John Clarke of Jericho: Ready to Answer God's Call

                                                                   Jericho Baptist Church

In 1802, John Clarke was born in Teviotdale, 35 kilometres south east of Kelso in Scotland. Serious illness, when he was 18, influenced him to pay attention to the things of God. Soon after this, he made a personal commitment to God in response to a sermon delivered by George Thom, a Scottish Presbyterian pioneer missionary to South Africa. After his views on baptism changed, Clarke joined the Baptist Church at Berwick-on-Tweed. While he worked as a teacher, he gave himself to preparation for missionary work with the help of two pastors in churches near his community. Then, he offered himself to BMS for missionary work overseas and, on July 28, 1829, he was commissioned to serve in Jamaica.

In preparation for this, Clarke married Margaret, the eldest daughter of Alex Kirkwood, his pastor at Berwick-on-Tweed, on April 19, 1829, just prior to leaving for Jamaica where, on arrival, he commenced work as teacher at the school attached to what is now East Queen Street Baptist Church, and as pastor of a small Baptist Church in Port Royal – the same way Thomas Knibb and William Knibb started their ministry in Jamaica. In 1832, the year when the Baptist War broke out, he was serving in Spanish Town during James Phillippo’s absence from the island. The mission house in that town, which was then Jamaica’s capital, was a place of refuge for Baptist missionaries, such as Knibb, Gardiner and Dendy, and their wives, fleeing persecution in western Jamaica.

Clarke began preaching at Jericho in St Thomas in the Vale and in 1834, upon Phillippo’s return to Jamaica, he relocated to Kenmuir, and then to Jericho, where the witness grew rapidly. Several other churches, in addition to Jericho, came under Clarke’s care: the church at Moneague in St Ann, Point Hill in the parish of St John. Mt. Hermon in Hampshire and Mt Nebo, Guy’s Hill, also came under Clarke’s leadership.

The Clarkes faced several challenges while serving in Jericho. Their first two children died in childhood. Clarke also suffered a malaria attack. He barely escaped death and, upon reviving, in 1839, he and his wife and sole surviving child – a daughter – took refuge first in America and then in England, leaving the Jamaicans – Richard and Joseph Merrick – in charge of the churches that had been under his care.

In 1840, while Clarke was in England waiting for greater improvement in his health, BMS appointed him to visit West Africa to identify a suitable place where BMS could launch a mission to Africa. He set out with Dr George Kinghorn Prince, arriving in Fernando Po [Bioko, Equatorial Guinea] in January, 1841. The two men started a mission there and served the mission until February, 1842, when Clarke and Prince started their return journey to England. Their ship, Golden Spring, was so battered by a thunderstorm that it was blown off course, ending up in Demarara (Guyana). Eventually, after travelling in the eastern Caribbean mobilising people for an African mission, Clarke and Prince arrived in England in September, 1842, to present his report.

In time, BMS chartered the vessel named the Chilmark and commissioned John and Margaret Clarke, together with Alfred and Sarah Ann Saker, who sailed from England on their way to West Africa via the Caribbean, where they expected to recruit and gather settlers, teachers and pastors to join them on the mission to Africa.

On December 1, 1844, the commissioned missionaries sailed for Africa, together with 42 persons, including 18-year-old Joseph Jackson Fuller from Spanish Town. Fuller was a formerly enslaved man who had been emancipated and who later became an outstanding linguist and missionary, serving for more than 30 years in Cameroon. This, although soon after arriving in the country, he suffered the loss by death of his wife and infant child. He translated books, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, into Duala. For several reasons, the mission on Fernando Po was not a success. This was not the case, however, with the work the team from England and Jamaica started in the Cameroon.

Unfortunately, Clarke again fell ill and, in 1847, he and his wife decided to return to Jamaica. Several of the Jamaicans who had accompanied him to Africa decided to join the Clarkes on their return to Jamaica.

On arriving in Jamaica, Clarke visited several churches to share news on the Baptist mission to Africa. In 1848, Clarke went to England to do the same. While there, he completed his books on Fernandian Grammar and Specimens of African Tongues. He also completed and published a translation of the Gospel according to Matthew in Fernandian (Bube). After this, Clarke pastored a church in Perth in North East Scotland for a year. Then, he received a call to serve as pastor at the Savanna-la-Mar and associated Fuller’s Field churches in western Jamaica, whose pastor, John Hutchins, had died, Clarke resigned his charge in Scotland and travelled with his wife to Jamaica in response to the call. In 1852, Mr and Mrs Clarke and their two daughters arrived in Jamaica to commence a new phase of work. Within eleven weeks, their younger daughter, who was only three years old when she arrived in Jamaica, breathed her last. Undaunted, the Clarkes continued their ministry, serving for thirteen years at Savanna-la-Mar and Sutcliffe Mount churches, after handing over Fuller’s Field to John Nisbet, a General Baptist Missionary Society agent in Jamaica.

The church in Jericho, where Clarke had served for several years, being without a pastor after the departure of BMS missionary James Hume, who was returning to England on account of ill health, decided to invite Clarke to return there as their pastor. After an absence of 26 years from Jericho, the Clarkes returned to pastor the church and served there until 1880.

It was during this period that Mrs. Clarke died. She had been sister to Mrs. Hume, the wife of Clarke’s predecessor at Jericho. Clarke informed BMS of his wife’s passing:

 

After two weeks of sore suffering, she has been released from the “body of sin and death.”  I need not tell you how I feel…. And I, now in my sixty-eighth year, may expect soon to follow her, who has been my loving helper for more than forty years…. When I think of the sufferings she has passed through in Jamaica and in Africa, on her weakly frame, from her youth up, it is wonderful that she escaped so long the shafts of death…. After more than forty years of happy companionship, I must feel the wrench of death which has parted us for a while.

John Clarke contributed in many ways to Baptist witness in Jamaica. Apart from his work in the pastorate, he was the person who established Victoria in St. Thomas-in-the-Vale as a “free village.” His contribution to the West African mission was also outstanding. We are thankful that Clarke was always ready to answer God's call.