John Daniel Jones Explained

John Daniel Jones (13 April 1865  - 19 April 1942) was a Welsh Congregational minister.

He was born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, the son of Joseph David Jones (1827–70), a schoolmaster in the town and a respected musician and composer. The family moved to Tywyn, his mother's home town. In 1877, after the early death of his father, his mother married David Morgan Bynner, a Congregational minister at Chorley. After studying at Manchester University, Lancashire Independent College and St Andrews University, he was ordained at Newland Congregational Church, Lincoln in 1889.^[1]

Jones became well known as the minister of Richmond Hill Church, Bournemouth where he was minister from 1898-1937. He was elected chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales in 1909–10, and again in 1925–6. In 1919 he was elected an honorary secretary of the union, a position which he held until his death.^[2]

Politically a Liberal, Jones spoke regularly in support of his brother Henry Haydn Jones, MP for Merioneth from 1910-45. Lloyd George was a personal friend and in retirement a near neighbour and visitor.^[3]

After his return to Wales to retire, he was the subject of a memorable satirical poem by Saunders Lewis.^[4]

Works

• The Glorious Company of the Apostles (1885)
• The Model Prayer: A Series of Expositions on “The Lord’s Prayer” (1899)
• Paul’s Certainties and Other Sermons (1900)
• Reasons Why for Congregationalists (1904)
• Elims of Life: and Other Sermons (1904)
• Christ's Pathway to the Cross (1905)
• The Gospel of Grace (1907)
• Things Most Surely Believed (1908)
• Our Life Beyond (1911)
• The Hope of the Gospel (1911)
• The Unfettered Word. A Series of Readings for the Quiet Hour (1912)
• The Gospel According to St. Mark, vol. 1-4 (1913)
• The Gospel of the Sovereignty (1914)
• The Great Hereafter: Questions Raised By the Great War Concerning the Destiny of Our Dead (1915)
• If a Man Die (1917)
• The Lord of Life and Death (1919)
• The King of Love: Meditations on the Twenty-Third Psalm (1922)
• The Greatest of These: Addresses on the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians (1925)
• Watching the Cross (1926)
• The Ideal Church Member (1926) (New edition with new chapters, 1955)
• The Inevitable Christ (1928)
• On Religious Teaching in the Schools (1929, pamphlet)
• Pilate's Three Questions (1931)
• Richmond Hill Sermons (1932)
• Morning and Evening (1934)
• The Way into the Kingdom, or, Thoughts on the Beatitudes (1934)
• Keep Festival: Sermons on the Great Occasions of the Christian Year (1939)
• Three Score Years and Ten: The Autobiography of J. D. Jones (1940)
• The Power to Endure (1940)
• Our Debt to the Reformation (N.D.)

Notes and References

1. Book: Binfield . Clyde . Taylor . John . Who They Were in the Reformed Churches of England and Wales . Shaun Tyas . 2007 . 978-1900289-825 . 117 .
2. S. M. Berry, ‘Jones, John Daniel (1865–1942)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 12 March 2013.
3. Book: Binfield . Clyde . Taylor . John . Who They Were in the Reformed Churches of England and Wales . Shaun Tyas . 2007 . 978-1900289-825 . 118 .
4. Owen, Richard Griffith. John Daniel Jones, Welsh Biography Online; Gruffydd, R. Geraint. 1992. '"I'r Dr J. D. Jones, CH" Saunders Lewis', in J. E. Caerwyn Williams (ed.), Ysgrifau Beirniadol 18. Dinbych: Gwasg Gee, pp. 240-44.