The New Thought Bulletin
Raymond C. Barker, EditorPublished by the International New Thought Alliance
General Headquarters, 1713 K Street N.W.
Vol. 29, No. 1-2 Washington 6, D. C. Winter-Spring, 1946
"From Medicine to Metaphysics"
The Story of Dr. H. Emilie Cady by Ella Pomeroy
As a schoolgirl in New York City, I frequently passed a small red brick building, then known to me as the Homeopathic Medical College; and having been reared by a mother who had escaped from the "calomel belt" of Missouri into the mild and placid fields of Homeopathy, it was natural that, when later the decision to study medicine was taken, my choice of a school should have been Homeopathy. My plans never matured, but their very failure seemed to give me a living connection with H. Emilie Cady when the opportunity came to meet her. Indeed, it would have been very difficult to get into any other group, for women medical students were not then looked upon with favor. Miss Cady must have been one of the first "woman doctors" in New York City.
It was through a friend interested in my "occupation" that it became possible for me to meet her, and our infrequent but understanding talks together were a privilege. Living quietly in an uptown apartment, I found an impressively tall woman with bold, strong features, a hearty, pleasant voice, and a decidedly clear head. She was sympathetic to the needs of the world, and based all her thinking upon the one idea of God's Presence and Power in the world right then, right now. We talked of the need for practical good sense in the Truth or New Thought Movement, of its importance to the world, and always underlying whatever she said was the recurring consciousness of God.
When I first met H. Emilie Cady I asked her if she had taken her training in Homeopathy, and how she had become interested in Truth and New Thought. She replied that some time after her graduation from the Homeopathic College there had come to New York City a "faith healer" named Simpson, and I could recall reports of his work in the daily papers, of the hundreds of persons he had helped, and of his marvelous powers. She went on to say that it had seemed to her that there must be a bridge between his "faith" and the practice of medicine.
Miss Cady began her life work at that peculiar time in the religious history of the United States when "faith healers" were common, when Christian Science was gaining recognition, and when the ideas of Phineas P. Quimby were gaining ground. A certain W. F. Evans, a minister, healed by Quimby, was writing on the subject and wrote well. His books were issued by a Boston publisher, and fell into Dr. Cady"s hands, and in the older copies of her noted book, "Lessons In Truth," his name is used by her. Evans' style of writing was lucid and simple, his ideas sound, and he evidently helped her to lay hands on that mental bridge between the outer facts of life and the nature and presence of Spirit which she sought. Being of a deeply religious nature, she desired to behold God at all times, and to magnify Him without sacrificing balance or a right sense of the relationship between Spirit and body.
She heard the man Simpson many times. He was of the revivalist type and spoke in a large tent set up in a field. Her admiration for his accomplishments was unbounded, but her good sense told her that there must be a way of solidifying and retaining such healings as he gave to his followers, and to her came revelation of the way—a way of simple discipline and thanksgiving to God. She taught her readers a faith founded upon an understanding of the Nature and Presence of God; and fortunately for the field of metaphysics, she was able to express her thoughts with ease and lucidity.
While she was herself a practicing physician, she had come to know that it was not her prescriptions which had accomplished the healing, but the Power of God revealed to the patient by his efforts to change the tenor and quality of his thoughts, by abandoning his destructive thinking and training himself in trust and joy in the Lord. The more deeply she thought on these things, the clearer became the conviction that God is the Healer; and as she was an open-minded person, she learned of Charles Fillmore's Unity Movement, then in its formative stage in Kansas City, and sent him some articles and letters. Mr. Fillmore liked them and so did his readers of Unity Magazine. The demand for more of the Cady articles became insistent, as did the demand for a book which would state the underlying principles of the "new" approach to God in simple, clear terms; and because Miss Cady seemed to have all the requirements, she was asked to write such a book. Thus, the world-renowned book "Lessons In Truth" was written. In the book published by the Unity School of Christianity entitled "Unity's Fifty Golden Years," there is a quite full account of that organization's publications of Dr. Cady's writings. The book now known as "How I Used Truth," formerly known as "Miscellaneous Writings," is made up of the separate articles she first sent to Charles Fillmore.
