Rufus Jones (1863-1948) on the spiritual impact on him of a November 1922 car accident in Morristown, New Jersey, recalled a decade later. (Jones was a Haverford College Philosophy Professor, a founder of the AFSC and author of 54 books.)
There was no single moment of invasion or of uprush. I discovered that a new life and power -had come- to me without my knowing precisely when it came.
I was hit by an automobile one night while away from home. It happened without any preparation for it. No sound, no light, no consciousness of danger, preceded the startling event.
Suddenly I felt my chest break and cave in. At the same time there was a powerful impact in my leg and my body was hurled through space with tremendous force. The odd thing was that I did no thinking. I just felt.
I was vaguely aware that an irresistible force was crushing the life out of my body, but I felt no touch of fear. There was a huge boulder of undifferentiated experience, undisturbed by reflection and without the emergence of overwhelming emotions.
I was near neighbor to death as I shall ever be while actually living, as close to the border of our world here as one can ever be and return again to the fullness of life, and yet not the least sense of fear or terror.
When a doctor arrived a few minutes after the accident my heart was beating regularly and my pulse was normal. In a few days I was brought home, carried to my spacious library and settled into a high modern hospital bed.
I was strapped tight to protect my broken ribs. My leg was fastened in a ‘fracture case’ so that I could not turn, for the slightest movement hurt me. My students brought moveable chairs, filling the room, and I went on with my college lectures and finished all my courses, lying thus flat on my back, feeling all the time an unusual élan.
Gradually I began to discover the amazing power of regeneration which living tissue reveals. Forces as gentle as the fall of snow flakes began to operate as though miracles had not ceased.
The split and broken bones were woven together again. The ligaments were stretched back and fastened in their old places. The lacerated muscles are healed by some hidden alchemy. The torn skin and contused flesh were made whole by unseen processes. Every broken fibre was regenerated as though nature’s whole business was restoration and renewal.
It was a long time before I realized that a still deeper miracle had been taking place within me. I cannot quite date the discovery. But it began to dawn upon me that a 'restoration' of another sort had gone on. I seemed in a new way to be liberated from fears and anxieties and worries. I had entered into an unexpected tranquility and peace.
More than that I had gained an immense increase of vitality and ‘vis viva.’ Life had become a more joyous and radiant affair than I had ever known. I no longer cared anything about arguments to prove the reality of God, any more than I did to prove the incomparable worth of the human love which surrounded my life as I lay quietly recovering.
Rufus Jones, “Why I Enroll with the Mystics,” in Contemporary American Theology: Theological Autobiographies, ed. V. Ferm, New York: Roundtable Press, 1932, p. 208-9.