Stair-Climbing Faith
Hannah Whitehall Smith wrote in her journal in March of 1878: Faith is the stairway that leads to the manifestation, but it is not the manifestation itself, and to settle down to a pure life of faith alone without the Divine response is to sit down on the stairway, and never reach the place to which the stairway was meant to lead. This I have done in common with hundreds of others, and as a consequence our souls have not experienced that conscious indwelling of the abiding Comforter which is plainly promised in the Bible, and which some Christians have most blessedly realized. I had however got contented with this way of living, and had settled it in my own mind, that this conscious experience was not for me, that it was a matter of temperament, or of health, and that I was called to a walk of faith alone. But the deep down inward sense of lack always remained after all, but I would not notice it, thinking it must be temptation. Last spring however the Lord by a series of most remark