Writer, Philosopher, Scholar of Mysticism, Historian. During his lifetime, the London Times labeled Rufus Matthew Jones "the greatest spiritual philosopher living in America since William James," and The New York Times lauded him as "a great humanitarian as well as a great scholar." He was born into a Gurneyite Quaker family and grew up in a religious atmosphere, where family Bible reading was a daily practice. He recalled his childhood as happy and filled with love. He graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 1885, where he began teaching philosophy in 1893. He earned master’s degrees from Haverford in 1886 and Harvard in 1901. His teaching career began in 1886 with stints at Oakwood Seminary in Union Spring, New York, and Friends School in Providence, Rhode Island, after which he served as principal at Oak Grove Seminary in Vassalboro, Maine. He began teaching philosophy at Haverford in 1886, where he retired as Professor Emeritus in Philosophy in 1934, holding the T. Wistar Brown chair in philosophy. He also served on the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania from 1898 to 1936. He was a prolific writer, producing more than 50 books and numerous pamphlets and articles during his lifetime. Though mysticism was the topic for which he became famous, he also wrote on religious philosophy, biography, and education, and authored a number of popular inspirational books. He worked long and hard on his life mission to heal the split in American Quakerism that came about during the nineteenth-century evangelical movement in England and America. He was a leader in the establishment of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which received the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with its British counterpart, the Friends Service Council. Though he was a veteran of many trips abroad (his daughter wrote that he had crossed the ocean 200 times), his Asian tour of 1926 deeply influenced his ever-evolving views on religion and spirituality. That year he traveled under the sponsorship of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YWCA) to address a YWCA conference in China, also stopping in Japan, India, and the Holy Land. During that trip, his visit to Gandhi’s ashram in India and his conversation with Gandhi, "profoundly heightened his appreciation for non-Christian religions" (Angell). After his 1934 retirement from teaching, he devoted his time to writing and service with the AFSC. In 1938 he visited with General Jan Smuts in South Africa and, later that year, was the leader of an AFSC mission to meet with Hitler to seek a peaceful solution to the threats of war. Hitler refused to see them, but they eventually succeeded in getting an interview with representatives of the German Secret Police. Obviously, there would be no talk of peace, but the AFSC delegation, pointing to their non-political aid to millions of German civilians following World War I, asked for the right to aid persecuted civilians, particularly the German Jews who were being forced into camps. Their success was limited, but they did receive permission to "investigate the suffering of Jews and to bring such relief as they see necessary" (Gallagher, p. 15). Though Nazi cooperation was short-lived, they were able to save the lives of many Jewish families during their brief window of opportunity. Until his death in 1948, he continued his service work with the American Friends Service Committee. He embraced modern science and found no problem in reconciling it with religion. He espoused equality among religions, seeing many religions as being rooted in universal love and aligned with divine purpose in their service to humanity. His egalitarian mysticism is perhaps the most famous of his teachings: In New Eyes for Invisibles, published in 1944, he wrote: "the eyes that see the invisibles, do not belong to a chosen few persons, the spiritual élite, they belong, potentially at least, to all of us who have minds." He influenced the work of some who went on to greater fame. Howard Thurman, civil rights activist and spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., studied with him. Harry Emerson Fosdick, founder of one of the earliest super churches under the patronage of the Rockefellers, was a convert to his modernist Christian views. He taught that religion and mystical experience mean little unless they are associated with positive action to make the world a better place.