First-Day With Rufus Jones
by NORA WALN
1
IT WAS the middle of May. The hemlocks and the maples by the morning wind’s faint stirring wove a pattern of shine and shadow on the lawn at Far Country. From over the treetops came the sound of Sabbath bells. The notes that pealed from a blackbird’s throat and the way he flew off on heavy wing told me, as I leaned in the open window, that the day would be warm. In my hand I had a letter with music in its inviting words: —
“Now that thee is back from thy arduous tour to the West Coast, do come to spend First-day with us, attend our Meeting for Worship, have dinner with Elizabeth and me, and stay the afternoon.”
This day of deep, still happiness was a golden moment in my life. I hope to keep its joy through whatever heartbreaking tragedies I may know when I return to Europe.
When I started for Rufus Jones’s home the sky was fair, a summer blue. The dogwoods that lace their branches over Kitchen’s Lane were dropping petals pink and white. The meadow brook flowed gently, rippling softly over the stones on its way down to the ducks’ pond. On sloping bank the ferns gave wild, sweet scent. In gardens that I passed, the flowers were in their full glory.
Walking up from the Haverford station, I stopped a short way inside the College gates to take pleasure in the beauty of the campus and the graceful symmetry of the stone halls. For a while I loitered, halted more than once by undergraduates whose friendship I treasured. Soon I came to the modest house where my host lives. Before I was up the steps of his porch he opened the screen door and came out, bidding me welcome in his rich warm voice that always seems to have the quality of the sun in it.
We sat on the porch. Perhaps in every religious group in some of the generations there is the blessing of a person who so lives that in his ripe age he is a saint of whom others would be in awe, except that his simplicity is so great that even the most timid are at ease in his presence. Rufus Jones is our saint. The Quaker saint is one who has met evil at its worst yet is stayed in faith, wholeheartedly a follower of Christ.
We conversed of America, of Europe, and of Asia; we remarked the beauty of the world and we felt the pity that men could not live in it with competence. Then we spoke of the ants industriously constructing their residence within our view, and finally of a short and simple Psalm, the Twentythird, written by a Palestinian shepherd. Rufus Jones gave me generously of his wisdom. Speaking first of the Psalm as an exquisite poem, complete in comeliness, with no unnecessary word yet saying all, he led on to talk of its contents.
Rufus has the Twenty-third by heart. Its words spoken in his understanding voice had a dual charm. Listening to him I thought of this Psalm as I have heard it in the many languages of the various foreign lands into which I have traveled. It has elegance unadorned, a sturdy yet delicate splendor, the vitality of truth. These are the thoughts of a man who is supremely normal; therefore he can speak to healthy people everywhere. His words go into our English alive and real. They translate into the tongues of Europe and Asia with the same power. This is authorship at its best.
2
MY HOST talked casually, and these are some of the things he said. This perfect poem is a song from a keen-seeing man who is satisfied with life as he has found it on earth. He has contentment of body, peace of mind, and a thankful spirit. Probably his life was in a time as politically troubled as our own, but he grew strong in it. The Psalm has three distinct parts. One for childhood. One for middle age. The other for maturity.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Life for the average child anywhere on earth starts that way. Out of this springs up naturally a simple faith, sweet and artless, a perfect trusting. There is no foresight in it. Life begins with innocence as the Psalm does. It is a wondrous time, the time of happy expectancy and friendly joy. But innocence, lovely as it is, is not a virtue. Innocence is a gift, and it is a rule of human life that virtues have to be won. Every virtue men have possessed has been got by self-effort and selfchoice. Thus the individual and the race climb up in human growth.
Not only do we usually come into life given a father who cares for us, but we all come in amazingly equipped with instincts. This contrivance, which is sufficient for animal life, is a thrilling gift. We could not start without it, and it carries us a long way. The instinctive operations in the bee, the ant, the colt, and the baby are delightful to watch. Instinct is something given, another instance of “green pastures and still waters.” By it the bird builds its nest, the bee makes honey, the babe sucks, stands up, and walks.
