CHAPTER V
THE QUIMBY CONTROVERSY—MRS. EDDY'S CLAIM THAT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE WAS A DIVINE REVELATION TO HER—THE STORY OF HER FALL ON THE ICE IN LYNN AND HER MIRACULOUS RECOVERY
Nine years after the death of Phineas P. Quimby, Mrs. Eddy published a book entitled Science and Health, in which she developed a system of curing disease by the mind. In this work she mentions Quimby only incidentally, and acknowledges no indebtedness to him for the idea upon which her system is based. Upon this foundation Mrs. Eddy has since established the Christian Science Church, the sect which regards her as the real discoverer and only accredited teacher of metaphysical healing. Quimby himself, though he founded no religious organisation, to-day has thousands of followers; the several schools of Mental Scientists are convinced that he was the discoverer and founder of mental healing in this country. Mrs. Eddy's partisans maintain that she received her inspiration from God, while Quimby's adherents maintain that she obtained her ideas very largely from Quimby. Interrupting, for the present, the narrative of Mrs. Eddy's life, this chapter will attempt to present the arguments of both sides in this controversy.
Quimby's followers do not assert that Quimby wrote Science and Health, or that he is the responsible author of all the ideas now formulated in the Christian Science creed. In brief, their position is this: that Mrs. Eddy obtained the radical principle of her Science,—the cure of disease by the power of Divine mind,—from Quimby; that she left Portland with manuscripts which formed the basis of her book, Science and Health; that she publicly figured for several years after Quimby's death as the teacher and practitioner of his system; that she had, herself, before 1875, repeatedly acknowledged her obligations to him; and that since the publication of the first edition of Science and Health, in her determined efforts to disprove this obligation, she has not hesitated to bring discredit upon her former teacher. They do not maintain that Quimby is, in any sense, the founder of the present Christian Science organisation; they do declare, however, that had Mrs. Eddy never visited Quimby, never listened to his ideas or studied his writings, such an organisation would probably not now exist. On the other hand, Christian Scientists repudiate any suggestion that Mrs. Eddy, or their ecclesiastical establishment, is in the slightest degree indebted to the Portland healer.
Christian Scientists believe that Mrs. Eddy received the truths of Christian Science as a direct revelation from God. She came to fulfil and to complete the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus, that is, possessed only partial wisdom. "Our Master healed the sick," she writes in Science and Health, ". . . and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to his students; but he left no definite rule for demonstrating his Principle of healing and preventing disease. This remained to be discovered through Christian Science."[1] "Jesus' wisdom ofttimes was shown by His forbearing to speak," she writes, "as well as by His speaking, the whole truth. . . . Had wisdom characterised all His[2] sayings, He would not have prophesied His own death and thereby hastened it or caused it."[3] In other words, Jesus, by foretelling His crucifixion, created that thought, and the thought ultimately hastened His death. In a letter written about 1877, Mrs. Eddy again suggests that her mission completes that of the New Testament:
My Dear Student:
I did not write the day your letter came, a belief was clouding the sunshine of Truth and it is not fair weather yet. But Harry, be of good cheer "behind the clouds the sun is still shining." I know the crucifixion of the one who presents Truth in its higher aspect will be this time through a bigger error, through mortal mind instead of its lower strata or matter, showing that the idea given of God this time is higher, clearer, and more permanent than before.[4] My dear companion and fellow-labourer in the Lord[5] is grappling stronger than did Peter with the enemy, he would cut off their hands and "ears"; you dear student, are doubtless praying for me—and so the Modern Law giver is upheld for a time. I shall go to work for the book as soon as I can think clearly for agony, or outside of the belief.
May the All Love hold and help you ever,
Your Teacher
M B G E.
In Retrospection and Introspection, Mrs. Eddy writes:
No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary. No person can compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No person can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science. Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity.
