Modern Religious Cults and MovementsTheosophy / New ThoughtScholarly ReconstructionEnglishShareModern Religious Cults and Movements 16Project Gutenberg #19051 - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableProject Gutenberg #19051LanguageEnglishEspañol‹Modern Religious Cults and Movements 2Modern Religious Cults and Movements 3Modern Religious Cults and Movements 4Modern Religious Cults and Movements 5Modern Religious Cults and Movements 6Modern Religious Cults and Movements 7Modern Religious Cults and Movements 8Modern Religious Cults and Movements 9Modern Religious Cults and Movements 10Modern Religious Cults and Movements 11Modern Religious Cults and Movements 12Modern Religious Cults and Movements 13Modern Religious Cults and Movements 15Modern Religious Cults and Movements 16Modern Religious Cults and Movements 17Modern Religious Cults and Movements 19Modern Religious Cults and Movements 20Modern Religious Cults and Movements 21Modern Religious Cults and Movements 23Modern Religious Cults and Movements 24Modern Religious Cults and Movements 25Modern Religious Cults and Movements 27Modern Religious Cults and Movements 28Modern Religious Cults and Movements 29Modern Religious Cults and Movements 30Modern Religious Cults and Movements 31Modern Religious Cults and Movements 32Modern Religious Cults and Movements 33Modern Religious Cults and Movements 34Modern Religious Cults and Movements 35Modern Religious Cults and Movements 36Modern Religious Cults and Movements 37Modern Religious Cults and Movements 38Modern Religious Cults and Movements 39›Part In The Development Of The Movement And The Larger Part Of ItsModern Religious Cults and Movements 16ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1literature deals with what one might call perhaps the laws of mental and spiritual hygiene. The principles implicit in New Thought as a healing cult carry of their own weight into other regions. It is important enough to get well--that goes without saying--but it is more important to keep well. Good health on the whole is a kind of by-product. We suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental maladjustments as from physical. We suffer also from the sense of inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our own powers and the challenge of life. New Thought has addressed itself increasingly to such states and problems as this. Here it ceases to be a cult or a method of healing and has become a most considerable influence and here also it in general takes the direction of and is identified with what is truest in the Christian religion, what is sanest and most clear visioned in present-day thinking. The typical books just here are Trine's "In Tune with the Infinite" and a similar literature. 2Another application of New Thought is in the direction of personal efficiency. There is a considerable literature in this region. It does not specifically call itself New Thought but it is saturated with the New Thought fundamentals and has distinctly the New Thought outlook. Marden is the most popular and prolific writer in this connection and the titles of his books are suggestive--"Keeping Fit," "Selling Things," "The Victorious Attitude," "Training for Efficiency," "Getting On," "Self-Investment," "Be Good to Yourself," "He Can Who Thinks He Can," "Character," "Opportunity," "An Iron Will." Something like this has, of course, been done before but the modern efficiency literature moves along a wider front than earlier books and makes a fuller use of the new psychology. All this literature dwells strongly upon the driving power of a self-assertive personality strongly controlled by will, single visioned and master of its own powers. It suggests lines of approach by which other people's wills can be overcome, their interest aroused or their cooeperation secured. 3Quotation is almost impossible--there is such an abundance of material and much of it is commonplace. It takes a deal of padding to make shelves of books out of the familiar and generally accepted truisms which are the "Sermon on the Mount" and the "Beatitudes" of this gospel of personal efficiency. Keep fit, keep at it, assert yourself, never admit the possibility of failure, study your own strength and weakness and the strength and weakness of your competitor and success is yours. Look persistently on the bright side of every situation, refuse to dwell on the dark side, recognize no realities but harmony, health, beauty and success. 4It is only just to say that success is generously defined and the disciples of this New Thought are asked also to live in the finer senses--the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that is--but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way with the world. It is the apotheosis of what James called "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of our time and seems to reconcile that serving of two masters, God and Getting On, which a lonely teacher long ago thought quite impossible. 5Naturally such a movement has a great following of disciples who doubtless "have their reward." So alluring a gospel is sure to have its own border-land prophets and one only has to study the advertisements in the more generally read magazines to see to what an extent all sorts of short-cuts to success of every sort are being offered, and how generally all these advertisements lock up upon two or three principles which revolve around self-assertion as a center and getting-on as a creed. It would be idle to underestimate the influence of all this or, indeed, to cry down the usefulness of it. There is doubtless a tonic quality in these applications of New Thought principles of which despondent, hesitating and wrongly self-conscious people stand greatly in need. 6But there is very great danger in it all of minimizing the difficulties which really lie in the way of the successful conduct of life, difficulties which are not eliminated because they are denied. And there is above all the very great danger of making far too little of that patient and laborious discipline which is the only sound foundation upon which real power can possibly be established. There is everywhere here an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and proclaim an unconquerable optimism. 7But at any rate New Thought, in one form or another, has penetrated deeply the whole fabric of the modern outlook upon life. A just appraisal of it is not easy and requires a careful analysis and balancing of tendencies and forces. We recognize at once an immense divergence from our inherited forms of religious faith. New Thought is an interweaving of such psychological tendencies as we have already traced with the implications and analogies of modern science. The God of New Thought is an immanent God, never clearly defined; indeed it is possible to argue from many representative utterances that the God of New Thought is not personal at all but rather an all-pervading force, a driving energy which we may discover both in ourselves and in the world about us and to which conforming we are, with little effort on our own ‹Previous chapterModern Religious Cults and Movements 15Next chapterModern Religious Cults and Movements 17›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the USA