Ernest S. Holmes: "Reading Emerson is like drinking water to me".

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes (1887–1960) was an American writer and spiritual teacher. He was the founder of a Spiritual movement known as Religious Science, a part of the New Thought movement, whose spiritual philosophy is known as "The Science of Mind." Founder of Science of Mind magazine. Holmes had previously studied another New Thought teaching, Divine Science. Holmes was an ordained Divine Science Minister.Ernest Holmes was a spiritual seeker. Born in 1887, he was primarily "home schooled" by his mother, who was an ardent reader. In his teens, Ernest began a search for the similarities in all the worlds' religions. He read extensively about all of them. He was deeply moved by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Holmes said, "Reading Emerson is like drinking water to me".

Holmes discovered Thomas Troward's work in 1914, two years before Troward died. He said "This is as near to my own thoughts as I shall ever come". He began speaking on Troward's writing to growing groups when he was 25 without realizing his lifetime ministry had begun. He totally absorbed Troward's ideas and deeply linked them with his own thinking. He was one of the main channels through which Troward's ideas reached American circles.Ernest Holmes studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins in her later years(1924) when she was teaching only individuals. He felt she was among the greatest of the mystics.“Just what Mrs. Hopkins taught him (Ernest Holmes), just how the voice of spirit spoke through her, is hard to delineate. It is difficult to put the intangible into words, to open the door to reality so as to give at least a glimpse of its unspeakable beauty. Mysticism is perhaps the most difficult of all metaphysical themes, for it involves an experience rarely realized and never adequately expressed in words – the realization of identity with absolute being, or the here and now experience of “union with God.” The value of the teaching of Emma Curtis Hopkins, Ernest felt, was the fact that she had not only experienced the consciousness of the mystic herself but imparted spiritual conviction in such a way as to awaken a corresponding consciousness in her students.” Fenwicke L. Holmes, Ernest Holmes: His Life and Times (NY: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1970): 199
Religious Science International: http://www.rsintl.org/