When Emma Hopkins went to New York to
speak in the late 1880s, she was met by an enthusiastic
crowd. Among
those who were affected by her words was a struggling
schoolteacher whose family had fallen on hard times.
Emilie Cady heard Emma’s lectures and
decided to become a physician in order to better practice the
principles. She knew that as a physician she would be able to
see and help more people who were suffering than in any other
form of work available to an educated, middle class woman of
the time. It was
a leap of faith, for money and her own stamina were limited,
but she chose to put her trust in the new way of thinking and
take the leap.
At that time, there were several accepted
forms of medical practice, and she chose the least invasive,
homeopathy.
She completed the course and set up a practice there,
in New York.
Combining her understanding of
metaphysics with traditional homeopathic remedies, she was
quite successful. And, as she worked with her patients, she
continually stretched her own understanding and capacity to
use “Truth,” trying various experiments in her own life to
“prove” the theories.
That she applied them to her own health
challenges is shown in the following:
After days of
excruciating pain from a badly sprained ankle, the ankle
became enormously swollen, and it was impossible for me to
attend to my professional work as an active medical
practitioner.
Ordinary affirmations of Truth were entirely
ineffectual, and I soon struck out for the very highest
statement of Truth that I could formulate. It was this: There is only God; all
else is a lie. I vehemently affirmed it and steadfastly
stuck to it. In
twenty-four hours all pain and swelling—in fact, the entire
“lie”—had disappeared.
Perhaps the most telling of these
experiments was her attempt to follow the principle of
abundance and stop charging fees for her services.
I had a good
profession with plenty of patients paying their bills
monthly. But there were also … people whose
visible means of support were gone. These … were like
cases of gnawing cancer or painful rheumatism. There-fore, there
must be a way out through Truth, and I must find it. As always, instead
of rushing to others for help in these tight places, I
stayed at home within my own soul and asked God to show me
the way. He
did. He gave me the clear vision of Himself as All Sufficiency in All
Things; and then He said: “Now prove it, so that you can
be of real help to the hundreds who do not have a profession
or business on which to depend.” From that day on, no
ministry or work of any kind was ever done by me for “pay.”
No monthly bills were sent, no office charges made. I saw
plainly that I must be working as God works, without
expectation or thought of return. Free gift.
For more than
two years I worked at this problem, never letting a human
being know what I was trying to prove. … More than once …
the body was faint for want of food, and yet, so sure was I
of what God had shown me that day after day I taught
cheerfully and confidently to those who came to my office
the Truth of God as the substance of all supply—and there
were many in those days. At the end of two
years of apparent failure I suddenly felt that I could not
endure the privation any longer. … I went direct to God and
cried out; “Why, why this failure?” …
His answer
came flashing back in these words: “God said, Let there be
light: and there was light.” It was all the
answer He gave.
… I did not
understand. I kept repeating it again and again, the words
God said becoming
more and more emphasized, until at last they were followed
by the words “Without Him [the Word] was not anything made
that hath been made.” That was all I needed. I saw plainly
that … I had not once spoken the word: “It is done: God is now
manifested as my supply.”
…
Suffice it to say that the supply problem was ended
that day for all time and has never entered my life or mind
since.
Dr. Cady’s first attempt to document
these experiments and their results was in a small pamphlet
called “God, A Present Help”Referring to her work in the third person, Dr. Cady
was able to show the effectiveness of her practice in a clear
and readable (for the time) fashion. An early version of
the booklet attracted the attention of Myrtle Fillmore, who
persuaded her husband Charles to invite Dr. Cady to write for
their magazine.
“Neither Do I Condemn
Thee” appeared in the magazine in 1892, and other articles
appeared frequently in the issues that followed. In that first article,
she issued a challenge:
Even among
Truth students who know the power of the spoken word—and
because they know it, so much greater is that power—there is
a widespread tendency to condemn the churches and all
orthodox Christians, to criticize and speak disparagingly of
students of different schools …), and even to discuss among
themselves the failings of individuals ...
Let us stop
and see what we are doing. Why should we condemn the
churches? Did not Jesus teach in the synagogues? He did not
withdraw from the church and speak contempt-uously of it.
No, He remained in it, trying to show people wherein they
were making mistakes, trying to lead them up to a higher
view of God as their Father, and to stimulate them to live
more truly righteous lives. … He … remained with them and
taught them a more excellent way … Shall not we, whom the
Father has called into such marvelous light, rather help
those sitting in darkness, even in the churches, than utter
one word of condemnation against them? …
Strong
thoughts of condemnation about anyone by any person will
give him the physical sensation of having been hit in the
pit of the stomach with a stone. If he does not
immediately throw off the feeling—as he can easily do by
looking to the Father and saying over and over until it
becomes reality, “God, approve of
me”—it will destroy his consciousness of a perfect life,
and he will fall into a belief of weakness and
discouragement …
… unless there
is something within us that responds to sin in others we
shall not see it in them … The moment we
begin to criticize or condemn another, we prove ourselves
guilty of the same fault …
Cady’s articles were well received, and
in 1894 Charles asked her to write a series of lessons that
others might use to duplicate her success. She was hesitant at
first, but finally agreed to the project. She pulled together
her notes from her classes with Emma Hopkins, and the first Lesson in Truth
appeared in the October, 1894 issue of the magazine.
A total of twelve lessons were published
over the next year, and they received an enthusiastic
response. So many
requests came in for back copies of the issues that Charles
had the articles printed up in little booklets—of four lessons
each. In later years, these were combined into one book, Lessons in Truth,
which has become the fundamental text for membership in all
Unity schools and churches.
Unfortunately, Cady was not pleased with
Charles’ editing and publishing of her work as a
textbook. He had
taken her articles and divided them up into numbered
paragraphs with subheadings—a format that she felt interfered
with her intention in the writing of it. This disagreement
caused a breakdown in their relationship for some time, such
that no more of her articles were published, but it seems to
have been healed when Cady presented the Fillmores with a
sequel to Lessons in
Truth, a collection of her earlier articles called How I Used Truth.
In the Foreword to this second book,
she writes
The papers
that make up this volume have been written from time to time
as a result of practical daily experience. In none of them is
there anything occult or mysterious; …Truth is that which is
so, and it can never change. Every true statement
here is as true and workable today as it was when these
papers were written. … “Prove all things” for yourself; it
is possible to prove every statement in this
book. Every
statement given was proven before it was
written.
And, in a letter inserted by the editors
of more recent editions, we learn about Cady and her
experience, for the first time in the first person.
Almost every
one of the simply written articles . . . was born out of the
travail of my soul after I had been weeks, months, sometimes
years, trying by affirmations, by claiming the promises of
Jesus, and by otherwise faithfully using all of the
knowledge of Truth that I then possessed to secure
deliverance for myself or other from some distressing
bondage that thus far had defied all human help.
…
In this we see that Emilie Cady followed
the same prescription as Myrtle Fillmore: “I know that God
would not have me struggle with unknown things, or talk of
that which I have not proved.”
