World Citizen
Mendelsohn, Jack
World Citizen Friend of Life: the biography of rufus m. jones, by Elizabeth Gray Vining. Lippincott. 347 pp. $6. Reviewed by Jack Mendelsohn We make machines that act more and more like men,...
...He learned early to detest the arrogance of nationalisms that look with scorn on the aspirations and loyalties of others...
...For him the universal aspect of the religious life was reverence...
...Reviewed by Jack Mendelsohn We make machines that act more and more like men, while we act more and more like machines...
...To do this she could not travel under Secret Service escort...
...The life of a great friend of life has been adequately re-created, and a reviewer does his best service in this instance by urging that it be read...
...Record of Growth On My Own, by Eleanor Roosevelt...
...Teacher, philosopher, writer, humanitarian, he was above all a man whose life was "sprinkled with the dew of religion...
...She must be her natural self, a concerned visitor to the scene of suffering, at whatever risk was involved...
...Through triumph and tragedy, from birth in a frugal Maine household to death in fame and honor, Jones was the living embodiment of the best in Quakerism...
...The days are bleak for the essential human characteristics, but as long as our society can produce a Rufus Jones, we are far from lost...
...And she resolved to feel the hardships families were suffering from first-hand contact and to compensate as best she could for the President's handicap in travel, by honest and frank reporting to him...
...His religious journey was always from the intimate to the universal...
...Well he might...
...She entered the White House conscious of the suffering resulting from the depression...
...The illnesses, bereavements, and shattered plans are as much a part of her story as the travels, adventures, and accolades...
...This was far beyond mere toleration, for it was based on the insight that an honest person is required to rethink the implications of his faith, to take a look again and again at his working hypotheses, to try to find ways of translating from his own religious idiom into that of any equally honest person...
...Elizabeth Vining has written sensitively and in detail about a man she knew and loved as a friend, colleague, and neighbor...
...These were the foundations that enabled Rufus Jones in his 83rd year to write on the New Year's Day page of his pocket diary, "The Time has come to go forward...
...When Theodore Dreiser wrote his novel about Quakers, The Bulwark, he used passages of conversation lifted bodily from Finding The Trail of Life by Rufus Jones...
...Two of Franklin Roosevelt's friends kindly offered to "plan her life" for her soon...
...His private beliefs and practices were precious not because they were the truth but because they were his way of seeking and approaching truth...
...Untroubled by the great, rich diversities of human thought and belief, he found an instinctive union with the whole stream of life...
...241 pp...
...To her friends who knew her during that time, the deepening and broadening of her interests since White House days seems entirely natural and appropriate...
...Harper...
...And especially was this true of Eleanor Roosevelt...
...He learned that it is also arrogance to suggest that one's own experience of religion is the only valid experience...
...Reviewed by Clarence E. Pickett THE Secret Service men assigned to the White House found it very difficult to protect the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential family at all times...
...Neither divided against himself nor pitted against the world, his religion made him a citizen of the universe who loved its spectacles and its joys...
Vol. 22 • November 1958 • No. 11
