The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 15

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER XV

A CONFLICT OF PERSONALITIES

THE house at Broad street was purchased by Mrs. Glover that it might become a refuge from the distraction of fleeting worldly interests encountered in boarding-houses; that it might be a haven of security insuring her against moving from place to place and the intrusion of elements of thought likely to create discord in her little flock of students; in fact it was bought for a home and designed for a center of peace. How shortly it became a storm center, a theater of intense mental disturbance, must be shown; for it was while living in this house that Mary Baker had enough of agitation, through the discord of her early students, the dereliction and menace of those she had cherished as friends and intimate aids, the failure of the second edition of her book, the harassment of a series of petty lawsuits, and ultimately, the revelation of a dastardly plot as ingenious as it was diabolical, to make her wish to leave not only the house but Lynn, and to seek a new base of activity.

A great work of promulgation lay before the founder of Christian Science. The twilight of dawn was revealing its elements in her mind, but they did not yet stand forth distinctly. The signs of the times were as yet but vague. Looking backward, philosophic students of history declare that no such period of freedom and pure democracy was ever experienced in the world’s history as was enjoyed in the United States from about 1870 to 1880. What was to come after in the despotism of trusts and the menace of great wealth in the hands of a few was not yet dreamed of. America felt young, happy, and virtuous. A revived industrialism, following the disastrous waste of the Civil War, made the consciouness of the people buoyant. No one thought of criticizing democracy. Only that little group of transcendentalists in New England, known as the Brook Farm colony, had ever ventured to raise the warning cry of the danger of a mechanical society plunging ahead to materialism. And the seeds of that social experiment had not yielded its harvest of socialism.

But Mary Baker had the nature of a true seer. No more than the great Way-shower of Palestine would she have dreamed of leading a few followers into a community to make a stand against the trend of the world. Like Him, she knew the truth must be sown broadcast. But the seed must first be grown in the little garden plot among her earliest students. Renan has said that Jesus could not possibly have had a knowledge of Plato or of Buddha or of Zoroaster; yet He was aware, by the subtle sympathy of humanity, of the elements of the great philosophic speculations of His age. It is possible that even a scholar like Renan may be mistaken in his judgment as to how the seer of God becomes possessed of the needs of his time. Mary Baker was not a sociologist, a political economist; she was not concerned with those social passionists whose philosophy was shaped at the universities, and who were insisting upon the religion of democracy. But in her heart of hearts was the seed of truth which was to multiply for the health of her age.

Classes in Christian Science were formed almost immediately after Mrs. Glover was settled in her new home. All during the summer of 1875, in spite of laborious hours spent in her little study under the eaves, she conducted classes, and these were more numerously attended than were those formerly held at South Common street. Though her charge for tuition had been advanced from $100 to $300, Mrs. Glover’s income was still meager for the reason that she privately admitted the greater percentage of her students without fee, teaching them gratis that the work might the more rapidly spread. Payment was required from those who were able, and some made their payments in instalments. Time and experience proved that those who paid valued the treasure they secured, while those who did not very shortly allowed it to become valueless. The weekly wage of the toiler is of infinite sweetness to him, while a munificent allowance is an unpalatable surfeit of indulgence to an ingrate. For in human nature is the instinct to value only that which we acquire by some individual energy. The gospel is as free as the sunshine, but the yoke and the burden, the leaving of father and mother, are indications of the service required; and diffused sunshine is regained only by labor as in mining for coal and diamonds. Concerning the tuition fee for class instruction Mrs. Eddy has written in “Retrospection and Introspection”:

When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction in Christian Science Mind-healing, I could think of no financial equivalent for an impartation of a knowledge of that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course of lessons at my college, — a startling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept this fee. God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom of this decision; and I beg disinterested people to ask my loyal students if they consider three hundred dollars any real equivalent for my instruction during twelve half-days, or even in half as many lessons. Nevertheless, my list of indigent charity scholars is very large, and I have had as many as seventeen in one class.^[1]

Among the students in the first class held in Broad street was Daniel H. Spofford, a man who figured largely in the events of the next few years. He came from New Hampshire, and as a youth had lived in Eastern Massachusetts, working as a chore boy on farms and later as a watchmaker’s apprentice until he entered the army at the age of nineteen. He served through the Civil War and when he was mustered out returned to Lynn and entered the shoe-shops. He first met Mrs. Glover in South Common street. He did not enter her class there, but had access to her manuscripts through another student and copied them, or portions of them, for his private perusal. Leaving Lynn for a three years’ sojourn in Southern and Western states, he carried these copies about with him, pondering and studying them. Being awakened to a faith which he but partially grasped, he returned to Lynn and attempted to practise Mind-healing without further acquaintance with the author of the manuscripts.