She spoke to me of the great tragedy of her life and how her knowledge of Truth kept her in service to others. She told me of an experience with a sick sister, very ill indeed, who, as Miss Cady claimed the Presence of God for her beloved, recovered before her eyes and confirmed her faith in the love of God. She held uncompromisingly to the simple teachings of the Christ and their immense import. And once in a while there would be a flash of impatience with pretense, coming like a bolt across the conversation and disappearing in a quiet smile. Being with her was always a stimulant, an impulse to seek more deeply, to trust more and more. To her, whatever appeared to contradict her convictions was either negligible or laughable. She was distinctly of the mind which put current or modern New Thought on a sound footing. There can be no doubt that the direct and easily grasped teachings in "Lessons In Truth" have influenced many thousands of lives, simply by pointing the way to controlled and regulated thought.
One of her most important contributions to this field of thought lies in her chapters on "Going into the Silence." We were hearing a good deal about that in those early days. Her explanation of what takes place and what results is sound in its simplicity and directness. Free from any suggestion of "psychic" experiences, her instructions are a liberal education in the art of prayer. We held a "silence" several times together, and it was always cheerful, informal and restful.
Of her early life nothing seems to be konwn. The rules concerned with entering medical colleges were not as closely drawn then as they are now, and she may or may not have been university trained. Her important training undoubtedly came from the Spirit within her, giving her the peculiar simplicity and clarity which seems to come to those who seek to be taught of the Spirit itself. She sought always to keep her pesonality out of sight, to speak as an ancient prophet might have spoken: "Thus saith Jehovah", — never "thus speaketh Emilie Cady."
In an article on Homeopathy in the Encyclopedia Britannica it is said that some homeopathists of the present day believed with Hahneman that, even after the material medicinal particles of a drug have been subdivided to the fullest extent, the continuation of the dynamization or trituration or succession develops spiritual curative agencies, and that the higher the potency, the more subtle and more powerful is the curative action. Hahneman says, "It is only by means of the spiritual influence of a morbific agent that our spiritual vital power can be diseased, and in like manner, only by the spiritual operation of medicine can health be restored."
Being spiritually-minded, Miss Cady first sought Homeopathy. Encountering the action of "blind faith" and pondering understanding faith, she developed a scheme of thought and a manner of teaching the Christ way of healing which has been invaluable to seekers of the Truth "Way through the years and will continue to reach and satisfy them for many years to come. Her work, her thought, will roll on through time, and the New Thought Movement will steadily increase its appreciation of her contribution to its ministry.
EXCERPTS FROM LESSONS IN TRUTH
"Become as a little child," and, learning how to be still, listen to that which the Father will say to you through the intuitional part of your being. The light that you so crave will come out of the deep silence and become manifest to you from within yourself, if you will but keep still and look for it from that source.
This conscious knowledge of an indwelling God, which we so crave, is that of which Paul wrote to the Colossians, as "the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest ... Christ in you, the hope of glory." "The secret place of the Most High," where each one of us may dwell and be safe from all harm or fear of evil, is the point of mystical union between soul (or conscious mind) and Spirit (or God in us), wherein we no longer believe, but know, that God in Christ abides always at the center of our being, as our perfect health, deliverance, prosperity, power, ready to come forth into manifestation at any moment we claim it. We know it. We know it. We feel our oneness with the Father, and we manifest this oneness. ...
We repeat from time to time, while waiting, words something like these:
Thou art now renewing me according to Thy highest thought for me; Thou art radiating Thy very self throughout my entire being, making me like to Thyself— for there is nothing else but Thee, Father, I thank Thee, I thank Thee.
Be still, be still while He works. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."