Human life moves on. With the passage of the age of innocence, the age of instinct, the age of protection, one says farewell to many things — to certain ideas and emotions, images, hopes, and illusions, and finds out hard and thorny things, goes into an era when there is no rest, no progress without personal effort. Once we have left this early stage of life we cannot go back into it.
Rufus uses his hands when he talks. During the second period of our growth — if we grow — there are steep hills to climb and deep valleys with their frightening shadows to be passed. This costs us pain and suffering. We experience bodily, mental, and spiritual stretch. There is no real escape. The sane go on. The brave persevere. The way is the way. We are now come into the time when every achievement costs us effort. This is the stage when man develops through the use of his capacity for free will.
There is a career to be made, a craft to be learned to earn a livelihood, and the necessity to labor at it. The musician must master his instrument, the seamstress her needle. And now we discover that we need more than the practice of ethics handed down to us from our ancestors, and must acquire our virtues for ourselves in the heat of battle with temptations and difficulties. We are in the era of growth where intelligent choices must be made, and even the ability to keep close touch with God has to be cultivated or lost. Others have been this way and left us honest record by which we can safely travel. In our era men trust scientific findings and proceed by them, armed with scientific conviction.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
A light seemed to shine from his face as he went on. Mankind has a large store of spiritual findings harvested by trustworthy men and women. By experience our race has learned, again and again, as the shepherd relates in his Psalm, that God is with us in the dark and shadowed valleys and helps us find the food we need on the perilous steeps. In the days of our labor and struggle He anoints us with His oil of gladness, filling our cups to overflowing, giving everyone plenty to share with others.
Through the journey of our middle life we can come to a new place. There we have a faith very different from the naïve faith we had before this climb. It is the faith of a person spiritually robust and virile. It is founded on intelligent living and is tested and tried. This is the best part of life, the rich harvest season.
It is the time when the violinist lifts his bow with confidence, the reader looks at the words with understanding, the builder knows how to make a durable house. We are come into the place of safe “secondary instinct” where the subconscious processes can be trusted. The character is formed by now and, if well stayed on Christ, is reliable. One can depend on one’s self in crisis. Secondary instinct is capable of continuous improvement through practice and effort. We have the chance to keep on growing so long as our senses are alertly alive. But now one can have a special pleasure because this is the era of achievement. It is the time of good ease in one’s craft, in one’s thinking, in one’s communion with God. With the sturdy wisdom gained by healthy self-effort one is certain of our Lord and can say with the Palestinian shepherd: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
When Rufus Jones had finished the words of the Psalm we were both quiet for a while. It was a joyous time for me. The air was laden with the clean, fresh smell of growing leaves and grass, and the hum of bees. The sun gave a gracious warmth. A gentle breeze blew in from the west. Students passing the porch waved a friendly greeting to their teacher and he waved gayly back. Sometimes they stopped, and as I listened my happiness deepened. Here were laughter and serenity, concern for the welfare of mankind, full comprehension of our troubles, firm faith in God and man. So might it have been to sit with Socrates or Mencius. I witnessed humility and holiness in a scholar.
At the College Meetinghouse we joined others who were entering. We walked in silence and took our seats in quietness. Haverford is a Meetinghouse plain as the Meetinghouse called Jordans, in Buckinghamshire, England, where my husband and I are members. There is the same stillness in the two. It is a deep hush as if the Friends of previous generations have left their peace of spirit on the benches where they sat.
At Haverford that morning there was a vital quiet, a silence which we call a living silence. We use this term when we are certain that God is present. I felt a spiritual harmony among us binding us together and all to Him. It gave me peace of mind beyond all describing.
A noonday peace was on the room when Rufus Jones rose from the Elders’ bench, where he sat facing the body of the Meeting. He quoted the closing sentences of the Ninetieth Psalm, reminding us of two aspirations which were in the author’s heart. One is a hope common to all mankind that the work of his hands may be permanently established on earth. The other is a prayer for beauty, manifest in him while he is living and toiling.
