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The Truth About Mary Baker Eddy 

 
 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth,
he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.

Revelation 12:13

...Every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt
condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their
righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.

Isaiah 54:17  

 

General Statements

Falsehood  

Reply to McClure's Magazine

The Quimby Manuscripts Hoax

  

GENERAL STATEMENTS

         In writing my history they can say nothing against me, so they begin to tell lies. (Mrs. Eddy's statement recorded by Lida Fitzpatrick, Divinity Course Notes, p. 25)


         Persecution of all who have spoken something new and better of God has not only obscured the light of the ages, but has been fatal to the persecutors. Why? Because it has hid from them the true idea which has been presented. To misunderstand Paul, was to be ignorant of the divine idea he taught. Ignorance of the divine idea [Christ] betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the ideaignorance of Truth and Love. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 560)


         Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunderstood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadow cast by this error. (Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 105:20)


         For the world to understand me in my true light, and life, would do more for our Cause than all else could. This I learn from the fact that the enemy tries harder to hide these two things from the world than to win any other points. Also, Jesus' life and character in their first appearing were treated in like manner. (Letter to Edward Kimball quoted in The Destiny of The Mother Church, by Bliss Knapp, p. 261)


         When Christian Science and animal magnetism are both comprehended, as they will be at no distant date, it will be seen why the author of this book has been so unjustly persecuted and belied by wolves in sheep's clothing. (Science and Health, p. 104:3)


         There is great joy in this consciousness, that throughout my labors, and in my history as connected with the Cause of Christian Science, it can be proven that I have never given occasion for a single censure, when my motives and acts are understood and seen as my Father seeth them. I once wondered at the Scriptural declaration that Job sinned not in all he said, even when he cursed the hour of his birth; but I have learned that a curse on sin is always a blessing to the human race. (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 278:8)


         I have not had sufficient interest in the matter to read or to note from others' reading what the enemies of Christian Science are said to be circulating regarding my history...I briefly declare that nothing has occurred in my life's experience which, if correctly narrated and understood, could injure me; and not a little is already reported of the good accomplished therein, the self-sacrifice, etc., that has distinguished all my working years. (Christian Science Sentinel, March 12, 1910)


         The effort of disloyal students to blacken me and to keep my works from public recognitionstudents seeking only public notoriety, whom I have assisted pecuniarily and striven to uplift morallyhas been made too many times and has failed too often for me to fear it. The spirit of Truth is the lever which elevates mankind. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be continually pursuing a liethe one evil or the evil one. Therefore I ask the help of others in this matter, and I ask that according to the Scriptures my students reprove, rebuke, and exhort. A lie left to itself is not so soon destroyed as it is with the help of truth-telling. (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 130:7-19)

 

FALSEHOOD

         The Greeks showed a just estimate of the person they called slanderer, when they made the word synonymous with devil. If the simple falsehoods uttered about me were compounded, the mixture would be labelled thus: "Religionists' mistaken views of Mrs. Eddy's book, 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,' and the malice aforethought of sinners."

         That I take opium; that I am an infidel, a mesmerist, a medium, a "pantheist;" or that my hourly life is prayerless, or not in strict obedience to the Mosaic Decalogue,is not more true than that I am dead, as is oft reported. The St. Louis Democrat is alleged to have reported my demise, and to have said that I died of poison, and bequeathed my property to Susan Anthony.

         The opium falsehood has only this to it: Many years ago my regular physician prescribed morphine, which I took, when he could do no more for me. Afterwards, the glorious revelations of Christian Science saved me from that necessity and made me well, since which time I have not taken drugs, with the following exception: When the mental malpractice of poisoning people was first undertaken by a mesmerist, to test that malpractice I experimented by taking some large doses of morphine, to see if Christian Science could not obviate its effect; and I say with tearful thanks, "The drug had no effect upon me whatever." The hour has struck,"If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."

         The false report that I have appropriated other people's manuscripts in my works, has been met and answered legally. Both in private and public life, and especially through my teachings, it is well known that I am not a spiritualist, a pantheist, or prayerless. The most devout members of evangelical churches will say this, as well as my intimate acquaintances. None are permitted to remain in my College building whose morals are not unquestionable. I have neither purchased nor ordered a drug since my residence in Boston; and to my knowledge, not one has been sent to my house, unless it was something to remove stains or vermin.

         The report that I was dead arose no doubt from the combined efforts of some malignant students, expelled from my College for immorality, to kill me: of their mental design to do this I have proof, but no fear. My heavenly Father will never leave me comfortless, in the amplitude of His love; coming nearer in my need, more tenderly to save and bless.

Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 248:8-26 np

 

REPLY TO McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

         It is calumny on Christian Science to say that man is aroused to thought or action only by ease, pleasure, or recompense. Something higher, nobler, more imperative impels the impulse of Soul.

         It becomes my duty to be just to the departed and to tread not ruthlessly on their ashes. The attack on me and my late father and his family in McClure's Magazine, January, 1907, compels me as a dutiful child and the Leader of Christian Science to speak.

         McClure's Magazine refers to my father's "tall, gaunt frame" and pictures "the old man tramping doggedly along the highway, regularly beating the ground with a huge walking-stick." My father's person was erect and robust. He never used a walking-stick. To illustrate: One time when my father was visiting Governor Pierce, President Franklin Pierce's father, the Governor handed him a gold-headed walking-stick as they were about to start for church. My father thanked the Governor, but declined to accept the stick, saying, "I never use a cane."

         Although McClure's Magazine attributes to my father language unseemly, his household law, constantly enforced, was no profanity and no slang phrases. McClure's Magazine also declares that the Bible was the only book in his house. On the contrary, my father was a great reader. The man whom McClure's Magazine characterizes as "ignorant, dominating, passionate, fearless," was uniformly dignifieda well-informed, intellectual man, cultivated in mind and manners. He was called upon to do much business for his town, making out deeds, settling quarrels, and even acting as counsel in a lawsuit involving a question of pauperism between the towns of Loudon and Bow, N. H. Franklin Pierce, afterwards President of the United States, was the counsel for Loudon and Mark Baker for Bow. Both entered their pleas, and my father won the suit. After it was decided, Mr. Pierce bowed to my father and congratulated him. For several years father was chaplain of the New Hampshire State Militia, and as I recollect it, he was justice of the peace at one time. My father was a strong believer in States' rights, but slavery he regarded as a great sin.

