Thomas Jones

“ In the bowels of love and mercy, let me beg thee to ask thy soul this question, How long will this life and the comforts of it last? Thy soul is immortal, and must never die, but it must have a being somewhere to all eternity. ”

“ Or faint lutes sounding in Arcady
Through the purple dawn,—yea, far sweeter than
The music that wafts from a Southern sea!
Beneath its spell the wastes bloom in flowers,
And back again come the vanished hours,
For she who sings to the soul of man
Is the Autumn spirit of memory. ”

“ Quaint, time-worn gravestones crumbling on the soil.
Yet they once lived and struggled years ago;
Their hearts beat madly as these hearts of ours—
And now is all undone in dreamless rest?
See, a great city stands against the glow—
Their city, they who here beneath the flowers
Have known so long God’s gift of peace, most blest! ”

“ But would you believe it, Caroline, many of the inhabitants of this little star imagine that when that part which they inhabit is turned from the sun, darkness prevails throughout the universe, merely because it is night with them; whilst, in reality, the sun never ceases to shine upon every planet. When, therefore, these little ignorant beings look around them during their night, and behold all the stars shining, they cannot imagine why the planets, which are dark bodies, should shine; concluding, that since the sun does not illumine themselves, the whole universe must be in darkness. ”

“ I know well enough that thou haft been a blasphemer, or a drunkard, or a whoremonger; yet I stand at the door this day and knock, I will receive thee into mercy, I will forgive thee all thy sins, I will accept, I will heal, I will save thy soul, if thou wilt open thy heart this day unto me, and let me in.' O brethren, for Christ's sake, refuse not Christ; do not reject nor neglect so great a salvation, lest you perish. ”

“ A moon-lit path between aspiring trees,
’Neath wind-blown leaves rustling in harmonies,
A little song that I may never sing—
But oh, the wondrous memory lingering.
And though I never may return until
I clasp your hand beyond these years, why still
There is one guide the path of life along—
A fleeting end of dream-remembered song. ”

“ Youth without pity and without a care.
Not his the swift lithe strength that ever slays,
And in its joyous slaying doubly sweet,
Like some young god adown immortal ways,
Crushing the blossoms ’neath unheeding feet. ”

“ A light more wondrous than the dawn of youth—
For ’tis a flame cleft out the veil of night
From that eternal dawn that ne’er can die!
Tristesse
If you were not away
These trees, this south-wind and this dreary day
Would all be mad with joyous ecstasy;
But you are gone, so mourning they with me
Find bitter-sweet in idle fantasy. ”

“ Jones's closest friends during his undergraduate days included (Sir) George F. Bowen, H. J. Coleridge, E. A. Freeman, and W. Gifford Palgrave, all Trinity scholars, and his former schoolfellow, James Riddell, scholar of Balliol. They had a literary and philosophical society of their own called 'Hermes,' in which Jones took a prominent part; he was also a member and for a time secretary of the Oxford Architectural Society. At Queen's College commenced his close intimacy with William Thomson (afterwards archbishop of York) , who like himself was an old Shrewsbury boy. ”

“ Jones is abused as a ‘knave and rogue’ by Wood, who was like himself a member of Merton College, for supporting the election of Dr. (afterwards Sir) Thomas Clayton [q. v.] , ‘a stranger,’ as warden in 1661. According to Wood, Clayton when in office disappointed Jones of promised preferments, and his mind consequently gave way. In 1662–3 he retired to London to follow the profession of the law at Doctors' Commons, but being unsuccessful his mental derangement grew. He died of the plague in the autumn of 1665. Wood gloated over Jones's derangement, death, and unceremonious burial. ”

“ Jones led an exceptionally active life, and it is said that he preached twelve thousand times, and left behind him six thousand sermons in manuscript; he delivered about one thousand addresses on behalf of the Bible Society, and eight thousand temperance lectures. Besides a large number of articles contributed to Welsh periodicals, he was either the author, translator, or editor of over forty works in Welsh, being from 1867 Welsh editor for Messrs. Blackie of Glasgow. His numerous writings show greater versatility than originality. ”