The second appearing of Jesus is unquestionably, the spiritual advent of the advancing idea of God as in Christian Science.[6]
Mrs. Eddy believes that Christian Science is foretold in the Book of Revelation. In Science and Health she writes:
John the Baptist prophesied the coming of the Immaculate Jesus and declared that this spiritual idea was the Messiah who would baptise with the Holy Ghost—Divine Science. The son of the Blessed represents the fatherhood of God; and the Revelator completes this figure with the Woman, or type of God's motherhood.[7]
Again
Saint John writes, in the tenth chapter of his Book of Revelation: "And I saw another mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open; and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth." Is this angel, or message from God, Divine Science that comes in a cloud? To mortals obscure, abstract, and dark; but a bright promise crowns its brow. When understood, it is Truth's prism and praise; when you look it fairly in the face, you can heal by its means, and it hath for you a light above the sun, for God "is the light thereof." . . . This angel had in his hand a "little book," open for all to read and understand. Did this same book contain the revelation of Divine Science, whose "right foot" or dominant power was upon the sea, upon elementary, latent error, the source of all error's visible forms? . . . Then will a voice from harmony cry: "Go and take the little book. Take it and eat it up, and it shall make thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." Mortal, obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find its digestion bitter. . . . In the opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the present age.[8]
Rev. -xii. 1. "And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." . . . Rev. xii. 5. "And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God, and to his Throne." Led on by the grossest element of mortal mind, Herod decreed the death of every male child, in order that the man Jesus (the masculine representative of the spiritual idea) might never hold sway, and so deprive Herod of his crown. The impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our Master; but "of his kingdom there shall be no end," for Christ, God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and peoples—imperatively, absolutely, finally—with Divine Science. This immaculate idea, represented first by man and last by woman, will baptise with fire; and the fiery baptism will burn up the chaff of error with the fervent heat of Truth and Love, melting and purifying even the gold of human character.[9]
The following extracts from Mrs. Eddy's writings indicate the magnitude of her claims, and her conception of her own exalted mission:
She says in Science and Health:
In the year 1866, I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing, and named it Christian Science. God had been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing. . . . No human pen or tongue taught me the Science contained in this book . . . and neither tongue nor pen can ever overthrow it.[10]
Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, continues the teachings of St. Paul.
On our subject, St. Paul first reasons upon the basis of what is seen, the effects of Truth on the material senses; thence, up to the Unseen, the testimony of spiritual sense; and right there he leaves the subject.
Just there, in the intermediate line of thought, is where the present writer found it, when she discovered Christian Science. And she has not left it, but continues the explanation of the power of Spirit up to its infinite meaning, its Allness.[11]
Mrs. Eddy's followers believe that her discovery, in a manner, has repeated the day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Ghost to man. She says:
This understanding is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost,—that influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecostal Day, and is now repeating its ancient history. . . .
In the words of St. John: "He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science.[12]
In Miscellaneous Writings, Mrs. Eddy further says of her Science and her ministry:
Above the fogs of sense and storms of passion, Christian Science and its Art will rise triumphant; ignorance, envy, and hatred—earth's harmless thunder pluck not their heaven-born wings. Angels, with overtures, hold charge over both, and announce their principle and idea. . . .
No works similar to mine on Christian Science existed, prior to my discovery of this Science. Before the publication of my first work on this subject, a few manuscripts of mine were in circulation. The discovery and founding of Christian Science has cost more than thirty years of unremitting toil and unrest; but, comparing those with the joy of knowing that the sinner and the sick are helped upward, that time and eternity bear witness to this gift of God to the race, I am the debtor.
In 1895, I ordained the Bible, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Christian Science Text-book, as the Pastor, on this planet, of all the churches of the Christian Science Denomination. This ordinance took effect the same year, and met with the universal approval and support of Christian Scientists. Whenever and wherever a church of Christian Science is established, its Pastor is the Bible and My Book.
