New Thought

I've been researching New Thought authors, my interest being the 1800's to early 1900's. Thomas Troward, who mentored Genevieve Behrend, is indicative of using mental facilities to visualize what you want , being tuned into the Universal consciousness to be guided towards action and having the faith that your seeds will bear fruit. And that prayer plays an integral part.In “Your Invisible Power”
(CH16), Genevieve Behrend wrote:
Scientific Prayer
The Principle Underlying Scientific
Prayer
In prayer for a change in condition, physical, mental, or financial, for yourself or another, bear in mind that the fundamental necessity for the answer to prayer is the understanding of the scientific statement:“Ask, believing you have already received,
And you shall receive”

She had written and lectured on LawOfAttraction material some 80 years before the contemporaies. Feelings of lack were because you had forgotten your connection to “Divine abundance”.

Troward once wrote in a letter to Behrend: ”I speak after many years of careful study and consideration when I say that the Bible and its Revelation of Christ is the one thing really worth studying, and that is a subject large enough in all conscience, embracing, as it does, our outward life and of everyday concerns, and also the inner springs of our life and all that we can in general terms conceive of the life in the unseen after putting off the body at death.”.

Born in India to English parents Troward was raised in England. At age 22, in 1869, he returned to India and took the difficult Indian Civil Service Examination. One of the subjects was metaphysics and Troward surprised everyone with his answers because of their originality. He became an assistant commissioner and was quickly promoted to Divisional Judge in the Punjab, where he served for the next 25 years. While in India, he learned the language of the country. He studied all of the bibles of the world, including the Koran, Hindu scriptures and books of Raja Yoga. His studies in original Hebrew provided the foundation for his book, Bible Mystery and Bible. His books use scientific jargon that was present around 1900. He was raised in the Church of England and had read the Bible daily from boyhood. Universal consciousness and the power of the mind seem to be central themes.

Evidently, a number of people drawn to New Thought through healing (Robert Collier, Charles and Cora Fillmore).

The occult was around too. Paschal Beverly Randolph (October 8, 1825 – July 29, 1875) was an American medical doctor, occultist and writer. He claimed special knowledge. After his death in 1875, the floodgates opened, and from the 1890s until well into the 1950s, the West was inundated by a tide of all-seeing, all-knowing, all-telling swamis, yogis, fakirs, and mahatmas. Some of these representatives from the East were genuine teachers who represented known lineages of Indian and Asian spiritual and philosophical tradition.

Others were simply phonies or staged acts.

Now, where does New Thought meet Mental Science?