From Ernest Holmes
(1959) Sermon by the Sea:

"Science of Mind is the most direct impartation of Divine Wisdom that has ever come to the world, because it incorporates the precepts of Jesus, and Emerson, and Buddha, and all the rest of the wise. . .We have rediscovered that which the great, the good, and the wise have sung about and thought about the imprisoned splendor within ourselves and within each other — and have direct contact with it. Whether we call it the Christ in us, or the Buddha, or Atman, or just the Son of God the living spirit, makes no difference. You and I are witness to the Divine fact and we have discovered an authority beyond our minds, even though our minds utilize it."

Photo of Ernest Holmes and friends
enjoying The High Seirras (1953)

Ernest Holmes: The First Religious Scientist
Written by James Reid

"There is a power for good in the universe greater than you are and you can use it."

The man who first stated that affirmative belief, choosing those exact words, was speaking to those sharing the Twentieth Century with him.

Because of him, countless others have discovered and countless millions yet unborn will discover a rewarding awareness of their infinite potential.

A lifelong searcher and student himself, he was inspired to write a book that would become a textbook, a guidebook, for other searchers and students.

His book, The Science of Mind, correlated "the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy, and the revelations of religion applied to the needs and the aspirations of humankind."

This correlation, something completely new to the world, was also the beginning of the Institute of Religious Science and School of Philosophy, Inc., where he and others were to teach and inspire. This, in turn, would lead to the beginning of the Church of Religious Science, later to become the United Church of Religious Science.

As he always insisted, he did not legislate any of the laws that govern the universe, and he did not invent a secret new way by which humankind can partake of the unlimited good in the universe.

He sought only to explain the infallibility of the laws and express the essence of the ever-existent way.

No one before him had done that. His work was to make this modest man "a man for the ages" a pioneering guide to all humankind.

His name was Ernest Holmes.

He was born January 21, 1887,
on a small farm near Lincoln, Maine.

His parents, William and Anna Heath Holmes, had nine sons. The youngest was named after a poetic young preacher of that area, Rev. Ernest Shurtleff, who later wrote the hymn, "Lead On, O King Eternal." In the order of their arrival, Ernest Holmes' older brothers were: Walter, Luther, William, Charles, Harry (who died in infancy), Fenwick, Guy and Jerome.

He acquired "the basics" of education in rural schools: grammar school in Lincoln, and Gould's Academy in Bethel, Maine. He once said: "I quit school when I was about 15 and didn't go back except to study public speaking." From 1908 to 1910, working in a store to pay his way, he attended the Leland Powers School of Expression in Boston.

The rest of his prodigious learning came from an insatiable search for what would be most meaningful for any man to know. He was an omnivorous student of and finally an authority on the universal truths and imperishable ideas manifested through the ages of literature, art, science, philosophy and religion. He spent a life-time synthesizing his discoveries. The result: The Science of Mind.

Near the close of his life, he talked to an interviewer about his own beginnings and the beginnings of Religious Science.

This from a man born in 1887 who later inspired the "positive thinking" of Norman Vincent Peale, Peggy Lee, Cary Grant, Cecil B. DeMille and countless others without ever intending to create a religion or a following of masses of people. He simply had a brilliant mind and wished to synthesize the writings of the times into one volume, which became the Science of Mind textbook, and was inspired by the teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Judge Thomas Troward and mystic Emma Curtis Hopkins. He discovered that affirmative prayer containing specific elements of recognition, unification, realization, thanksgiving and release engendered healing in lives that appeared to be broken. He offered the theory that when these treatments were spoken for and about others by spiritual counselors called "practitioners," they were even more potent. By 1927, he founded a monthly publication and an institute for Religious Science and School of Philosophy that trained spiritual mind practitioners. These institutes that grew from the first one in Los Angeles, California became Religious Science churches by the 1940's.

Holmes' teaching is based on a belief that there is a universal law of cause and effect operating in the life of humankind that is primarily mental and spiritual. (Open at the Top, the Life of Ernest Holmes, 1993). "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." He called his philosophy a science because "it can be taught, it can be learned and it can be consciously applied with a certainty of definite and repeatable results." The definition of religious science that Holmes taught is, "Religious Science is the correlation of laws of science, opinions of philosophy and revelations of religion applied to human needs and the aspirations of man." Holmes identified God as, "Universal Mind, Spirit, Intelligence, that is the origin of everything. . .This Universal life and Energy finds an outlet in and through everything that lives."

Spiritual Mind Treatment is a specific form of prayer of recognition and affirmation. It is more an accepting and receiving of what is true; it is never a prayer of supplication, or asking God for favors or help. He taught that there are two basic truths: Love and Law. Love is Divine Givingness, which is the nature of Spirit and Law is the impersonal, mechanical, and mathematical way that mental activity turns into form or experience.

Spiritual Mind Treatment
God is all there is.

I am part of God.

I have all I need within me. I accept it as the gift that it is.

I celebrate this awareness with gratitude.

I release this word unto the Law where is manifests as my experience.

And so it is.