“ For the Lord's sake chuse not cursing, but blessing; chuse not death, but life, chuse not hell, but heaven; chuse not sin, but Christ; tho' you have formerly slighted him, if you will now regard him; tho' you have formerly contemned him, yet if you will praise him; tho' you have formerly resisted, if yet you will yield, if you will consent, if yet you will become willing to open unto Christ, Christ will be yours, mercy will be yours, salvation will be yours.
And what would you have more? What! will not all this do? Will not mercy allure you? Will not love constrain you? ”

“ B. I know not which is most worthy of our admiration, the causes, or the effects of the earth's revolution round the sun. The mind can find no object of contemplation more sublime, than the course of this magnificent globe, impelled by the combined powers of projection and attraction, to roll in one invariable course, around the source of light and heat: and what can be more delightful than the beneficent effects of this vivifying power on its attendant planet. It is at once the grand principle which animates and fecundates nature. ”

“ If thou lookest downwards, thou may's see hell gaping and opening its mouth to swallow thee up quick; Many dangers attend thee every day, many miseries every moment, legions of devils stand about thee, watching for thee, and waiting only for the leave of God, to drag thy soul into the lake of fire. ”

“ It is a law which we discover throughout nature, and worthy of its great Author, that all its purposes are accomplished by the most simple means; and what reason have we to suppose this law infringed, in order that we may remain at rest, while the sun and stars move round us; their regular motions, which are explained by the laws of attraction, on the first supposition, would be unintelligible on the last, and the order and harmony of the universe be destroyed. ”

“ We know also by experience, that the heavier a body is, the greater is its force; it is not therefore difficult to understand, that the whole power, or momentum of a body, must be composed of these two properties, its weight and its velocity: but I do not understand why they should be multiplied, the one by the other; I should have supposed that the quantity of matter, should have been added to the quantity of motion? ”

“ As long as thou refusest to hear Christ's voice, thou hast a hell upon earth: it is not the multitude of thy companions that go thither, shall any whit lessen thy torments, but rather increase them. Thy life that hath been full of worldly joy, shall end in deadly woe. ”

“ In some respects, light is obedient to the laws which govern bodies; in others, it appears to be independent of them: thus, though its course is guided by the laws of motion, it does not seem to be influenced by those of gravity. It has never been discovered to have weight, though a variety of interesting experiments have been made with a view of ascertaining that point; but we are so ignorant of the intimate nature of light, that an attempt to investigate it, would lead us into a labyrinth of perplexity, if not of error ”

“ Thus you understand that all matter is attractive, from the smallest particle to the largest mass; and that bodies attract each other with a force proportional to the quantity of matter they contain.
Emily. I do not perceive any difference between the attraction of cohesion and that of gravitation; is it not because every particle of matter is endowed with an attractive power, that large bodies consisting of a great number of particles, are so strongly attractive? ”

“ Oh how will men and angels hiss at you! This is the person who for lust's sake forsook his mercies, who for a little vanity rejected his own salvation : O how wilt thou curse thyself for nothing! Nay for that which is worse than nothing, thou hast put off Christ and his salvation: Therefore men, brethren and fathers, hearken unto me, as Moses said to the Israelites, so this day I propound unto you Blesing and cursing, life and death! Salvation if you open to Christ, and damnation if you refuse Christ. ”

“ Caroline. Does attraction act on water more powerfully than on land? I should have thought it would have been just the contrary, for land is certainly a more dense body than water?
Mrs B. Tides do not arise from water being more strongly attracted than land, for this certainly is not the case; but the cohesion of fluids, being much less than that of solid bodies, they more easily yield to the power of gravity; in consequence of which, the waters immediately below the moon, are drawn up by it, producing a full tide, or what is commonly called, high water, at the spot where it happens. ”

“ A Postlude
If only in your life to live, might I
Perchance those broken chords with my own meet,
Though quite imperfect, yet but thus to try
Were oh, so wondrous sweet.
Not the broad high-roads which you would have trod,
A lonely wanderer these may not essay,
Still, spirit mine, the by-paths that I plod
Do lead the selfsame way. ”

“ I am so much accustomed to see bodies firm and solid, that it never occurred to me that any power was requisite to unite the particles of which they are composed. But the attraction of cohesion does not, I suppose, exist in liquids; for the particles of liquids do not remain together so as to form a body, unless confined in a vessel? ”

