The art of living is the least learned of all arts. Man has learned the art of existing, of getting by somehow with the demands of life, of escaping into half answers; but he knows little about the art of living, about being able to walk up to life, with all its demands, humbly conscious that he has within him a mastery that is able to face this business of living with adequacy. That is life's central lack. All others are marginal lacks. The modern man knows everything about life except how to live it! The thesis of this book will be: a group of ordinary people were mastered by the risen Christ moving into them in the Holy Spirit; and thus mastered, they moved out to master their circumstances and their relationships into a miniature kingdom of God. It is mastery, within and without.
Eli Stanley Jones was a 20th century Methodist Christian missionary and theologian. He is remembered chiefly for his interreligious lectures to the educated classes in India, thousands of which were held across the Indian subcontinent during the first decades of the 20th century.
Jones was born in Baltimore, Maryland. After attending Asbury University, he became a missionary in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He traveled to India and began working with the lowest castes, including Dalits. He became close friends with many leaders in the Indian Independence movement, and became known for his interfaith work. He said, "“Peace is a by-product of conditions out of which peace naturally comes. If reconciliation is God’s chief business, it is ours—between man and God, between man and himself, and between man and man.” He was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation work in Asia, Africa, and between Japan and the United States.
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