Talks on Truth

Charles Sherlock Fillmore (August 22, 1854 - July 5, 1948) founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889. He became known as an American mystic for his contributions to spiritualist interpretations of biblical Scripture.

Born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, he broke his hip at age ten due to an ice skating accident which left him with lifelong disabilities. Despite little formal education, he studied Shakespeare, Tennyson, Emerson and Lowell, as well as works on spiritualism, Eastern religions, and metaphysics.

Charles married Mary Caroline Page, known as Myrtle, in Clinton, Missouri in 1881 and they moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where Charles established a real estate business with the brother-in-law of Nona Lovell Brooks (later founder of the Church of Divine Science).

After the births of their first two sons, the couple moved to Kansas City, Missouri and in 1886 attended New Thought classes held by Dr. E. B. Weeks. Myrtle subsequently recovered from chronic tuberculosis and attributed her recovery to her use of prayer and other methods learned in Weeks’s classes. Charles also began to heal from his childhood accident and became a devoted student of philosophy and religion.

In 1889, the Fillmores began publication of a new periodical, ‘Modern Thought,’ notable as the first publication to accept the writings of the New Thought pioneer William Walker Atkinson. In 1891, Charles’ ‘Unity’ magazine was first published. Dr. H. Emilie Cady published ‘Lessons in Truth’ in the new magazine. This material later was compiled and published in a book by the same name, which served as a seminal work of the Unity Church.

Charles and Myrtle were among the first ordained Unity ministers in 1906 and operated the Unity organizations from a campus near downtown Kansas City.

Charles died in 1948 at the age of 93.