Abstract

Spencer traces the spiritual development and mystical consciousness of Hannah Whitall Smith, nineteenth-century American Quaker, prominent devotional writer, and Holiness preacher. Based on her autobiography, diary, and carefully archived letters, Spencer explores her Quaker roots, evangelical conversion, transatlantic ministry, exploration of new religious movements, and lifelong fascination with the meaning of spirit baptism. Spencer shows how she integrated the mysticism of the historic Quaker tradition, the writings of the French Quietist Jeanne Guyon, the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, and other emerging forms of spirituality in the Victorian era into a final embrace of a practical, rational mysticism that incorporated all her so-called heresies including her reconciling of God’s love and justice in the “restitution of all things,” a Christian universalism.