"It has always been my idea that the greatest life is the one that includes the most--that we have to study what everybody has to say, we have to be the judge principally of what we think is right or wrong, good or bad, or true or false. There is nothing else, and we must not live by authority. We must have no more prophets or saviors."
by Ernest Holmes, founder of Science of Mind

Standing Room Only
A Thing of Destiny
Ernest Holmes

I consider Religious Science a thing of destiny or I wouldn't be here. I have given my life to it. I never even made a living out of it, because it doesn't interest me in that way. I think it is a thing of destiny. I believe that the evolutionary process, periodically in history, pushes something forward as a new emergence to meet a new demand.

What I have gathered has been from reading, studying, thinking, and working--it is a long, laborious, tough method, but it pays off. I don't believe there is a real other method. What you will really learn will be what you tell yourself, in a language you understand, you accept--giving yourself a reason that is rational enough to accept, reasonable enough to agree to, inspirational enough to listen to with feeling, profound enough to sink deep, with light enough in it to break away the clouds. Because there is a place where the sun never has stopped shining in everyone's mind, and there is ever a song somewhere and we all have to learn to sing it.

There would be no Religious Science movement had there not at first been a New Thought movement. We are one of the New Thought groups of America, which have come up in the last 60 years and influenced the thought of the world and this country more than any other one single element in it--that is, spiritually, religiously, theologically, and psychologically too. But the New Thought movement itself, which originated in America, had its roots in a very deep antiquity.

We happen to have the most liberal spiritual movement the world has ever seen, and yet it is synthesized and tied together by the authority of the ages and the highlights of the spiritual evolution of the human race, all of which I have been familiar with, since I have spent 50 years studying it and thinking about it.

I was always studying; and since I had to make a living, I took a job as a purchasing agent. A superintendent asked me what all the books that I had around my office were, and I said they were books on philosophy and metaphysics, the occult, New Thought--everything you can think of. He said, "They look interesting to me." I said, "You are an engineer and wouldn't be interested," but he thought he might. He borrowed some of them and after a while he said, "How would you like to come over to my house and I will invite a few people one evening and you can just talk to us?" I said that would be fine--and we did it.

Those were the first talks I ever gave, in two homes. During one of these evenings a lady came to me and said she was at the Metaphysical Library (we used to have a big metaphysical library at 3rd and Broadway, and I used to get books out of it) and she said, "I told the librarian you would come up next Thursday and talk." I said, "Talk on what?" And she said, "Like you talk to us! You are really better than the people we hear up there."

I went, and the librarian said, "You have a class this afternoon at 3 p.m." I said, "I wouldn't know how to teach a class." She informed me I could pay a dollar for the room and charge 25 cents a person to come. I decided to teach Troward. I had read The Edinburgh Lectures. I believe I had 13 in the class and got home with a five-dollar gold piece above my rent. Within two years I was speaking to thousands of people a week and never put a notice in the paper. They just came.

This went on for a number of years, and I thought I would like to see how it worked in other places. For several years I went to Eastern cities and around and discovered that people everywhere wanted it and were ready for it. I had already started on what I consider our great synthesis, putting the thing together. I had a beautiful home here and had made many friends, so I came back to Los Angeles after several years of being out of this local field.

In 1925 we took the little theater which used to be in the Ambassador Hotel. It seated 625 people. We put an ad in the paper and started on a Sunday morning. Within a year the people couldn't get in. Then we took the Ebell Theatre and within a year were turning people away from there. It seated 1,295 people.

Then, because we needed the space, I took the Wiltern Theater, and we turned away many, many hundreds every Sunday. This was during the time of the Depression, and probably many people were looking for help even more than ordinarily. I had a big radio program, too, which was a big help.

I want to go back before this happened. I came back here in 1925, and in 1926 some friends of mine said, "You should organize this." But I said, "No, I don't want to do that; I don't want to start a new religion or be responsible for it; I don't want to tell anyone what to do. I don't know what to do myself, so how can I tell anyone else?" But they argued that this was something they thought valuable and the greatest thing in the world, and they finally convinced me--and we became incorporated as a nonprofit religious and educational organization. It was called the Institute of Religious Science and School of Philosophy.

It wasn't until it had many, many, many branches that I really thought to myself, something is going on here, this really is a thing of destiny; it is really going to become the next spiritual impulsion of the world--and I believe it. I finally came to see that it had to be organized so it wouldn't fall apart. We have a very wonderful organization, democratic; we are governed by a top board of 19 members, seven of whom are elected by the field.

This is a new spiritual impulsion in the world; it has certain objectives in the world, has certain purposes: to teach and to practice, and nothing else. Teach and practice, practice and teach--that is all we have; that is all we are good for; that is all we ever ought to do.

We must bear witness to a spiritual truth which has come down to us through the ages; and if there is any truth, this is it. It is a compilation, a synthesis--a putting together of all the great thoughts. If you take the deep thoughts of the ages--Plato and Moses and Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Aristotle and Emerson and Plotinus, all of them--you will have to have the greatest teaching the world has.

It is a terrific thing to synthesize the wisdom of the ages. I don't claim to have done it, but we have come nearer doing it than ever has happened before in the history of the world. Therefore, we are beneficiaries of innumerable sources. Those sources we gladly recognize, and we feel very proud and happy we have had sense enough to use them. They must be brought into line--the great philosophical and spiritual truths must be brought into line with the modern metaphysical knowledge of the Law of Mind in action, which the ancients did not understand at all. If they did, they didn't practice it or, as far as I know, teach it. They taught the broad, generalized principles that underlie it and which will explain it--but not in action.

We have launched a movement which is destined--I won't live to see it and don't want to--in the next hundred years to be the great new religious impulsion of our day and of modern times. I am convinced our movement is a thing of destiny.

Now what do we teach? It is very simple: God is all there is. There isn't anything else; there never was and never will be. When the psychological reaction of condemnation is done away with in the world, Hell will have cooled off; the Devil will be out of business; present-day evangelism will have been rolled up like a scroll and numbered with the things that were once thought to be real.

Something new and grand will have appeared. We are the forerunners of a new race of people; we are the arbiters of the fate of unborn generations; we are the custodians of the chalice of truth. But we are not hung on a cross. We have a song to sing; we have a joy to bring to the world, and love and peace and happiness.

I think we should feel as though we are on a mission. Not a mission of sadness to save souls--they are not lost, and if they were, you wouldn't know where to look for them--but a mission that glorifies the soul. Not to find we are here for salvation, but for glorification--the beauty, the wonder, the delight of that Something that sings and sings and sings in the soul of humankind.

Excerpted by arrangement with DeVorss & Co. from The Philosophy of Ernest Holmes, compiled by George P. Bendall © 1996 by Ann Bendall ($12.95). It is available from DeVorss. To order, call 1-800-382-6121.

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