Little Book of Selections from the Children of the Light

Rufus M. Jones, the Quaker philosopher and historian who taught at Haverford College, compiled this small anthology in 1909 as a gathering of voices from the Society of Friends. The title borrows the early Quakers' own name for themselves, the Children of the Light, and the book belongs to Jones's larger lifelong effort to recover the inward, mystical center of the Quaker tradition at a time when many Friends had grown unsure of their own spiritual inheritance. Jones was then in the middle of the work that would produce his major histories of Quaker and mystical religion, and this volume puts the primary voices themselves before the reader rather than commentary about them.

The selections move through the generations of Friends, from the first witnesses such as George Fox, Isaac Penington, and William Penn to later writers who carried the same conviction forward. What binds them together is a single claim that runs through nearly every page: that God speaks directly to the human soul, that the Inward Light is not a metaphor but an experienced presence, and that a life shaped by this presence will show itself in plainness, honesty, patience, and service. Jones chose passages that dwell on the practice of waiting upon God in silence, on the relation between inward experience and outward conduct, and on the way inner guidance and everyday faithfulness belong together. The brief excerpts are meant to be read slowly, one at a time, so the anthology works less as an argument to be followed than as a devotional companion in which each extract carries its own weight.

The book has continued to matter because it offers an unusually direct way into the Quaker mystical stream without requiring a reader to work through seventeenth-century journals and tracts in full. It also shows why Jones himself became so influential in twentieth-century Christian spirituality: he insisted that the testimony of ordinary believers who had met God in the depths of the soul was itself a form of theology. For readers today who feel the pull of silence and interiority but want a tradition with ethical backbone, these pages still speak with clarity.

Who should read this: Readers drawn to contemplative practice, silent worship, or the Quaker tradition will find a gentle and trustworthy guide here, as will anyone who wants to hear early Friends in their own words in small portions. It is not for those seeking a systematic account of Quaker history or doctrine, nor for readers who want sustained argument, since this is a collection of brief passages meant for reflection rather than a continuous treatise.