The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 11

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER XI

THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE

FOR three years after my discovery I sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing; searched the Scriptures, read little else; kept aloof from society, and devoted time and energies to discovering a positive rule. The search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced, in primitive Christian healing, by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know its Science, and I won my way to absolute conclusions, through divine revelation, reason, and demonstration. The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually, and apparently through divine power.^[1]

After a lengthy examination of my discovery, and its demonstration in healing the sick, this fact became evident to me, — that Mind governs the body, not partially, but wholly. I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests.^[2]

Mrs. Patterson had boarded with her husband in several places in Lynn and Swampscott. She had made a few excellent friends who were steadfast in their interest and loyalty through the hardships which were to befall her in the next few years. Of these friends none were more devoted than the Phillipses, an excellent Quaker family. Mr. Thomas Phillips was a manufacturer of shoe-findings and lived with his family in Buffum street.

Mary Baker was very devoted to this elderly couple whom she called by the endearing names of “Uncle Thomas” and “Aunt Hannah.” Their home became a refuge to her in the summer of 1866. She did not live with them, but boarded with Mr. and Mrs. George D. Clark of Summer street. The Clarks lived in their own home, taking in boarders to increase their income. They were a kindly, social family. In their home Mrs. Patterson had solitude when she desired it, and a friendly democratic society when she felt the human yearning for sympathetic interest in other lives. For such independence and comparative comfort the charges were not heavy. Indeed she could not possibly have met them had they been so, for her purse was but scantily furnished at this time.

But to the Phillips home in Buffum street she fled for true social and spiritual companionship. They were of that excellent breeding which comes of true piety, and they cherished this stricken woman, too proud to admit herself desolate among strangers, as a very lamb of the Lord. Their aged mother lived with them. She was a saintly Quaker, who had passed her ninetieth year, and as the years rolled by and she lived on toward the close of her century of human experience, she grew weary of earth. She would sometimes say with gentle impatience, “I fear the good Father hath forgotten me.” One day she refused to rise from her bed, and said to her children, “Thee need never bring my gown again.” She was determined to go, and so she slept sweetly out of this world’s life.

But before that calm change came upon her, she spent many hours with Mary Baker, hours of mutual consolation and uplifting. These two women, between whom yawned a half century, loved each other tenderly, calling one another by her Christian name, which in both cases was Mary. Their intercourse was of a heavenly sweetness. They would sit side by side on a sofa with hands clasped, sometimes conversing and sometimes meditating. Mr. Phillips, returning home and finding them there, would call his wife and say, “Hannah, do you see our two saints? There they sit together, the two Marys.”

In this house silent prayer was the custom before eating. Mary Baker yielded to this custom with great reverence, often saying it seemed to her like a holy communion. With Mr. Phillips she had frequent conversation about her religious views and her healing experience, delineating for him the features of her discovery, stating the principle to be Divine Life operating in human consciousness. He was the first to listen to her intelligently; he was the first to see that she was depicting a new mental state that would elevate all human existence. Upon the aged grandmother her words fell like dew, graciously accepted as pious utterances, but scarcely understood. Upon other members of the family they made but slight impression and, were it not that they loved their guest, they would have been guilty of an occasional smile of incredulity.

Incredulity there must have been among them. A daughter of the house was afterward a Christian Scientist. She was not a believer in these ideas for many years — not indeed until after Mrs. Eddy had long passed out of her life with the death of her parents. She has related to the author her father’s impressions of the future founder of Christian Science. In rebuking their unbelief he voiced a prophecy by saying: “Mary is a wonderful woman, Susie. You will find it out some day. I may not live to see it, but you will.”

This daughter Susan married George Oliver, and in her own home often entertained Mrs. Patterson. Her husband was a business man with a growing shoe trade which actively engaged his mind. He would, however, neglect to return to his business for hours if Mary Baker happened to be at his home for luncheon.

“I cannot understand it,” he would say to his wife of their guest’s conversation, “but I would rather hear Mrs. Patterson talk than make a big deal in business. After listening to her arguments I feel some way as though I would be the better able ‘to cast my net on the right side.’”

It was on Susan Oliver’s brother Dorr, then a schoolboy, that Mrs. Eddy made her first demonstration of Mind-science. The lad had a bone felon which kept him awake at night and out of school during the day. Mrs. Patterson had not been to the Phillips house for several days, and when she did go and found the boy in agony walking the floor, she gently and sympathetically questioned him.

