boys who make
gain from ethereal things.
The spot which Abel Jones chose for his home had many of the
characteristics of a scene in Maine. Hills were backed by other hills,
and not far in from the lake was a mile-long "horseback."[2] The trees
were not pigmies in those days, but giant oaks and pines,
"Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
Whose giddy tops the morning loved to gild."
[2] These ridges are very abundant in Maine, and are supposed to owe
their origin to glacial action.
There were dense forests of cedar, and the scattered bass-woods made
the whole place fragrant in the spring. Never had an axe swung in
these solitudes, and the mighty power of the ages was felt as these
stout pines met the breeze. It was no small privilege to be canopied
with such a tent as their meeting tops made.
"Whoso walks in solitude
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird
Before the money-loving herd,--
Into that forester shall pass,
From these companions, power and grace.
On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down;
All constellations of the sky
Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence.
The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stones, his helpers be."
China had first been settled in 1774 by a family of Clarks. There were
four brothers, two of whom were Friends. They cut the first tree that
a white man's axe had ever felled in the township, and began to survey
the land for homes. The two Friends chose the eastern and the others
the western side of the lake. Life in the midst of the Maine forest
implied struggle, and these families were courageous. No report of
possible gold-mines or other hidden wealth drew them and those who
followed them, but the desire to seek out quiet homes for themselves
and their children where the temptations to a life of uselessness
would be few. Trials they expected, and they were not spared. It was a
hand-to-hand contest with want. At one time a cow was nearly the only
valuable possession of the little company, and this was accidentally
shot for a deer. The men went often ten miles through the woods, by
the aid of "spotted" or "blazed" trees, to get their corn ground. We
are told that in one case the mother was forced to put stones, in lieu
of potatoes, in the hot ashes to induce her crying hungry children to
go to bed until they should be called, and often the potatoes which
had been planted were dug up to be eaten. Indians and the wild animals
were around them, continually causing fear. In a cove at the
south-western shore of the lake is a large heart, called the
"Indian's heart," cut in a huge boulder, and in spring nearly covered
by water. This marks the encampment of a tribe of Indians naturally
friendly to their white neighbors, but exceedingly treacherous. On one
occasion they visited the settlers in a body, and while the latter
were unsuspiciously entertaining them they threw water on the guns of
the white men, and only the darkness of the night saved these from
destruction.
Gradually one family after another was added to the community, and as
they all came for the same purpose, the settlement was composed of
strong characters. These farmers had the idea that it should not be
the chief aim of those who till the soil to grow rich, or to fill the
market with choice vegetables, or to gain an easy livelihood, but
rather to send out from their households sons and daughters marked by
strength of character and able to do manly and womanly work in the
various spheres of the world. Their visible workfield may have seemed
narrow and roughly hedged in, but they felt the needs of the future,
and did their best to raise a tower of strength in the land by
properly training their successors. The horizon which shuts in their
real domain expands as the times grow riper.
The first Friends' meeting in China was held about 1803, in a private
house two and a half miles from the south end of the lake. Abel Jones
was married to Susannah Jepson in this house in 1806, and about seven
years later a meeting-house was built, to which Eli was taken even
before it was wholly finished. This building was heated by a wood-fire
under an iron kettle, and in every particular it was plain and rough;
but no more sincere praises to the Lord have risen through the arches
of marvellously wrought cathedrals than in this forest meeting-house.
Eli Jones's grandfather on his mother's side was the first
acknowledged minister in this meeting. Eli first heard the gospel
preached in this house, and here he saw the occasional visitors from
afar. Each year, which added its natural increase to the boy's
stature, was marking a no less evident growth of mind and vigor of
spirit. His mother taught him that "serving God and keeping His
commandments was the whole duty of man." He was shown by the quiet
example of both parents that honest work in the right spirit is an
essential part of pure and undefiled religion, while the lives of
Joseph, Samuel, David, and Daniel were put before him, showing him the
justness of God's dealing in the different ages, both in rewarding
righteousness and in punishing unrighteousness. Those heroes of faith
of the Old Testament made a deep impression on him, as they must on
every young person whose mind is not corrupted by the unnatural and
impossible fictions of the present day; but the pages which told of
Christ's work and words, His life and death, were so fixed in his mind
and heart that the great Master early began to shape and strengthen
the character of His chosen disciple.