Jones, Charles & Bala

On Monday, I called at Bala in Merionethshire, Wales. It has strong associations with the Bible Society and boasts a 'Mary Jones Pilgrim Centre' just out of the town. Ironically, it is closed on Mondays, but wide open on the Lord’s Day, so I could not get in.

The fifteen-year-old Mary Jones famously walked twenty-six miles barefoot across hilly countryside to buy a copy of the Welsh Bible for which she had been saving for six years. The clergyman from whom she bought it was the Rev Thomas Charles, below. He was so moved by the sacrifice of the purchase, that he proposed setting up the Religious Tract Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society with the purpose of making the scriptures widely and more cheaply available. When I first heard the story of Miss Jones, I wept; that one so young would have so great an appetite for God’s word! This is in stark contrast with our own day, when even people who claim the name Christian have a weak hold of it and a feeble desire to know it and live it. One who desires God and pays so dear a price to get hold of His lively oracles is in a stronger state of faith than those who have several copies about their shelves, but neglect to read and live thereby.

I was sorry for not being able to attend the 'Pilgrim Centre', whose staff must take Mondays off for having to work on Sundays. Yet I was also inspired by the one after whom it is named. I run three Bible studies each week at Salem Chapel, and a fourth for young men each month or so. Those who trouble to attend, God will surely bless as they grow in their faith and understanding of His ways. Jones’ and Charles’ generation is long gone, and we again live in a season of spiritual famine. May we relish the food which God still gives us.

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:3