Who was Napoleon Hill?

Napoleon Hill wrote one of the most influential books for personal achievement, Think and Grow Rich.  Both Andrew Carnegie and “the Venerable Brotherhood of Ancient India” inspired this book.1  The author’s purpose in the book is for the reader to “find the magic of self-direction, organized planning, auto-suggestion, master-mind association, an amazing revealing system of self-analysis, detailed plans for selling your personal services, and a wealth of other specific helps from the experience of great men who have proved their value.”2

Clement Stone, author of Success through a Positive Mental Attitude (co-authored by Hill),3 stressed the power of the mind and tried to make a science out of faith.  Hill was not the only one who ran with this concept. Robert Schuller’s “possibility thinking,” Norman Vincent Peale’s “positive thinking,” Clement Stone’s “positive mental attitude,” Charles Capps’ “positive confession,” and Oral Roberts’ “seed-faith” principles all teach the same thing:  the power of faith as a force that can change one’s environment, and even God.  Not only is this “doctrine of demons” taught widely to leaders in the business world, but also it pervades the professing church at large.

Napoleon hill received his “guidance” from “unseen, silent forces”4 and “Invisible Counselors” (Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford, and Carnegie).5  He writes further, “I was astonished by the discovery that these imaginary figures became apparently real….”6  Not only did Hill became exceedingly fearful of the meetings with his “Invisible Counselors,” but also by his own admission he confessed:  “The experiences were so uncanny, I was afraid if I continued them I would lose sight of the fact that the meetings were purely experience of my imagination.7

Obviously, demonic spirits were at work to influence this author’s famed Law of Success.  In another part of his book, Hill quotes Henley as writing, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” and then states that Henley should have informed us that such is true for all men, “because we have the power to control our thoughts.8  As a matter of fact, this is one of man’s problems; man wants to be captain of his own soul, master of his destiny.  Mankind tries to usurp God’s sovereignty, as the popular Stanford Graduate School of Business Course, Creativity in Business,9 illustrates.  Mankind is indeed running around on this earth like little gods, but the true and only God has said, “ye shall die like men” (Ps. 82:7).

1 Napoleon Hill, Grow Rich With Peace of Mind (Greenwich, CT:  Fawcett Crest, 1967), p. 159.

2 Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (Brooklyn:  Fawcett Crest, 1963), pp. 5-6.

3 Clement Stone, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (Brooklyn:  Fawcett Crest, 1960).

4 Hill, Grow Rich, pp. 218-219.

5 Hill, Think and Grow, p. 215.

6 Ibid., p. 217.

7 Ibid., p. 218.

8 Ibid., p. 29.

9 Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers, Creativity in Business (New York:   Doubleday, 1986), pp. 36-38.