ABSTRACT
In 1870, Hannah Whitall Smith, a Philadelphia Quaker, published Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, the most popular devotional book to emerge from the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement. Her book, which is still in print, became an instant best seller, going through numerous editions, and continues to be read by religious seekers over one hundred years later. Smith claims she had to be introduced to holiness by a Methodist millworker, because the experience was essentially hidden to her within Philadelphia Quaker Orthodoxy. The author's work identifies early Quakerism as essentially holiness and argues that different interpretations of holiness characterize subsequent traditions of Quakerism. Holiness as the defining aspect of Quakerism provides a structure, arising out of the material itself, for interpreting changes in Quaker theology. A spirituality of holiness, though shared with many other groups, is completed in Quakerism by a doctrine of perfection, both mystical and ethical.