         Mark Baker was the youngest of his father's family, and inherited his father's real estate, an extensive farm situated in Bow and Concord, N. H. It is on record that Mark Baker's father paid the largest tax in the colony. McClure's Magazine says, describing the Baker homestead at Bow: "The house itself was a small, square box building of rudimentary architecture." My father's house had a sloping roof, after the prevailing style of architecture at that date.

         McClure's Magazine states: "Alone of the Bakers, he [Albert] received a liberal education. . . . Mary Baker passed her first fifteen years at the ancestral home at Bow. It was a lonely and unstimulating existence. The church supplied the only social diversions, the district school practically all the intellectual life."

         Let us see what were the fruits of this "lonely and unstimulating existence." All my father's daughters were given an academic education, sufficiently advanced so that they all taught school acceptably at various times and places. My brother Albert was a distinguished lawyer. In addition to my academic training, I was privately tutored by him. He was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature, and was nominated for Congress, but died before the election. McClure's Magazine calls my youngest brother, George Sullivan Baker, "a workman in a Tilton woolen mill." As a matter of fact, he was joint partner with Alexander Tilton, and together they owned a large manufacturing establishment in Tilton, N. H. His military title of Colonel came from appointment on the staff of the Governor of New Hampshire. My oldest brother, Samuel D. Baker, carried on a large business in Boston, Mass.

         Regarding the allegation by McClure's Magazine that all the family, "excepting Albert, died of cancer," I will say that there was never a death in my father's family reported by physician or post-mortem examination as caused by cancer.

         McClure's Magazine says that "the quarrels between Mary, a child ten years old, and her father, a gray-haired man of fifty, frequently set the house in an uproar," and adds that these "fits" were diagnosed by Dr. Ladd as "hysteria mingled with bad temper." My mother often presented my disposition as exemplary for her other children to imitate, saying, "When do you ever see Mary angry?" When the first edition of Science and Health was published, Dr. Ladd said to Alexander Tilton: "Read it, for it will do you good. It does not surprise me, it so resembles the author."

         I will relate the following incident, which occurred later in life, as illustrative of my disposition:

         While I was living with Dr. Patterson at his country home in North Groton, N. H., a girl, totally blind, knocked at the door and was admitted. She begged to be allowed to remain with me, and my tenderness and sympathy were such that I could not refuse her. Shortly after, however, my good housekeeper said to me: "If this blind girl stays with you, I shall have to leave; she troubles me so much." It was not in my heart to turn the blind girl out, and so I lost my housekeeper.

         My reply to the statement that the clerk's book shows that I joined the Tilton Congregational Church at the age of seventeen is that my religious experience seemed to culminate at twelve years of age. Hence a mistake may have occurred as to the exact date of my first church membership.

         The facts regarding the McNeil coat-of-arms are as follows:

         Fanny McNeil, President Pierce's niece, afterwards Mrs. Judge Potter, presented me my coat-of-arms, saying that it was taken in connection with her own family coat-of-arms. I never doubted the veracity of her gift. I have another coat-of-arms, which is of my mother's ancestry. When I was last in Washington, D. C., Mrs. Judge Potter and myself knelt in silent prayer on the mound of her late father, General John McNeil, the hero of Lundy Lane.

         Notwithstanding that McClure's Magazine says, "Mary Baker completed her education when she finished Smith's grammar and reached long division in arithmetic," I was called by the Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., Principal of the Methodist Conference Seminary at Sanbornton Bridge, to supply the place of his leading teacher during her temporary absence.

         Regarding my first marriage and the tragic death of my husband, McClure's Magazine says: "He [George Washington Glover] took his bride to Wilmington, South Carolina, and in June, 1844, six months after his marriage, he died of yellow fever. He left his young wife in a miserable plight. She was far from home and entirely without money or friends. Glover, however, was a Free Mason, and thus received a decent burial. The Masons also paid Mrs. Glover's fare to New York City, where she was met and taken to her father's home by her brother George. . . . Her position was an embarrassing one. She was a grown woman, with a child, but entirely without means of support. . . . Mrs. Glover made only one effort at self-support. For a brief season she taught school."

         My first husband, Major George W. Glover, resided in Charleston, S. C. While on a business trip to Wilmington, N. C., he was suddenly seized with yellow fever and died in about nine days. I was with him on this trip. He took with him the usual amount of money he would need on such an excursion. At his decease I was surrounded by friends, and their provisions in my behalf were most tender. The Governor of the State and his staff, with a long procession, followed the remains of my beloved one to the cemetery. The Free Masons selected my escort, who took me to my father's home in Tilton, N. H. My salary for writing gave me ample support. I did open an infant school, but it was for the purpose of starting that educational system in New Hampshire.

         The rhyme attributed to me by McClure's Magazine is not mine, but is, I understand, a paraphrase of a silly song of years ago. Correctly quoted, it is as follows, so I have been told:

Go to Jane Glover,
Tell her I love her;
By the light of the moon
I will go to her.

         The various stories told by McClure's Magazine about my father spreading the road in front of his house with tan-bark and straw, and about persons being hired to rock me, I am ignorant of. Nor do I remember any such stuff as Dr. Patterson driving into Franklin, N. H., with a couch or cradle for me in his wagon. I only know that my father and mother did everything they could think of to help me when I was ill.

         I was never "given to long and lonely wanderings, especially at night," as stated by McClure's Magazine. I was always accompanied by some responsible individual when I took an evening walk, but I seldom took one. I have always consistently declared that I was not a medium for spirits. I never was especially interested in the Shakers, never "dabbled in mesmerism," never was "an amateur clairvoyant," nor did "the superstitious country folk frequently" seek my advice. I never went into a trance to describe scenes far away, as McClure's Magazine says.

         My oldest sister dearly loved me, but I wounded her pride when I adopted Christian Science, and to a Baker that was a sorry offence. I was obliged to be parted from my son, because after my father's second marriage my little boy was not welcome in my father's house. McClure's Magazine calls Dr. Daniel Patterson, my second husband, "an itinerant dentist." It says that after my marriage we "lived for a short time at Tilton, then moved to Franklin. . . . During the following nine years the Pattersons led a roving existence. The doctor practised in several towns, from Tilton to North Groton and then to Rumney." When I was married to him, Dr. Daniel Patterson was located in Franklin, N. H. He had the degree D.D.S., was a popular man, and considered a rarely skilful dentist. He bought a place in North Groton, which he fancied, for a summer home. At that time he owned a house in Franklin, N. H.