In 1896, it goes without saying, preeminent over ignorance or envy, that Christian Science is founded by its discoverer, and built upon the Rock of Christ. The elements of earth beat in vain against the immortal parapets of this Science. Erect and eternal, it will go on with the ages, go down the dim posterns of time unharmed, and on every battlefield rise higher in the estimation of thinkers, and in the hearts of Christians.[13]
To Christian Scientists, therefore, Mrs. Eddy's discovery or revelation was a great turning-point in the history of the human race, and the manner in which it came about is of the highest importance.
It is difficult to ascertain definitely just when Mrs. Eddy arrived at the conclusion that mortal mind, not matter, causes sin, sickness, and death, as her own recollection of her initial revelation seems to be somewhat blurred. "As long ago as 1844," she writes in the Christian Science Journal, in June, 1887, "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."
To her discovery of the principle of mental healing, she has assigned no less than three different dates:
In a letter to the Boston Post, March 7, 1883, she says:
We made our first experiments in mental healing about 1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science, which, if understood, would heal all disease.
Again, in the first edition of Science and Health (1875), she says:
We made our first discovery that science mentally applied would heal the sick, in 1864, and since then have tested it on ourselves and hundreds of others and never found it fail to prove the statement herein made of it.
In Retrospection and Introspection, she says:
It was in Massachusetts, in February, 1866, . . . that I discovered the Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing, which I afterwards named Christian Science.[14]
In later editions of Science and Health, and in numerous other places, Mrs. Eddy definitely fixes 1866 as the year of her discovery. This is now the generally accepted date. Her enemies have naturally made much of the seeming inconsistency of these statements. To disprove her claim that she had a knowledge of mind healing as far back as 1844 or 1853, they quote Mrs. Eddy's own words in the Christian Science Journal of June, 1887. She there says that before her visit to Quimby in 1862, "I knew nothing of the Science of Mind-healing. . . . Mind Science was unknown to me."
It is scarcely necessary to remark that each of these dates might be intrinsically correct, as each might mark an important advance in Mrs. Eddy's mastery of her science. It would be extremely difficult for any discoverer to date exactly the inception of an idea which eventually absorbed him completely. Doubtless these seeming inaccuracies on Mrs. Eddy's part would have been passed over as due to mere inexactness of expression, had not each date been given to meet some specific charge as to her indebtedness to Quimby—and given, as it would seem, mainly for the purpose of extricating herself from the difficulty of the moment.
As shown above, in the first edition of Science and Health (1875), she said that it was in 1864 that she first discovered that "science mentally applied would heal the sick."
Eight years after Mrs. Eddy had announced 1864 as the correct and authentic date of her discovery, Julius A. Dresser,[15] in a letter to the Boston Post (February 24, 1883), advanced Quimby's claim. It was in a reply to this letter, written March 7, 1883, published in the same paper, that Mrs. Eddy first asserted: "We made our first experiments in mental healing about 1853."
Four years later (February 6, 1887), Mr. Dresser delivered an address upon "The True History of Mental Science," at the Church of Divine Unity, in Boston, in which he declared that Quimby was the originator of the present science of mental healing, and that Mrs. Eddy did not understand disease as a state of mind until she was his patient and pupil. This address caused such comment and discussion, that four months later (June, 1887) Mrs. Eddy answered it through the Christian Science Journal by asserting: "As long ago as 1844, I was convinced that mortal mind produced all disease. . . . In 1862 . . . I was proclaiming . . . that science must govern all healing."
The unprejudiced historian finds discrepancies, not only in the dates of Mrs. Eddy's discovery, but in her accounts of the particular episodes which occasioned it. In the several editions of Science and Health, for example, there are two elaborate versions. In the early editions Mrs. Eddy associates her discovery with experiments which she made to cure herself of dyspepsia; in later editions, as the result of a miraculous recovery from a spinal injury received in a fall on the ice in Lynn, in 1866. Both these episodes are related in all editions of the book. In the early versions, however, the recovery from dyspepsia receives the greater emphasis; while in recent editions the fall on the ice assumes the chief importance, with the other story forced more and more into the background.
