Hannah Whitall Smith’s Highway of Holiness:mysticism, heresy and feminism in a Quaker “free

lance”

Carole Dale Spencer, Earlham School of ReligionPaper presented for the J.M. Ward Lecture

Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.September 30, 2013

Introduction

In 1903 Hannah Whitall Smith, a free-spirited

product of Orthodox Quakerism” in the 19th century,

proudly admitted in her spiritual autobiography:

“I have always rather enjoyed being considered a heretic, and have never wanted to be endorsed by any one. I have felt that to be endorsed was to be bound, and that it was better, for me at least, to be a free lance, with no hindrances to my absolute mental and spiritual freedom.”

When I read that line I knew I had found the Quaker

woman of my dreams! A woman who defies

classification even today, a woman who has

illumined my own life as well as my understanding

of Quakerism, as well as a woman whose life

embodied multiple identities and contradictions.

Hannah was Evangelical in orientation (which was

mainstream religion in the 19th century context).

1

Today she is read and revered largely by

Conservative Christians-- yet she was a

universalist, and admitted she held heretical

views. She was progressive, even radical in

politics, a fierce feminist who marched with her

daughters for woman’s suffrage. Later in life she

gave labor union speeches and explored Christian

socialism. A birthright Orthodox Quaker, she was

baptized by water as an adult. An author who wrote

her most famous book on the subject of happiness,

and truly espoused joy in life, she experienced

deep pain and suffering, and both fame and scandal

in her very public life.

As a devout Christian who called religion the

‘grand romance of her life’ she had to contend with

an antagonistic atheist son-in-law, the famous

philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who called religion

pure superstition and a thing of the past. (One can

only begin to imagine the fierce exchanges between

those two nemeses.)

In addition to Bertrand Russell, a startling number

of celebrated people from the secular literary, and

political world, find their way into her story

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including Bernard Berenson, another son-in-law:

From Susan B. Anthony to William James to Walt

Whitman to Beatrix Potter. Hannah was one of the

most prominent female religious figures of her day,

an international celebrity preacher & best-selling

author. Today she is perhaps the most famous

Quaker that most Quakers have never heard of.

Initially, I knew her, not as a Quaker, but as a

holiness evangelist and the author of The Christians

Secret of a Happy Life, a 19th century self-help book, and

popular expression of Christian mysticism. Her

book became an instant bestseller, going through

numerous editions, is still in print, and now

considered a “spiritual classic,” that continues to

be read by spiritual seekers today.

Later when I was in seminary and working on my

first research paper in Quaker history, I was

surprised to learn that a Quaker had written this

most enduring book to emerge from the literature of

the Holiness Movement. Curious, I decided to read

her spiritual autobiography, The Unselfishness of God,

and discovered a most delightful & unexpected book,

which became a significant primary resource for me

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in understanding the radical changes that occurred

within the Religious Society of Friends in the

latter half of the 19th century. Her life spanned

the transformation of American Friends into

evangelicalism and English Friends into liberalism,

and she was in the eye of the Quaker storm on both

sides of the Atlantic for most of her life. Her

autobiography is now beginning to enjoy something

of renaissance as it has been rediscovered by

contemporary readers. Through further research I

learned of the surprising friendship and

endorsement Smith received from the famed Harvard

philosopher and pioneer psychologist, William

James, who said that Hannah Whitall Smith’s

Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life “would always be

kept among his literary treasures, and, that if he

were to become a Christian, he would want to be the

kind of Christian the book describes” (Dieter,

1999). One would expect the pragmatist, and

skeptical philosopher, William James to be a critic

of a book which some might call simplistic and

sentimental, yet James cites it as an example of

his thesis, and quotes from it in his pioneering

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work in psychology in Talks to Students on Some of Life’s

Ideals (1899). In a chapter called ‘The Gospel of

Relaxation’: he writes:

The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. In an admirable and widely successfullittle book called 'The Christian's Secret of aHappy Life,' by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, I find this lesson on almost every page. Act faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel. ‘It is your purpose God looks at,’ writesMrs. Smith, ‘not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to. . . . Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, and make no account ofthem either way. . . . They really have nothingto do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or ofyour present physical condition.’1

When we think of the Holiness Movement and the camp

meeting revivals of the nineteenth century, of

which Hannah played a major role, we generally

think of intense emotions displayed publically, and

evangelists’ manipulating those emotions, and yet 1 http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jgospel.html (Nov. 8, 2009).

