Mysticism has been for the most part sporadic. It has found an exponent now here, now there, but it has shown little tendency toward organizing and i… - Rufus Jones
" "Mysticism has been for the most part sporadic. It has found an exponent now here, now there, but it has shown little tendency toward organizing and it has manifested small desire to propagate itself. There have been types of mystical religion which have persisted for long periods and which have spread over wide areas, but in all centuries such mystical religion has spread itself by a sort of spiritual contagion rather than by system and organization. It has broken forth where the Spirit listed, and its history is mainly the story of the saintly lives through which it has appeared. The Quaker movement, which had its rise in the English Commonwealth, is an exception. It furnishes some material for studying a "mystical group" and it supplies us with an opportunity of discovering a test and authority even for mystical insights
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About Rufus Jones
Rufus Matthew Jones (25 January 1863 – 16 June 1948) was an American writer, magazine editor, philosopher, historian and theologian who was one of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the American Friends Service Committee), and the only person to give two Swarthmore Lectures, the first of them all, in 1908, and his second in 1920.
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Rufus Matthew Jones
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Additional quotes by Rufus Jones
The Society of Friends is not a yearly meeting, not a Five Years Meeting, not an occasional conference, not a central office somewhere, not a series of committee meetings; it is primarily and essentially a widely scattered number of local meetings, little cells, where the actual vitality and power and future potency of Quakerism is being settled and determined. We work in vain unless we keep our minds focused on these local units.
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