“Dorr, will you let me heal that felon?”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Patterson, if you can do it,” replied the lad.

“Will you promise not to do anything for it or let any one else, if I undertake to cure it?”

“Yes, I promise, and I will keep my word,” said Dorr Phillips. He had heard his father and their friend discuss divine healing many times, and had a boy’s healthy curiosity to see what would happen if all this talk was actually tried on a wicked, tormenting, festering felon that was making him fairly roar with rage one minute and cry like a girl the next.

That night the boy stopped at his sister Susie’s house. “How is your finger,” she asked solicitously.

“Nothing the matter with my finger; it has n’t hurt all day. Mrs. Patterson is treating it.”

“What is she doing to it? Let me look at it.”

“No, you’ll spoil the cure. I promised not to look at it or think about it, nor let any one else touch it or talk about it. And I won't.”

The brother and sister looked at each other with half smiles. They were struggling with skepticism.

“Honest, Dorr, don’t it hurt?”

“No.”

“Tell me what she did.”

“T don’t know what she did, don’t know anything about this business, but I’m going to play fair and keep my word.”

The boy actually forgot the felon and when his attention was called to the finger it was found to be well. This strange result made an impression on the family. No one quite knew what to say, and they were scarcely ready to accept the healing of a sore finger as a miracle.

“But it is not a miracle,” said Mary Baker. “Nor would it be if it had been a broken wrist or a withered arm. It is natural, divinely natural. All life rightly understood is so.”

Mr. Phillips said there was something in that which he could not understand, and there it rested. With peace restored to his body, Dorr Phillips forgot all about Divine science.

At the Oliver home lived a rich young man from Boston who had come to Lynn to learn the shoe business. He was intense and active, eager to show his father his business sagacity. But severe application to business and excitement over his new responsibilities threw him into a fever. He was brought home from the factory and put to bed, where he promptly lapsed into delirium. The Olivers saw that he was very ill, and sent for his parents. Before they arrived Mrs. Patterson came to the house and found Susan Oliver in distress over the serious situation.

“If he should die before they come, what would I do?” she asked excitedly. “Perhaps I should call our physician. But they might not like it. He is their only child. Think of his prospects, his father’s fortune — and for him to be stricken in this way!”

“He is not going to die, Susie,” said Mary Baker. “Let me go in and see him.”

“You may go in, if you think best; but he won’t recognize you,” said Mrs. Oliver.

Mary Baker went into the sick chamber and sat down at the side of the bed. The young man was tossing from side to side, throwing his arms about wildly and moaning. She took his hand, held it firmly, and spoke clearly to him, calling him by a familiar name.

“Bobbie,” she said, “look at me. You know me, don’t you?”

The young man ceased his monotonous moaning, his tossing on the pillows, and his ejaculations. He lay quiet and gazed steadfastly at the newcomer.

“Of course you know me, Bobbie,” she persisted gently. “Tell me my name.”

“Why, yes,” he said with perfect sanity, “it’s Mrs. Patterson.” In a few minutes he said, “I believe I will go to sleep.”

He did go to sleep and waked rational, and did not again have delirium. His parents came and carried the boy off to Boston for medical attention. But he escaped espionage of nurse and doctor, and of his parents also. They had taken him to the old Revere House, where they were living, and had established him comfortably in the famous Jenny Lind room. But all this solicitation could not hold him. He returned to Lynn and sent word of his state of mind and whereabouts to the distracted parents. Mrs. Patterson had made him well in spite of the physician’s declaration that he was in for a run of fever. So simply was the youth’s release from fever accomplished that none who knew of the case would credit her with having done anything. However, Mary Baker had in this instance once more illustrated her discovery.

Her power to heal the sick was shown once again among these friends. The Charles Winslows of Ocean street were related to the Phillipses, and Mrs. Patterson knew them as intimately as she knew the Olivers. Mrs. Winslow had been for sixteen years in an invalid chair, and Mrs. Patterson, who occasionally spent an afternoon with her, desired to heal her.

“If you make Abbie walk,” said Charles Winslow, “I will not only believe your theory, but I will reward you liberally. I think I would give a thousand dollars to see her able to walk.”

“The demonstration of the principle is enough reward,” said Mrs. Patterson. “I know she can walk. You go to business and leave us alone together.”

“But I want to see you perform your cure, Mary,” said Charles Winslow, half mirthfully. “Indeed, I won’t interfere.”

