Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/98

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LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

told her, was Mrs. Crosby's guardian spirit; he had long been trying to communicate with her, but had never been able to do so until his sister came to visit her, as Mary was his "only earthly medium." Mrs. Crosby says that she implicitly believed in Albert's care and guardianship over her, that she derived constant strength and comfort from it, and that this spirit friendship was one of the most real she has ever known.

Albert's first communication to Mrs. Crosby occurred as follows:^[1]

One day Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Crosby sat together at opposite sides of the same table. Suddenly Mrs. Patterson leaned backward, shivered, closed her eyes, and began to talk in a sepulchral, mannish voice. The voice said that "he" was Albert Baker, Mrs. Patterson's brother. "He" had been trying, the voice continued, to get control of Mrs. Patterson for many days. "He" wished to warn Mrs. Crosby against putting such entire confidence in Mrs. Patterson. "He informed me," Mrs. Crosby continues, "through her own lips, that while his sister loved me as much as she was capable of loving any one, life had been a severe experiment with her, and she might use my sacred confidence to further any ambitious purposes of her own."

Mrs. Crosby was naturally amazed at this injunction. That

↑ Mrs. Crosby does not assert or even imply that Mrs. Eddy was ever, in any regular or professional sense, a "medium." Mrs. Eddy herself states that she has been able to perform the signs and wonders of spiritualism, though explaining them by another cause. In the second edition of Science and Health, 1878, page 166, she says: "We are aware that the Spiritualists claim whomsoever they would catch and regard even Christ as an elder brother. But we never were a Spiritualist; and never were, and never could be, and never admitted we were a medium. We have explained to the class calling themselves Spiritualists how their signs and wonders were wrought, and have illustrated by doing them; but at the same time have said, This is not the work of spirits and I am not a medium; and they have passed from our presence and said, behold the proof that she is a medium!"

[1] Mrs. Crosby does not assert or even imply that Mrs. Eddy was ever, in any regular or professional sense, a "medium." Mrs. Eddy herself states that she has been able to perform the signs and wonders of spiritualism, though explaining them by another cause. In the second edition of Science and Health, 1878, page 166, she says: "We are aware that the Spiritualists claim whomsoever they would catch and regard even Christ as an elder brother. But we never were a Spiritualist; and never were, and never could be, and never admitted we were a medium. We have explained to the class calling themselves Spiritualists how their signs and wonders were wrought, and have illustrated by doing them; but at the same time have said, This is not the work of spirits and I am not a medium; and they have passed from our presence and said, behold the proof that she is a medium!"

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