The Luminous Trail

THERE is in most of us a vast acreage of our inner estate which has never been touched by the plow.” In these words one of the great religious teachers of our time expresses not only his own conviction but also a truth that is today dawning upon many people who had supposed themselves immune to the influence of religion. Once that idea has made its way into a mind, it opens the way for spiritual insight and the discovery of unsuspected riches.

But the question of the man of Ethiopia, sitting in his chariot reading the prophet Esaias, still requires an answer. Philip asked him, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” And the servant of Candace replied, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” There is today no wiser guide, for anyone sincerely seeking the touch of the plow upon the uncultivated ground of his inner life, than Rufus Jones; and this most recent volume from his pen will increase the debt of gratitude gladly acknowledged by men and women of every form of faith — and of none.

What the author does is to invite the reader to accompany him on a quiet walk along a trail that is very familiar to him the trail made luminous by the lives of saintly men and women from the time of St. Paul to our own day. With none of the external trappings of scholarship, but with understanding that only scholarship could produce, he makes each of these saintly persons real and relevant to our needs, and at the same time disturbing. At moments the plow cuts very deep indeed.

For this reviewer, the chapters on Clement of Alexandria, Erasmus, and Horace Bushnell possess the most direct and helpful value; for another reader, it might well prove to be the chapters on St. John, Hugh of St.

Victor, and the “Builders of the Invisible Church.” To each according to his need, and also according to his capacity to share the mystic experience. No willing learner will fail to find much of lasting worth on one or another of these shining pages, and perhaps he will find also “that glimpse of truth for which he had forgotten to ask.”

The book closes with a chapter — “Of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven ” — on the life of the author’s son, Lowell Jones, who died at the age of eleven. No one should read it who is not prepared to become as a little child himself.

FREDERICK MAY ELIOT