“You want to see me perform a cure,” cried Mary Baker, with a flash of her clear eyes. “But I am not going to do anything. Why don’t you understand that God will do the work if Mrs. Winslow will let Him? Leave off making light of what is a serious matter. Your wife will walk.”

And Mrs. Winslow did walk, walked along the ocean beach with Mary Baker and around her own garden in the beautiful autumn of that year. She who had not taken a step for sixteen years arose and walked, not once but many times. Though a wonderful thing had been accomplished, the woman’s pride kept her from acknowledging a cure. The method seemed to her so ridiculously inadequate. To accept it was like convicting her of never having been ill. So she returned to her former beliefs.

Such were some of the first results of Mary Baker’s efforts to prove that she had grasped a great truth and was not asserting an imaginary doctrine of fanciful or fanatical origin. She began to see in the wilful pride of one patient, the scornful rejection of her services by the parents of another, and the kindly indifference of still another, who guessed things just happened so when you were not watching, that this could not be her field of activity. But she had at her very door abundant opportunity among the humbler shoe workers. The Phillipses were satisfied with their religion and culture; the Winslows were wealthy and secure in their own well-being. They meant to be her friends and told her that the world would say she was mad if she continued to preach divine healing. “It is better not to talk of it,” they said. It seemed to them an unnatural doctrine, something that might become an awkward topic in their drawing-room, something that this interesting woman should be persuaded to forget.

Interesting Mary Baker was, more interesting than ever in her life, with a strange power of impressing the world with the wonder of things which was to grow more and more a part of her. A description of her appearance at this time and of her daily life is afforded through the reminiscences of George Clark, the son of the family in which she was boarding. He says she was a beautiful woman with the complexion of a young girl, her skin being fair, the color often glowing in her cheeks as she talked; her eyes were deep blue, becoming brilliant and large under emotional interest, and her hair falling in a shower of brown curls about her face.

“She usually wore black,” says Mr. Clark, “but occasionally violet or pale rose in some arrangement of her dress. And I remember well a dove-colored gown trimmed with black velvet that she wore in the summer. I remember the colors because she suggested a flower-like appearance; she had a refreshing simplicity about her which made one think of lilies. Yes, that is the very flower, because she had distinction, too. She was a little above medium height, slender, and graceful. Usually she was reserved, though her expression was never forbidding. But when she talked, and she talked very well and convincingly, she would often make a sweeping outward gesture with her right hand, as though giving her thought from her very heart.

“So characteristic were her gestures that I would recognize her to-day were I only to see her outstretched hand. She sat at the head of our table, my mother occupying the center of one side, and I, in my father’s absence, the opposite seat. From this place at our table she easily dominated attention when she cared to talk, and she was always listened to with interest. Every one liked and admired her, though sometimes her statements would cause a protracted argument.

“We were a rather mixed household and were fourteen at table. There were several shoe operatives from the factories, a salesman or two, and a man who has since become a well-known bootmaker. There was a painter amongst us, who afterwards became a successful artist in landscape. He was an argumentative talker, inclined to be skeptical of most things. The wives of several of the men were also guests at table, and conversation was usually lively, often theological.

“My mother had been a Universalist, but she was progressive in her views, a come-outer, as you might say. She was much interested in Spiritualism and used to entertain the Spiritualists. Seances were sometimes held at our house. Mrs. Patterson sometimes was present at these affairs held in our parlor, just as she took part agreeably, but not conspicuously, in any social gathering. You see she liked people, liked to meet them unaffectedly and kindly, but, mind you, always with that air of distinction, that something that made her different. I think she was hungry for hearts, if I may so express it, but she would draw them up to her level rather than go to theirs.

“On days succeeding a seance my mother would often leave the breakfast room with the ladies to talk over the doings of the night before and the nature of the ‘phenomena.’ My mother and Mrs. Patterson would occasionally get into a lively argument, and both expressed themselves most positively on opposite sides of the question. They never fell out about it, for they were both too well used to such divergence of view among their friends. My mother was always having to defend her views, and indeed so was Mrs. Patterson. They respected each other, I may say they had too much affection to quarrel.