         Although, as McClure's Magazine claims, the court record may state that my divorce from Dr. Patterson was granted on the ground of desertion, the cause nevertheless was adultery. Individuals are here to-day who were present in court when the decision was given by the judge and who know the following facts: After the evidence had been submitted that a husband was about to have Dr. Patterson arrested for eloping with his wife, the court instructed the clerk to record the divorce in my favor. What prevented Dr. Patterson's arrest was a letter from me to this self-same husband, imploring him not to do it. When this husband recovered his wife, he kept her a prisoner in her home, and I was also the means of reconciling the couple. A Christian Scientist has told me that with tears of gratitude the wife of this husband related these facts to her just as I have stated them. I lived with Dr. Patterson peaceably, and he was kind to me up to the time of the divorce.

         The following affidavit by R. D. Rounsevel of Littleton, N. H., proprietor of the White Mountain House, Fabyans, N. H., the original of which is in my possession, is of interest in this connection:

         About the year 1874, Dr. Patterson, a dentist, boarded with me in Littleton, New Hampshire. During his stay, at different times, I had conversation with him about his wife, from whom he was separated. He spoke of her being a pure and Christian woman, and the cause of the separation being wholly on his part; that if he had done as he ought, he might have had as pleasant and happy home as one could wish for.

         At that time I had no knowledge of who his wife was. Later on I learned that Mary Baker G. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was the above-mentioned woman.

(Signed) R. D. ROUNSEVEL

         Grafton S. S. Jan'y, 1902. Then personally appeared R. D. Rounsevel and made oath that the within statement by him signed is true.

Before me, (Signed) H. M. MORSE,

Justice of the Peace

         Who or what is the McClure "history," so called, presenting? Is it myself, the veritable Mrs. Eddy, whom the New York World declared dying of cancer, or is it her alleged double or dummy heretofore described?

         If indeed it be I, allow me to thank the enterprising historians for the testimony they have thereby given of the divine power of Christian Science, which they admit has snatched me from the cradle and the grave, and made me the beloved Leader of millions of the good men and women in our own and in other countries,and all this because the truth I have promulgated has separated the tares from the wheat, uniting in one body those who love Truth; because Truth divides between sect and Science and renews the heavenward impulse; because I still hear the harvest song of the Redeemer awakening the nations, causing man to love his enemies; because "blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany
by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 308:5-316:8

 

THE QUIMBY MANUSCRIPTS HOAX

STATEMENT BY SYBIL WILBUR
(Human Life, April, 1907. Reprinted in
The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, 1908 edition, pp. 102, 103) 

         The author made the journey in the depth of winter to the little town of Belfast, Maine, off the main line of travel and somewhat difficult of access, to see, as I supposed, the Quimby manuscripts. Arriving there the custodian of the manuscripts, George A. Quimby, said to me:

         "If all the people who have come to see me in the past twenty years about these manuscripts of my father were fishes and were laid head and tail together they would stretch from here to Montana. If all the letters that have been written to me on this subject were spread out they would make a plaster that would cover the country."

         When I asked Mr. Quimby for permission to see these much-talked-of manuscripts, he took from a drawer in his desk a copybook such as school children use to write essays in. It was in a good state of preservation, not yellowed by age, and was written in from cover to cover in a neat copyist's hand. There were no erasures, or interlineations, no breaks for paragraphs and very few headings. There were dates at the end of the articles, of which there appeared to be two or three different ones in the book. The dates were 1861 and 1863.

         "Is this your father's handwriting?" I asked Mr. Quimby.

         "It is not; that is my mother's, I believe, and here is one in the handwriting of one of the Misses Ware."

         Mr. Quimby went to a great iron safe in the wall of his office and brought out six or eight more books of a similar character. I glanced through the pages and saw that all were written in this style with some variation in the handwriting and then asked:

         "Are none of these in your father's handwriting?"

         "No, they are all copies of copies. . . . These are the only manuscripts I have shown to any one and the only ones I will show."

         "But," I objected, "there have recently been printed facsimile reproductions of your father's manuscripts over the date 1863 in which appears the words 'Christian Science.' I particularly wished to see that manuscript."

         "I am showing you exactly what I showed others. That is the very page that was photographed." (emphasis added) [Note: apparently the "printed facsimile reproductions" had been deliberately altered.]

         "And in whose writing is this?"

         "My mother's, I believe, or possibly one of the Misses Ware; . . . they are copies of things my father wrote. He used to write at odd moments on scraps of paper whatever came into his mind."

         "And have you those papers now?"

         "Yes, I have."

         "Will you let me see a few pages of them?"

         "No, I will not. No one has seen them and no one shall. . . . I tell you they have all been after them, Arens, Dresser, Minot J. Savage, Peabody, and these recent newspaper and magazine investigators. But I have never shown them. Dr. Savage wrote me that I owed it to the world to produce them."

         "And did you not think so?"

         "No. I have said I will never print them while that woman lives."

         "Do you mean Mrs. Eddy?"

         "That is just who I mean."

The following excerpts are from "From Hawthorne Hall, An Historical Story, 1885," by William Lyman Johnson, pp. 254 - 263.

         'A keen observer of the evolution of thought that has been taking place relative to mental healing could recognize, from the signs of the times, that the opportunity was at hand [in the early 1880's] to put forth a method which would be so moulded that the physicians and the clergy would not denounce it. ...

         'The time was opportune for a doctrine of this kind. But where could such be found? To attempt to create a new school would be following in the tracks of a dozen or more who had taken part of what Mrs. Eddy taught, added something of their own and had given it another name. There was practically nothing left in the field of metaphysics out of which to make up a new and especially attractive method. But there was one hope left of reaching the heights of ambition, namely, the exploitation of the work of Dr. Quimby. Here was something already made awaiting the initiative of some one to put it before the public, the great mass of which had never heard of it, for with the death of Dr. Quimby in 1866 its vogue and momentum suddenly stopped.

         'If, previous to 1883, Julius Dresser, patient and close friend of Dr. Quimby, had ideas of building up a following around the Quimby theories, they had not been made evident. It was not until after Mrs. Eddy came to Boston and opened her College, and he was surprised at the interest taken in her work that the desire came to him to have a following like Beecher, Talmage, Moody, Simpson, and Dr. Cullis, and the Quimby theory was the one ready at hand for his use to gain this end.

