Dr. Ernest Holmes is the founder of Religious Science. He was born January 21,
1887 in rural Maine. He was the youngest of nine children of William N. and Anna C. Holmes. There were three books in constant
use by the Holmes family, The Bible, The Story of
the Bible, and a book written by Henry Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World.
Though he had little
formal schooling, Ernest was a great reader. He was always seeking answers as to why things were as they were. As a young
man he read, Self Reliance, which made a deep impression on him. He read Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook and was inspired by it. When he read books by Thomas Troward,
he was elated to find someone who had aslo reached the same conclusions as he about Life and Reality and how It works.
Dr. Holmes continued reading widely. He read and memorized
works by Walt Whitman, Robert Browning, Meister Eckhart, Emma Curtis Hopkins, just to name a few. Dr. Holmes found that all
the great literature of mankind, whether contemporary or ancient, had many ideas in common, and he decided to devote his life
to the formation of a synthesis of all of them.
In 1926 Ernest Holmes published Science of Mind, the textbook, which
is a summary of his understanding as to the answers to the "questions all thoughtful men have asked."
The heart of the teaching is contained in the first
four chapters of the textbook. It is his understanding of the founding ideas of the
world religions and the philosophies of the past, also, including the philosophies of New Thought, for which he declared he
was a natural candidate.
The
study of Science of Mind is a study of First Cause, Spirit, Mind, that invisible Essence, that ultimate Stuff and Intelligence
from which everything comes, the Power back of creation, the Thing Itself, that which is at the heart of every religion, the
great Reality, The Unseen upon which men of all faiths have an instinctive reliance. It is a study of Its nature and of our
relationship to It. Dr. Holmes states, "Since everything comes from this one, we are It, and It is us. We are It to the
extent that we grasp it."
This is,
of course, a brief glimpse of Ernest Holmes and his philosophy. He was an inspired teacher, attracting thousands of individuals
to his Sunday talks. He had a way of making spiritual ideas practical, therefore, profoundly meaningful. His whole philosophy
centered on "one Life, one Power, a life-affirming power, therefore, a power
for good in which we live and move and have our being; that this is the changeless reality of our being, and to the degree
that we know It, we may make conscious use of It to create a happy, healthy, fulfilling experiences.