Mrs. Glover heard of this man and his efforts to practise her doctrine. She smiled at the excited students who reported the facts to her and sent a messenger to him with a note which read: “Mr. Spofford, I tender you a cordial invitation to join my next class and receive my instruction in healing the sick without medicine, — without money and without price.” So Mr. Spofford became one of those students who because of his qualities was given his instruction gratis.^[2]

It was directly after Mr. Spofford’s completion of class work that he called together a meeting of students for the purpose of arranging for renting a hall and raising a subscription toward sustaining Mrs. Glover as a teacher and instructor in weekly services. Mr. Spofford’s emotional and moral nature had been deeply stirred by his class work, so truly affected that he was able to say thirty-five years after to hostile critics of Mrs. Eddy that no price could be put upon what Mrs. Glover gave her students, that the mere manuscripts which he had formerly studied were, compared to her expounding of them, as the printed page of a musical score compared to its interpretation by a master.

The meeting of students which Mr. Spofford called together appointed a committee to carry out the will of the meeting and the committee was composed of the three who supposedly stood nearest to the teacher at the time, each one of whom was to participate in one of the petty lawsuits which presently involved the community of students in strife. These students composed for the time a committee harmonious in devotion to the cause and enthusiastic for its furtherance. They drew up the following resolutions:

Whereas, in times not long past, the Science of healing, new to the age, and far in advance of all other modes, was introduced into the city of Lynn by its discoverer, a certain lady, Mary Baker Glover,

And, whereas, many friends spread the good tidings throughout the place, and bore aloft the standard of life and truth which had declared freedom to many manacled with the bonds of disease or error,

And, whereas, by the wicked and wilful disobedience of an individual, who has no name in Love, Wisdom, or Truth, the light was obscured by clouds of misinterpretations and mists of mystery, so that God’s work was hidden from the world and derided in the streets,

Now, therefore, we students and advocates of this moral science called the Science of Life, have arranged with the said Mary Baker Glover to preach to us or direct our meetings on the Sabbath of each week, and hereby covenant with one another, and by these presents do publish and proclaim that we have agreed and do each and all agree to pay weekly, for one year, beginning with the sixth day of June, A. D. 1875, to a treasurer chosen by at least seven students the amount set opposite our names, provided, nevertheless, the moneys paid by us shall be expended for no other purpose or purposes than the maintenance of said Mary Baker Glover as teacher or instructor, than the renting of a suitable hall and other necessary incidental expenses, and our signatures shall be a full and sufficient guarantee of our faithful performance of this contract.

(Signed)

Elizabeth M. Newhall	$1.50
Dan'l H. Spofford	2.00
George H. Allen	2.00
Dorcas B. Rawson	1.00
Asa T. N. Macdonald	.50
George W. Barry	2.00
S. P. Bancroft	.50
Miranda R. Rice	.50

This was the first step toward a Christian Science church. It will be seen from the amounts pledged by the signers of the resolutions that they did not have very much to contribute and the whole sum amounted to only ten dollars per week, part of which was to go for the necessary expense of a hall. But the meetings begun in this humble way continued as long as Mrs. Eddy remained in Lynn. Her student, S. P. Bancroft, conducted the singing, his wife playing the melodeon. The hall was one used by the Good Templars and was rather small. The audiences seldom exceeded twenty-five.

Besides teaching, preaching, and writing, Mrs. Glover performed many healings. She healed George Barry of consumption; she caused Mrs. Rice to have a painless delivery of a child. These two students were so devoted to her that they were continually about her house, rivaling each other in services to their teacher. Barry habitually addressed her as “Mother.” He inscribed to her the lines of poetry he wrote, of which the following is an example of his state of mind, if not of any particular genius for verse making:

“O, mother mine, God grant I ne’er forget,
“Whatever be my grief or what my joy,
“The unmeasured, unextinguishable debt
“I owe to thee, but find my sweet employ
“Ever through thy remaining days to be
“To thee as faithful as thou wast to me.”

