This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
162
MRS. EDDY: 1862-1875

equation. Headers of the works of Eev. Warren F. Evans, the first author to produce a book on the rediscovered science of healing, have found in that writer's six volumes one type of interpretation of Quimby's teaching. Well versed in philosophy, the teachings of Swedenborg, and especially in the idealism of Berkeley, Evans put Quimby's views in terms of idealism, with scant emphasis on the realities of the material world. The interpretation made by Mrs. Eddy went farther in the same direction, that is, in her emphasis on the intelligence and power of spirit, as if the world of nature had no existence. The original sources of this interpretation, as based on Quimby's writings, have never been disclosed until the publication of the present volume.

The direct sources were “Questions and Answers,” and Vol. 1 of the manuscripts, supplemented by notes based on the readings and conversations in Dr. Quimby's office. Given Mrs. Eddy's version of Christian Science as it is to be found in her various books, in “The Science of Man” and other small writings, and in the different editions of “Science and Health,” including the first, the reader will be able to trace out her version of the Quimby theory from its inception. Given the present volume in its fulness, the reader will also see what the later version of Christian Science might have been had Mrs. Eddy enjoyed the benefit of all the Quimby manuscripts. For the later writings are in various respects correctives of the view which underestimates the place and reality of the natural world.

It is not necessary to trace out the changes made in the writings which were in Mrs. Eddy's possession. The manuscript known as “Questions and Answers”[1] is the typical instance. With great care Miss Milmine[2] followed all these changes throughout the period which intervened between 1866 and 1875, when Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Glover, lived in Maine and in Stoughton, Mass. She has shown how “Questions and Answers” gradually became “The Science of Man, by which the sick are healed, Embracing Questions and Answers in Moral Science, arranged for the learner by Mrs. Mary Baker Glover,” 1870. She has disclosed the fact that this manuscript was still attributed to Dr. Quimby while Mrs. Eddy lived in Stoughton, but that Mrs. Eddy

  1. See pages 165-178.
  2. See Appendix page 435.