         'Dr. Quimby, as I have said, passed away in 1866. For seventeen years practically nothing was heard of his writings or his theories until suddenly in 1883, when Mrs. Eddy's teachings were making broad progress, Julius Dresser burst forth with the charge that Mrs. Eddy had derived the basis of her teachings from Quimby. When one considers that Science and Health was first published in 1875 and five thousand copies had been published before this charge was made, one cannot but believe that Julius Dresser had a sinister motive in his thought. The stake for which he determined to play was monumental, the opportunity of centuries, but Mrs. Eddy's work must first be destroyed that his own might rise from the ashes.

         '...When Mr. Dresser realized the demand that existed for mental healing, he felt that his territory had been invaded when Mrs. Eddy came to Boston and began teaching.'

         'By withholding the writings of Dr. Quimby from publication ... and enveloping them in mystery, George Quimby, the son, could do more to keep his father's name before the public than if they were published, because if they were found to be badly expressed, illogical and confused; many words misspelled, and teaching concentration of one mind over another as they do, and carrying no healing power, the whole scheme would fall by its own weight. If it had the power to heal, as Mrs. Eddy's writings have had from the very beginning, Julius Dresser and his wife, who were thoroughly conversant with them, would have brought them forward many years ago, and the time for so doing would have been in 1875 when Mrs. Eddy published her book. It is useless for Mr. Dresser to give as an excuse that the time has not been right for their publication because the public is not ready for them. The public was ready for Mrs. Eddy and the demand for her teaching is increasing rapidly.

         'The whole conception of using Dr. Quimby's methods was cumulative. First, foundations already laid, these having precedence over Mrs. Eddy and her discovery as being many years earlier. Second, an organization composed of patients of Dr. Quimby waiting to be brought together into an organization to perpetuate their everlasting love and gratitude for him. Third, the construction of a method which should have no theology which would tend to keep its followers from attending churches of different denominations. This would be a safeguard as it would keep this method and its adherents from conflict with the ministry. There would also be enough latitude in its teachings relative to the practice of materia medica so that physicians would not make war upon it.

         'Fourth, a propaganda which would extol the Quimby system, and by attacks upon Mrs. Eddy break up the foundations of her work and then destroy it. This result would tend to bring into the new organization, of which Julius Dresser would be the head, those who were interested in some of the many offshoots of Mrs. Eddy's teachings. If, through a propaganda of censure and ridicule, disseminated by press and pulpit, the world could be made to believe that the foundations of her teaching had been taken from Dr. Quimby, and that in his unpublished manuscripts there were more certain and complete instructions for healing than in hers, there would be an exodus of her followers, and those who had been healed by her students would look toward the original fountain headDr. Quimbyfor further help.

         '...To a soaring ambition for personal leadership there must have been a cutting feeling of chagrin when Mr. Dresser contrasted the picture of Mrs. Eddy, when he met her as she entered the office of Dr. Quimby in 1862, and the present time. He saw her in 1862 as a sufferer, craving and pleading for some help that would ease her pain. His close friendship with Dr. Quimby gave him a feeling of superiority over this new patient, but this ailing woman with very little money to spend upon board and lodgings, for some unaccountable reason to him, after 1866, suddenly went past him in her knowledge of healing, and to-day her name is better known to twenty times as many people as that of Dr. Quimby, yet Mr. Julius Dresser, who would take the leadership of a mental healing movement built upon the Quimby theories, had admitted in a letter to Mrs. Eddy, which she has, that he tried to heal by following what he observed Dr. Quimby do, that he could not obtain results, and was unable to heal his wife of a slight ailment.

         'From what I have been able to learn from some of Dr. Quimby's patients it is safe to state that he had no distinctive theology by which he guided his work or which guided him. To patients he said, 'I have no religious belief,' and he denied the immaculate conception and the resurrection of Jesus.

         'There is one fact that should first be considered by those Mr. Dresser will try to influence, namely, that Dr. Quimby's patients must have been considerably over a thousand, yet nowhere had there been created a school with his methods as the fundamentals of a healing process. It seems reasonable to believe that if he had built up a definite system of healing and had written intelligently and exhaustively upon it, so it would heal, that some of his patients would have set themselves up as practitioners of his method. Had he left a definite religious belief, of which his method of healing was a part, why have we not heard of religious bodies working under the theology of Dr. Quimby, as we have our Christian Science Church and Associations? If the foundations of his method had been exactly the same as those of Mrs. Eddy, the whole structure of his work would have been the same, and his patients, grateful for the physical, and especially the spiritual uplift they had received, would have asked him to teach them how to continue to help themselves and to help others just as Mrs. Eddy's patients did. If his patients had been healed, purified and given a new outlook on life equalling that which Mrs. Eddy's patients had received from her teachings, there would have been a stir in the religious world because his followers would have increased, and they would have gone out from the churches in which a personal God and a personal devil were preached, for acquiescence to such a doctrine would have worked constantly against their labor of healing.

         '...[Edward] Arens asked George Quimby to allow him to use his father's manuscripts in court that he might make a 'deadly parallel' with Mrs. Eddy's writings. George Quimby refused. There is something very singular and mysterious about these manuscripts because those which have been shown are not in Dr. Quimby's handwriting but in that of others. Whatever he may have written with his own hand is absolutely withheld from inspection. ...

         'There is no reason why Arens should not have been able to have obtained those manuscripts for his case ...There are laws which provide for such a need. They could have been procured through legal process and the writings compared. If Dr. Quimby's son desired to put his father in the right place before the world and prove that Mrs. Eddy was using his methods instead of those she received by revelation at the time of her healing, he missed the best opportunity he ever had. It seems to me that if he were playing an honest game, that as Mrs. Eddy's cards were all on the table, so to speak, he should have put his there also. It will be very difficult for him to give a reason for not so doing which will be acceptable to people who think carefully. If he considered his father's work of such great and original value he should have defended it at that time. ...