The young man spaded her garden, went to market for her, carried messages to and from the printer in Boston, and in many ways made himself an efficient aid. Mrs. Glover taught him patiently for he was not educated. She corrected his penmanship and orthography, and after he had shown some advancement allowed him to do some copying for her. When he presently fell in love, he brought the young woman of his choice to see Mrs. Glover. She received her not only as a friend but as a student, and gave her sanction to the marriage which presently followed. It was understood that Mrs. Glover felt as a mother toward Barry, and such a relationship with her was recognized by the other students.

Dorcas Rawson and Barry were the students who arranged for buying the Broad street house. When the first edition of “Science and Health” was published they, with Elizabeth Newhall, undertook to dispose of the one thousand volumes, making short journeys into the adjoining towns and canvassing from door to door with them, talking Christian Science wherever they could get a hearing, and frequently winning disciples who later came to Mrs. Glover for instruction. George Barry considered himself chief agent for the disposal of the book. He had an interest in its sale, for he and Elizabeth Newhall had advanced the money for its publication.

As yet everything was moving harmoniously in the little home. But the advent of a new personality was to throw the band of workers into a confusion of jealousy. The new figure in the drama of the early church work was Asa Gilbert Eddy. Mr. Eddy was sent to Mrs. Glover by the Godfreys of Chelsea.

Mrs. Glover had instantly healed a finger on Mrs. Godfrey’s right hand from which she was suffering greatly. Mrs. Godfrey had broken a needle in her hand and further aggravated the wound by poisoning it with colored thread. For weeks she had carried her hand in a sling, refusing to allow the finger to be amputated as a physician advised. Visiting her relatives who were Mrs. Glover’s tenants, she had been most astonishingly healed. Retiring as usual, she arose with the finger cured. Her astonishment and gratitude was such that she sent many patients to Mrs. Glover, brought her own child through a blinding snowstorm to be cured of membranous croup, sent a workman who had fallen from the roof of a house and lost the use of his arm. All these cases were cured by Mrs. Glover.

Now the Godfreys were acquainted with Mr. Eddy. They described him to the author as a grave, sweet-tempered man, to whom children were devoted. He was a bachelor living in East Boston, an agent for a sewing-machine concern. He was not in good health and the Godfreys, recounting to him their unusual experiences, impressed upon him the idea of visiting Mrs. Glover.

When Mr. Eddy visited Mary Baker she not only healed him, but advised him to enter a new class she was forming. She read his character and read it aright. He was a man of such gentleness and sweetness that persons knowing him but slightly were often led to think him devoid of the true force of manliness. He was, however, so those who knew him best declared, possessed of the staying quality of sterling integrity. Seldom assertive, preferring to master a situation by patiently studying it and moving conciliatingly and gently among the forces at play, he could, when occasion demanded, act with a masterfulness that commanded instant respect. Mrs. Glover placed considerable responsibility in Mr. Eddy’s hands very early in their acquaintance and as soon as she did so a conflict of personalities began which shook her circle from circumference to center.

Daniel Spofford had opened an office in Lynn directly after finishing his class instruction. His practise had been quite successful and had had two years to grow into a flourishing condition. Mrs. Glover had been revising her book during these two years and was aware of the slow and unsatisfactory way in which the first edition was being gradually disposed of. She sent for Spofford and laid before him the needs of the movement. The book must be sent forth to do the work it was written to do. She needed greater business ability than George Barry possessed to accomplish this. A new edition must be watched through the press, and ways and means of circulation thought out. She asked Daniel Spofford to undertake this work. Spofford assured her of his willingness but referred to his practise. What should he do with that? Mrs. Glover told him to give it into the hands of Mr. Eddy.

An extraordinary move in any organization causes instant excitement in all its parts unless the whole is so unified that it will act in perfect harmony. George Barry, who had professed such profound love and intentions of devotion toward his teacher, now instantly rebelled when acquainted with her desire to relieve him of the direction of her publication. He who had been all docility and gentleness, while he felt himself the most important personage in the field, now went into a paroxysm of rage and would not come near the Broad street house. Spofford was in little better mood. He affected to accept the situation cheerfully, but constantly hinted that he was being driven out, that a cloud had come between him and his teacher, that certain students were trying to compel him to leave her. But, he asserted, nothing should compel him to do so. They might try to their utmost, but he would stand faithful to his post.