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ironically the most widely read devotional book to

emerge from the Holiness Revival is advocating the

very opposite. Pay no attention to your emotions,

it’s only your will and purpose that matter, not

your emotions.

Her legacy however, has been largely confined to

Evangelical Christians, who read her work

selectively, in censored editions, and maintain an

idealized, and sentimental, one-sided view of her,

with a blind eye to her radicalism.

In this presentation I will examine primarily

the sources and nature of her feminism, mysticism,

and universalism, her multiple and contrasting

identities, and how she integrated all into her new

understanding of Quakerism just as it was opening

into the modern world of culture, politics, and the

new science of evolution and psychology.

But First Her story

Hannah Whitall Smith was born in Philadelphia on

February 7, 1832 and died on May 1, 1911 in

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England. She was raised in a prominent and well-

to-do Quaker family. Her mother was Mary Tatum

Whitall, her father, John Mickle Whitall. (Memoir

writing was part of the DNA of the Smith and

Whitall Families into the 3rd generation. And they

were prolific letter writers. Over 20,000 family

letters are archived, 6000 from Hannah alone).

Her early journals reveal an exquisitely loving,

happy, but strictly plain Quaker childhood. Her

parents were heavily influenced by the more

culturally open views of the British Quaker

reformer, Joseph John Gurney, and were close

friends of his widow, Eliza Kirkbride Gurney, who

resided in Philadelphia. (Celebrated in the annals

of Quaker history for her correspondence and visit

to Pres. Lincoln, in which she was accompanied by

Hannah’s father, John.) The family attended 12th

Street Meeting, the principle home of the

Philadelphia Gurneyites (who might be considered

the “emergent or convergent” Friends of the day).

Hannah was born with a sunny, cheerful nature and

had loving, even doting, parents. Happiness and

joy gush forth from her early journals, ‘the fate

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of happiness’ she called it, so it seems no

surprise that ‘the secret of a happy life’ becomes

a primary theme in later writings (Smith, 1903,

20). But in her Quaker adolescence she had doubts

that happiness and piety could be reconciled. Her

burning adolescent question was whether Christians

should be sober or joyful. After graduation from a

Quaker day school (the extent of her formal

education) she took her first step outside the

Quaker fold by joining a reading club, a group of

young women (many of whom were nonQuaker) who met

for education and entertainment. She also began a

process of self-education by reading voraciously

history, philosophy, natural science, theology and

mysticism, including forbidden fiction, and began

to expand her Quaker horizons.

At age 18 she writes of a desire to reform the

Society of Friends (a goal shared by many of her

peer group at that age.) But when her best friend

Abbie Folwell chooses to “take up the cross” and

become a plain Quaker she finds that path of reform

unappealing.

She writes in her journal at age 19:

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“Religion is something to make one happy not miserable and disagreeable—it is full of intense and improving trials, I know, but then the joys of consolation and peace are so exquisite, and the sense all the time of being loved by God and of doing His will must be rich in happiness, that a continual thanksgiving ought it seems to me to fillthe heart and light up the countenance.” HWS diary,vol 5, 27 April 1851. Lilly lib.

She adds: “I love the friends, and value their

doctrine, and their beautiful spiritual belief far

beyond all price, but I am afraid to be one.” She

begins to question the necessity of suffering,

plainness, and peculiarity.

Marriage at age nineteen to Robert Pearsall Smith

(also from a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family)

brought her first real life- struggles and

intensified her spiritual searching.

A month before she was married she decided not to

adopt plain dress. She had considered taking it up

on her wedding day to conform to wishes of her

soon-to-be husband, Robert, and her parents and the

standard of practice of Orthodox Friends. But

after making a detailed list of pros and cons she

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concluded in a clear leading of spirit not to

become plain. P. 90 (Meg)

In her early 20s, she experienced a crisis of faith

she called her “years of skepticism.” By 1856

(age 24) she publically supported women’s rights,

and joined the “bloomerites” a movement to reform

women’s dress, introduced by feminist Amelia

Bloomer. (Though I have found no evidence that

Hannah ever wore bloomers.) During this period she

and her husband, Robert, resigned from the Society

of Friends to explore the wider religious world,

finding Philadelphia Orthodoxy too sectarian and

parochial (even the more liberal Gurneyite

variety). She first experimented with the

Plymouth Brethren (Smith, 1903, 189), similar to

Quakers in worship style, but not in theology. She

credits them with teaching her how to study the

bible, (she became well known as a Bible teacher),

but soon she left the Brethren troubled by their

narrow Calvinism.

