Hannah Whitall Smith - The Christians Secret to a Happy Life

Copyright 2017 by B&H Publishing Group

All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-4999-8

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.84

Subject Heading: HAPPINESS \ CHRISTIAN LIFE \ DISCIPLESHIP

Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version. Public domain.

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Letter to the Reader

D uring work on this small book, my research on Hannah Whitall Smith led me to the knowledge that although The Christians Secret to a Happy Life was her most popular work, Smith had anything but a happy life, particularly toward the end of it. Her husband was involved in a sexual scandal, one of her children walked through divorce, another married the famous agnostic Bertrand Russell, Hannah and her husband had a very unhappy marriage, and both eventually left the orthodox Christian faith. She had, what some might call, a very unhappy life indeed. Yet her book is still widely read and touted as a Christian classic. Why, then, have we dedicated a volume of this series to a writer whose life was so contrary to her words?

The title of this book leads the reader to assume this little volume contains four keys to happiness, like some cheap self-help book, or a perfect potion for joy, a combination of just enough of this and that to create an atmosphere of pure bliss in the Christians life. But what this book actually contains are some very difficult practices and beliefs about God and salvation that few of us ever come fully into. The real gem of Smiths book is the offer of believing what is true about God and what is true about His children. It seems like a simple equation, and not one which should take an entire book to say, but with deft insight and striking conviction, Smith offers her readers the clear opportunity to walk in truth, or willfully walk in lies. This then is the secret to a happy life: to believe God is who He says He is and will do what He has said He will do. That Smiths life did not end a happy one does not lessen the truth of her words within.

This is a lesson to us all, and I was challenged myself again and again while working on this volume: am I actually believing God, or just saying I believe Him because it is part of my culture and life to say so? Working on this book was like an X-ray or MRI to my heart and brain, holding up truth as it should be and likening my own happiness, joy, confidence, love, and peace to it, showing it was not as it should be. My prayer for you as you read this is that you will be able to see it in your own life too, and that the unhappy life of Hannah Whitall Smith will not be a discouragement to you, but a warning to you. God is the best giver of the most joy, but He gives it in the midst of pain, uncertainty, frailty, and fear, not only when things are just as they seem they should be.

Preface

W hat I have to tell in this little book is no new story. The early Church taught it in the days of the Apostles, and from those days, down to the present time, there have been found in every age some whose voices and whose lives have proclaimed it.

Many times it has been lost sight of and the Church has seemed to fall into almost hopeless darkness and lifelessness. But the secret has always been preserved by an apostolic succession of those who have walked and talked with God. In the present day the truth concerning it has been afresh revived, and my little book is an effort to tell it again in a way that will be simple enough for all to understand. Too often the language of religion, like the oft repeated chimes of a bell, seems to lose its power to attract attention; and it may be that even a bell of inferior tone shall be able to break the careless inattention of some souls.

I have not tried, therefore, to make my book theological. I could not if I would. I have simply sought to tell the blessed story, so old and yet so new, in the homely and familiar words of everyday life. I do not want to change the theological views of a single individual. The truths I have to tell are not theological, but practical. They are, I believe, the fundamental truths of life and experience, the truths that underlie all theologies, and that are in fact their real and vital meaning. They will fit in with every creed, simply making it possible for those who hold the creed to live up to their own beliefs, and to find in them the experimental realities of a present Saviour and a present salvation.

Most of us acknowledge that there is behind all religions an absolute religion, that holds the vital truth of each; and it is of this absolute religion my book seeks to treat.

No doubt it is very imperfectly done, but I can only trust that all its mistakes may be counteracted, and only that which is true may find entrance into any heart. The book is sent out in tender sympathy and yearning love for all struggling, weary souls, of whatever creed or name; and its message goes right from my heart to theirs. I have given the best I have, and can do no more.

This new and revised issue goes forth on its mission, with the prayer that the Lord may continue to use it as a voice to teach some, who sorely need it, the true secret of a happy life.

Philadelphia, January, 1888

Part I

The Life

Chapter I

Is It Scriptural?

N o thoughtful person can question the fact that, for the most part, the Christian life, as it is generally lived, is not entirely a happy life. A keen observer once said to me, You Christians seem to have a religion that makes you miserable. You are like a man with a headache. He does not want to get rid of his head, but it hurts him to keep it. You cannot expect outsiders to seek very earnestly for anything so uncomfortable. Then for the first time I saw, as in a flash, that the religion of Christ ought to be, and was meant to be, to its possessors, not something to make them miserable, but something to make them happy; and I began then and there to ask the Lord to show me the secret of a happy Christian life.

It is this secret, so far as I have learned it, that I shall try to tell in the following pages.

All of Gods children, I am convinced, feel instinctively, in their moments of divine illumination, that a life of inward rest and outward victory is their inalienable birthright. Can you not remember, some of you, the shout of triumph your souls gave when you first became acquainted with the Lord Jesus, and had a glimpse of His mighty saving power? How sure you were of victory, then! How easy it seemed to be more than conquerors, through Him that loved you! Under the leadership of a Captain, who had never been foiled in battle, how could you dream of defeat! And yet, to many of you, how different has been your real experience! Your victories have been few and fleeting, your defeats many and disastrous. You have not lived as you feel children of God ought to live. You have had perhaps a clear understanding of doctrinal truths, but you have not come into possession of their life and power. You have rejoiced in your knowledge of the things revealed in the Scriptures, but have not had a living realization of the things themselves, consciously felt in the soul. Christ is believed in, talked about, and served; but He is not known as the souls actual and very life, abiding there from the penalty of sin, but you have not found Him as your Saviour from its power. You have carefully studied the Holy Scriptures, and have gathered much precious truth there from which you have trusted would feed and nourish your spiritual life, but in spite of it all, your souls are starving and dying within you, and you cry out in secret, again and again, for that bread and water of life which you see promised in the Scriptures to all believers. In the very depths of your hearts, you know that your experience is not a Scriptural experience; that, as an old writer said, your religion is but a talk to what the early Christians enjoyed, possessed, and lived in. And your hearts have sunk within you, as, day after day, and year after year, your early visions of triumph have seemed to grow more and more dim, and you have been forced to settle down to the conviction, that the best you can expect from your religion is a life of alternate failure and victory, one hour sinning, and the next repenting, and then beginning again, only to fail again, and again to repent.