HARRIET EMILIE CADY

AUTHOR 

A NEW THOUGHT

These pages are dedicated to the impersonal work of author and teacher HARRIET EMILIE CADY (July 12, 1848 – January 3, 1941), healer and prominent figure in the New Thought movement.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of copies of Unity's textbook Lessons in Truth, by H. Emilie Cady, have been sold since its first publication in 1895. Inasmuch as each copy of a book of this kind is usually read by several people, over the years literally millions of people have read Lessons in Truth.

How famous, how widely known an author would be today if his or her book sold a million copies! That author would be on talk shows and television, lecturing in colleges, becoming more and more widely known every day. But it is safe to say that the thought of becoming widely known, famous, or rich never occurred to the author of Lessons in Truth. H. Emilie Cady just did not think in those terms.

The same adventurous, self-reliant, and "can do" spirit must have led Emilie Cady to choose a career in medicine in the 1880s. Even today, nearly a hundred years later, men still predominate in medicine. What a drive within her it must have taken to leave schoolteaching, one of the few callings other than marriage sanctioned for women at that time, and braving the disapproval of society, to become a doctor of homeopathic medicine in New York City!

And she succeeded. It was as an established and successful physician that she first appeared on the Unity scene. Quite on her own she had written and published a booklet, called Finding the Christ in Ourselves. This came to the attention of Myrtle Fillmore, who was so impressed with it that she gave it to Charles Fillmore. He lost no time in asking permission to print and distribute the article as a booklet, and invited contributions for UNITY Magazine.

As a result, beginning in January 1892 a number of articles by Dr. Cady appeared in the magazine. The first one, "Neither Do I Condemn Thee," later became a chapter in the book Miscellaneous Writings (later renamed How I Used Truth). Subsequent articles entitled "Oneness with God" and "God's Hand" were also included in this book. letter written by Dr. Cady, which appeared in the March 1892 issue of UNITY Magazine, shows that she had already established in herself a superb confidence in Truth principles.

She led a busy life of service, not only treating those who came to her for help in overcoming sickness, discouragement, or other personal problems, but after office hours seeking to aid persons in institutions, such as homes for "bad girls." In this letter Dr. Cady tells how, after a busy day at her office, she gave a talk at one of these institutions to some twenty-five of those she calls "the younger sisters," giving them words of love and encouragement instead of reproaches. After this talk, when as she says she was "alone in her home with the Father," a feeling of discouragement came over her. Faithfully she released all the various cases to God.

To quote from her letter: "Dear Lord, I commit all these various cases to Thee. I do not know that I have helped any of these troubled hearts a bit, but thou knowest I have, in each case, given them the very best I knew how to give."

THERE WAS STILL another problem to be overcome, the problem of money supply. She herself had an established medical practice, with plenty of patients paying their bills monthly, so it was not her own supply that troubled her. Other cases came to her for help whose means of support were exhausted. To the kind-hearted physician these cases were as distressing and painful as though the patients were afflicted with cancer or rheumatism. What could she do about it? She turned to God in prayer.

In answer, she tells us, God gave her the vision of His presence as all-inclusive supply of all things. She wrote the article "All Sufficiency in All Things," and set out to prove that God's power would supply her. From that time on, no work or ministry of any kind was performed by her for pay. No monthly bills were sent out. No office charges were made. She gave with no thought of return, a free giving.

Yet as her distinguished teacher, Emma Curtis Hopkins, had written: "There is always at least once when we are called to stand steady to our principles. . . . Nothing is sure at all in your life until it has been put through the furnace, which is the meeting of the opposite to it, with its noble steadfastness to itself."

For more than two years Dr. Cady persisted in proving this idea of God as supply, never letting anyone know what she was trying to prove. But alas, it did not work out. More than once she did not even have money for the bare necessities of life and was faint for want of food. But with supreme fortitude she kept on, cheerfully teaching all who came to her that God would supply all their needs.

And then, after two years of this, she reached her limit. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." Flesh and blood and human self could endure no more. Like many another, both before and since, she cried out to God: "Why? Why this failure? You told me in the vision that if I would give up the old way and trust to You alone, You would proveto me Your sufficiency. Why have You failed to do it?"

What was God's answer? Only a verse of Scripture came into her mind: "And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." At first she could not see any relevance in this. But she kept on repeating these words, hoping to see the meaning in them. And as she repeated them there seemed to be an increasing tendency to stress the word said. Suddenly it dawned upon her that never once, in all those two trying years, had she "said" or "spoken the word" for supply.

She saw that she must not just leave the matter of supplying money in God's hands, as she had been doing. She must set the supply principle in motion, into action; activate it and direct it by her spoken words, definite words. She had been expressing a passive, indefinite trust, unbacked by positive and active direction to the supply principle. Apparently this was not enough. Her whole emphasis had been on giving only, not on receiving as well.

Here again, as she had done in freeing her father, she must set God's power in motion, give it direction. In order for God's power to work for her, it must work through her. At once she spoke the word for supply, and that day the supply problem was ended for all time.

But, in what appears to be an elaboration of this account, she tells us that to establish completely an outward supply of money, she continued to speak the word "vigorously out into the great ocean of substance for something [she] much desired." During this period she wrote an ordinary business letter to a friend in the country. Much to Dr. Cady's surprise, her friend replied that on receipt of this letter a strange thing happened to her. When she took the letter in her hand, it had the appearance of being covered with the very thing for which Dr. Cady had been speaking the word! When she opened "Miss C---'s letter," the letter took the form of a horn of plenty pouring out in unlimited quantity this same thing. "Had she gone crazy?" the friend wondered.