Rufus spoke of the importance of the practical things being done at home and abroad by Quakers and those who work with us, and then went on to stress gently a matter of first importance: the making of our lives with care that the beauty of God is in us. He said that life building is a fine art. A beautiful life must have poise and serenity and joy in it as well as the spirit of adventure. People have a God-given talent, the power of self-creation. In the midst of many other duties it is possible to overlook this fundamental thing.
One who would be creative must come to know what he wants to be. Such an ideal does not come to a sudden fulmination. There must be a plan to give unity and coherence. It can be a changing plan in outward things but must have a centered pattern. The beautiful life must have in it a resolute will able to control your conduct at all times. It must have noble intentions, wise judgment, largeness of view, generous regard for the opinions of others. There must be vision to see the invisible. You must have capacity not just to see facts but to see beyond facts to what ought to be, and courage to act by the as yet unseen. What ought to be can be made fact. This we know through experience. Above all, your life must be luminous, a lantern lit with love, a kindling flame that never goes out even when you are fighting dark, cruel, evil forces. The beauty of God must be in you if you are to be successful.
On this note he closed the morning Meeting for Worship, turning soon after he sat down to shake hands with the one next him. Along the front bench the men and women shook hands. Down the seats the signal passed. Each took his neighbor’s hand.
3
ELIZABETH and Rufus Jones have open hearts and generous hospitality for many. There were others at their First-day dinner table that day besides me. The windows of the dining room were open wide that we might feast upon the beatitudes of May while we ate dinner. In the noon heat the song of birds was hushed, but the soft air came in laden with the smell of azaleas.
My host’s humor has a delicious flavor. He is from Maine, and his turn of wit is different from our Pennsylvania expressions. That characteristic of his has not changed during all the years that he has spent at Haverford. I like his fun best of all the humorous Quakers of nimble tongue whom I know. It makes me laugh when I least expect to be amused. Yet it is illusive to my pen. When I tried to record his wit of this noonday on paper, I had no more than has one who pins a butterfly in a specimen box.
Round the table it was Quakerly fun — salty, dry, matter-of-fact, down to earth, then off on whimsical wings. The outward appearance of Quakers may be sober, even dour, solemn, austere, and plain, but poking fun at ourselves and each other is a pastime often indulged in by members of the Religious Society of Friends. Ours is a practical religion allowing us to be mystics, saints, and joyous fools.
Rufus’s light humor flew too fast and high for me on that happy day. This reminds me of an anecdote about him which can be applied to my inadequacy. It is widely told amongst us. Once when he had spoken at a First-day morning Meeting for Worship, on things above her head, a woman Friend rose up from the hush that followed on his words and spoke solemnly: “Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs,’ not ‘Feed my giraffes.”’
There is another told of his speaking in Meeting. When Rufus was a young man his religious surety was a cause of alarm to some of our members. It still is to a few. He speaks out as one who knows God intimately; and naturally those who have never had a mystical experience, because they have kept their souls closed, are sometimes doubtful of the truth of his words. In groups such as our religious sect, where there is no appointed preacher and all have freedom to give messages, probably there always grows up a spirit of caution. It tends to hold the ardent down, hut also it steadies those who get up. And the truly moved can never be really crushed if the push is from God. In his younger days, Rufus used to be “preached at" frequently, as a discipline. He is not so likely to have this happen to him now, but it might, any time. On the morning of which I would tell, he was seen to be about, to rise, when an older, more weighty Friend suddenly prayed: “Dear Lord, give us protection. We are going to be told a number of things which are not true.”