         '...From my observation of Mrs. Eddy at the time I heard her preach, it is easy to see that with her spontaneity of thought, incisive action and power of quick analysis, Dr. Quimby must have found much to interest him in her questions, answers and statements, and it was natural ... he should have put down in his writings what he received from her in explanation as to what she believed to be the reason for certain metaphysical phenomena. After seeing her, hearing her preach, and reading such a definite and incisive reply as she has made to Bishop Fallows in Mind in Nature, can one doubt that Dr. Quimby found in her a remarkable patient? In fact, as her history so far shows to date, she must have been the most remarkable person he ever had as a patient. Where are there others of his patients who have battled as hard and accomplished as much? ...'

MIND HEALING HISTORY
by Mary Baker Eddy
The Christian Science Journal, June, 1887

The fool hath said in his heart "There is no God."

PSALMS xiv. 1.

         By reason of "mining and tunnelling," and the sinister, silently directed mental influence of our latest aspirant to the discovery of Christian Science,—a student who, about one year ago, received his first lesson from me,—Mr. [Julius] A. Dresser has again "let loose the dogs of war." In other words, he has loosed from the leash his pet poodle, to alternately bark and whine at my heels. In a peppery pamphlet, Mr. Dresser delivers a stupendous eulogy over the late P. P. Quimby, as his healer, and exaggerates and fabricates in Quimby's behalf; but all that is kind, and I wish it was honest. I commend gratitude, even in the child who hates his mother; and this gratitude should be a lesson to that suckling litterateur Mr. Marston, whom I taught, and whose life I saved three years ago, but who now squeaks out an echo of Mr. Dresser's abuse.

         Did I write those articles, in Mr. Dresser's pamphlet, purporting to be mine? I might have written them, twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until his death, [in January, 1866]. He was illiterate, and I knew nothing then of the Science of Mind-healing; and I was as ignorant of mesmerism as Eve, before she was taught by the serpent. Mind-science, was unknown to me; and my head was so turned by Animal Magnetism and will-power, under his treatment that I might have written something as hopelessly incorrect as the articles now published in the Dresser pamphlet .

         After turning in despair from Materia Medica to new remedies in the realm of mortal mind, I struck out blindly, and imagined that my other mode of medicine might be more scientific. I even believed that hygiene and physiology were scientific; though I dropped all such conclusions, after discovering the Science of Mind-healing, and immediately gave up the idea that Mr. Quimby's practice was anything above its physical method of manipulation, or that its basis was anything but mortal mind. Indeed, I often asked him for an explanation of his practice, but he never gave it. Once he told me, that by manipulation, and the use of water, he conveyed a healthy electricity to my body. At length his method lost its power over my belief, and the disease was more formidable than ever. I was not healed until after the death of Mr. Quimby; and then healing came as the result of my discovery, in 1866, of the Science of Mind-healing, since named Christian Science.

         If, as Mr. Dresser says, Mr. Quimby's theory (if he had one) and practice were like mine, purely mental, what need had he of such physical means as wetting his hands in water and rubbing the head? Yet these appliances he continued until he ceased practice; and in his last sickness, the poor man employed a homoeopathic physician. The Science of Mind-healing would be lost by such means, and it is a moral impossibility to understand or to demonstrate this Science through such extraneous aids.

         It can be shown that Mr. Dresser tried Quimby's method, and relinquished it because he could not heal by it. I denounced it, after a few of my first students rubbed the heads of their patients, and the immorality of one student opened my eyes to the horrors possible in Animal Magnetism. A mesmerist contemporary with Mr. Dresser, Dr. Evans, had it announced on his business cards, until 1884. that he practised mesmerism. Mr. Quimby never, to my knowledge, taught that matter was mind, and he never intimated to me that he healed mentally, or by the aid of Mind. Did he believe matter and mind to be one, and then rub matter, in order to convince the mind of Truth? Which did he manipulate with his hands, matter or mind? Was Mr. Quimby's entire method of treating the sick intended to hoodwink his patients, as Mr. Dresser would now have us believe?

         Mr. Dresser says Mr. Quimby "progressed gradually out of mesmerism, into a knowledge of the hidden powers of mind." How does Mr. Dresser know this? Let him produce a single proof of it. Mr. Quimby told me and others, that he did not know how he healed. I never heard him intimate that he healed disease mentally; and many others will testify that, up to his last sickness, he treated us magnetically,—manipulating our heads, and making passes in the air while he stood in front of us. During his treatments I felt like one having hold of an electric battery, and standing on an insulated stool.

         His healing was never considered or called anything but Mesmerism. I tried to think better of it, and to procure him public favor. He was my doctor, and it wounded me to have him despised. The last time I saw him, he said, "You have made me all I am in Portland." In those days he needed friends. Why did not Dresser lecture then for Quimby, as he does now? He had no defender then but myself. I believed he was doing good; and even now, knowing as I do the harm in his practice, I would never revert to it, but for this public challenge. I was ignorant of the basis of Animal Magnetism twenty years ago, but know now that it would disgrace and invalidate any mode of medicine.

         He says: Quimby "found in man a principle, or a power, that was not of man himself, but was higher than man, and of which he could only be a medium." The Principle of Christian Science is not to be found in man, for Science shows that God is the Principle of man; and that as the greater cannot be in the lesser, God cannot be in man. Science also shows that a sinning, sick, and dying mortal is a poor medium for the harmonious, eternal, and divine Life.

         Mr. Dresser says: Dr. Quimby "found that disease was nothing but an erroneous belief of mind. Here was a discovery of truth, and on this discovery he founded a system of treating the sick, and founded a science of life." Now it is clear that finding disease to be an error of belief was not the discovery of the Truth that could heal it. When did Mr. Quimby found a system? He neither wrote a book, taught a student, nor explained how he healed. Where is his system? This system is laid on the shelf; and Quimby's manuscripts are withheld from the people, under the pretence that, although the system is so important to this age, his writings are so unfit for it, that nobody must read them. Yet Mr. Dresser can practise this system; and Mrs. Eddy's works, which (as he insinuates) include the substance of this system, are in demand and are doing good. The Science of Life is not founded on a practice, but on Principle. A discovery is not Principle; and an error of belief is neither the foundation nor the Truth of a true discovery. Will this able advocate and expositor, now that he comes to the front, please explain the Principle of the Science of Life, on the basis of the Quimby practice? If he will, then, in the far future, we may hope to climb the hidden heights of this system.

         For the past fifteen years the public have been semiannually notified that the Quimby manuscripts would soon be published; and I now offer a premium for the publication of those alleged manuscripts,—provided, when examined, they prove to be Mr. Quimby's own writings.