In her spiritual seeking she happened upon a “noon-

day prayer meeting” in 1858 in downtown

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Philadelphia, part of a popular renewal movement

among urban businessmen and workers, which she

considered at the time “only another effort of a

dying-out superstition to bolster up its cause.”

But out of curiosity she joins in, and describes a

life-changing mystical experience in these terms:

“Then suddenly something happened to me. What it was or how it came I had no idea, but somehow an inner eye seemed to be opened in my soul,” … I do not remember anything that was said. I do not even know that I heard anything. A tremendous revolutionwas going on within me that was of far profounder interest than anything the most eloquent preacher could have uttered. God was making Himself manifestas an actual existence, and my soul leaped up in anirresistible cry to know Him.”

She writes of it many years later in her autobiography:

“ It was not that I felt myself to be a sinner needing salvation, or that I was troubled about my future destiny. It was not a personal question at all. It was simply and only that I had become awareof God, and that I felt I could not rest until I should know him…All I wanted was to become acquainted with the God of whom I had suddenly become aware. (Unself. 172 (also 169ff)

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She had a clear awakening to the God within, but

doesn’t call it her “conversion” until a Plymouth

Brethren Friend tells her this experience meant she

had become a Christian and was “born of God.” But

she adds in her autobiography that “I had only

touched the surface of the spiritual realities

hidden under the doctrines I had so eagerly

embraced.” (p. 182)

In 1864 her husband, Robert, became manager of the

Tatum-Whitall Glass Co. (Hannah’s father’s company)

and the family moved to Millville NJ where she was

to discover a very different religious and social

culture. The mill workers were all Methodists, and

joining them in their meetings she was introduced

to their teaching on sanctification (called in

those days, The Second Blessing, a crisis

experience of empowerment for change; early Quakers

called it the baptism of the Holy Spirit).

Reflecting on this teaching in light of her Quaker

upbringing she writes:

“The Quaker examples and influences around me seemed to say there must be a deliverance somewhere, for they declared that they had experienced it; although they never seemed able to

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explain the “what” or the “how” in such a manner asI could understand it. (1903, 232)

With great zeal she convinces most of her family

and friends one by one “the what and the how” of

holiness.

Even though she had officially resigned from the

Society of Friends, she was nevertheless active

among Quakers, and her Quakerism continued to be a

large part of her religious identity. In 1866 she

started a Friends meeting in Millville which met

until the 1890s. But it was never granted official

status. She wrote an article for a Friends

journal, and In 1869 she published a small book:

The Early Friends: Their Message and the Secret of their Power, with

long extracts from early Friends, Isaac Penington

the most frequently quoted. (Their message: the

indwelling Christ, the secret of their power:

Baptism of the Spirit.)

By the 1870s she had become one of the leading

female voices in what became known as ‘The Holiness

Revival,” a spiritual renewal movement that swept

America and England in the second half of the

nineteenth century, and transformed a large portion

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of the Religious Society of Friends into the

Friends Church.

In England and Europe this Movement became known as

the Keswick or Higher Life Movement and was largely

created by Hannah and her evangelist husband,

Robert Pearsall Smith. Their teaching on holiness

became the known as the “Keswick theology,” at

least in its beginnings. With the Smiths as

leaders, preaching to audiences of thousands, made

up of Oxford and Cambridge students, Anglican and

Free Church ministers, poets, writers, and English

aristocrats, it became the religious version of the

Romantic Movement in Britain. Progressive (for the

time) inclusive and ecumenical, it was heavily

flavored with Quaker spirituality, at least in its

first three years (1873-75). But after the

departure of the Smiths (precipitated by rumors of

Robert’s inappropriate relationship with a women

disciple—the truth of which will probably never be

fully known), Keswick spirituality gradually became

more conservative, even fundamentalistic.

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Holiness became Hannah’s spiritual path to

empowerment, inner freedom, divine union, joy and

happiness. She would have fully agreed with

William Penn’s statement that Quakers teach that

‘men [and women] must be holy, or they cannot be

happy’ (Cope, 1882, 436).