“ We tended sheep in Arcady.
So, what if life now empty be,
Of all the past this do we know,
Although ’tis but a memory,
We tended sheep in Arcady!
The Summer Rain
As one who listens to the summer rain
Against the roof when all the night is still,
Save for the wind beneath the window-sill,
Crooning its homely, comforting refrain,—
And listening feels that neither joy nor pain
Can trouble now—only the faint sweet thrill
Of drowsiness and peace and rest until
The barque glides softly into sleep’s domain ”

“ When not in motion, a pendulum, obeying the general law of attraction, hangs like a plumb line, perpendicular to the surface of the earth, but if you raise the pendulum, gravity will bring it back to its perpendicular position. ”

“ His urbanity and sound judgment made him popular even with rigid churchmen; an affectionate letter addressed to him by Dr. Robert South [q. v.] is preserved among the Ayscough MSS. (4276, No. 86) in the British Museum, and is published in Dr. Rees's ‘Welsh Nonconformity’ (pp. 236–41) .
Jones gained some distinction as a Welsh poet, and was present at an important eisteddfod held at Beaupré at Whitsuntide, 1681. Several of his compositions are preserved in ‘Cyfrinach y Beirdd,’ and one English poem, written on his recovery from a serious illness, was published by Rees (op. cit.) ”

“ JONES, JOHN (1788–1858) , versifier, also known as ‘the Welsh Bard,’ was born in 1788 at Llanasa, Flintshire, where his parents held a small farm. From 1796 to 1803 he was apprenticed to a cotton-spinner at Holywell, Flintshire, where he learnt to read and write. In 1804 he went to sea in a trading vessel sailing from Liverpool to the coast of Guinea, and in 1805 joined an English man-of-war, called The Barbadoes, which cruised in the West Indies. ”

“ It is with no little pleasure we have learned, that the author has prepared a similar history of the United States; a work long wanted, to fill up a deplorable chasm in the education of American youth. ”

“ B. The moon reflects the sun's light, with as much vividness as any terrestrial object. If you look at it on a clear night, it will appear as bright as a sheet of water, the walls of a house, or any object seen by daylight, and on which the sun shines. The rays of the moon are doubtless feeble, when compared with those of the sun ”

“ Petitions signed by one hundred and fifty Welsh clergymen against the adoption of his system were presented to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and were so far successful that the old orthography was adopted in the society's Welsh editions of the Old Testament. After his return to Wales in 1841 Jones took an active part in the Eisteddfod and other literary gatherings, particularly the brilliant series held at Abergavenny, which resulted in the formation of the Welsh MSS. Society. ”

“ It is true that, according to the laws of attraction, all bodies at an equal distance from the earth, should fall to it in the same space of time; and this would actually take place if no obstacle intervened to impede their fall. ”

“ JONES, WILLIAM ELLIS (1796–1848) , Welsh poet, whose bardic name was Gwilym Cawrdaf, born on 9 Oct. 1796 at Tyddyn Sion in the parish of Abererch, Carnarvonshire, was the second son of Ellis and Catherine Jones. His father was then a fuller, but subsequently became a schoolmaster. William after working as a journeyman printer at Dolgelly and Carnarvon, removed to London in 1817. About this time he studied landscape-painting, and soon after accompanied a gentleman to France and Italy in the capacity of a draughtsman. ”

“ He was a zealous supporter of protestantism, and became in 1655 puritan rector of Castell Caereinion in Montgomeryshire. He thereupon mastered the Welsh language so as to preach in it. After the Restoration Jones was ejected (1661) from his living in favour of Rice Wynne, the rector who had been deprived in 1645, and he was removed to Ludlow as chaplain to the lord president of the marches. In 1663 he became chaplain to James, duke of York. When the Duchess of York announced her intention to join the Roman catholic church, Jones charged Dr. George Morley [q. v.] ”

“ Jones was an independent, and wrote, at the request of ministers of that denomination, a large number of Welsh hymns, which rank in popularity second only to the productions of the greatest of Welsh hymn-writers, William Williams of Pantycelyn (1717–1791) [q. v.] , the methodist preacher. Like Williams's hymns, Jones's works do not bear the impress of sectarian theology, and are in common use throughout Wales at the present day. Always joyful in tone, they move easily and are clear in thought and expression. ”