A Teacher
H. Emilie Cady
Lessons in Truth — practical Christianity
The transmission
Harriet Emilie Cady was an American homeopathic physician and New Thought author whose Lessons in Truth (1894–1903) became the foundational textbook of the Unity movement and one of the best-selling New Thought works of all time.
A student of Emma Curtis Hopkins, Cady wrote with clarity and devotional warmth, presenting “practical Christianity”: the indwelling of God, the reality of Spirit, the use of denials and affirmations, and the healing power of right thought.
Cady’s significance is as the doctrinal anchor of Unity. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore adopted Lessons in Truth as a primary teaching text, and it remains in use over a century later.
Her accessible articulation of New Thought metaphysics—God as omnipresent Spirit, the human being as expression of that Spirit, and thought as the instrument of healing and demonstration—helped fix the practical, affirmation-based method that runs through the entire prosperity-and-healing lineage down to modern manifestation.
What they gave
Unity’s foundational text: Authored Lessons in Truth, the core curriculum of the Unity movement.
- Denials and affirmations: Codified the practical method of denying error and affirming truth.
- Indwelling-God metaphysics: Centered the omnipresence of Spirit and the divinity of the individual.
- Healing through thought: Articulated mental/spiritual healing in clear, teachable terms.
In their words
The appearances are that our bodies and our circumstances control our thoughts, but the opposite is true. Our thoughts control our bodies and our circumstances.
God as infinite wisdom lies within every human being, only waiting to be led forth into manifestation.
To affirm anything is to assert positively that it is so, even in the face of all contrary evidence.
All joy and strength and good spring up from a fountain within one’s own being; and if we only knew this truth we should know that, because God in us is the fountain out of which springs all our good, nothing that anyone does or says, or fails to do or say, can take away our joy and good.
Victory must be won in the silence of your own being first, and then you need take no part in the outer demonstration of relief from conditions.
It does make a great difference in our daily lives what we think about God, about ourselves, about our neighbors.
If you turn your thoughts away from the external toward the spiritual, and let them dwell on the good in yourself and in others, all the apparent evil will first drop out of your thoughts and then out of your life.
Understanding is a spiritual birth, a revelation of God within the heart of man.
But until, down in the depths of your being, you are conscious of your oneness with the Father, until you know within yourself that the spring of all wisdom and health and joy is within your own being, ready at any moment to leap forth at the call of your need, you will not have spiritual understanding.
When you have learned how to abandon yourself to infinite Spirit, and have seasons of doing this daily, you will be surprised at the marvelous change that will be wrought in you without any conscious effort of your own.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: Emma Curtis Hopkins; New Thought; Christian metaphysics; the Quimby lineage.
- Influenced: Unity and Charles & Myrtle Fillmore; New Thought devotional curricula; later affirmation-based practice.
Revelations they taught
Orders & Societies
Essential Works
- Lessons in Truth1903
- God a Present Help1908
- How I Used Truth1916