But Hannah’s Quaker holiness diverged radically

from traditional evangelical teaching in her firm

belief in restitution or universal salvation, the

“restoration of all things” a belief she initially received

by ‘revelation’ through an overwhelming sense of

divine compassion which she called the ‘the mother-

heart of God.’ Her description of this “powerful

illumination” which comprises one whole essential

epoch of her spiritual journey, is edited out of

all subsequent editions of her autobiography

(Smith, 1903, 198-208). By restitution she meant

that no one would be lost from God’s love, everyone

would be reconciled to God, because an infinitely

loving God could not abandon any of God’s children—

nor punish them for eternity—‘salvation must be as

universal as the fall,’ she declared (Smith, 1903,

204). In other words, ‘Love wins.’

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This belief, which she publically announced, being

at variance with much of Christian tradition,

brought accusations of heresy from her strictly

orthodox friends, including Quakers at that time,

as she describes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek:

As was to be expected in those days, my views on Restitution, which of course I had speedily announced, met with a great deal of disapprovalfrom the Plymouth Brethren, and my other orthodox friends, and I had to undergo a good deal of what might be called persecution, but which I myself rather gloried in, because I felt it was a grand thing to know so much more of God than those did who opposed me.” (Smith, 1903, ch. 24)

Surprisingly her “heresy” was rarely an obstacle in

her speaking invitations or her books contracts.

She candidly reveals that:

“…it seemed likely that the holding of what wasconsidered by many to be such a grave heresy, might have proved a hindrance to my Christian work; and I dare say it may have been so in some quarters. But as I always had far more openings for work awaiting me than I could possibly fill, I never experienced any difficulty. I tried to be courteous enough not to involve people, to whom such views were abhorrent …but the revelation I had had was too

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glorious for me to withhold it whenever I foundan open door; and as I was never willing to sail under false colours, nor speak anywhere without its being perfectly well known beforehand what a heretic I was, I enjoyed for the most part all the freedom I desired.”

By 1876 after speaking at the Keswick Higher Life

conferences in England she admits to her friends

that “my orthodoxy has fled to the winds. I am

Broad, Broader, Broadest.” HWS to [Mary Beck] 8

Aug. 1876, box 9. Lilly Lib). (Yet she still speaks

at Holiness conferences and finds deep spiritual

fulfillment and inspiration at Camp Meetings.)

She describes her spiritual evolution in these

words:

“I feel myself to have gotten out into a limitless ocean of the love of God that overflows all things.My theology is complete, if you but grant me an omnipotent and just creator I need nothing more. ‘God is love,’ comprises my whole system of ethics.There is certainly a very grave defect in any doctrine that universally makes its holders narrow and uncharitable, and this is always the case with strict so-called orthodoxy. I find that every soulthat has traveled on this highway of holiness for any length of time, has invariably cut loose from its old moorings.” (Phila. Q., 34-5

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When Hannah writes of having “gotten out into a

limitless ocean of the love of God that overflows

all things,” she is surely echoing George Fox, in

his famous journal entry "I saw, also, that there

was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite

ocean of light and love, which flowed over the

ocean of darkness.” (For her, Holiness theology was

an expansion of consciousness, not a limiting or

constrictive one.)

As the Holiness revival became more polemical,

especially within Quakerism, and doctrinally rigid,

Smith distanced herself from those who were

interpreting holiness in a narrow dogmatic

paradigm. She maintained an open, all–embracing,

mystical vision of holiness, as the pure love of

God, which explains at least in part, why she came

to embrace restitution, or universal hope. While

her “heresy” did not preclude her from being

invited to speak at Holiness conferences,

(including Indiana YM in 1877) it did prevent her

from being accepted back into the Society of

Friends when she applied for membership in

Whitewater Monthly meeting (IYM) in 1881 (even

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though she had the support of her friends Charles

and Rhoda Coffin.) It took five more years of

trying to rejoin Quakers before she was finally

granted membership in Baltimore YM in 1886--the YM

where here sister Mary Thomas, a weighty Quaker

minister, thankfully, was very influential. (Not

long after rejoining Friends she was offered the

opportunity to became “recorded as a Friends

Minister” but she chose to remain a freelance. She

wrote to a friend: “I am much freer now. It would

be I fear a dreadful hamper to me.” (H. to

Priscilla Mounsey, 20 Nov. 1887, box 9, Lilly.)

