Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/245

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MESMERISM DETHRONED
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I went to Lynn to practise with Mrs. Eddy. Our partnership was only in the practise, not in teaching. I practised healing the sick by physical manipulation. This mode was operating upon the head, giving vigorous rubbing. This was a part of her system that I had learned. The special thing that she was to teach me was the science of healing by soul power. I have never been able to come to a knowledge of that principle. She gave me a great deal of instruction of the so-called principle, but I have not been able to understand it. … I was there at the time Stanley was there. I made the greatest effort to practise upon her principle and I have never had any proof that I had attained to it.[1]

This statement made in court many years later was the fact revealed in the spring of 1872. It was the cause of the separation of Mary Baker and Richard Kennedy. Stated as he expressed himself in court it sounds very simple to a worldling. And as Mr. Kennedy related the cause of his separation from Mrs. Glover to the author, it appears a reasonable and ordinary event. He said their separation was not due to a quarrel but to a gradual divergence of views. He continued practising physical manipulation throughout a long career. He claimed to have no knowledge of Christian Science, having never read the text-book and failing to comprehend the spiritual significance of what he had been taught by word of mouth.

This divergence of view, that culminated in the severance of their relations, was developing for

  1. McClure’s Magazine, May, 1907.