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.
[CHAPTER II.]
AT SCHOOL AND AT HOME.
"My mind, aspire to higher things—
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust."
Philip Sidney.
The opportunities for study in China were not enough to satisfy a boy with even a moderately strong desire for knowledge. Books were as rare as in the days before John Gutenberg, and Eli Jones has often said that if he had been asked ten times a day what he most wished for, he would have answered each time, Books. The fact that he longed so to read, and that he was almost entirely confined to the Bible, resulted in his becoming thoroughly familiar with the different parts of that great Book. It furnished him his poetry, his history, and his ethics; it was his reading-book and his spelling-book. Joseph in his coat of many colors and David with his sling were as much acquaintances of his as were the few boys he played with. David's lament for Jonathan and Deborah's song of triumph, the spiritual melody of the Psalms and Isaiah's rapt words, made him feel the power of Hebrew poetry, while the New Testament was helping him to know the manliness and divinity of Christ. What boys acquired in those days was well acquired, and if they did not have as much learning, they often were imbued with a better learning than at the end of the same century. It is certain that Eli had the spirit to learn, and did what he could to lay a proper foundation.
While he was still very young he came with his father and mother to live at the south end of the lake, and there was built the house which has been the birthplace and home of so many of the Jones family. During the years of political excitement and fierce war against the mother-country—the years between 1812 and 1815—hardly a rumor of the outside strife had penetrated the long line of unbroken forests. While men were dying daily to force England to respect American rights, and while Europe was united to crush Napoleon, the citizens along China Lake were building brick-kilns to make material for the chimneys of their houses, doing their every-day work without knowing, perhaps, that Bonaparte was in the world, and having no fear that a war-cloud might break over them. Thus the future lover of peace dwelt in peace, and he did not need to learn the horrors of war by experience to hate it.