Jonas king

I wish to print, if possible, a thousand copies.

Will you allow me to do this at the expense of the Board? It must, of course, be printed out of Greece, for if printed here I should be subject to prosecution, imprisonment, and perhaps exile.

The expense of printing a thousand copies in the three above-mentioned languages would not exceed, I think, two hundred dol-

lar'c. Yours, truly,

JONAS KING.

i

CONCL USION.

3⁶9
THE ONLY SON.

TRACT NO. 53o, A. T. S.

SOON after the Rev. Pliny Fisk and Rev. Levi Parsons left their mountain homes in Western Massachusetts, near the close of 1819, as the first American missionaries to Palestine, their young friend JONAS KING, from the same neighborhood, was elected professor in Amherst college, and proceeded to Paris to pursue the study of Arabic with the celebrated De Sacy. He there became familiar with an American gentleman, then at the head of one of the first commercial houses in Paris, to whose care his correspondence was addressed.

In February, 1822, the lamented Parsons died, and Rev. Mr. Fisk without delay addressed a letter to Mr. King, requesting that he would meet him at Malta, and, in place of Rev. Mr. Parsons, accompany him as a missionary to Palestine ; and fearing delay by waiting the action of the American Board of Missions, he in the same enclosure requested Mr. King's mercantile friend not only to second his invitation, but, if possible, to raise the sum of $1,500, requisite for his support for three years.

Mr. King, receiving the letter in the merchant's counting-room, retired to his private office to read it. Oppressed with the weight of the proposition it contained, he spent an hour in prayer for divine direction; and hoping to gain further light as to the path of duty, sought the merchant's advice. He returned to the countingroom, and asked with deep solicitude, "What shall I do?" Said his friend, "Go." "But," said he, "what will become of my aged and infirm parents in America?" " I will be a son to them in your stead," replied his friend. " Then," said Mr. King, " I go up to Jerusalem, `not knowing the things that shall befall me there.' "

" Now," said the merchant, "sit down at this desk and write to my friends Thomas Waddington of St. Remy, France, Louis Mertens of Brussels, Claude Cromlin of Amsterdam, and John Venning of St. Petersburg: state to them the circumstances, and that you are willing to go ; tell them I will give on-fifth of the $I,5oo, and leave it to their decision whether they will join me in filling up the amount." By the return of the mails it appeared that God had

37⁰ ,7O2VAS KING.

put it into the hearts of these gentlemen cheerfully to respond to the appeal by enclosing each $300, making the sum required; and Mr. King lost no time in preparing for his departure.

A few months previous to this, Mr. King had established the monthly concert of prayer in his own hired upper chamber in Paris, which had been attended with increasing interest; a large concourse assembled in the church of the Oratoire to listen to his farewell address and join in commending him to the God of all grace ; he was cheered in a similar manner on his way by Christian assemblies at Lyons, Nismes, Montpelier, and Marseilles. where he embarked for Malta and Jerusalem. He is now the well-known, persecuted, but laborious and successful missionary at Athens.

His friend the merchant, from time to time, wrote to the solitary parents, enclosing some tokens of regard "from their affectionate son ;" the next year he returned to America, and early in the spring of 1524 he was at Northampton, about twenty-five miles from the parents, meditating a visit to their humble abode. He applied to the landlord, who furnished him a wagon with his little son for a driver; and freighted with a bag of groceries which extended the whole length of the wagon, they set off early in the morning, and after encountering snowdrifts and other obstacles by the way, arrived at the cottage about two in the afternoon.

Leaving the lad with the wagon in the street, the gentleman knocked, saying as he entered, "It is a chill, uncomfortable day, friends ; would you be so kind as to allow a stranger to warm himself a little by your fire?" He was welcomed and seated between the aged couple, in whom he distinctly recognized the features of their son Jonas, and they in turn fixed on him a scrutinizing eye. After a short pause he said deliberately,

" I once had a friend who said to me, ' What shall I do?' Said I, ' Go.' ' But what,' said he, ' wilI become of my aged and infirm parents in America ?' I replied, ' I will be a son to them in your stead.' ' Then,' said he, ' I go up to Jerusalem, "not knowing the things that shall befall me there."'"