While her discovery of the “doctrine of holiness”

came through the Methodists, she soon realized it

was the core of her Quaker tradition all along, it

just had not been transmitted to her in a way she

could understand in her earlier life.

Thus, she admitted she had to learn from outside

the Society what were in fact the foundational

principles of Quakerism. She wrote of sharing with

a Quaker friend her “new discoveries” of holiness

teachings:

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[The Friend]…on hearing what I had to tell, had expressed surprise at its being new to me, as it was, she declared, what the Quakers had always taught. This seemed to throw light upon Quakerism that I had never dreamed of. My mother also said tome one day, but Hannah why does thee call this doctrine new? Thee is only preaching what all the old Friends have always preached. Yes, I answered, “I begin to see that this is the case, but they have never preached it in a way that ordinary people could know what they were talking about. It seems to me that nobody, who did not know it already, could possibly get hold of it from their preaching.” Certainly I never did, although I have been listening to their preaching all my life…But Icame to the conclusion that my mother and my friendwere right. It was true Quaker doctrine that we haddiscovered. (1903, 275-6).

She concluded that Quakers called holiness “the

life hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3—a phrase

oft-quoted by Christian mystics and early Quakers)

(Smith, 1903, 276). But she had not understood

their preaching because they never explained “how”

it could be realized. They urged “holiness of life

but failed to tell the secret by which this

holiness was to be attained” (Smith, 1903, 279).

But as she discovered the interior life for herself

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she came full circle back to her Quaker roots and

understood their meaning anew:

…the true inner meaning of Quakerism dawned upon memore and more fully day by day. It was the “way of holiness” in which they were seeking to walk. They preached a deliverance from sin, a victory over thecares and worries of life, a peace that passeth allunderstanding, a continual being made “more than conquerors” through Christ. They were in short “Higher Life” people, and at last I understood them; and the old preaching, which once had been soconfusing, became marrow and fatness to my soul. The preaching had not changed, but I had changed. Ihad discovered the missing link, and had reached that stage in my soul’s experience to which such preaching ministered. (1903, 280-1)

Smith explained that holiness was the “missing

link,” but not until she came to understand it and

experience it herself did she realize it was the

core of Quaker belief and action:

…nearly every view of divine things that I have since discovered and every reform I have since advocated, had, I now realize, their germs in the views of the Society; and over and over again, whensome new discovery or conviction has dawned upon me, I have caught myself saying, “Why that, was what the early Friends meant, although I never understood it before.” (1903, 55-56)

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(Which she found most clearly articulated in Isaac Penington.)

She also discovered holiness in the writings of the

French Quietists Madam Guyon & Fenelon, and the

17th century monk, Brother Lawrence, whose book,

The Practice of the Presence of God, she found so important

she had a new version published with her own

introduction in 1895 (and is still being

reprinted).

Hannah as a Christian mystic: The influence of French Quietism

While Hannah wrote in the language of the popular

Christian spirituality of the time, her underlying

theology, I would argue, is the process of divine

union that comes principally from the French

Quietists, Jeanne Guyon and Fenelon.

The spirituality of Smith’s devout Quaker father,

who introduced her to these two mystics, was

indelibly shaped by them (as were many Quakers

throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Hannah’s

father John M. Whitall, gave all his children, when

they became young adults, his most beloved book

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called Spiritual Progress: or Instructions in the

Divine Life of the Soul, a book of extracts from

the writings of Guyon & Fenelon.

This book always held a special place for Hannah

alongside her Bible because, she writes, “it seemed

to reveal the mystical pathway” (1903, 234).2 She

admitted that she initially did not understand it,

and in the zeal of her early evangelical conversion

actually thought it to be doctrinally “unsound.”

But she realized later:

…all unconsciously to myself its teachings had made a profound impression upon me; and, even while I criticized, I still was often consciousof an underlying hunger after the mystical sideof religion set forth in this book. (1903, 234)

Smith herself, was probably unaware of the strong

historical link between Friends theology, the

practice of silence, and the Catholic Quietist

movement of seventeenth-century France. The most

evident historical link between Quakers and

seventeenth-century Quietists is a another similar

book of extracts called A Guide to True Peace or the

2

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Excellency of Inward and Spiritual Prayer Compiled Chiefly from the

Writings of Fénelon, Guyon, and Molinos, compiled anonymously

by two Quakers in 1813. This guide to contemplative

prayer was reprinted by Quakers many times

throughout the 19th century. Quakers had been the

first to translate the writings of Guyon into

English in 1727 and the first to publish her works

in America (1738).