“But their arguments were highly entertaining to me, and I often wondered how persons holding such opposite views could shake hands so amiably over their differences. I was a youngster and felt very important, for I was going to sea. I used to think that when I came back from seeing the world, all these religious matters would have become of no importance to me. In that I was mistaken, and I fancy now that the arguments going on there at my mother’s table and of an evening when some of the party played whist and others gathered around Mrs. Patterson were the everlasting and eternal arguments of our lives, and that a prophet was among us unawares.”^[3]

Among the boarders in this mixed and highly democratic household were Hiram S. Crafts and his wife. The former was known as an expert heel-finisher in the shoe factory. He possessed an ordinary intelligence, a common school education, and a tendency toward transcendentalism. This tendency was as marked a characteristic in New England middle-classes during the middle years of the last century as Puritanism was in England during the reign of Charles I, two centuries before. It made Unitarianism and Universalism possible as an outgrowth of Calvinism.

It may appear extravagant to credit with notions of transcendentalism a shoe-worker of Lynn; but in great mental movements in a nation such as the American, or in a race such as the Anglo-Saxon, history has shown that the artisans, craftsmen, and farmers share in the intellectual experience of the scholars, if that experience is more than a passing ripple. This is especially true in the United States. If they are somewhat later than the scholars in arriving at their convictions, the sympathies and antipathies of the laboring class go deeper and are more compelling. Their “feeling” has to be reckoned with. Thus it will be recalled that Cromwell sought religious men for his army, knowing that unless armed with some staying convictions his common soldiers could never stand against the gentlemen and cavaliers of the forces of the king.

Transcendentalism is a big mouthful of a descriptive; but this term had scholarly origin, being Germanic, not Yankee or British. A brief history of the word may not be impertinent. The term was first applied to Kantian philosophy which only a very exceptional shoe-worker of New England could have been expected to read. How then could a shoe-worker acquire tendencies toward such speculations? But the philosophers may wrap their notions in very unusual language and still occasionally coin words the vulgar will learn to handle. Kant used this word to denote intuitions which the descendants of Puritans had already analyzed before Emerson made the word transcendentalism familiar in New England as Carlyle did in old England. Thus it was not left for the Yankee shoe-worker to dig it out of the Critique.

A little before the Civil War broke out, in the late forties and early fifties, the lyceum system became popular in America, especially in New England. Courses of lectures were instituted in the small towns as well as in the large cities, and the latest thoughts in science, art, literature, politics, and philosophy were given to the people. How democratic these audiences were was shown in results. Now transcendentalism in both religion and politics began to flourish. The working people were ready to believe something in religion that released them from the pain and cramp of a long-preached doctrine of inherent total depravity. The “rise of man” was being substituted for the “fall of man” and the cramp in the brain and the ache in the heart were letting go their clutch.

Much earlier than this the intellectual world had revolted from the Calvinistic “plan of salvation.” William Ellery Channing had done such work in Boston that Lyman Beecher left his parish in Eastern Massachussetts in 1823 to go to Boston to “confront and stay the movement”; and he shortly wrote in a letter that “all the literary men of Boston, the professors of Harvard College, the judges on the bench are Unitarian.” That was in 1823. The movement continued among the scholars and intellectuals until about 1836, when it reached the people and spread like contagion. Elias Hicks became the unorthodox leader of the Quakers, and Hosea Ballou was with less intellectual difficulty attacking the Calvinistic dogma with the doctrine of Universalism. This last was the really popular reaction in New England. Unitarianism was scholarly, Universalism popular. But it all amounted to a revolt against dogmatic theology. Channing denied the depravity of man to show “how capable God had made him of righteousness.” He was the center of a bitter fight, but to-day he looks calmly down from his pedestal in the Public Garden of Boston, and the average passer-by may wonder why he is there. Emerson taught that the revelations God made to man were made within the soul, that the soul had infinite dignity and capacity, that transcendentalism was an experience of the immanence of God. He also had his bitter fights with the college men — all forgotten now in the universal reverence for his name. Margaret Fuller described the idea of transcendentalism as an exalting conception of the Godlike nature of the human spirit.

Now it must be remembered that this liberalizing work had been going on in New England for fifty years. Its most prominent teachers were Channing, Emerson, and Theodore Parker. There was a danger in the work, looked at religiously, for whereas the scholars might be supposed to take care of themselves philosophically, the breach made in religious customs for the common man left him nothing. In giving up creed and catechism he could scarcely be expected to come into “living touch” with the philosophy of Germany. So the spectacle is presented of Puritan churches becoming Unitarian and Universalist, and presently a large percentage of the members of these, unable to feed on elevated ethical ideas, dropping off into Spiritualism. Yet Spiritualism, so bizarre and tempting, did not generally satisfy the religious need of the descendants of the Puritans. They had been used to the teachings of stern duty, and it was in their nature to show themselves capable of spiritual effort. Though often of but ordinary intelligence, the artisans and craftsmen and agriculturalists of that period had a deep capacity for religion.