The talk waged back and forth among the students. Barry was angry, Spofford was offended, the women students who had made desultory efforts to sell the book felt themselves criticized in the new arrangement. Some of the patients did not like Mr. Eddy as well as they had Mr. Spofford; some liked him better. And so the jealousies waged for many months. In the midst of the struggle of personalities Mrs. Glover quietly married Asa Gilbert Eddy, and the war temporarily ceased. The marriage took place on New Year’s Day, 1877. The Unitarian clergyman, the Rev. Samuel B. Stewart, whose services Mrs. Glover had formerly attended with Richard Kennedy and Miss Susie Magoun, performed the ceremony.

Sobered by this unlooked-for event, the students for a time were quieted. Barry who all the time had expected to be solicited to return became ominously silent. Mr. Spofford, who received back his practise when Mrs. Eddy was married, attended to his extra duties with some address but with mingled feelings. He had entertained other ideas which this event had dashed to the ground, and for a time he knew of nothing better to do than attend to his work without complaint. Other students showed their pleasure in what they regarded as a romantic and humanizing incident by giving Mr. and Mrs. Eddy a reception about three weeks after the wedding, bringing various bridal gifts to her house and spreading a supper there. They made speeches indicative of their good feeling and generally betrayed a desire to make a rosy ring around their teacher and the man she had chosen to honor.

Mrs. Eddy replied to their good-will offering with an address which brought them out of the somewhat hectic sentimentalism which threatened to inundate her. She spoke of her marriage as a spiritual union and recalled them to their fidelity to truth and the noble purposes they had cherished. She then took the Bible and read from it, expounding certain passages until she brought the company into its usual sense of the spiritual work she wished her students to perform. They beheld their teacher and leader, the same Mary Baker, with hands as ever outstretched to them with the spiritual gift to be transferred through them to the whole human race and to the age; with growing solemnity they saw through her eyes the far horizon and the vision of the work they had to do. Mr. Eddy at this moment became simply one of them again, a student who stood a little closer, but still a student. He, like them, must carry out her directions that the spreading of Christian Science should not languish, but to him was the special duty given of guarding her against the onslaughts of the envious and ambitious who pressed too close with their human desires.

If for a time Mrs. Eddy’s influence lulled the storm, it suddenly broke forth again and now followed storm upon storm. George Barry was the first to move. He brought suit against her in the spring of 1877 to recover $2,700 which he said was due him for services extending over five years. His bill of particulars stated his services very minutely. He mentions copying manuscripts, searching for a printer, moving goods from the tenement on South Common street, disposing of some articles at auction and storing others, clearing up rooms, paying rent for same, withdrawing moneys from the Boston Savings Bank, aiding in buying the house at 8 Broad street, aiding in selecting carpets and furniture, helping to move and putting down carpets, working in the garden. He made items of fifty cents for fetching up a pail of coal from the cellar, items for walking out with her in the evening in search of a dwelling. There was nothing that he did not mention in his bill of particulars, even to a pair of boots which he bought for himself with her money. As for the copying, he had done it so badly that his work was useless to her. Mrs. Eddy had taught him, healed him, paid many of his debts, guided him in his marriage, and directed his practise as she did that of many of her students.

When the suit was heard in court Mrs. Eddy went on the stand and explained her relations with the young man, how she had practically adopted him, and what her intentions toward him had been. Her attorney, Charles P. Thompson, argued: “It is important to look at the relations of the parties and at what their understanding was at the time of rendering and receiving services. If the understanding was that of an exchange of services without any compensation, it cannot be revoked.” Barry recovered $350 instead of $2,700 and afterwards repented and made a tentative effort to return to her good-will. But whether or no that was a serious intention will be presently shown.

Mrs. Eddy’s next troubles were with Spofford. She was preparing the manuscript for her second edition. In the midst of this labor Mr. Spofford began to evince a renewal of his dissatisfied frame of mind. He balked at all of her advice and continually declared that the book could not be financed. While striving to make the way plain for him, her business agent, and continuing her literary labors, her doors were thronged with perplexed students who wished her help in healing patients. The students pressed upon her so with their varying needs that she was finally driven to leave her home for a time with her husband and keep her whereabouts unknown, for they interrupted her work and the book lay waiting.

