"What Christians need is a little more of Christ's Christianity, and a little less of man's."

 “Be filled with the Spirit," as if to say, "You have the Spirit dwelling in you, but have not yet realized His full power." You have been sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise”; but there are doors to be unlocked, and rooms to be occupied, before it can be truly said that you are “filled with all the fullness of God"

As a late writer has said concerning this: " Let me illustrate: I contract with a painter to paint and decorate my house. He sends a thoroughly competent man, with all necessary materials. The workman takes possession of the house; but the work progresses slowly. Why? Well, I have locked sundry doors, and piled up lumber in the corridors, and the man cannot go on with his work. What is wanted is not that I should ask the contractor to * send the painter,' or to let me have * more of the painter ' ; not more of the painter for the house, but more of the house for the painter. Give the painter a chance. Open the barred doors clear away the obstructing lumber, and he will carry on the work to a satisfactory completion, according to contract."

A dear young Christian mother and housekeeper came to me once with a sorely grieved heart, because of her engrossing temporal life. “There seems," she said,” to be nothing spiritual about my life from one week's end to the other. My large family of little children are so engrossing that day after day passes without my having a single moment for anything but simply attendance on them and on my necessary household duties, and I go to bed night after night sick at heart because I have felt separated from my Lord all day long, and have not been able to do anything for Him." I told her of what I have written above, and assured her that all would be changed if she would only see and acknowledge God in all these homely duties, and. would recognize her utter dependence upon Him for the doing of them. Her heart received the good news with gladness, and months afterward she told me that from that moment life had become a transformed and glorified thing, with the abiding presence of the Lord, and with the sweetness of continual service to Him.

Another Christian, a young lady in a fashionable family, came to me also in similar grief that in so much of her life she was separated from God and had no sense of His presence. I told her she ought never to do anything that could cause such a separation; but she assured me that it was impossible to avoid it, as the things she meant were none of them wrong things. “For instance," she said," it is plainly my duty to pay calls with my mother, and yet nothing seems to separate me so much from God as paying calls." "But how would it be," I asked, "if you paid the calls as service to the Lord and for His glory?" "What!" she exclaimed,” pay calls for God! I never heard of such a thing." “But why not?” I asked;"if it is right to pay calls at all it ought to be done for God for we are commanded whatsoever we do to do it for His glory, and if it is not right you ought not to do it. As a Christian,'' I continued," you must not do anything that you cannot do for Him." "I see! I see!" she exclaimed, after a little pause," and it makes all life look so different! Nothing can separate me from Him that is not sin, but each act done to His glory, whatever it may be, will only draw me closer and make His presence more real.''

These two instances will illustrate my meaning. And I feel sure there are thousands of other burdened and weary lives that would be similarly transformed if these truths were but realized and acted on.

THE CHRISTIAN'S SECRET A HAPPY LIFE.

By

H.W.S.

1885

Hannah Tatum Whitall Smith ( 1832 –  1911) was a lay speaker and author in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was also active in the Women’s suffrage movement and the Temperance movement.

Born in Philadelphia, Smith was from a long line of prominent and influential Quakers in New Jersey. Her most famous ancestor was Ann Cooper Whitall[2].

On November 5, 1851 Hannah married Robert Pearsall Smith, a man who also descended from a long line of prominent Quakers in the region. The Smiths settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania. They left the Quakers in 1858 after undergoing a Christian conversion. The Smiths were highly influenced firstly by the Plymouth Brethren, and then by the Methodist revivalists. They adopted the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification[1]. They were also influenced by William E. Boardman[3], who wrote The Higher Christian Life (1858).

From 1864 to 1868 Robert and Hannah Smith lived in Millville, New Jersey. Robert managed Hannah’s father’s business, the Whitall, Tatum & Company glass factories.

William Boardman[3] apparently groomed Robert and Hannah Smith to join the Holiness movement as speakers. From 1873–1874 they spoke at various places in England, including Oxford, teaching on the subjects of the "higher life" and "holiness." In 1874 Hannah helped found the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. That same year the Smiths traveled to the German Empire and Switzerland, where they preached in several major cities. In 1875, they returned to England and conducted meetings in Brighton. Due to a sexual scandal involving Robert, their visit to England came to an abrupt halt, with Hannah never becoming totally reconciled with her husband thereafter.

In 1888, the Smith family moved to England because their daughter Mary married an English barrister, Frank Costelloe. They eventually divorced, and Mary then married the critic Bernard Berenson. It was in England that Alys Pearsall Smith met and married the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Logan Pearsall Smith became an essayist and critic.

Hannah Whitall Smith had seven children in all, but only three—Mary, Alys Pearsall, and Logan Pearsall—survived to adulthood.

[1]Sanctification is the act or process of acquiring sanctity, of being made or becoming holy. "Sanctity" is an ancient concept widespread among religions, a property of a thing or person sacred or set apart within the religion, from temple vessels to days of the week, to a human believer who achieves this state. To sanctify is literally "to set apart for special use or purpose," figuratively "to make holy or sacred," and etymologically from the Latin verb sanctificare which in turn is from sanctus "holy" and facere "to make."

[2]Ann Cooper Whitall (1716–1797) was a prominent Quaker woman in early America. She was a Revolutionary War heroine and diarist. Born in Woodbury, New Jersey she married James Whitall.

During the American War for Independence, Whitall stayed in her house, even though British warships were firing cannons in that direction during the Battle of Red Bank. A cannonball did crash into the very room where Whitall sat working at a spinning wheel. She moved the spinning wheel down to the basement and kept working.

The battle was a victory for the colonists, and afterwards Whitall opened her house to wounded soldiers--American and Hessian. She gave them herbal medicines and bandaged their wounds. She is called the Heroine of Red Bank, NJ for her actions at that time.

Whitall kept a diary starting in about 1760 that contains important historical insight into the lives of people in the Red Bank area.

 [3] William Edwin Boardman (1810–1886) was an American pastor and teacher, and the author in 1858 of The Higher Christian Life, a book which as a major international success and helped ignite the Higher Life movement. Boardman's work attracted international attention, especially in England, where Boardman exercised great influence during 1873-1874.

Boardman also came to be a leader in the ministry of spiritual healing, and established Bethshan Healing Home in London. He joined with the Canadian pastor A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in the 1885 Bethshan Conference on Holiness and Healing in London. This conference is regarded by many as a turning point in the origins of the modern Pentecostal movement.