J. Rendel Harris, first Director of Studies at

Woodbrooke and one of the most influential biblical

scholars of his time, stated emphatically in a

Lecture at Bryn Mawr College in 1900: “There is no

Society that has been so influenced by Guyon as the

Quakers have been.” Harris also added his personal

tribute to Guyon, crediting her with being "the

teacher from whom I have received more help and

guidance in the things of God than from any other

person." (Founders Lecture, Bryn Mawr, 1900).

Harris’ wife, Helen Balkwill Harris, was a lifelong

friend of Hannah’s (both Harris’ were holiness

Quakers.) Hannah never penned a statement as

explicit as Harris on the influence of Guyon, but

based on the pervasiveness of Guyon’s teachings

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that infuses all of her writings, it may be true

for her as well. Guyon represents a concrete link

between Quaker Quietist spirituality and the

Nineteenth century Holiness Movement.

When Thomas Upham, a congregational clergyman,

holiness advocate and professor of philosophy,

published his Life of Guyon in 1847 it became the

key to popularizing Guyon in America, particularly

within the holiness movement. A recent Smith

scholar has claimed that this book was “probably

the single greatest influence on Hannah Whitall

Smith’s developing theology” (Meneghal, 2000. P.

63). Upham also wrote a book on spiritual

discernment, called “Inward Divine Guidance.”

Originally Published in 1843 in Boston, it was

later republished in 1887 in Philadelphia with a

preface by Hannah Whitall Smith.

Guyon, the French mystic and heretic, was Hannah’s

spiritual guide, as she was for many Quakers, as

well as Holiness advocates, in the 18th and 19th

centuries. Smith adeptly appropriated the

spirituality of seventeenth century Catholic

mystical writers through the popular spirituality

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of the Holiness revival in a way that spoke deeply

to Protestant spiritual seekers of her day. Hannah

saw the holiness movement as part of a broad

tradition of Christian spirituality with roots in

both Catholic and Quaker mysticism.

(Interesting side-note: The next scholarly research

on Quakers and Guyon, after Rendel Harris’ work,

was done by Russell Pope at Guilford in 1938. He

provides a general description of Quaker interest

in Madame Guyon in a series of Lectures, called

“Concerning Mysticism” delivered at Guilford

College in the Spring of 1938. (Guilford College

Bulletin 31, 1938, 11-25)

Smith as a Feminist

Smith’s feminism was essentially inborn, and

shaped within her Quaker community. Her Quaker

upbringing prepared her to become a public

religious figure, but her ministry came to fruition

and to the attention of the broader public in the

Holiness movement. She states that the one tangible

and clear teaching of Quakers was ‘the perceptible

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guidance of the Holy Spirit’ which ‘left every

individual free to serve God in the way that seemed

right’ (Smith, 1903, 82). And she adds

‘Nor was this the case in spiritual matters but earthly matters as well, and it gave to each individual the position of independence which has always to me seemed one of the most vital of human needs…and the most priceless of all the gifts that my Quaker inheritance has brought me’ (Smith, 1903,82).

She underscores this point by announcing that ‘no

male Quaker, not even the most tyrannical, could

curtail the liberty of his womankind, if only they

could say they “felt a concern” for any course of

action’ Smith, 1903, 82).

From her childhood she imagined herself as a

minister, and dreamed of preaching and traveling

all over the world. In the Quaker religious world

from its beginnings to be a minister meant an

itinerant, missionary life, a life of adventure and

spiritual fulfillment. It was the one avenue of

public life always open for women in the Quaker

tradition, and women ministers modeled such a life

for her. Yet, she still could equivocate and bemoan

27

her lot when she wrote to her cousin at age

eighteen,

‘But I am only a woman, and woman are so weak and dependent and never do any good. There is no chanceis there? I shall have to be content to plod on in the same humdrum path, making pies and cooking and scrubbing, and mending stockings and makings shirts, and feel proud if I may claim relationship with great and noble men’ (Smith, L. P., 1950, 4). Later she wrote in the margins—‘ridiculous’

(Strachey, 1982, 21).

