Anxious Cries for Your Salvation

A selection from a letter by Mary Jones, wife of the Rev. Charles Colcock Jones. She wrote her son Charles about a cousin who had given himself to drink. She exhorted her son against the sin of intemperance. She said, "I honestly believe that every man who takes a glass, saving in cases of sickness or ill health, or who makes a practice of offering it to his friends, is treading the broad road to ruin himself and drawing others along with him." Since he was not yet converted to Christ, she also pleaded with him, as she often did in her letters, to be saved. The letter was written February 28, 1860.

Have you read the paper I put into your hands as we parted [a tract, perhaps]? Daily does my soul go out to the precious Saviour in anxious cries for your salvation. When, my son, are you going to consider the interests of your immortal soul? Are you daily reading the Word of God? Do you pray? I know that the Holy Spirit alone can enlighten your heart and new create it, but you must "seek if you would find," "knock if you would have the door of mercy opened." Will you not say with the Psalmist: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities. Blot out my sins, and remember no more my transgressions."

The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, edited by Robert Manson Myers, Yale University Press, 1972, pp. 564-65.

A Prayer and a Hymn

A selection from a letter by Mary Jones, wife of the Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, to her granddaughter, Mary. She sent a prayer that she might say before a meal and a hymn for her to memorize. The letter was written March 30, 1864.

I am very much pleased to hear that you go to Sunday school and love your teacher. You must obey all she tells you, and always say your lessons well… The other day we went to Flemington, and Willie and Jimmie both repeated a beautiful hymn they had just learned, and did not miss a word of it—the hymn your mother and Uncle Charles and Uncle Joe used to say when they were small; so that Grandmama remembered it, and now writes it from memory for you and Brother to learn to say to me when I come up. Cousin Marion Glen, one of my dear friends, has been a week with me, and her niece Miss Laleah Dunwody, and she said a sweet little grace for Little Sister to learn; and I write it down here for you to say when there is no one to ask a blessing:

Lord, bless this food which now I take
To do me good, for Jesus’ sake.

And this is the hymn:

My Heavenly Father, all I see
Around me and above
Sends forth a hymn of praise to Thee
And speaks Thy boundless love.

The clear blue sky is full of Thee,
The woods so dark and lone.
The soft south wind, the sounding sea
Worship the Holy One.

The humming of the insect throng,
The prattling, sparkling rill,
The birds with their melodious song
Repeat Thy praises still.

And Thou dost hear them every one;
Thou also hearest me.
I know that I am not alone
When I but think of Thee.

The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, edited by Robert Manson Myers, Yale University Press, 1972, pp. 1155-56. Iain Murray makes reference to this book of letters in a chapter on the Jones’s in his recent book, Heroes (published by The Banner of Truth Trust).