Jokes concerning Meeting for Worship are many. There is one Rufus told me of Nicholas Waln, who lived about a hundred years ago. Nicholas was a somewhat restless Friend, impatient if people were too hesitant in getting the message out. Upon one occasion a Quaker rose in Meeting, looked about him, cleared his throat and began, “I feel—” Then followed a long pause, more throat clearing; and after another survey of the assembly the speaker solemnly repeated, “I feel —” Again pausing and casting his eye over his hearers, he reiterated for the third time, “I feel—” This was too much for Nicholas, who could not stand the extreme deliberation practiced by some Friends in their preaching, and in that pause he supplied a word which burst out of him — “a louse.”
Naturally, Nicholas knew that a deputation of Friends, outraged at his conduct, would call upon him to “Elder” him, probably that evening when they had given themselves time to cool off and him time to be sorry. Sure enough, early in the evening a group of Friends arrived at his door. The house was dark and there was no response to their repeated knockings. Finally, concluding that Nicholas had gone away, they were turning from the door when a window opened above and he stuck his head out. “Friends,” said he, “you needn’t come in. The Lord has been here before you.”
Most early Friends drank wine and smoked without concern about it beyond the fact that the use of food and drink and tobacco should be moderate — enough and no more. But later there came a period when smoking and drinking at all were frowned on. John Hunt and Samuel J. Levick were two Quakers who did not share the general sense of responsibility to bear a testimony against tobacco. One day after dinner at a Friend’s house where there was no smoking, the two went to the back yard to enjoy their cigars. They were followed by other Friends and taken sharply to task. “Yes. Friends,” said John Hunt, “Samuel and I agree. Tobacco is a vile weed and we are burning it up just as fast as we know how.”
Personal independence within general unity has been a mark of Quakers from the seventeenth century, when our sect started, on to the present day. Quakerdom is a term that holds many types within its circle. We are a sect without a written creed and we have no binding rules other than the regulations of our discipline. What keeps us together is that we have unity in essentials, and what saves us from breaking up is that we have diversity in lesser matters. Fun such as we practice may seem out of place among religious people, but it is of value to us. The stories we remember from other days help us to get through minor differences still holding fast together on important matters. And jokes help to rid us of pompousness, which is ever a danger in religious people. When the roots of faith are strong, then the winds of laughter bring no harm.
Rufus Jones is as natural when he is joking as when he speaks of mystic things. This conduct seems to me nearer to the pattern of Christ when He lived on earth as Jesus than any other way could be. I can never think of Jesus as a man with whom I should not enjoy to go to dinner. I think that there would be happiness, easy and pleasant, at His table.
4
SOON after dinner we separated to do various things. My host, who is in his eighty-fifth year, went to rest in his downstairs library. I was put in his upstairs study, where there is a comfortable sofa, and given the freedom of the books. The quiet house was peaceful.
On the shelves and the tables there was nothing mean or sordid. It is pleasant to roam a lettered world where the sage’s word and the poet’s song are met. In the selection of his books a man’s character is plainly shown. Even if I had never talked with Rufus Jones, but had merely spent two hours in this room, I should know that he is a man wide open to learning and catholic in his friendships.
In his study I found a harvest from the world. It is the reaping of one who has pleasure in creative literature. Greek and Hebrew, Latin, German, and French writing, as well as English and our own, keep company with thought from India and the Far East in that room. There is no color bar in Rufus’s choice. The works of Negro and white stand side by side. Orient and Occident are not separated. There is kinship in everything collected, in that they are the books of mankind.
Resting in that room I had a serene yet intense emotion. I was conscious of the boon of living. I knew that it is wonderful to be on our earth in this era or any other. I did not get the illusion that the task of our human climb upward is easy. Neither did I feel helpless in the strain and stress of centuries of forward advance and backward blunder. Here were authors who gave life intrinsic meaning. I was privileged to be resting in the company of those who bear witness to the nobility of mankind in their treatment of the foibles and the sorrows, the virtues and the sins, the mistakes and the achievements of people.