While you thus wait, and let Him, He will work marvelous changes in you. You will have a strange, new consciousness of serenity and quiet, a feeling that something has been done, that some new power to overcome has come to you. You will be able to say, "I and the Father are one," with a new meaning, a new sense of reality and awe that will make you feel very still. Oh! how one conscious touch of the Oversoul makes all life seem different!
I. N. T. A. EXECUTIVE BOARD
Officers
Dr. Raymond C. Barker
58 West 57th Street
New York 19, New York
1st Vice-President
Dr. James E. Dodds
Academy of Spiritual Science
43 North Euclid Avenue
Pasadena 1, California
Secretary (headquarters)
Miss Florence E. Frisbie
1713 K St. N. W.
Washington 6, D. C.
2nd Vice-President
Rev. Emma Smiley
Victoria Truth Center
734 Fort Street Victoria, B. C, Canada
Treasurer
Miss Ida Jane Ayres
1601 Argonne Place N. W.
Washington 9, D. C.
3rd Vice-President
Rev. Elizabeth Carrick-Cook
Institute of Religious Science
177 Post Street
San Francisco 8, Calif.
4th Vice-President
Dr. Florrie Beal Clark
209 APCO Tower Building
Oklahoma College of Divine Science
Oklahoma City 2, Oklahoma
Auditor
Rev. Eleanor Mel
Boston Home of Truth
175 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston 16, Massachusetts
Board Members
Three-Year Term
Rev. Maebel V. Carrell
Unity Church of Christ
1322 South Fourth Street
Louisville 8, Kentucky
Dr. Fletcher A. Harding
Associate Minister
School of Psychology and Divine Science
One Groveland Ter., Minneapolis 5, Minn.
Two-Year Term
Rev. Maude Allison Lathem
Institute of Religious Science
3251 West Sixth Street
Los Angeles 5, California
Rev. Ruth Chew
Church of the Truth
810-A First Street, West
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
One-Year Term
Dr. Amelia A. Randall
New Life Fraternity
2744 Fourth Avenue South
Minneapolis 8, Minnesota
Rev. Ervin Seale
Church of the Truth
9 East 40th Street
New York 16, New York
Poet Laureate of the I. N. T. A.
Rev. Henry Victor Morgan
Past Presidents
Rev Elizabeth Towne
Dr. Harry Granison Hill
Mr. Lorenzo Elliott
Rev Rev Edna Lister Erma W. Wells
Dr. John Seaman Garns
*Mr. James A. Edgerton
*Rev. Murrel Powell-Douglas
*Dr. Thomas Parker Boyd
*Rev. Mary E. T. Chapin
* Deceased
"Behold, how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." —Ps. 133:1.
Daily Blessing
for theINTERNATIONAL NEW THOUGHT ALLIANCE
Written by MAEBEL V. Carrell,
Minister, Unity Church of Christ, Louisville, Kentucky
"MY SOUL; WAIT THOU ONLY UPON GOD, FOR MY EXPECTATION IS FROM HIM."
THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN that cometh into the world now shines through me enlightening and activating my Consciousness.
IN THIS LIGHT I am conscious of man's right relationship with God and with his fellow man.
IN THIS LIGHT I am conscious of a united thought and purpose in the International New Thought Alliance which makes it an effective power for Good in the world.
IN THIS LIGHT I see each member of the Alliance blessed and prospered with both spiritual and material riches.
IN THIS LIGHT I see each affiliated group and organization blessed with increased interest, attendance and prosperity.
IN THIS LIGHT there is the expectation of even greater works being done through the Alliance and all groups of people everywhere working for the glory of God and the good of Mankind.
IN THIS LIGHT I give thanks for the continuous growth and progress of the Alliance as a United Movement toward a just and lasting Peace.
My expectation is sustained in the knowledge that ALL THE POWERS OF THE UNIVERSE ASSEMBLE AROUND RIGHT PURPOSES AND SERVE AS THE MEANS FOR THEIR FULFILLMENT."
