Prosperity: Chapter 6

*Prosperity* is a New Thought spiritual treatise by Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity Church, arguing that material wealth flows naturally from cultivating the right inner mental and spiritual state. Fillmore's central claim is that prosperity is not primarily about accumulating money or capital but about developing a "prosperity consciousness" — a deep, habituated belief in limitless divine supply — which then attracts the outer conditions of abundance as a secondary effect. He draws heavily on Jesus as his model: a man with no property who nonetheless always had his needs met, because he understood that "the earth is the Lord's" and claimed his identity as a spiritual heir to all of it. A distinctive move in the text is Fillmore's sharp distinction between the *sin of hoarding* (which he condemns) and the sin of poverty thinking (which he equally condemns), positioning both fear of want and love of money as spiritually and practically destructive. He also insists that right thought alone is insufficient — one must act on the ideas that come, staying alert to opportunities that arrive in answer to prayer rather than waiting passively for miracles. The work sits squarely in the early 20th-century American New Thought tradition, blending Protestant biblical interpretation, metaphysical idealism, and proto-positive-thinking self-help into a systematic theology of abundance.

Prosperity: Chapter 6

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