Life, The.
A Monthly Magazine of Christian Metaphysics / A New Weekly Department Paper / A Monthly Journal of Applied Metaphysics / A Weekly Journal of Christian Metaphysics and Healing / Devoted the unfoldment of the life and power essential in man's divine nature, through the inculcation and practice of the principles of Christian Metaphysics. A Department Devoted to Mental Healing.
The Life is more than Meat, and the body, than raiment / Alive, and Free, and True to Truth
1894--1908 Weekly, then monthly in 1902, and then bimonthly and weekly
Kansas City, MO.
Editor: A.P. Barton, editor and publisher, and C. Josephine Barton, associate editor, then A.P. Barton and C. Josephine Barton, editors and publishers; Ralph Barton, staff artist.
Publisher: A.P. Barton and C. Josephine Barton.
Succeeded by: The Child Life (1897-1898?); The Life Holiday Extra (1901)
1/1, April 4, 1894-1908.
$1.00 a year.
Originally 8 pp; 48 pp. from 1901.

Illustrated with halftone plates. Beginning date extrapolated from volume 4, which began in November 1897. A new series was begun in January 1902 as a monthly. The children's companion to this by the same couple was The Child Life, purportedly edited by their six-year old son, Ralph.

Abraham Pool Barton (1845-1914) was an attorney in Missouri and Catherine Josephine Wiggington Barton (1857-1935), his wife, was a portrait painter, art teacher ( the cover and masthead of the first series, 1894-1901, was her work), novelist, violent opponent of the "curse of rum"and later of conscription, and proponent of various quack theories (the Aurora Borealis is "an electrical signal made by people living at the north pole to attract the attention of any other inhabited part of globe"). They were both admirers of Emma Curtis Hopkins (her name, they said was "a pure and shining light to all the world") and attended her "seminary" in Chicago. A.P. Barton related in the 13th anniversary issue of the journal, that in February 1894 "a patriarchal looking old man, with venerable mien and long white beard" entered his law office and said "the spirit came to me in a vision last night and said 'Go to A.P. Barton's office and tell him he must start a paper.'" Barton complied, borrowed Charles Fillmore's subscription list for Unity and lists of potential subscribers from the leading New Thought journals of the period, and published the first issue for 500 subscribers, 100 of them paid in full for a year.

On the spectrum of New Thought, Life was decidedly on the uplift, healing and comfort side of the scale. The advertisements for the journal that ran through the 1890s proclaimed that it was "devoted to the unfoldment of life and power in man's divine nature [and has a] department devoted to Mental Helaing, International Bible Lessons and Renderings from the Original Languages by the editor." It vehemently opposed the "Money Wants Me" aspect of the New Thought movement. In an often-quoted article captioned "Fakes" in 1907, A.P. Barton proclaimed:

"This morning on coming to my desk I took up a new or advanced thought magazine, so-called, and turned to the advertising pages. I was soon nauseated and disgusted with what I read. One applicant for business announced that dollars were actually given for dimes by his method. Another claimed that an E. India magazine brings light that Americans need and clinches the argument with a silly quotation, 'Out of darkness cometh light.' . . . Another fake wants to enlighten a very ignorant people on the subject of sex, --knows all about it--and another to make all of us beautiful by means of a face mask. Still another offers to furnish an elixir of life which is the very foundation of youth. One offers to impart mystic powers to everybody who applies, and an old, emaciated looking fellow offers to heal us all without drugs, 'by psychic methods.' Three ugly women in a row (pictures) offer to tell your past and present and future and how to be happy and get money. Another has an appliance which 'compels deep breathing' and another tells you all about 'voice placing,' whatever that may be. Then comes a 'startling fact--like miracles,' etc. Cures everything, absolutely free--if you pay for it. Others tell you how to get acquainted with yourself, etc., etc. Of course we know these are all desperate bids for money and are mainly fraudulent in their pretensions. Of course we know these are all desperate bids for money and are mainly fraudulent in their pretensions. We could always have filled The Life with such stuff, but would not. If you see an ad. in The Life you may be sure of at least one thing -- we believe the person or thing advertised to be genuine. We have always declined to carry healers' cards simply because there are so many fakes in the business . . . ."

The journal carried advertisements for the books of Freeman B. Dowd published by the Eulian Publishing Company, and for P. Braun's New Man, as well as notices promoting the Bartons' own pamphlets and courses and, occasionally, those of other New Thought practitioners like Henry Wood. The Bartons sold a series of New Thought lessons. Their "elementary course" of Home Life School of Christian Metaphysics and Healing included two weeks in their home at a cost $35.00 for room, board and lessons and the "normal course"cost $50.00, and entitled the student to teach others. The announcements for these were buttressed by enthusiastic letters from satisfied students and patients. Like other teachers, the Bartons also provided the times and dates of "Silent Hours" of coordinated benevolent thought by their followers.

Thomas J. Shelton's Christian, February 1901, noted The Life Holiday Extra: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Metaphysical and Applied Science, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1901, edited by Mrs. Barton in Kansas City. This obviously reflects some stage in the development of this journal or an attempt to expand it, but the details are unknown. The Bartons also published Child's Life, 1897-1898, probably a juvenile version of this journal, that was ostensibly edited by their son Ralph with Mrs. Barton as "assistant editor." Ralph Waldo Emerson Barton (1891-1931) went on to become a famous illustrator of the period (illustrating Gentlemen Prefer Blonds for Anita Loos, for example), and was an editor (and shareholder) of The New Yorker and a successful Hollywood director,.

This journal was very successful for a journal on the "soft" side of New Thought. Julius Dresser, The True History of Mental Science (New York, Alliance Publishing Co., c. 1899), says this, along with Thought/Unity were among the most widely read of early New Thought periodicals, and Rowell's American Newspaper Directory for 1900, for example, says the journal had a circulation of about 1,000. NYPL.

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