In the first edition of Science and Health (1875), Mrs. Eddy gives the following account of how she was led to see the truth:
When quite a child, we adopted the Graham system for dyspepsia, ate only bread and vegetables, and drank water, following this diet for years; we became more dyspeptic, however, and of course thought we must diet more rigidly; so we partook of but one meal in twenty-four hours, and this consisted of a thin slice of bread, about three inches square, without water; our physician not allowing us with this simple meal, to wet our parched lips for many hours thereafter; whenever we drank, it produced violent retchings. Thus we passed most of our early years, as many can attest, in hunger, pain, weakness and starvation. At length we learned that while fasting increased the desire for food, it spared none of the sufferings occasioned by partaking of it, and what to do next, having already exhausted the medicine men, was a question. After years of suffering, when we made up our mind to die, our doctors kindly assuring us this was our only alternative, our eyes were suddenly opened, and we learned suffering is self-imposed, a belief, and not truth. That God never made men sick; and all our fasting for penance or health is not acceptable to Wisdom because it is not the science in which Soul governs sense. Thus Truth, opening our eyes, relieved our stomach, also, and enabled us to eat without suffering, giving God thanks; but we never afterwards enjoyed food as we expected to, if ever we were a freed slave, to eat without a master; for the new-born understanding that food could not hurt us, brought with it another point, viz., that it did not help us as we had anticipated it would before our changed views on this subject; food had less power over us for evil or for good than when we consulted matter before spirit and believed in pains or pleasures of personal sense. As a natural result we took less thought about "what we should eat or what drink," and fasting or feasting, consulted less our stomachs and our food, arguing against their claims continually, and in this manner despoiled them of their power over us to give pleasure or pain, and recovered strength and flesh rapidly, enjoying health and harmony that we never before had done.
The belief that fasting or feasting enables man to grow better, morally or physically, is one of the fruits of the "tree of knowledge" against which Wisdom warned man, and of which we had partaken in sad experience; believing for many years we lived only by the strictest adherence to dietetics and physiology. During this time we also learned a dyspeptic is very far from the image and likeness of God, from having "dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, or beasts of the field"; therefore that God never made one; while the Graham system, hygiene, physiology, materia medica, etc., did, and contrary to his commands. Then it was that we promised God to spend our coming years for the sick and suffering; to unmask this error of belief that matter rules man. Our cure for dyspepsia was, to learn the science of being, and "eat what was set before us, asking no question for conscience' sake; yea to consult matter less and God more."
In the latest editions, Mrs. Eddy relates this incident, but does not connect herself with it. "I knew a woman," she says, "who, when quite a child, adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia," giving the incident merely as an illustration of Christian Science healing.
At present, Christian Scientists date the dawn of the new era from February 1, 1866, on the evening of which day Mrs. Eddy fell on the ice. She says in Retrospection and Introspection:
It was in Massachusetts, February, 1866, and after the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P. P. Quimby, whom Spiritualists would associate therewith, but who was in no-wise connected with this event, that I discovered the Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing, which I afterwards named Christian Science. The discovery came to pass in this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the Scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.
My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.
Even to the Homeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the Divine Spirit had wrought the miracle—a miracle which later I found to be in perfect Scientific accord with divine law.[16]
In a sketch of Mrs. Eddy, published by the Christian Science Publishing Society, still a later version is given:
In company with her husband, she was returning from an errand of mercy, when she fell upon the icy curbstone, and was carried helpless to her home. The skilled physicians declared that there was absolutely no hope for her, and pronounced the verdict that she had but three days to live. Finding no hope and no help on earth, she lifted her heart to God. On the third day, calling for her Bible, she asked the family to leave the room. Her Bible opened to the healing of the palsied man, Matt, ix, 2. The truth which set him free, she saw. The power which gave him strength, she felt. The life divine, which healed the sick of the palsy, restored her, and she rose from the bed of pain, healed and free.