But in her better moments she feels assured that

someday she would be called to preach and have a

public life, and imagines herself as Madame Guyon,

or Elizabeth Evans, a famous Quaker preacher. In

1868 shortly after discovering holiness doctrine

through the Methodists, she wrote to her good

friend Anna Shipley,

I believe God has made me a pioneer, so that I do not expect much sympathy or understanding as I go along; and the breaking through of hedges, and fences, and stone walls is not a very pleasant path, I can assure thee. But it is my nature, I cannot help it…” (Smith, 1903, 14).

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The one life-long regret she voices on numerous

occasions is her lack of a college education.

Though a rare opportunity for women at that time,

plans had been made for her to be tutored soon

after marriage, but she became pregnant almost

immediately and her dream of a college education

was never realized.

In 1852, at age twenty she writes in her journal:

I am too young to be married. The cares of life have crushed all the joyousness out of my spirits….now are overthrown all my fond hopes of a life of study—of becoming a thoroughly educated woman…Greekand Mathematics I must now lay aside, and for the present most of my reading. Well, I suppose I can do it, and still be a good and useful woman. But it is a great trial (Strachey, 1982, 21).

Her personal deprivation led her to become a

staunch advocate for women’s higher education. She

became a mentor to numerous young women, among her

family and friends. Her favorite niece to whom she

gave the most attention and guidance, and had the

most impact, was M. Carey Thomas who became a

pioneer in women’s higher education, the first

female dean of a college (Byrn Mawr) and one of the

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first American women to get a PhD. Thomas, I

believe, was Hannah’s alter ego.

In another letter to her friend Anna Shipley in

1873, the passion Hannah feels around female

education and her own loss is evident: “Girls have

a right to a college education. They ought to be

made to get it, even if it had to be done at the

point of the bayonet (Smith, L. P, 1950, 18-19).

In 1882 Hannah gave her first official public

speech for women’s suffrage. In writing to her

daughter about this experience she relates how she

came to this conviction.

In my speech I said I had come to the advocacy of this reform by the way of the gospel, that Christ came to break every yoke and set free all that werebound, and that I wanted to follow in his steps andshare in his work. I said the gospel did not arbitrarily upset the existing order of things, butit put a mine under all wrong and oppression that finally blew it up. And that therefore women were made free by the working out of the principles of Christ who had declared there is neither male nor female in Him (Smith Letters, 1882a).

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She adds: ‘They make fun of me in these

[newspaper] slips but all reformers must expect

that’ (Smith, 1882a). To her sister, she writes

with candor and humor, about her first suffrage

speech:

Sally, I tell thee it was fun. I took my audience too. I could see the women nudging each other all over the room, as I made some home thrusts. Our Temp. ladies said I surpassed myself. I am going to try it again sometime; and I put it on the religion of Christ which I said put gunpowder underall forms of bondage and slavery. How the heads did nod at that! I guess they were glad to have a little Christianity thrown in (Smith Letters, 1882b).

Smith became spiritual counselor, guide and mentor

to hundreds of women in her lifetime, who met with

her one on one, or who she counseled through her

letters.

Her many experiences of listening to the grievous

stories of women’s abuse and oppression motivated

her to take up the cause of what can only be called

a nineteenth century women’s liberation movement,

which is how she viewed the mission of the Woman’s

Christian Temperance Union. (Which supported the

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then-radical feminist fight for woman suffrage.)

Her radical liberationist rhetoric comes through in

her letters to her daughters. She writes to her

daughter Mary:

I wish thee could have heard some of our women. Two new [leaders] have been developed during the past year—two grand good women, whose lives had been lived in a little narrow circle with no scope for their gifts, until our WCTU came along and gavethem an outlet…Neither of them are married—they were not willing to go into slavery, they declare, let it be ever so gilded (Smith Letters, 1882c).

The most profound irony I’ve discovered in my

research into the life of Smith, is her continuous

appropriation by conservative evangelical women as

a model of women’s submission, despite the fact

that Hannah vehemently opposed any notion of male

headship or female submission. Hannah’s greatest

fear for her daughters was that they would marry

men who held ‘that hateful notion of the authority

of husbands’ (Strachey, 1982, 91). She not only

taught her daughters that marriage should be ‘a

perfect equality between husband and wife as

between man and man’ but also made her views known

to their male suitors. She believed only in

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obedience and submission to a loving, compassionate

God, never (even in her ‘extreme evangelical’ days)

did she endorse women’s subordination to male

authority.

