More Rufus....

Something is wrong when a company of worshippers meet week after week to enjoy communion with the Lord, and sit unconcerned about the multitudes who in the same city live in misery, in hunger, in squalor, in vice and in sin.

No one would think of studying the theory of electricity, or physics, or mathematics, without going on to a further practical study of applied electricity, or physics, or mathematics. It is for the sake of the latter that we study the former.....The church holds a position of power in the world only in proportion as it applies the Christianity it teaches in theory, and if it does not succeed in the practical service, something is wrong with its theory.

das End der Welt

"I came once up the Engelberg Valley in Switzerland to a place which the natives call the end of the world - das End der Welt. A huge mountain closes the pass, the road stops abruptly and no one can go on there. It is a terminus.... How often in life the gateway shuts, a semaphore drops in front of us, the way closes. We have come to a terminus. The next day, however, I found a zigzag path farther down the valley that went up the side of the mountain. I climbed up and went on over the End of the World. There is always, if one can find it, a way higher up that goes over these closed ways which confront us." - Rufus Jones, New Eyes For Invisibles

I am growing into a new kind of understanding of Rufus and his ways. He was articulate, well-read, a scholar to the core - and yet what mattered most to him was how spiritual contact manifested into action. For Jones this was the proof that the spiritual encounter was indeed "real" and lasting. His words, while sometimes complicated, are ever hopeful throughout his many books.

Rufus Jones

Revelation, then, cannot all be on a single level. It depends for its height wholly upon the person through whom it comes, as the same breath through a flute gives a high note or a low note, according to the stop that is fingered. If this be so—and it is hard to see how any other view could be held—then the thing we are to look for in a revelation is not infallibility, not a dictated word, but a divine message spoken through a human personality, tested in a personal life and preserved for our use to-day because it has proved its supreme worth through all the siftings of the ages. - Rufus Jones, A Dynamic Faith

Tested in our life.
Preserved for day-to-day use.

Taking note, Rufus!