         Dresser again quotes from Quimby: "Disease and its power over life, and its curability, are all embraced in our belief."

         I have heard Quimby talk like that myself. He believed in the reality of disease, and its power over life; and he depended on man's belief in order to heal him, as all mesmerists do. Nothing is more remote than this from Science, whose Principle is God, and whose power is vested in its Principle, and not in man. In the Science of Mind you find no disease, and no power superior to Life, because Life is God. This Science substitutes, for human belief, the Divine Mind and His power; and it shows that mortal, erring belief has no curative power. The so-called cure, wrought through belief, is an effect produced by human will, inducing a state of mesmerism that is worse than the disease.

         Dresser quotes Quimby as saying: "I know that I can distinguish that which is false from a truth, in religion or in disease." Here Mr. Quimby says there is truth in disease; yet Dresser says that Quimby found disease to be error. The fact is, Mr. Dresser borrows from my Science and Health though without giving the author due credit, and then attributes these statements to Mr. Quimby's lore. Incapable of deciphering Christian Science Mind-healing, Mr. Dresser does not understand it well enough even to state its ideas correctly, and could not demonstrate Mind-science through his own statement.

         If Truth is in disease, or disease is in Truth, surely disease cannot be destroyed by Truth. Dresser's theory, throughout, is an outgrowth of Animal Magnetism. It presupposes disease to be an Intelligence, Soul to dwell in sense, Truth in error, and Mind in matter.

         Those statements, which Dresser covertly calls misstatements, were facts elicited by his uncalled-for attacks upon me in the Boston Post, four years ago; facts that exposed his falsehoods, and which he had opportunity to disprove in Court,—though he did not venture to appear there. In his eulogy on Quimby he contradicts his past statements in newspaper articles; for in one of them he wrote: "Dr. Quimby claimed no authorship that was eternal, but simply the discovery that disease was an error; and Mrs. Eddy knew that he [Quimby] never used mesmerism in treating the sick."

         In his pamphlet Dresser states that Quimby "discovered the science of life,"—God. Must not the science of life be of necessity eternal? Later, Mr. Dresser owns that Quimby had been a mesmerist.

         Who is the Haman, to whom Mr. Dresser alludes? Is it not he who rests not, but would trouble the peace of the dead, so long as a Mordecai is at the gate,—even though this Mordecai had given Haman his only place and power as a so-called healer?

         Was it "an evil hour," as Dresser hints, when I exchanged poetry for Truth, grasped in some degree the understanding of Truth, and undertook at all hazards to bless them that cursed me? Was it an evil hour when I discovered Christian Science Mind-healing, and gave to the world, in my work called Science and Health, the leaves that are "for the healing of the nations"?

         Was it "for some strange reason" that the impulse came upon me to endure all things for Truth's sake? Does ceaseless servitude, while treading the thorny path alone and for others' sake, arise from "a purely selfish purpose"? This obscure history, which Dresser foists upon the public, provides no legacy of Mind, whereby Quimby's unscrupulous advocate can take one forward step for the human race. After the death of this so-called Originator of Mind-healing, it required ten years of nameless experience for me to reach the standpoint of my first edition of Science and Health, the book which gave Mr. Dresser his only knowledge (meagre as it is) of the Science of Mind-healing.

         Is it love for our "mutual friend," or envy of the living, that would drag the silent departed so mercilessly before the people? I would touch tenderly his memory, speak reverently of his humane purpose, and name only his virtues, did not this man Dresser drive me, for conscience-sake, to sketch the facts. I cannot defraud humanity of its claims, hide the true discovery, or close my eyes to usurpers, casting lots for Truth's seamless robe. Silencing my grief at treading less lightly on the ashes of the dead, I must write down Christian Science Mind-healing as the antipodes of Mr. Quimby's theory (if he had one!) and of his treatment of disease; for true Mind-healing is the opposite of all modes of mortal mind or matter, whether taking the form of Animal Magnetism, of drugs, of hygiene, or of eclectic pathology.

         It has always been my misfortune to think people better and bigger than they really are. My mistake is, to endow another person with my ideal, and then make him think it his own. This is apparent, even in those articles credited to me. When I thought Mr. Quimby was doing good, it was natural for me to help him; and hundreds of others I have helped since then, sparing neither ease, time, nor money for this end.

         The most unselfish motives evoke the most ingratitude; yet it is only by such motives that the best results are achieved. My final discovery of the Science of Mind-healing was the outgrowth of my motives and method.

         A dozen years before meeting Mr. Quimby, I healed desperate cases of disease with unmedicated globules. This was then my modus operandi, arising from such ignorant therapeutics; but it was by no means Christian Science Mind-healing. The lost chord of Truth (healing, as of old) I caught consciously from the Divine Harmony, vibrating its own sweet music. It was to me a revelation of Truth,—God; and Science, explaining the Principle of this Divine Harmony, enabled me to understand it, and to systematize and demonstrate Truth.

         It was after the death of Mr. Quimby, and when I was apparently at the door of death, that I made this discovery, in 1866. After that, it took about ten years of hard work for me to reach the standard of my first edition of Science and Health, published in 1875.

         Before understanding and settling the great question of my discovery, I wrote to Mr. Dresser, who had tried Mr. Quimby's cure by manipulation, and asked him if he could help anybody, or tell me how Quimby healed. He replied, in a letter which I have, to the effect that he could not, and was unable to heal his wife of a slight ailment; adding, that he did not believe anyone living knew how Mr. Quimby healed the sick.

         As long, ago as 1844 I was convinced that mortal mind produced all disease, and that the various medical systems were in no proper sense Scientific. In 1862, when I first visited Mr. Quimby, I was proclaiming—to druggists, spiritualists, and mesmerists—that Science must govern all healing.

         When, therefore, I believed that Mr. Quimby had healed me, I naturally wrote and talked as if his method must be genuine Science, and I was too proud to believe it could be aught else.

         Afterwards I suffered a relapse; then I saw my bitter mistake. I then realized the harmful influence, mentally and physically, of such a false human concept. This I hastened to acknowledge. In proportion as the mischief of misconceived mental bases and methods of treating disease were discovered, I took back my words, uttered in ignorant enthusiasm, and stated the Truth as it is in Science.