Several documents can be brought in refutation of this claim. Mrs. Eddy's own letter to Julius A. Dresser, after the death of Quimby, apparently disproves the miraculous account given above. This letter, already quoted in full in the preceding chapter, contains the first recorded reference to this accident:
Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk (writes Mrs. Eddy), and struck my back on the ice, and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapours from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.
The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly. . . . Now can't you help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?
In this letter, although it was written two weeks after the mishap in question, Mrs. Eddy makes no reference to a miraculous recovery. In fact, she apparently fears a return of her old spinal trouble and asks Mr. Dresser to protect her against it by the Quimby method. She adds that, although she has not placed her "intelligence in matter," she is "slowly failing."
In the first edition of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy refers to this recovery, but merely as an interesting demonstration of Scientific healing. She also describes it in a letter written in 1871 to Mr. W. W. Wright. Wright, a well-known citizen of Lynn, and a prospective student, addressed several questions to Mrs. Eddy concerning Christian Science. "What do you claim for it," he says, "in cases of sprains, broken limbs, cuts, bruises, etc., when a surgeon's services are generally required?" To which Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Glover, replied:
I have demonstrated upon myself in an injury occasioned by a fall, that it did for me what surgeons could not do. Dr. Cushing of this city pronounced my injury incurable and that I could not survive three days because of it, when on the third day I rose from my bed and to the utter confusion of all I commenced my usual avocations and notwithstanding displacements, etc., I regained the natural position and functions of the body. How far my students can demonstrate in such extreme cases depends on the progress they have made in this Science.
Here again Mrs. Eddy cites the experience merely as a remarkable instance of the power of Christian Science; and does not connect it in any way with her revelation.
The Dr. Cushing to whom Mrs. Eddy refers in this letter is still living at Springfield, Mass. He has the clearest recollection of Mrs. Eddy and the accident in question. He is an ex-president of the Massachusetts Homœopathic Society. From his records he has made the following affidavit:
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
COUNTY OF HAMPDEN, SS.:
Alvin M. Cushing, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I am seventy-seven years of age, and reside in the City of Springfield in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am a medical doctor of the homeopathic school and have practised medicine for fifty years last past. On July 13 in the year 1865 I commenced the practice of my profession in the City of Lynn, in said Commonwealth, and, while there, kept a careful and accurate record, in detail, of my various cases, my attendance upon and my treatment of them. One of my cases of which I made and have such a record is that of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, then the wife of one Daniel Patterson, a dentist, and now Mrs. Mary G. Eddy, of Concord, New Hampshire.
On February 1, 1866, I was called to the residence of Samuel M. Bubier, who was a shoe manufacturer and later was mayor of Lynn, to attend said Mrs. Patterson, who had fallen upon the icy sidewalk in front of Mr. Bubier's factory and had injured her head by the fall. I found her very nervous, partially unconscious, semi-hysterical, complaining by word and action of severe pain in the back of her head and neck. This was early in the evening, and I gave her medicine every fifteen minutes until she was more quiet, then left her with Mrs. Bubier for a little time, ordering the medicine to be given every half hour until my return. I made a second visit later and left Mrs. Patterson at midnight, with directions to give the medicine every half hour or hour as seemed necessary, when awake, but not disturb her if asleep.
In the morning Mrs. Bubier told me my orders had been carried out and said Mrs. Patterson had slept some. I found her quite rational but complaining of severe pain, almost spasmodic on moving. She declared that she was going to her home in Swampscott whether we consented or not. On account of the severe pain and nervousness, I gave her one-eighth of a grain of morphine, not as a curative remedy, but as an expedient to lessen the pain on removing. As soon as I could, I procured a long sleigh with robes and blankets, and two men from a nearby stable. On my return, to my surprise found her sound asleep. We placed her in the sleigh and carried her to her home in Swampscott, without a moan. At her home the two men undertook to carry her upstairs, and she was so sound asleep and limp she "doubled up like a jack-knife," so I placed myself on the stairs on my hands and feet and they laid her on my back, and in that way we carried her upstairs and placed her in bed. She slept till nearly two o'clock in the afternoon; so long I began to fear there had been some mistake in the dose.