Not at all, said Dr. Cady. The vibrations of her vigorous thought and spoken word concerning the desired substance or thing had permeated the psychic structure of her letter to the friend, and the friend, having developed some degree of psychic perception, saw the shape that "Miss C---" had created by her thought and spoken word.

At this point Dr. Cady comments that the continued speaking of the word soon brought this "shape" or form of supply forth in the visible world, as a solid manifestation of what she desired. How? What happened? Did she receive a legacy? Years ago I remember being told that in some way Dr. Cady became financially independent. What actually happened?

Some light may be thrown on this by a fascinating reference in a book by Richard Ingalese. He mentions Dr. Emilie Cady as being one of a small class of mental workers who could draw supply to themselves without employing physical means. To quote:

"Dr. Emily [sic] Cady has performed very remarkable cures (it was said of her that she thought no more of healing a cancer than she did of healing a headache), and has helped the world through her writings as much as any other metaphysician of her time. Dr. Cady had used the law in healing and her faith was great enough to believe she could make other demonstrations of a more material nature. She . . . showed her implicit faith in the law by demanding and receiving a large sum of money, which she needed to reimburse herself for the time and money she had given to suffering humanity. She pictured the amount she wanted and then claimed it for her own, and within a short time after she made her creation, a stranger brought to her what she had demanded. According to her picture and her faith was it given unto her."

Many years later, another New York metaphysician, Florence Scovel Shinn, wrote that "God is the giver and the Gift, and creates His own amazing channels." Whatever the means or the channel, supply did come forth in response to Dr. Cady's demand, while she was looking to God only for it. She stresses this point in Lessons in Truth where, after quoting Psalm 62:5 ("For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him"), she asks this question: "Is your expectation from Him, or is it from books or teachers or friends or meetings or societies?"

Her question is justified, and has brought many back on the right track in demonstrating supply. One of the most persistent tendencies we have to deal with - is that we do not look to God only in making a demonstration of supply. We tend to "outline" by trying to decide in advance by what means or through what channel our supply will come. In other words, our anxious human self, which is only praying or treating for supply because it cannot see any ways and means of getting supply, does not leave to God ways and means by which the prayer can be answered, as it should.

On the contrary, we at once appoint ourself as a ways-and-means committee of one, which is not only without ways and means to begin with, but as a rule cannot even imagine any way in which the supply could come. Instead of having our attention on God as the Source, we have our attention on outward appearances, and it is probably that the prayer will fail.

"What you want is your business. How it comes to you is God's business." Let God choose or create His own divinely right channels, through which the prayer can be answered.

All this of course Emilie Cady knew, and knew well. She confided in no one, looked to no one. Joyously animated by God's revelation of the power of her words, she spoke her words into the intangible, universal substance of all good, and the law responded. She proved the law and was supplied.

What did Emilie Cady look like? The only photograph we have of her (the one on her niece's living room wall) reveals that her face had the same dynamic serenity as that of Myrtle Fillmore, born no doubt of a secure and secret faith in God.

She was established in her spiritual convictions. Ella Pomeroy, who knew Emilie Cady personally, wrote of her as being so thoroughly established in her metaphysical philosophy that when views opposed to those she held as Truth were brought up, she merely smiled tolerantly, and dismissed them with a gesture.

BY RUSSELL A. KEMP

EDITOR -JÁN MASTER

Harriet Emilie Cady shows us the way to full understanding in this book. It is a book that has helped hundreds of thousands of students to become established in the basic principles of truth: 

There IS within every human being that which is capable of being brought into that person's material, daily life as an abundance of all the good things that he can desire.

Be forever free from the law of poverty and want, as you are from the law of sin and disease—through faith in Christ; that is, by taking this indwelling Christ, or Spirit, or Invisible Man as your abundant supply, and, looking to no other source, hold to it until it manifests itself as such.

Recognize it. Reckon it. Be still and know it. Do not struggle and work

and worry while you know it, but just be still.

"Be still, and know that I am" what? part of God? No. "Know that I am God"—all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am Health. I am Love. I am Supply. I am the Substance of all that human souls or bodies can need or want.

editor - JÁN MASTER

Harriet Emilie Cady shows us the path to your Divine Source, which will reveal to you full spiritual understanding. It is a book that has helped hundreds of thousands of students to become grounded in the fundamental principles of truth.

***

You may have an intellectual perception of Truth. You may easily grasp with the mind the statement that God is the Giver of all good gifts—life, health, love—just as people have for centuries grasped it. Or you may go farther, and intellectually see that God is not only the Giver, but the Gift itself; that He is life, health, love, in us. But unless it be "revealed unto thee by my Father which is in heaven," it is of no practical benefit to you or to any one else.

This revelation of Truth to the consciousness of a person is spiritual understanding.

You may say to yourself, or another may say silently to you, over and over again, that you are well and wise and happy. On the plane of mortal mind or intellect a certain "cure" is effected, and for a time you will feel well and wise and happy. This is simply hypnotism, or mind cure. But until, down in the depths of your soul, you are conscious of your oneness with the Father, until you know within yourself that the spring o 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.

All the teachings of Jesus were for the purpose of leading men up to this consciousness of their oneness with the Father. He had to begin at the external man—because people then as now were living mostly in external things—and teach him to love his enemies, to do good to others, and so forth. These were external steps for them to take—a sort of lopping off of the ends of the branches; but they were steps which led on up to the place of desire and attainment where finally the Master could tell them some of the "many things" which previously they "could not bear."

EDITOR -JÁN MASTER