         Misinterpretations and misapplications of Truth constitute all error; and error can only be destroyed by the correct interpretation and application of Truth. The animal poison imparted through mortal mind, by false or incorrect mental physicians, is more destructive to health and morals than are the mineral and vegetable poisons prescribed by the matter-physicians. This acknowledgment brings the wrath of mediums and mesmerists upon me, but never warps my purpose to enlighten mankind.

         I discovered the Science of Mind-healing, and that was enough. It was the way Christ had pointed out: and that fact glorified it. My discovery promises nothing but blessings to every inhabitant of the globe. This glorious prospect seems to incense some degraded minds, and stimulate their unscrupulous efforts to thwart its benign influence and defeat its beneficence.

         If ever Mr. Quimby's ominous manuscripts are brought to light, it will be when my copyrights have expired, and the dear-bought treasures of Truth are appropriated by both the evil and the good. Then, arm-in-arm, Mr. Dresser and his skeleton (like Dorcasina and her hero, in Female Quixotism) may enter the drawing-rooms of Mind-healing Science. Stumbling up my stairs, they may fall unexpectedly into good company.

         Alas for the future of Mind-healing, if built on the sand of falsehood! He who is not honest and unselfish can never steer the Ark of Christian Science, casting out error and healing the sick, over the waters of this or any future age. No wonder envy and hate dare not risk their false claims on this sea, where none but Truth can walk the wave. I have sown for others' reaping, and a righteous Father will give the harvest. In the words of Paul: "I have labored, and others have entered into my labors . . . . Paul may plant and Apollos water, but God giveth the increase."

         In the suit brought by me against E. J. Arens, in 1883, for pirating my works,—in his Replication to my Bill of Complaint, he declared that I was not the author of my books; but, on the contrary, that these books were substantially copied by me from manuscripts originally composed by Dr. Phineas P. Quimby. He was unable to prove his claim, and the United States Circuit Court decreed that a perpetual injunction be issued against Arens, restraining him from repeating the offence of pirating my works. He was fined the costs of court; and about four thousand of his pamphlets were destroyed in Boston, being chopped into pieces by the officers of the law. The Records of the United States Circuit Court, in Boston, show this history, in case 1850. Further allowances might have been awarded me; but I refused them, having gone to law not for money, but the cause of Truth.

         Mr. Arens swore that he was not continuing to publish, give away, distribute, or otherwise circulate his infringing pamphlets, and had not done so for more than a full year previous; but his testimony was proven false by testimony of my witnesses, who produced a copy of his pamphlet, purchased at his house within six months of the date of the Writ served on him for stealing my writings.

         If Arens's Replication to my Bill of Complaint had been true, as Mr. Dresser would have it appear, why did Arens not support it with this alleged profuse evidence? Arens's present course shows conclusively that, if his claims had been honest, he would have sustained them in court. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly shall perish."

The following excerpts are from Footprints Fadeless by Mary Baker Eddy (see "Essays and Other Footprints," compiled by R.F. Oakes) and The Christian Science Journal.

MENTAL HEALING IN THE [EIGHTEEN] FIFTIES

         In the fifities, Mrs. Smith, of Rumney, N.H., came to me with her infant, whose eyes were diseased, a mass of inflammation, neither pupil nor iris discernable. I gave the infant no drugsheld her in my arms for a few moments while lifting my thoughts to God, then returned the babe to her mother healed. In grateful memory thereof Mrs. Smith named her babe 'Mary', and embroidered a petticoat for me. I still have carefully preserved that garment to this day.

         This simple case of mental healing occurred in the fifties, before I saw P.P. Quimby, and before I gave up the practice of homeopathy on the conviction that mind, rather than matter, is the Aesculapius...

A MAGNETIC DOCTOR

         In 1862, I went from a hydropathic institute to Dr. P.P. Quimby, a magnetic physician. He used no drugs; with this exception, his method in no way related to Christian Science. He never intimated to me in two years that he treated the sick metaphysically. He did not pray for me when treating me, he talked with me on various subjects, then wet his hands in water and manipulated my head. He helped me for a while, but failed to cure me. He had almost no book-learning, but advanced views on his subject of magnetic practice. He was not scientific, he was not a Christian Scientist. My complete departure from his practice is proven in that the first students in Christian Science tried to demonstrate my teachings after Quimby's method, but Christian Science could neither be demonstrated thus, nor by any material method. Christ was, and is, my only teacher of Christian Science.

         We have no record that Jesus described disease but he healed it. I taught students in Christian Science not to describe disease, but to heal it; whereas Mr. Quimby, after manipulating his patients, retired to record a description of the person and of the disease. I once asked him to show me his description of my case. I read it and returned it to him.

         While under Mr. Quimby's treatment he frequently asked me to look over his scribblings and put them in grammatical form. This I did. Also I wrote manuscript copies of my own, and left them with him. I had no occasion, or incentive, to steal his thunder.

         My first student will say I never taught him what is contained in the chapter RECAPITULATION in Science and Health. I failed to state Christian Science fully until I had written Science and Health in 1875, nine years after the death of Mr. Quimby.

         The Science of Man was written in Lynn, about 1870; it was my own composition, and I prepared it for a class I taught.

         In what I wrote, I sought to express what I had discovered, but failing at first to do this, learned to 'labor and to wait' for more fitness to express an awakened spiritual sense of what the infinite subject of Christian Science contains. I could not have written Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures sooner than I did. Ask any loyal student today if he could learn Christian Science, as I now teach it, from the manuscripts I wrote for my first student, or if he could demonstrate it by manipulation or by electricity: what would his answer be? This is my proof that Mr. Quimby's scribblings, and his treatment of the sick, were mental leagues apart from Christian Science.

         I refer to these facts in my Preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

         The copies that I have seen purporting to be originally his are chiefly plagiarisms from my private manuscripts, and copyrighted works.

         Quimby believed that matter is as real as Spirit, and that sin, disease, death, and contagion are real. In Christian Science all is Spirit and spiritual, there is no matter, no contagion, sin, disease, deathGod is All-in-all, infinite. And the infinite can know nothing and cause nothing apart from the nature of the infinite.

         I had dropped this subject, relating to fossilized falsehood. But evidence and testimony on the side of Truth are always in order, and proverbially better late than never. Hence I republish from the Christian Science Journal an extract from the following letter mailed to me by a student.