In Rufus Jones’s study his books spoke to me, reminding me that the arts are not luxuries. The hunger of a world in need, such as ours, is not all physical. Human spirits are low, hearts are depressed, minds lose their sanity because that hope which is the bread of life is scarce on our twentiethcentury tables. The time for active artists is come, as it always comes in such eras. We need books, pictures, music that feed men’s starving souls. Thinking of this, I began to consider what Rufus has done for all of us.
He has lived a full life and he has been openhanded with his experiences. Throughout his life runs a concern with the actuality of God. His word is careful. And it has grown luminous. He tells of the mystic, and his telling rings as truth rings. From early manhood on, as his scholarship and his personal experience have grown, He has never faltered. His reports have the surety of an honest man who knows by direct contact. His concern is with us as we live on this earth. He cares wholeheartedly that his fellow men be fed and sheltered, healthy and happy. He wants for all others what he wants for himself.
As a publisher of truth, he has steadily called for a resurgence of religious faith through an era increasingly dominated by concern with science. Scientific discoveries have fascinated the Western world, and this fascination is spreading to men everywhere. Never has Rufus been against the tide of eagerness to know the secrets of material combinations, or against research into human psychology. He has encouraged the desire for such wisdom.
At the same time he has put forth his discoveries in religious matters. These are the fruits of research into history, combined with his own calm, positive assertion that mankind must lay hold of truth as it relates to our spirits. He has constantly warned men and women to beware of putting trust in reason which is not the whole of reason, and repeatedly asked us to be cautious about relying on facts which are merely half facts.
In the classroom, on the public lecture platform and in the Quaker Meetinghouse, in his magazine articles and in many books, he has been industrious in saying that while humans can live successfully without the things which science gives, although better with them if wisely used, we cannot dwell on this earth in peace of mind without taking into account the necessity to grow in our souls. By his reasoning, unless our advance in knowledge goes forward in complete development of the human soul within us, in all its four parts, then mankind is in real danger of self-destruction. According to the law of nature which he teaches, humans have either to exercise the talent for self-creation or perish. He uses the word soul as the ancient Greeks used their word for soul, including under that term the entire inner self of man — intellect, imagination, emotion, and will. Frequently he makes use of a quotation from the Book of Ecclesiasticus: “The soul of a holy man discovereth sometimes true things: more than seven watchmen that sit in a high place to watch.”
Rufus has touched people far beyond our United States. His written words are translated into the tongues of five continents and he has traveled to homes in many lands. While I considered what he has meant to others, my thoughts narrowed down to what he has meant to me. He has broadened and enriched my life. He has restored my vision when I was blinded.
Consideration of Rufus led me to memories of my childhood, Born within the fold of Quakerdom, to plain Friends of the Hicksite division, I was reared with slight opportunity for knowledge of the “world’s people,” as others were called by many Quakers then. And religious dispute within the Religious Society of Friends kept such as I from association with Orthodox Quakers. Theoretically, I was taught a Christian faith that makes mankind one family. Actually we lived set apart.
But as early as I can remember, a clean wind was blowing in. A fresh liveliness was astirring. Several grown men and women were in this Quaker movement. Young Rufus Jones attracted the most general attention from the whole of Quakerdom, although he was born into the Orthodox division. He was highly talented with voice and pen.
Rufus and his associates were blasting at the divisions between Friends, and dynamiting the invisible wall which protected us from other Christians and pagans. Furthermore, they were proclaiming the name of God with a freedom which recently had not been habitual with us. Some members were alarmed, others delighted. He was radical and heretic, or herald and prophet, depending on how one looked at the matter.
My grandfather, Elijah Waln, a birthright Hicksite, took a keen interest in the doings of Rufus Jones, the young Orthodox. It was an interest so sharp that Grandfather was asked, by a solemn deputation of Friends, to cease sitting on the Elders’ bench in our Meeting for Worship. Grandfather responded by sitting under his own maple trees in quiet worship at the hour of First-day Meetings. Then, because young people followed him out there and he felt a responsibility about division among Friends, he went back into our Meetinghouse — right up to his old place on the Elders’ bench. This drama thrilled me.
