"The History of New Thought" By Dr. EMMET FOX

The purely spiritual message of Jesus Christ began to be clouded over as the years passed and those who had known him personally disappeared. Early in the 4th century Christianity was made an established and subsidized church by Constantine, and after that the Spiritual Idea rapidly faded out. As the centuries passed, the Spiritual Idea would emerge from time to time here or there among small groups of people (of which the 17th century Quakers are probably the most notable) but it was not until modern New Thought appeared a hundred years ago in New England that the Spiritual Idea became fairly wide-spread in the world. This is really the Second Coming of the Christ prophesied by Jesus himself.

Like all significant movements it came into the race mind through several different channels at about the same time. No one person can be said to have "originated" it. Emerson may be regarded as the prophet of the movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby did practical healing in Portland, Maine, and taught several students who afterwards went out and spread the teaching in different ways. The New England Transcendentalist Movement was really part of the same current of thought, and included in addition to Emerson himself, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau, Theodore Parker and others.

Amos Bronson Alcott - Margaret Fuller - Theodore Parker

Amos Bronson Alcott ( 1799 – 1888) was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights. Of his four daughters, the second Louisa May, fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868.