The Power of Faith (Condensed Classics): The Founding Father of Positive Thinking on How to Lead a Healthful Life

By Norman Vincent Peale and Mitch Horowitz

ARE YOU NEGLECTING THE GREATEST SOURCE OF POWER IN YOUR LIFE?

The Power of Faith is one of the earliest and most profoundly practical works to come from the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Written in 1940, twelve years before Peale's classic on positivity, The Power of Faith describes in simple, clear terms how to harness the extraordinary energies of prayer, reflection, faith, and religious insight to revolutionize your life in the areas of relationships, business, self-image, healing, guilt, peace of mind, and purpose.

In this first-ever abridgement-introduced and edited by PEN Awardwinning historian and New Thought scholar Mitch Horowitz-the pioneering minister of positive spirituality shows you:

• Why prayer works.
• How faith in a higher power eases your mind about business.
• Why you are never truly alone.
• How to move past grief.
• The true source of self-respect and positive self-image.
• The secret to a happy marriage.

In the space of a single sitting, allow Norman Vincent Peale to imbue you with a whole new sense of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G&D Media
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781722521608

Norman Vincent Peale

Norman Vincent Peale was an American minister and author known for his work in popularizing the concept of positive thinking, especially through his best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Foundations of Positive Thinking

By Mitch Horowitz

This short book is a condensation of Norman Vincent Peale’s first collaboration with psychiatrist Smiley Blanton, originally titled Faith Is the Answer. Their 1940 effort presents a valuable summary of Peale’s therapeutic theology and of the themes he explored to worldwide notice twelve years later in his Power of Positive Thinking.

But in The Power of Faith you will discover a different Norman Vincent Peale from the one who later authored one of the world’s most popular books.

The authorial voice of The Power of Faith reveals the younger Peale not only as a trenchant and elegant writer, but also as a figure of considerable literary breadth. In The Power of Faith, Peale effortlessly weaves Scriptural analysis and little-known works of theology with the ethical insights of figures including Marcus Aurelius, William James, Henry Drummond, and Daniel Defoe, as well as the modern voices of his own congregants.

Peale wanted to be understood not only as a theologian of good tidings, but also as a true intellectual, which he was. One of the pains of Peale’s life was that, despite his worldwide fame and in some ways because of it, he got rundown in lettered circles after the publication of The Power of Positive Thinking. Critics and academics, many of whom I doubt read or more than skimmed Peale’s books, often depicted the minister a kind of philosopher for simpletons. This was a profoundly unfair judgment, which I explore in my historical treatment of Peale in One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life.

The Power of Faith is less mystical in nature than many of Peale’s later works. The minister had not yet fully immersed himself in the study of New Thought, Science of Mind, Christian Science, and other variants of the mind metaphysics that characterized The Power of Positive Thinking. Yet the telltale influence of early twentieth-century French mind theorist Emile Coué appears in The Power of Faith. In Peale’s chapter on self-criticism he notes, imagination is stronger than will. That was one of Coué’s key insights. Coué noted that our behavioral patterns are dictated by subliminal emotion and self-image much more than by personal determination. Hence, Coué—who coined the mantra day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better—considered self-reconditioning essential to the pursuit of a happy and purposeful life. Peale’s resonance with this principle warmed him to concepts he later discovered in New Thought, including the therapeutic uses of visualization, prayer, and affirmation. You will see that Peale also examines the Proverb as a man thinketh, which served as the basis of the spiritual-psychology brought by early New Thought author James Allen in 1903.

Peale and psychiatrist Smiley Blanton originally wrote this book in alternating chapters. My condensation retains only the key points of Peale’s own chapters. In some cases, Blanton’s considerable psychological insights have been supplanted by more recent developments in neuroscience, cognitive restructuring, and psychopharmacology. But Peale’s spiritual observations and Scriptural analyses remain universal, actionable, and revealing of his earliest attitudes toward the therapeutic value of faith.

I believe that in this book you will discover Norman Vincent Peale not only as a deeply appealing storyteller and communicator, but also as a man whose vision of religion as a workable, practical philosophy helped transform the spiritual landscape of the past century—and of our own. His early vision may transform your life, as well.

CHAPTER ONE

The Power of Faith

If I were to tell you that everything troubling you, every weakness, every unhappiness can be eliminated; if I were to declare that everything about your life can be strong and effective, what would be your reaction? Probably many of you would be skeptical or at least wistful, doubtful that such marvelous results are possible. Some people have never had anything great happen to them, so they doubt that it can happen. They suffer from what a great thinker once referred to as the vast inertia of the soul.

But it is a fact that any person’s life can be so completely changed that every crippling thing known and unconscious which interferes with his well-being can be eliminated or effectively controlled. This is no academic assertion but one that can be fully documented from the experiences of many