We subscribed to every Quaker publication. If I recollect rightly, there was an editor who used to print news about Rufus in red ink. My interest was not religious. I took my God for granted. So far as I was concerned, He was not in this excitement. I had a childish faith, simple and unbothered. God loved me and I loved Him. My interest was more in nature than in humans. While very young I began to syndicate a series about birds and flowers, and — combined with this, as I explained in The House of Exile — to collect items concerning China. Religion, as disputed, was something I put off for consideration later. So serene was my faith, that the study of the Chinese philosophers did not ruffle it. I was grateful to Rufus for the freedom of movement he helped secure us, and I early began the practice of attending Hicksite and Orthodox Meetings alternately.
5
IT WAS not until I was living in China that I began to read his books, and from then on they became a source of intellectual pleasure. That period of my life was contented and leisurely. During it I read much, and Rufus became one of my favorite authors. From him I learned of European mystics and considerable of the history of our sect. I did not skip his spiritual words. I read them without stir of spirit.
My faith was a shallow thing, a weak growth, something I failed to cultivate. In Europe I lost it. It burned out in hate of the Nazis, dried up, disappeared. I kept the tenets of my inheritance but I had no surety of God. It was in despair that I grasped Rufus’s extended hand. I turned to his teaching as the thirsty seek water.
His words assure the troubled that the first essential in such a predicament is the calming of the mind. Fear must be eliminated by use of the will. One must prepare to “stand the universe.” Then the spiritual senses must be roused. One must not turn from life. It is not detachment, but attachment, that one seeks. God is there. He will break through even as the hidden mountains break through into sight when clouds clear. The first step in kindling lost faith is a desire for faith. Divinity comes alive in us if we really want it. But the soul has to waken to its own need.
From Rufus I learned. He knew the way. His findings are helps to others. He teaches that the soul must make progress or wither. A child’s simple faith is not sufficient for a grown woman in the present day. The way to growth is not to hate and not by turning from other humans, however sinful. The way forward is by Christ’s pattern — greater loyalty to God and stronger love for our fellow men. The soul must come to have the qualities of tenderness, gentleness, humor, endurance, and integrity unshakable.
My thankfulness to Rufus for his help is today something beyond the power of my words to express. From thoughts of this I was interrupted by his call from below stairs. Tidying myself, I went down to join him and he took me with him to a meeting in Haverford College Library.
There Rufus took a leading part in discussion concerning the paucity of artistic genius to be found among us. We have been among the last of the non-Catholic sects to allow our members to enjoy the Renaissance cult of physical beauty. Many of our diaries show us a people seeking to keep clear of the seductions of nature and of art. Quaker artists, musicians, poets, actors, and playwrights in full membership are few. Talents have been deliberately turned by education and social pressure away from any such career. With the whole weight of his present eminence among us, Rufus struck to knock off these shackles.
He spoke of beauty as one who loves the beautiful. He sees loveliness when he looks into a flower, and thrills to it. He hears it in music, enjoys it in fiction, in a painting, and on the stage. He knows that the face of Jesus on the Cross was not mournful and ugly, but beautiful and strong with the same light that is on many a laborer’s face when he has done his work well. Beauty should be portrayed, written, sung. Artistic gifts are Godgiven.
All there agreed. My day ended in bliss.
Rufus has come to his golden day when his word has weight. Behind him are decades of earnest endeavor. He has been among the foremost in drawing us to work together as the American Friends Service Committee and, putting down the barriers of separation, enjoy the Friends Social Union. His accomplishments are many. Most important of all is his success with the fountain from which his success flows. In an era when few believe in God, Rufus has touch with Him.
After the meeting, we said farewell. He stood against the western wall of the sunset, and I was conscious that there is no beauty surpassing the beauty of a man who has taken care to make his life good. The beauty of our Lord is on him, manifest in him, when he is come to the place where the labor of his hands is established on earth by faithful use of his talents.