Said Mrs. Patterson proved to be a very interesting patient, and one of the most sensitive to the effects of medicine that I ever saw, which accounted for the effects of the small dose of morphine. Probably one-sixteenth of a grain would have put her sound asleep. Each day that I visited her, I dissolved a small portion of a highly attenuated remedy in one-half a glass of water and ordered a teaspoonful given every two hours, usually giving one dose while there. She told me she could feel each dose to the tips of her fingers and toes, and gave me much credit for my ability to select a remedy.
I visited her twice on February first, twice on the second, once on the third, and once on the fifth, and on the thirteenth day of the same month my bill was paid. During my visits to her she spoke to me of a Dr. Quimby of Portland, Maine, who had treated her for some severe illness with remarkable success. She did not tell what his method was, but I inferred it was not the usual method of either school of medicine.
There was, to my knowledge, no other physician in attendance upon Mrs. Patterson during this illness from the day of the accident, February 1, 1866, to my final visit on February 13th, and when I left her on the 13th day of February, she seemed to have recovered from the disturbance caused by the accident and to be, practically, in her normal condition. I did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson's recovery, or that she was in a critical condition, and did not at any time say, or believe, that she had but three or any other limited number of days to live. Mrs. Patterson did not suggest, or say, or pretend, or in any way whatever intimate, that on the third, or any other day, of her said illness, she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or that, discovering or perceiving the truth of the power employed by Christ to heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health. As I have stated, on the third and subsequent days of her said illness, resulting from her said fall on the ice, I attended Mrs. Patterson and gave her medicine; and on the 10th day of the following August, I was again called to see her, this time at the home of a Mrs. Clark, on Sumner Street, in said City of Lynn. I found Mrs. Patterson suffering from a bad cough and prescribed for her. I made three more professional calls upon Mrs. Patterson and treated her for this cough in the said month of August, and with that, ended my professional relations with her.
I think I never met Mrs. Patterson after August 31, 1866, but saw her often during the next few years and heard that she claimed to have discovered a new method of curing disease.
Each of the said visits upon Mrs. Patterson, together with my treatment, the symptoms and the progress of the case, were recorded in my own hand in my record book at the time, and the said book, with the said entries made in February and August, 1866, is now in my possession.
I have, of course, no personal feeling in this matter. In response to many requests for a statement, I make this affidavit because I am assured it is wanted to perpetuate the testimony that can now be obtained, and be used only for a good purpose. I regard it as a duty which I owe to posterity to make public this particular episode in the life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.
On this second day of January, in the year one thousand, nine hundred and seven, at the City of Springfield, Massachusetts, personally appeared before me, Alvin M. Cushing, M.D., to me personally known, and made oath that he had read over the foregoing statement, and knows the contents thereof, and that the same are true; and he, thereupon, in my presence, did sign his name at the end of said statements, and at the foot of each of the three preceding pages thereof.
It will be noted that although Mrs. Eddy's revelation and miraculous recovery occurred on February third, Dr. Cushing visited her professionally three times after she had been restored to health by divine power. Dr. Cushing says that he visited her on the third day—when, writes Mrs. Eddy, she had her miraculous recovery; and also two days later. In August, seven months after her discovery of Christian Science, he was called in to treat her for a cough, and made four professional visits during that month.
Quimby's adherents believe that Mrs. Eddy's own contradictory statements invalidate her claims that God miraculously revealed to her the principle of Christian Science. They assert that, on the other hand, they can clearly prove that she obtained the basic ideas of her system from Phineas P. Quimby. They can prove their contention, they add, from the sworn testimony of many reputable witnesses. They do not rely, however, chiefly upon personal testimony. They put forth as the chief witness against Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Eddy herself. They seek to disprove practically all her later statements regarding Quimby by quoting from her own admitted writings and from letters.
