The Inner Life

by Rufus Matthew Jones

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208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2007

About the author

Rufus Matthew Jones (January 25, 1863 – June 16, 1948) was an American religious leader, writer, magazine editor, philosopher, and college professor. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the American Friends Service Committee). One of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century, he was a Quaker historian and theologian as well as a philosopher. He is the only person to have delivered two Swarthmore Lectures.

Reviews

[Marlene M. Oaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mysticism My Love

Because of my life experiences p!us my reading and discussions with many, I have long been in love with the mystics. This little book is love!y, insightful and in tune with my understanding. I just reread William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience," which he quotes, and to which he is in harmony. It is well worth reading and contemplating.

[Luke Hillier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reconciling the presumed tension between spiritual and social engagement is an animating desire for countless spiritual writers, and a particularly pervasive one for Quakers especially. In The Inner Life, Rufus Jones offers his own insights, guided by a profound appreciation for interiority that manages to cut across the false binary that so often pits religion against meaningful action in the world. Writing with prescient wisdom that anticipated the public sentiment to come, Jones offers a vision for a richly cultivated inner life that serves as a seed for transformation following in the way established by Jesus in the Gospels.

“It may seem incongruous to be writing about an inner way of life in these days when action is felt by so many to be the only reality and when in every direction outside there is dire human need to be met." Although Jones wrote this in 1916, its sentiment likely rings even truer for readers today, many of whom have inherited a binary understanding of the inner and outer life. Jones is inevitably grappling with the entrenched polarities that emerged following Rauschenbusch’s social gospel and the counter-claims that shaped much of the theological landscape of the early 20th century. And yet, rather than claiming one side or the other, The Inner Life attempts at a third way that depicts one’s outcome arises from the commitments of the other, intertwining the two seemingly contradictory visions together.

Early on, Jones is careful to guard against charges of apathetic religious escapism, affirming that “To desert this world, which presses close around us, for the sake of some remote world of our dreams, is to neglect our one chance to get a real religion.” . However, he is equally unwilling to relinquish the spiritual altogether, understanding the “seed” of the Kingdom of God within one’s spirit to be the only true starting place for the Kingdom’s realization here on earth. Although Jones is partial to the metaphor of a seed, one could also apply that of a ripple to his core vision for the spiritual life, which he understands to be something that starts small and inward before expanding outward. He presents Jesus’s model of “propagating the truth” in similar fashion, writing that “[Jesus] counted almost wholly upon spontaneous and dynamic influence of life upon life, of personality upon personality. He would produce a new world, a new social order, through the contagious and transmissive character of his personal goodness."

Jones contrasts this “personal contagion” model of transmission against that of organizations or institutions, which must inevitably prioritize self-preservation and often in ways that involve the impulses to conquer and coerce. Ultimately, this preference for the rippling seed is reflected in his theory of political change, most concretely articulated when he writes that “we must look for this age [of the Kingdom of God], it seems to me, to come by slow increments and gains of advancing personal and social goodness, and by divine and human processes already at work in some degree in the lives of men." For Jones, all positive social transformation is encapsulated by the ever-burgeoning Kingdom of God, which will unfold not through political mandate or social pressure but as a gradual blooming of the seeds of peace planted within.

Jones’s sensibility brings to mind the testimony of an earlier Quaker, John Woolman. At one level, Woolman’s life serves as a sort of case study for Jones’s idea, depicting a life of careful inward stewardship that came to express itself in a diligent commitment to just action and advocacy. Further, Woolman’s strategy for change is akin to the personal contagion model touted by Jones, in which he exerted interpersonal influence in order to dissuade participation in the institution of chattel slavery. But this example ought not imply that Jones imagined this to be an exceptional outcome.

In keeping with the core principle of Quaker theology, Jones defines worship as “direct, vital, joyous, personal experience and practice of the presence of God” –– which is to say that such mystical encounters are considered commonplace. These ongoing experiences with the life of God inevitably bear fruit within our own. He writes: “Love constructs, because it is the inherent evidence of the Spirit, living, working, operating in the persons who love. Through them the incarnation of God is continued in the world…” In other words, God is the impulse and the impetus for all social action aligned with the Kingdom of God, and it is only as an outcome of our inner encounters with God that we are equipped to participate in God’s continuing incarnation in the world.

