The Sydney Family Album — 7

Posted on November 2, 2011 
Filed under History, Sydney Diocese

Mark Thompson has returned to his theme of Sydney’s Family Album with the story of Nathaniel Jones, Moore College Principal 1897–1911:

“Jones’ legacy was a determined evangelicalism, determined equally to live out the faith in quiet godliness and to resist the liberalism (a.k.a. modernism) that would seek a foothold in the diocese over the next two decades.”

Nathaniel Jones, Principal of Moore College from 1897 until 1911, must be included in any reckoning of those who shaped contemporary Sydney Anglicanism. He influenced a generation of Sydney clergy during his fourteen years as principal of the college. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Katoomba Christian Convention. It would be Jones’ men who would promote Howard Mowll for Archbishop in 1933. 

Jones was born in 1863 in the village of Oswestry in Shropshire, England. Though baptized as a child, he was rebaptized sometime around 1877 as a response to a genuine conversion to faith. He went on to study theology at Oxford (gaining a first class honours degree) and then to serve in the parish church in Wortley. His ordination to the priesthood would occur in Australia, however, where he had travelled on the advice of his doctors. For the next twenty-three years he would battle with a condition which would eventually reveal itself to be throat cancer.

Arriving in Melbourne in 1888, Jones served in a number of Melbourne parishes before becoming Principal of Perry Hall in Bendigo in 1894. Three years later he travelled to Sydney to take over the reigns at Moore College following the death of Bernard Schleicher.

Nathaniel Jones brought to Moore College a passion for serious theological education. He immediately set about raising the academic standard at the College, preparing students for the Oxford and Cambridge Preliminary Examination for Holy Orders. He was concerned to give his students the theological resources necessary to meet the challenges of liberal theology, which was already being exported to Australia from England and from America. His students would be able to face these challenges with confidence based on a deep grounding in the Scriptures and a clear evangelical Anglican theology of the type being taught at this time at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford by Jones’ lifelong friend W. H. Griffith Thomas (who had also been born in Oswestry).

Almost every testimony about Jones emphasises the quality of his personal life as a man of God. His transparent walk with the Lord left its mark on people. The plaque erected by his students after his death described him as ‘a gifted teacher, an inspiring preacher, and a quiet holy man of God’. He brought to his task powerful convictions about the importance of personal holiness. Marcus Loane described him as ‘one who had turned the true Keswick teaching into daily life and habit’. However, he saw no tension between such personal piety and intellectual rigour. His preaching displayed the clarity which comes from deeply understanding his subject matter as well as the conviction and earnestness which rose from a personal walk with the Saviour who had redeemed him at such great cost.

Jones’ legacy was a determined evangelicalism, determined equally to live out the faith in quiet godliness and to resist the liberalism (a.k.a. modernism) that would seek a foothold in the diocese over the next two decades. It would be an evangelicalism which expected theological convictions to transform behaviour, to energise personal and organised group activity for the sake of the lost and preservation of the evangelical ethos of the diocese, and to be  expressed with clarity and passion in biblical preaching. Leading clergymen of the next generation, men like H. S. Begbie, D. J. Knox, S. E. Langford Smith and R. B. Robinson — all Jones’ men — would keep this legacy alive and in turn make their own mark on the life of the diocese. And then their sons and daughters … But that’s another story.

Postscript: One of the treasures buried deep in the Moore College library is a photograph of Nathaniel Jones with his students. Photographs in those days were carefully staged with everyone striking the most serious poses. But this photograph was most probably taken inadvertently, in-between the settled seriousness of the official shots with everyone in their academic gowns. It shows students falling about in laughter and the broadest grin on the face of the principal. For all his serious attention to learning and godliness, Nathaniel Jones knew his students, laughed with his students and loved them. And they loved him in return.

First published at Theological Theology.