The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

It is Hannah Whitall Smith's classic guide to a life of rest and joy through full trust in God. Its 'secret' is simple: that the believer may hand over the whole of life — its cares, its sins, its future — to God and rest in him, exchanging a life of anxious effort for one of settled peace. It is one of the best-loved books of the deeper Christian life.

An American author and speaker of the nineteenth century, raised a Quaker, who became one of the most influential voices of the higher Christian life. This book, published in 1875, made her famous; her later autobiography, The Unselfishness of God, tells the personal story behind the teaching it contains.

That the happy Christian life comes not by trying harder but by fuller surrender and trust — by giving oneself and one's circumstances entirely to God and resting in his care. Smith teaches that the believer's part is to consecrate and to trust; God's part is to work. The secret is to stop struggling to carry what God has offered to carry himself.

In two parts. The first sets out the life of full consecration and trust — the disposition of surrender and faith the secret requires. The second deals with the practical difficulties and results: doubts, temptations, disappointments, and how the life of trust actually works out in the ordinary experience of the believer.

No — the happiness Smith describes is a deep, settled rest and joy that holds even in trial, not a superficial cheerfulness. It rests on the character of God and the finished trust of the soul in him, so that peace does not depend on circumstances. The 'happy life' is really a life freed from anxiety by trusting God completely.

The full and deliberate giving-over of oneself to God — will, plans, possessions, and future — holding nothing back. Smith teaches that this surrender is the doorway to the life of trust: only when the believer has truly handed everything to God can they rest in him. Consecration and faith together are the two movements of the secret she describes.

For any Christian who is weary, anxious, or defeated, and who suspects there must be more rest and joy in the Christian life than they have known. Smith writes with warmth and directness for the struggling believer, and the book has led countless readers out of striving into a settled life of trust.

At the beginning, with the life of trust and consecration that the first part sets out, before moving to the practical difficulties in the second. The book builds its case in order, and readers often find it best taken a chapter at a time and applied, since its secret is meant not merely to be understood but to be entered into.