Hiram Crafts was such a man, a Yankee workman transcendentalized. He was not singular, but a type of the man who was to be reached by Christian Science in the first twenty-five years of its promulgation. Out of the hunger of his heart for religion, he was drawn to a more intimate conversation with Mary Baker than he could gain at table, though he sat next her on the left hand and often lingered after supper for an hour of eager questioning and attentive listening. Nor was it singular that her first convert should be made in this way. This man had no intellectual antagonisms to overcome. He was simply hungry for spiritual experience, hungry to realize that personal communion with God that the religious movement of his times had led him to crave. The hunger of this shoe-worker was such that Mary Baker saw she must provide mental food.

She began to systematize her ideas and to write out a new manuscript, not entirely different from those she had prepared for Quimby. She still believed Quimby had shared the truth of divine healing with her, but her writings were now entirely based on her own experiences. These were written that Hiram Crafts might have something to study. The writings were exceedingly simplified, they were brief summaries, a primer of the simplest statements. Hiram Crafts in describing his pupilage years afterwards said:

“Mary Baker G. Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, was not a Spiritualist when she taught me Christian Science in the year 1866. At that time I was a Spiritualist, but her teachings changed my views on that subject and I gave up Spiritualism. She never taught me in my mental practise to hurt others, but only to heal the sick and reform the sinner. She taught me from the Scriptures and from manuscripts that she wrote as she taught me.”

In answer to a story intending to reflect discredit upon his teacher, a story which charged her with living upon this poor workman and his family without payment, he further said:

“Mrs. Eddy boarded at my house when I resided in Stoughton, Massachusetts. She furnished our parlor and gave us the use of her furniture.”

But this statement, while it throws a little color on the picture, is not the one to bear in mind concerning her relation to this family. Hiram Crafts was Mrs. Eddy’s first pupil. She taught him to return to his Bible, to seek in primitive Christianity the religion which he had lost through liberalism, and to become a mental practitioner to the sick and the sinning. In fact she gave him a profession by which he not only was able to live a religious life, but to earn his living. For a long period he did so earn his living and made some unusual cures.

Crafts had gone to Lynn to work in the factories for the winter, but becoming absorbed with this topic of Mind-science, he decided to return to Stoughton to practise it. He invited Mrs. Patterson to go with him and his wife as he was not satisfied with what he had learned, and wanted further information, instruction, and advice in practise.

In leaving Lynn with these humble people, Mary Baker took a radical step. She had tried for months to persuade those who were more akin to her in social and intellectual heritage to accept the truth she had to impart. Of these some, as the Phillips family, loved her, but were impervious to her doctrine. The Winslows had begged her not to talk of it, the Unitarian clergyman of Lynn and his wife were friendly, but they feared for their faith when she spoke to them of God as Principle. The Ellises of Swampscott, mother and son, the latter a teacher, listened with grave interest and amiable social spirit to her arguments for a higher religion when she was a lodger at their house; but they were not moved to accept her tenets. Her doctrine seemed to have the effect of provoking discussion. It aroused in some minds resentment. In some homes where she had experienced agreeable friendships, she found it necessary to withdraw. In these few months of 1866 this feeling had augmented almost to persecution.

Dr. E. J. Thompson, who was at the time, and long afterward practising dentistry in Lynn, told the author that he remembered talking to Mrs. Patterson on several occasions about her ideas of religion.

“I used to say to her,” Dr. Thompson said, “‘It may be all true, but I do not grasp it.’ As long as Mrs. Patterson, afterwards Mrs. Eddy, lived in Lynn, she was known as an unusual woman holding peculiar religious views. Never have I heard anything more against her, and I used to see her every day for many years. It was said she held peculiar views at which many people laughed. But no one spoke against her otherwise.”

Yet it was her very life that they were against, these friends of hers; for life meant nothing to her without religion. She could more easily give up society, culture, books, even church, than she could give up speaking of the understanding of God which had come to her. So she made the decision to go into what would have been for her at an earlier date a social Sahara.

