Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/248

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CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST EDITION OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH

HER application to her purpose from 1872 to 1875 was more rigid, more exclusive, more laborious than it had ever been. Her experience in Stoughton and Amesbury had yielded the “Science of Man” manuscript and also certain commentaries on the Bible. Now the book which she purposed writing was to contain the complete statement of Christian Science. It was the book and nothing but the book which engrossed her. These three years saw her in public rarely, except for the walks she took by the sea, those visits to the Red Rocks where she used to linger long in meditation. Of these three years there is very little to record of her activity. But they flowered in the first edition of “Science and Health.” If any one reading this life thinks this great work was accomplished easily, or that when she said the book was given to her as a revelation, she meant that a personal Deity literally guided her hand across the pages, framing the words for her, let him consider the ceaseless mental toil and spiritual application stretching between the miraculous recovery in 1866 and the publication of her book in 1875.

When Mrs. Glover severed her relations with Richard Kennedy, he removed to another house