Feminist historians have observed that one of the

self-presentation strategies Christian women use in

writing (even today) is self-depreciation, a

strategy Hannah employed to good effect in The

Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. She begins her preface

with: ‘This is not a theological book…I have not

been trained in theological schools’ (Smith, 1885,

iii.) But also adds, affirming Quaker spiritual

guidance, ‘the Lord has taught me experimentally

and practically’ (Smith, 1885, iii). She asks the

reader to ‘forgive the blundering way’ in which her

ideas were expressed, suggesting: ‘Say, if you

choose, “Well, she is only a woman, and cannot be

expected, therefore, to understand Theology:” – but

remember that God sometimes reveals, even to babes,

secrets that He has hidden from the wise and

prudent’ (Smith, 1875, 6). In her revised edition

of 1885 this last sentence is deleted. Such

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disclaimers, by women who nevertheless feel

spiritually empowered to write, have a long

tradition reaching back to medieval women mystics,

who begin with the expected literary convention of

self-depreciation then feel they have divine

permission to speak. The argument that God uses

the weak to confound the wise, is found in Margaret

Fell’s writing as well. Fortunately as Smith

became more confident in her voice (and found a

publisher, and an audience) she found no need to

include the disclaimer in her later books.

Conclusion

In 1901 on her 69th birthday, increasingly crippled

by arthritis, she circulated a letter to her

friends informing them she was in process of

writing her autobiography. She revealed that her

purpose in writing it was to share her discoveries

about the nature of God. She announces:

“Not to be outdone by the younger generation, Itoo am preparing something for publication. It is a part of my autobiography, and I call it “How I discovered God.” (her original title) It is the story of my soul life from my early Quaker days, on

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through all the progressive steps of my experience until I reach that peace which cannot fail to come to the soul who has “discovered God”!—I am putting all my heresies into my story, and am trying to show the steps that have led to them; and I flattermyself that it is going to be very convincing! So if you feel afraid of becoming heretics, I advise you not to read it.

In 1902 at the age of 70, Confined to a wheelchair

the last seven years of her life, she gave up

public speaking but remained alert and involved in

social causes. Her granddaughter Ray Strachey took

her in her wheel chair to demonstrate at the

Parliament building before a critical vote on

women's suffrage. Sadly like all of the pioneers

for women’s suffrage she did not live to get the

vote.

She published her spiritual autobiography in 1903,

admitting in a letter to her daughter Mary that

“words seem rather powerless to express spiritual

realities,” (P. 144 Phil Q.) She adds

“Even in my extreme evangelical days, what I got atwas the fact of God’s forgiveness, although I hung it on a hook that I had afterwards to discard…I fully believe that this bottom fact of a good Creator, can be got at through all sort of

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religious beliefs and all sorts of religious ceremonies, and that it does not matter what these are, provided the soul is honest in regard to them.” (P. 144 phil. Quaker)

Even in her much earlier work, Christian’s Secret

of 1875, still strongly evangelical in orientation,

her inter-faith sympathies are transparent. She

writes in her introduction: “I have tried to reach

the absolute truth which lies at the foundation of

all “creeds” and to bring the soul into those

personal relations with God which must exist alike

in every form of religion, let the expression of

them differ as they may.” (iv)

Her summation of her theology at the close of her

autobiography echoes her great spiritual mentor

Madame Guyon when she testifies:

“I had then reached...the real God, behind all the seemings, and my heart had entered into its rest. Ihad discovered that nothing else really matters---neither creeds, nor ceremonies, nor doctrines, nor dogmas. GOD IS; GOD IS UNSELFISH; AND GOD IS ENOUGH. “ p. 304

Her mystical faith sustained her through a life

filled with great joy and deep grief: the deaths

of 4 of her 7 children. It sustained her though a

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humiliating scandal and fall from grace of her

husband at the pinnacle of their international

fame, (dramatic story there’s not time to tell),

and through what was surely a difficult marriage.

Her radical optimism sustained her into her old age

and its physical disability. Her intimate

relationship with a mother-hearted God gave her

absolutely no fear of death and she concluded her

spiritual autobiography by declaring, “I await the

moment with joy‘ (Smith, 1903, 311).

This final statement also confirms her intimate,

life-long identity with the French mystic Madame

Guyon, who concluded her autobiography with almost

identical words “I waited for the end of my life

with delight.” (Prison narratives, ch. 8)

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