The Inner Life is, above all, a celebration of the possibility and promise evidenced by Christ that God is accessible to the ordinary individual in a real and immediate way. However, embedded within this is a host of rippling ramifications for our engagement with the world around us. Rather than reifying an outlook that sets the inner life over and against the outer, Jones casts a vision for how the richness of the former nourishes, directs, and energizes our action in the latter. From seed to fruit, God is the agent of transformation moving within and through us to bring about the slow unfurling of the Kingdom of God, always beginning with the inward depths of our spirit but never content to remain limited to that inner sphere.

[Brian Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jones, a late renowned Quaker scholar, or member of the Society of Friends, seeks to integrate science with the inner life, the inwardness practiced in Quakerism's silent waiting on the Light.

One of his major points is how life in general points to a spiritual environment in which life finds its being, this life being in dialogue with the 'other side,' so to speak. The world of matter hints at a spiritual inspiration that informs it and leads it to mutations, such as in evolution, that cannot be explained from within the process itself, as science cannot explain the reason for these 'leaps' in the process otherwise consistent and true to cause-and-effect. Jones informs on how non-religious researchers point this out in their studies, so he does not simply present the reader with religious presumptions. Likewise, Jones applies this even to the most ordinary of happenings, showing how any comprehension of and commentary on experience is transcendent of the experience at the level of the experience itself.

In these matters, as in the more devotional parts of this treatment, Jones can baffle at presenting complexity in the garb of simplicity, leaving the reader somewhat perplexed, as most writers tend toward being simple or complex; we could say, and paradoxically, Jones is scholastically devotional.

Jones leaves us with the question of whether these profundities in the common life point to a Source, a Being, or to complex depths inherent to life, our not yet having the tools to explore the yet-discovered depths of matter-and~mind itself. If the latter, life witnesses only to its profundity; if the former, life hints at a surrounding Beingness, however differently spoken of over time and place, a Being the potential for being. Both are likely true, yet Jones does not explore that in his conclusion, leaving us with the impression of an either-or polarity, this not being in sync with the work prior.

The treatise, over-all, leaves me no doubt that Jones concludes we are surrounded with a spiritual environment, and matter cannot explain itself. This is clear throughout the book. Jones, however, as is true of Quakers generally, does not reify this Otherness, even when referring to traditional language and Scriptures of the Christian communities. He reflects the practice of Quakerism, seeing faith more experiential and metaphorical, though no less real than traditional faiths or sciences, yet real in a more in-depth manner for addressing the Depth 'below' the surfaces intimating that Depth.

The book provides a look into Quaker spirituality, howbeit by one Quaker representing one approach ~ Friends is a widely divergent group, from evangelical conservative to progressive ~ a movement that arose from traditional Christianity, but responded, in its estimation, to the ritualism of Catholic Christianity and the idolization of the Bible by Protestantism. Jones mirrors indebtedness to that Christian faith, as in quoting prior Christian thinkers, like Augustine of Hippo, while showing how Christian faith diverged into accenting form; from being a spirit movement to being, first, a Church movement (Catholicism), then, a Bible movement (Protestantism). Yet, amid these lessons, the book is principally, directly a spiritual exposition, to inspire anyone who seeks to retain devotion to truth within Christian Scriptures, a truth universal and free of all Scriptures, and love for the 'Christ,' or 'Light' transcending all faiths and thought, experienced only directly 'within'.

[Neil Saltmarsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are parts of this book that I really like but maybe it is the authors of the mid 20th century have such expression as to make parts of it hard to read without a dictionary. I know that Mr. Jones was learned but this can and to my mind also makes it hard to access. I probably enjoy Thomas Kelly as a Quaker writer who speaks to me. This is my 2nd Rufus M. Jones book that I have read and I find that this incomprehensibility excludes many from enjoying the contents.