A Teacher
Emmet Fox
Seven-day mental diet
The transmission
Emmet Fox was an Irish-born New Thought teacher who became one of the most popular spiritual lecturers in mid-20th-century America, drawing thousands to his talks in New York.
Trained in the New Thought and Divine Science traditions, Fox specialized in a mystical-Christian reading of scripture, treating the Bible—especially the Sermon on the Mount—as an allegorical manual for the laws of mind and spiritual healing.
His best-known works, The Sermon on the Mount (1934) and the essay “The Seven Day Mental Diet,” argued that sustained control over the quality of one’s thoughts is the decisive factor in shaping health, circumstance, and character.
Fox sits precisely at the seam between Christian mysticism and New Thought, which is why the knowledge graph files him among the Christian Mystics even though his movement affiliation is New Thought. He carried the contemplative-Christian conviction that the divine is reached within, and recast it as a practical psychology of thought-discipline: change the habitual contents of mind and outer life reorganizes accordingly.
His “mental diet”—a disciplined refusal to dwell on negative thoughts for a set period—is a direct ancestor of modern affirmation, “mindset,” and thought-monitoring practices, and his work had a notable early influence on the spiritual framing of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Fox thus functions as a transmitter node, channeling the mystical-Christian interior tradition into 20th-century mental-healing self-help.
What they gave
The Seven-Day Mental Diet: A concrete thought-discipline protocol—an ancestor of “mindset” and thought-monitoring practice.
- Allegorical scripture-as-mind-law: Reframed Christian texts as instructions for mental causation and healing.
- Bridge mysticism→New Thought: Carried interior Christian spirituality into practical mental-healing teaching.
- Popular transmission: Spread mental-healing ideas to a mass mid-century audience, influencing AA’s spiritual language.
In their words
Thought is the real causative force in life, and there is no other.
For seven days you must not allow yourself to dwell for a single moment on any kind of negative thought.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: the New Thought tradition (Troward, the Hopkins/Divine Science lineage); Christian mysticism’s interior emphasis.
- Taught / Influenced: the early spiritual framing of Alcoholics Anonymous; mid-century mental-healing self-help; modern affirmation, “mental diet,” and mindset practices. (Boundary note: also classifiable under New Thought; placed here per the source knowledge graph’s categorization as the mysticism→New Thought bridge.)
Revelations they taught
Orders & Societies
Essential Works
- Power Through Constructive Thinking1932
- The Sermon on the Mount1934
- Find and Use Your Inner Power1937