Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/183

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HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
145

claimed to have gone as far as that. I have said that belongs to future time. I can alleviate—I cannot prevent a broken bone. I would send for a surgeon and set the bone—and after that I would alleviate the pain and inflammation. Can't do more in my present development—I have seen the dead in understanding raised[1]—The infant is the son of the parent and the parents' mind governs its mind—Through the parents' mind I cure the infant.

Before 1872 I taught manipulation and the use of water.

That was not all I taught—I never said that was the science, but I said it was a method, and until I saw a student doing great evil, etc.[2]

Richard Kennedy in his testimony said:

I went to Lynn to practise with Mrs. Eddy. Our partnership was only in the practice, not in her teaching.

I practised healing the sick by physical manipulation—The mode was operating upon the head giving vigorous rubbing—This was a part of her system that I had learned—The special thing she was to teach me was the science of healing by soul power—I have never been able to come to 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—She claimed that it would cure advanced stages of consumption and the worse cases of violent disease, that these were but trifles under her Science.

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 or had any success from it.

I had nothing to do with the instructions—She told me that she had expelled Mr. Stanley from the class—of his incompetency to understand her science—that it was impossible to convince him of the folly of his times—that his faith in a personal God and prayer was such that she could not overcome it—She used the word Baptist in connection with him because he was a Baptist—but it was the same with all other creeds.

So long as they believed in a personal God and the response to prayer, they could not progress in the scientific religion—I performed the manipulation of Mr. Stanley as follows:

Mrs. Eddy requested me to rub Mr. Stanley's head and to lay special stress upon the idea that there was no personal God, while I was rubbing him.

I never entirely gave up my belief in a personal God, though my belief was pretty well shaken up.


  1. See letter to W. W. Wright on page 149.
  2. Reference to Richard Kennedy.