A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEW THOUGHT

by Roger and Lydia Weiss


Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland in 1553 for a theology akin to New Thought, and Emanuel Swedenborg, a scholar & master of many fields, in the 1700's, secretly wrote of New Thought. It was Phineas P. Quimby in the 1800's, a master New England clockmaker, who gave up his trade to heal & was the first to proclaim a system of healing based entirely upon spiritual and mental processes. Quimby is considered the founder of New Thought.

Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's Principles:

God is invisible Wisdom which fills all space, and whose attributes are all light, all wisdom, all goodness and love.

90% of all beliefs are erroneous

God is Principle, without form or sex.

God is the only reality - everlasting essence, existing in all matter.

Indicted the clergy of his day as filling the world with sickness & disease

All subversions of Christ's doctrine which now pass as religion must one day give way to Truth. The true God is Benevolent, and could never have created disease.

Quimby understood Jesus to be opposed to all forms and ceremonies, having no "religious" opinions as such, and curing simply by changing the minds of those afflicted with maladies correcting errors in thought.

False ideas and mental imagery cause disease.

Sickness comes from beliefs and fears. Faith heals.

He had supreme contempt for misuse of authority.

God lets people work out their own salvation, and people are sanctioned according to their own belief.

Quimby transmitted his views to patients of his Warren Felt Evans, Julius and Annetta Dresser, and Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science. A former Eddy associate, Emma Curtis Hopkins was know as the teacher of teachers, as she taught the founders of Unity Church (Charles and Myrtle Fillmore), Religious Science (Ernest Holmes) and Divine Science (Nona Brooks and Malinda Cramer). Fenwich Holmes, brother of Religious Science founder Emest Holmes, partly influenced Masaharu Taniguchi to found Seicho-No-le, the Japanese New Thought Group with the largest following worldwide. A mystical outgrowth of Christian Science is Joel Goldsmith's Infinite Way. A recent addition to New Thought is A Course in Miracles.

The New Thought founders, e.g. Quimby, Holmes and the Fillmores originally did not intend to start churches but bring New Thought principles into other religions and groups.

In 1915, New Thought groups met and formed the Interrnational New Thought Alliance (INTA). INTA is a free and open alliance of truth motivated individuals and organizations who desire to unfold and practice a positive life-style of spiritual maturity. It's purpose: to teach people to come into a conscious realization of the divinity within, and the unity of God and man, so that out of the sublimity of our souls we can say, "I and the Father are one". Annual Tranformational-Expo's, regional and international meetings are held.


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