They assert that Mrs. Eddy obtained from Quimby, not only her ideas, but the very name of her new religion. Mrs. Eddy herself says that in 1866 she named her discovery Christian Science. Quimby, however, called his theory Christian Science at least as early as 1863. In a manuscript written in that year, entitled "Aristocracy and Democracy," he used these identical words. In the main, however, Quimby called his theory the "Science of Health and Happiness," the "Science of Christ," and many times simply "Science."
- ↑ Science and Health (1898), p. 41.
- ↑ Both this and other quotations in this article have been modified in later editions of Mrs. Eddy's hooks. The phrase above now stands: "This wisdom, which characterised his sayings did not prophesy his death and thereby hasten or permit it." The author thinks it hardly necessary, in what follows, to Indicate the various readings of the same quotation, but will content herself with naming the particular editions in which the phrases, as quoted, appear. When no edition is mentioned, the latest edition is to be understood.
- ↑ Miscellaneous Writings (1897), pp. 83 and 84.
- ↑ The italics are not Mrs. Eddy's.
- ↑ This is apparently a reference to Asa G. Eddy, her husband.
- ↑ Retrospection and Introspection, pp. 95 and 96.
- ↑ Science and Health (1888), p. 513.
- ↑ The italics in this paragraph are not Mrs. Eddy's.
- ↑ Science and Health (1898), pp. 550, 551, 552, and 557.
- ↑ Science and Health (1898), pp. 1 and 4.
- ↑ Miscellaneous Writings (1897), p. 188.
- ↑ Science and Health (1906), pp. 43 and 55.
- ↑ Miscellaneous Writings (1897), pp. 374, 382, and 383.
- ↑ Retrospection and Introspection, p. 38.
- ↑
Julius A. Dresser was born in Portland, Me., February 12, 1838. He was in college in Waterville, Me., when his health failed. He had a strongly emotional religious nature and intended to become a minister in the Calvinistic Baptist Church. When he went to Mr. Quimby in the summer of 1860, he apparently had only a short time to live. Quimby told him his "religion was killing him." Quimby treated him successfully for typhoid pneumonia, according to Mr. Dresser's son, Horatio W. Dresser of Cambridge, and "gave him the understanding which enabled my father to live thirty-three years after his restoration to health."
Mr. Dresser became an enthusiastic convert to the Quimby faith and for some years devoted himself to explaining Quimby's principle of mental healing to new patients. In this way he met Miss Annetta G. Seabury, whom he married in September, 1863, and Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson.
After his marriage Mr. Dresser took up newspaper work in Portland and in 1866 moved to Webster, Mass., where he edited and published the Webster Times.
The death of Quimby was a great shock to Mr. and Mrs. Dresser. It was generally expected by Quimby's followers that Mr. Dresser would take up the work as Quimby's successor. Mrs. Dresser hesitated to attempt it publicly, knowing her own and her husband's sensitiveness, and after consideration they decided not to undertake it at that time. "This," says Mr. Horatio W. Dresser, "was a fundamentally decisive action, and much stress should be placed upon it. For Mrs. Eddy naturally looked to father as the probable successor, and when she learned from father that he had no thought of taking up the public work, the field became free for her. I am convinced that she had no desire previous to that time to make any claims for herself. Her letters give evidence of this."
Mr. Dresser's health again weakened from overwork, and after living in the West for a time he returned to Massachusetts and began his public work as mental teacher and healer. In Boston Mr. Dresser found that Mrs. Eddy's pupils and rejected pupils were practising with the sick, and he believed that their work was inferior to Quimby's. This gave him confidence to begin. In 1882 Mr. and Mrs. Dresser began to practise in Boston, and in 1883 they were holding class lectures, teaching from the Quimby manuscripts and practising the Quimby method.
From this the facts with regard to Mrs. Eddy and Mr. Quimby spread, and this was the beginning of the Quimby controversy.
- ↑ Retrospection and Introspection, p. 38.