         "It might be of interest for you to know that Mr. A. J. Swartz of Chicago went to see the late Doctor P. P. Quimby's son, and procured his father's writings for the purpose of having them published in order to show the world that your ideas were borrowed from Quimby. After having examined them, to their utter disappointment it was found there was nothing that would compare in any way to Science and Health; and he, Swartz, concluded that it would aid you too much to publish them, so they were returned to the owner.

         "Mrs. Swartz saw and read these MSS. and she gave me this information."

MARY H. PHILBRICK.

Austin, Ill., May 18, 1892.

         The following letter is republished from the Christian Science Journal of November, 1886, an attested statement in reference to Dr. Quimby's method of healing the sick:

         "I was treated by Dr. P. P. Quimby, in Portland, for neuralgia in the head. Mrs. Eddy was also a patient of his. I first met her there, and it was in the summer of 1862. His mode of treating the sick was to immerse his hands in water and manipulate their heads. My father (W. P. Morgan) offered him one thousand dollars ($1,000) to explain his method of treating disease; to which the Doctor replied, "I cannot; I do not understand it myself." I never knew of his attempting to teach any one. His method was entirely different from Mrs. Eddy's system of Christian Science."

(Witness) MRS. E. A. THOMPSON.

         "We concur in affirming the known truth of the above statement."

MRS. A. D. MORGAN.
W. P. MORGAN, A. M.
MRS. A. R. RUTTEN.

         "We, the subscribers, hereby testify that the testimony signed by Mrs. E. A. Thompson, Mrs. A. D. Morgan, Mr. W. P. Morgan, A. M., and Miss A. R. Rutten, was spontaneously uttered in Mrs. Eddy's class, was heard by the class of about thirty members and was elicited accidentally."

PROF. E. J. FRENCH.
M. ANNA OSGOOD.
J. A. D. ADAMS, M. D.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, September, 1886.

         "I wish to add to the above statement that I was acquainted with Mr. Quimby four years, and I never heard him say that God healed his patients. He gave me no spiritual explanation of the Scriptures, while Mrs. Eddy's teachings and writings contain little else. I first met Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy in Dr. Quimby's office at the hotel in Portland, Me.,he was not a teacher of her method, neither did he use the pathological system originated by her. In 1886, Mrs. Eddy taught me Christian Science, and she taught me to overcome evil with good, never to harm others. I have practiced Christian Science fifteen years; and I know it to be as far above that which Mr. Quimby talked, wrote, and practised as the heavens are above the earth. I did not regain my health until after I learned Christian Science."

Emma A. Thompson

         The following offer first appeared in the Boston Post and the Boston Traveler in 1887; it has never been accepted:

         "To Whom it May Concern: Mr. George A. Quimby, son of the late Phineas P. Quimby, over his own signature and before witness, stated in 1883 that he had in his possession at that time all the manuscripts that had been written by his father. And I hereby declare that, to expose the falsehood of parties publicly intimating that I have appropriated matter belonging to the aforesaid Quimby, I will pay the cost of printing and publishing the first edition of those manuscripts with the author's name attached:

         "Provided, that I am allowed to first examine said manuscripts, and do find that they were his own compositions, and not mine, that were left with him many years ago, or that they have not since his death, in 1866, been stolen from my published works. Also that I am given the right to bring out this one edition under the copyright of the owner of said manuscripts, and all the money accruing from the sales of said book shall be paid to the owner. Some of his purported writings, quoted by Mr. D------, were my own words, as near as I can recollect them.

         "There is a great demand for my work Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; hence Mr. D------'s excuse for the delay to publish Quimby's manuscripts, namely, that this period is not sufficiently enlightened to be benefitted by them (?), is lost, for if I have copied from Quimby, and my book is accepted, it has created a demand for his."

Mary Baker G. Eddy

Boston Traveler, May 21, 1887

STAGES OF ADVANCEMENT

         After I had made the discovery in 1866 that All is Mindthere is no matter, that Mind includes all that is real of man and the universe, this infinite subject had to be digested mentally and its method of practice comprehended by students before I could give it to the public in a book. So immature was the general thought upon this topic I did not venture to print my manuscript of Christian Science for several years after its discovery. Some of my first students waited to grow to the stature of my teaching and practice. These now can heal through prayer, for they understand that the sick are healed by the divine power, and by spiritual means wherein matter has no part.

         From 1866 to 1875, I myself was learning Christian Science step by stepgradually developing the wonderful germ I had discovered as an honest investigator. It was practical evolution. I was reaching by experience and demonstration the scientific proof, and scientific statement, of what I had already discovered. My later teachings and writings show the steady growth of my spiritual ideal during those pregnant years...

REMINISCENCES
by Mary Baker Eddy
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 306-308:4

         In 1862, when I first visited Dr. Quimby of Portland, Me., his scribblings were descriptions of his patients, and these comprised the manuscripts which in 1887 I advertised that I would pay for having published. Before his decease, in January, 1866, Dr. Quimby had tried to get them published and had failed.

         Quotations have been published, purporting to be Dr. Quimby's own words, which were written while I was his patient in Portland and holding long conversations with him on my views of mental therapeutics. Some words in these quotations certainly read like words that I said to him, and which I, at his request, had added to his copy when I corrected it. In his conversations with me and in his scribblings, the word science was not used at all, till one day I declared to him that back of his magnetic treatment and manipulation of patients, there was a science, and it was the science of mind, which had nothing to do with matter, electricity, or physics.

         After this I noticed he used that word, as well as other terms which I employed that seemed at first new to him. He even acknowledged this himself, and startled me by saying what I cannot forgetit was this: "I see now what you mean, and I see that I am John, and that you are Jesus."

         At that date I was a staunch orthodox, and my theological belief was offended by his saying and I entered a demurrer which rebuked him. But afterwards I concluded that he only referred to the coming anew of Truth, which we both desired; for in some respects he was quite a seer and understood what I said better than some others did. For one so unlearned, he was a remarkable man. Had his remark related to my personality, I should still think that it was profane.

         At first my case improved wonderfully under his treatment, but it relapsed. I was gradually emerging from materia medica, dogma, and creeds, and drifting whither I knew not. This mental struggle might have caused my illness. The fallacy of materia medica, its lack of science, and the want of divinity in scholastic theology, had already dawned on me. My idealism, however, limped, for then it lacked Science. But the divine Love will accomplish what all the powers of earth combined can never prevent being accomplishedthe advent of divine healing and its divine Science.

 

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