To the Crafts she took her personal belongings and house furnishings and helped to make their home more like what she was used to. Her efforts resulted in an attractive home, though one of great simplicity. It would have been impossible for her to do otherwise than make her environment at least interesting. She lived there not entirely as a guest, for she had made an agreement with Mr. Crafts to guide and tutor him. She also diligently applied herself to writing. The whole problem of the science, of the textbook, and of the practical demonstration might have been worked out here. The wandering of the next few years need not have occurred, but for those inherent traits deep in human nature which show themselves as jealousy, envy, and resentment.

Perfectly natural as an exhibition of human nature was the gradual revelation of Mrs. Crafts’ state of mind. She resented playing the rôle of Martha in this household. To her naturally fell the marketing and housework. Her tasks were not unusual or heavier than she could well assume, but the presence of a woman in her house who was not contributing dollars and cents directly into her palm was disconcerting to her sense of thrift. Moreover, the guest was a woman conspicuously her superior, one upon whom she must occasionally wait as a serving woman. This waiting and serving was honorable and necessary, and looked upon in a very democratic sense by the household. No one dreamed of making it a badge of shame to the wife, certainly not the husband who had been accustomed to seeing his wife so occupied; certainly not Mrs. Patterson, who on occasion had performed the most menial tasks herself, as every New England girl is instructed to do when occasion requires. It had been imparted to Mary Baker as a part of the ethics of her breeding.

However, the thoughts of serving a woman who held long conversations daily with her husband and otherwise occupied herself with writing aroused in Mrs. Crafts a jealousy which was only increased as the days drifted by and the life they all lived was shown to be without blame. There was no ground for reproach, but Mrs. Crafts found a fault expressed in the statement, “She carried herself above folks.” Her jealousy may be regarded as natural by many, but it was certainly unfortunate in that it presently cut off the development of her husband’s work, and broke the continuity of Mary Baker’s.

But Mary Baker was finding out an invaluable secret. She was learning to pursue her work unmindful of petty disturbance. She seems to have mentally registered a vow, or engraved it upon her heart, “This one thing I do.” She was searching the Scripture, keeping aloof from society, and devoting time and energy to discovering a positive rule of healing. It must be remembered that she was finding the task “sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing.” She was winning her way to absolute conclusions through reason and demonstration. The revelation in her understanding was coming to her gradually. This was the test of experience.

After a winter of such work as was thought necessary to prepare Hiram Crafts to practise mental healing, the family removed to the neighboring town of Taunton. East Stoughton, where they had passed the winter, is now called Avon and is sixteen miles directly South of Boston. Taunton is still further South, thirty-two miles distant from Boston. Mr. Crafts opened an office and advertised in the local papers his readiness to deal with various mentioned diseases. He declared, however, that if patients gave him a fair trial and were not benefited he would refund their money. In three weeks he was able to print the testimonial of a woman patient who had been healed of an internal abscess. The patient tells of her own and her friends’ utter astonishment that this should have been done in an incredibly short time when she had suffered for twelve years and that it should have been done without medicines or applications, but she added that she was convinced that he was a skilful physician and that his cures were not the result of accident.

Such indorsement coming from one living in his own town, whose name and address were printed in full and could be easily seen by the villagers and country folk, had a good effect in swelling the number of his visitors, and Hiram Crafts found himself in the way of doing a great deal of good, while his livelihood, which his wife had feared would be threatened by the abandonment of cobbling, seemed secured. She made it a source of complaint, however, that Mrs. Patterson did not herself practise.

Mrs. Patterson encouraged, advised, and supported her student in all he did. During the evenings she discussed the principle of healing with him. Every cure that he made, however simple, was a further demonstration of the science. She was as deeply interested and as greatly rejoiced over each cure as was the practitioner. It was a season of wonder and delight to both teacher and student, and also at times to the faithful Martha of their household. But doubting relatives filled Mrs. Crafts with dissatisfaction and suspicion. To make shoes was a tangible, legitimate method of earning a living. To practise religious healing was, in their estimation, a pious fraud.

Conversations of this nature with her relatives had its effect in due time. It brought about strained relations in the household and made a new adjustment of conditions necessary. But fortunately before this took place a certain work had been accomplished which could not be undone. Mary Baker saw that not only could she herself heal, but she could impart the understanding of the modus operandi to another. In this respect her work already differed from Phineas Quimby’s; she could detach it from herself, separate it from her personality. What remained was to give the philosophy its scientific statement.

1. “Science and Health,” p. 109.
2. Ibid., p. 111.
3. Notes from a conversation with Mr. George Clark in July, 1907.