Instantly the aged couple sprung to him, exclaiming, "This is Mr. Wilder!" and almost overwhelmed him with their tears and caresses. "Let us pray," said the father; and they unburdened their hearts at the throne of mercy.

Scarcely were they again seated, when the mother took from

CONCLUSION. 37 r

the shelf a new quarto Bible, saying she hoped her friend would not blame her for paying ten dollars for it out of the fifty he had sent her a few months previous. "Our old eyes," she said, "could not well read the small print of the other Bible. I told Mr. King I did not believe we could make any better use of the money, or should ever be the poorer for buying a Bible that we could read; it is a great comfort to us." Their friend expressed his approbation of the purchase, admired the Bible, and before he returned it to the shelf slipped into it unperceived a ten-dollar bill, which she afterwards wrote him had been found on the floor when they were reading the Bible, and which she recognized as from the hand of God, having no knowledge by what means the exact. amount expended had thus come again into their hands.

After a brief interchange of confidence and affection, she said to her esteemed guest, " I presume, sir, you have not dined, and must be in need of refreshment. I am very sorry we have not a cup of tea to offer you, but we have some nice ham and fresh eggs, which I will immediately prepare." Her friend remarked, "There is a bag in the wagon containing several articles from 'your son ;' perhaps there may be tea among them."

'The bag, with no little effort, was transferred from the wagon to the cottage-floor, and the mother addressed herself to the task of taking out its contents. Among packages of flour, rice, loaf-sugar, coffee, chocolate, raisins, and other articles, each of which she held up with new expressions of delight, as received from one she so much loved, she at length came to a package of four pounds of hyson tea, when she held it out to the father with streaming eyes, saying, "Look here, papa; Jonas is the same dear good boy that he always was. He knew we were out of tea sometimes; he do n't forget his poor father and mother." Then opening a package of Turkey figs, "And is this also," said she, "from Jerusalem? Papa, was there ever such a son as Jonas ?" By this time all hearts • were overflowing. "Let us pray," said the father; and the exploring of the treasures was suspended while they again united in thanksgiving to God.

It was not long before the little company were seated at a weIlfurnished table, refreshed by the gifts of the kind "son," mingling their sympathies and recounting all the way in which they had been led. While thus conversing the merchant affectionately asked,

37² JONAS KING.

" Do you never regret the sacrifice you have made in giving up your only son to be a missionary?" The aged father replied,

i'God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life ;' and shall I withhold my only son from obeying the command of our ascended Saviour, ' Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature'?"

All present were deeply affected, a tear standing in the eye even of the young driver. They again bowed in prayer; both the father and the merchant led in turn, commending the little company, the absent son, and a sin-ruined world to the God of missions.

The interview was an hour bright with the beams of the Sun of righteousness amid the dark pilgrimage of life, an oasis in the desert, a season never to be forgotten by any one of the four persons who thus met for the first and the last time on earth.

That young driver, as he afterwards distinctly stated, here first had his mind impressed with the sacredness of the work of foreign missions. He gave his heart to Christ, pursued a thorough course of education, went forth to the heathen, and was no other than Henry Lyman, the noble martyr who fell by the side of Munson, in 1834, among the bloody Battas of Sumatra.

The aged father, in his will, bequeathed to the merchant, for the purchase of a book in token of his love, the sum of five dollars, which at his death was paid to the widow for the old small-print Bible, which is still preserved as a precious memento. The widow has entered into rest; and the stranger passing a rural graveyard in South Hawley, where the scenery opens in magnificence and beauty, reads on the tombstone of the father his reply just quoted to the question whether he ever regretted the gift to missions of his ONLY SON.