It was an interesting sight when their townsmen met to welcome them home. One can see them in the monthly meeting, which was held at this time. Many who came but seldom, rode over the hills that day to sit down on the unpainted seats and listen if they did not worship, and an unusually large number were present when the hushed stillness told that meeting had begun. One father and the mothers of the two ministers were there, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts; many who had always known them, and some who had never seen them,—all bowed their heads before the Mighty One, and
"Low breathings stole
Of a diviner life from soul to soul,
Baptizing in one tender thought the whole."
Even the cold-hearted felt a warmth steal in, and the low-spirited were exalted in their minds. No one who sat under that silence doubted that the Lord was speaking to "the spirit's finer ear;" and when the seal was broken and the moved lips opened in vocal thanksgiving many hearts rose in harmony. A brief, quiet prayer from a full heart, when the spirit of the whole meeting rises with it, reaches where eye cannot see, and comes not back void. Words are human, but power is divine.
We can see Eli Jones rise from his wonted seat and slowly speak his text: "When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water." His companion sees many before her who have grown cold while they have been answering the call from Ethiopia, and sweetly she asks them to whom they will go if they forsake Him who alone has the words of eternal life. Together they sound the alarm and call upon their friends and neighbors to stand firm and quit them like men while they go out again to reap in other vineyards. At the close of this day Sybil Jones could say, "He brought us unto his banqueting-house, and the banner over us was Love."
Once more they separated from home-friends and took their little children to West Hill, N. J., the lovely home of Eliza P. Gurney, who had asked that the two youngest boys, Eli Grelet and Richard Mott, might be left with her during their parents' absence.... On First day they attended the meeting at Burlington, and sat in company with Stephen Grelet and Richard Mott, for whom the boys had been named. Stephen Grelet, that great apostle, who had given messages from the King of kings to potentates and princes in all the countries of Europe, who had shown men's equality by holding his finger to the Pope's extended finger, and who was now waiting to be ushered into another and a higher court, addressed them thus: "The Lord has provided for your children in your absence, and thus given striking demonstration of His love to you; and now this testimony is applicable to you, my dear friends: 'I will be with thee whithersoever thou goest, and will guide thee with mine eye, and afterward receive thee into glory;' so go, dear friends, cheerfully, for the Lord will be your all-sufficient Helper."
After visiting their other children, at Haverford College and at Providence, they finally sailed from Boston the 31st of 3d mo. on the steamer "Niagara" for Liverpool. A goodly company of Friends from Lynn and elsewhere were on the wharf to wave them adieu.
It was an uneventful passage, except that an iceberg was discovered exactly in their course just in time to turn the ship from the danger. Sybil Jones writes of it: "I got on deck while it was in full view, and gazed with wonder and delight upon this magnificent frosty traveller from the frigid North to milder skies. It seemed like an island all of light consolidated into form, or as a cathedral whose stately spires pierced the eternal sunshine. The first rays of the morning sun gave to its pure, spotless whiteness a brilliancy and beauty that seemed almost of heavenly extraction. It reminded us of the infinitely more splendid and soul-ravishing charms of nature's God and heaven's eternal King, of whose mercy it seemed the white-robed harbinger."
On their return voyage, the ship, sailing at a rapid rate in a dense fog, found itself almost upon a gigantic iceberg, a mighty pyramid of ice. It seemed to all on board that the ship must be crushed. An infidel who was a fellow-passenger hurried on deck and cried out, "In an hour we shall all be lost, but let us die like philosophers."—"No," said Sybil Jones, rising to her feet; "if we are to meet death, let us do it as Christians." In God's goodness all were spared.