The Life of Edward Grubb, 1854-1939, a Spiritual Pilgrimage (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Life of Edward Grubb, 1854-1939, a Spiritual Pilgrimage, by James Dudley. London, James Clarke and Company, Limited, 1946. 159 pp. $1.50. 1T1HE CORE of life in the Society of Friends as elsewhere is in persons . Here is the story of one born when modern science was attacking religious formulas. Edward Grubb grew up in an evangelical family. He passed through a painful period of skepticism ; then through a long life, mostly as a school teacher, he led a generation of Friends into wider service, in neighborhood outreach, among leaders of other faiths, and in social reforms. Socialism with its inevitable rejuvenation did not appeal to him but at one time, when a factory worker, he was a member of a labor union, and always contributed wisdom and understanding to labormanagement problems. Economics was a favorite topic. Evolution and Biblical analysis for him were doorways to a fuller understanding of God. All aspects of nature he loved. Edward Grubb made four trips to America, in 1901, 1904, 1907 and 1920. He was Chairman of the Executive Committee which arranged the 1920 All Friends Conference in London, and came that year to the United States with three other Friends to promote it. Many American Friends will remember him, and each reader of this review would do well to get a copy of this pocket size biography and ponder in his daily devotions on some of the insights quoted in the last chapter on "Writings of His Later Life." Edward Grubb died early in 1939, five months before his wife, Emma Grubb, and after sixty years of devoted married life. J. Passmore Elkinton Moylan, Pennsylvania Chronique de la vie Quaker française, 1745-1945, by Henry van Etten. Second edition. Paris, Société des Amis (Quakers), 1947. 342 pp. 150 Francs. (May be ordered from Friends Book Store, 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia 6.) TT IS encouraging that our friend, Henry van Etten, has been able to publish this year (1947) a second edition of his authoritative history of Quakerism in France. Though substantially the same as the first edition , this edition brings the subject up to date for the past ten years and contains additional material amounting to some twenty pages. The growth in numbers of the Society and its activity during the last war is noticeable. Except as the future may add new pages to the history of French Quakerism, this volume will remain a completely satisfying account of the subject. William W. Comfort Haverford, Pennsylvania 86 ...