'There is Nothing You Cannot Be, Do, or Have'

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Though Quimby believed that he was practicing the same sort of medicine that Jesus did, and while most of the founders of New Thought considered themselves to be Christians, traditional Christian tenets of faith-original sin, the virgin birth, the Trinity, crucifixion and resurrection, the Eucharist, justification by faith and grace, heaven and hell-are nowhere to be found in its various theologies, except as symbols (the crucifixion, for example, represents the damage that negative thinking does to our bodies; the resurrection is the fruits of corrected thought; rather than a divinity, Jesus, as in some forms of Gnosticism, is understood to be a fully enlightened human being).

In New Thought, God (like the atoms of the 18th-century mystic Swedenborg or the Tao of Lao Tzu) is immanent in creation as invisible but omnipresent and intelligent energy. Anyone whose mind is properly opened can access this energy; its blessings are freely available to all. As Emmet Fox (1886-1951), a popular minister in Divine Science (and an early influence on Alcoholics Anonymous-his secretary was the mother of one of its first members) wrote:

"God is the only real Presence-all the rest is but shadow. God is perfect Good, and God is the cause only of perfect Good. God never sends sickness, trouble, accident, temptation, nor death itself; nor does He authorize these things. We bring them upon ourselves by our own wrong thinking. God, Good, can cause only good. The same fountain cannot send forth both sweet and bitter water."

New Thought might have begun as a method of faith healing, but by the early 20th century it had broadened into a complete spirituality. If new thoughts can conquer sickness, then they can eliminate prejudice, war, poverty, and all the other human miseries as well. In an address to the Metaphysical Club of Boston in 1914, Annette Dresser, one of Quimby's earliest followers, described its aspirations in almost messianic terms:

"We stand for the ideal that a new life, a new philosophy is coming into the world. Some of us are interested in applying it to healing; others care more for the philosophical elements; others still for its mystic and spiritual factors; and some for the religious point of view it presents; but we are all united in the desire to interpret and to understand life as a whole in the light of it.... Affirm your capacity to receive love, wisdom and power from the Lord-affirm that truth-hold to that truth. So shall your life be full, and so shall you live your life in service, and find it gloriously in Him. The truth shall make you free."

Dresser's son Horatio would publish a history of the New Thought movement in 1919; its first chapter proclaimed the dawning of "The New Age."

For all the zeal of its founders, today the denominations that comprise the New Thought Alliance are small-Unity, the largest, has about 75,000 members, Science of Mind slightly less; Divine Science has some 5000 members. Christian Science, which does not count its membership, was once hugely popular, but has declined in recent years.

But despite its small official numbers, the influence of New Thought philosophy-or a "God-centered health-wealth-happiness-producing practice designed to transform your daily living by changing your unconscious assumptions and consciously held beliefs, attitudes, and expectations," as the One Spirit Ministries of the Poconos styles itself on its website-is inescapable.

Today's most prominent New Thought teachers deliver their sermons from the couches of television talk shows rather than pulpits; their books are more likely to be shelved under "Business" and "Self-Help" in bookstores than in "Religion." Stephen Covey's highly effective business executives are direct descendants of the constitutionally "healthy-minded" Victorians that William James marveled at one hundred years ago.
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