She gave Mr. Spofford a Boston address and from there wrote him several letters urging him to speak to certain of the students and patients for her. Among them were two young women of Ipswich, the wife of the mayor of Newburyport, and a manufacturer of Boston, all of whom had pressed her for attention and healing. She wished them to be instructed in the necessity of doing their own mental work and thus to cease interfering with the more important work which lay upon her. Concerning these matters she wrote him: “If the students still continue to think of me and to call on me I shall at last defend myself and this will be to cut them off from me utterly in a spiritual sense by a bridge they cannot pass over. … I will let you hear from me as soon as I can return to prosecute my work on the Book. … I am going far away and shall remain until you will do your part and give me some better prospect.”^[3]

And again she wrote him: “If you conclude not to carry the work forward on the terms named, it will have to go out of edition as I can do no more for it, and I believe this hour is to try my students who think they have the cause at heart and see if it be so. … The conditions I have named to you I think are just. … Now, dear student, you can work as your teacher has done before you, unselfishly, as you wish to, and gain the reward of such labor. Meantime, you can be fitting yourself for a higher plane of action and its reward.”^[4]

Mr. Spofford's reply to this earnest solicitation that he should apply himself to pushing the book came in July of that year. He closed out the stock of “Science and Health” which he had received from George Barry and Elizabeth Newhall, and paid over the money from the sale of these books, something over $600, to these two students. They had supplied the capital for the first edition in consideration of gratitude to their teacher. They now received all the profits that had accrued, as Mrs. Eddy had no agreement with them for a royalty. There was a loss all around by this premature act. Mr. Spofford claimed $500 against the edition for personal expenses, which he could not by such hasty and ill-advised methods realize. The students themselves lost by the transaction. The publication of the book was temporarily interrupted and the author left without means to finance the second edition which was still in press. When the second edition finally came out it was found to be a slim book, labelled Volume II, though there was no Volume I. It was wellnigh a failure; its typographical errors were legion.

Now it is not necessary to inquire rigidly into the mental state of Daniel Spofford at that time to understand what had happened. He complained later that Mrs. Eddy did not understand the situation; he said that she was a woman and surrounded by many advisers, and would suggest that her life was in small like a queen’s court where suspicion and jealousies are rife and that one could not act for her firmly and steadfastly and bring about satisfactory results. Doubtless he had some business trials, doubtless there were many difficulties in financing a book of this character, and doubtless there was unwarrantable interference from the various students who wanted the text-book, wanted to see it circulated speedily and widely. But a man of ability should have silenced the intruders, should have worked patiently and purposefully, and should not have wound up so important a business as had been intrusted to him by rash precipitation.

Mrs. Eddy was justly indignant at his gross mismanagement of her affairs and his extraordinary method of accounting. He left her stranded without the means to forward a second edition. This might have been remedied had he withdrawn. But he did not withdraw. He called on her, not to explain his trials and the disadvantages under which he labored, but to tell her that he intended to remove from her all means for carrying on her work, “for,” said he, “you have proven yourself incapable as a leader, and I propose to carry on this work myself and alone.”

Thus Spofford did not go quietly and leave Mrs. Eddy to gather up the strands that were broken. He began to practise and to teach in opposition to her and to call upon her students with the object of deflecting them from her to himself as he had threatened he would do.

How did Mrs. Eddy meet these trials? It has been stated that she authorized and inspired at her house in Broad street meetings of devoted students who concentrated their thoughts upon individuals, — presumably Kennedy, Spofford, and Barry, — that a formula of mental suggestion was used against them.

Perhaps the charge that Mrs. Eddy so instructed her students to gather in a body and work mentally to do injury to others may be considered as an example illustrating her statement, “As of old, evil still charges the spiritual idea with error’s own nature and methods.” Christian Scientists who were in the movement in its first decade have stated that there is absolutely nothing hidden or occult in the teaching of Christian Science and that they have never known of a concerted effort of thought being made to bring about any result against an individual. There is, in fact, no secret doctrine. But they have said that Mrs. Eddy steadfastly from the beginning of her teaching to the close instructed her students never to seek to injure another mentally.

Mrs. Eddy says in “Miscellaneous Writings,” “I have no skill in occultism; and I could not if I would, and would not if I could, harm any one through the mental method of Mind-healing, or in any other manner.” Indeed, Mrs. Eddy would have had to go back on everything she had ever taught or written of the working of divine love in the consciousness of the individual had she suggested that destructive thought be used against those who were opposing her work. The idea is utterly inharmonious with the fundamental tenets of her faith.

However, it is not possible to state whether that early group of pioneer students did or did not meet to concentrate their thoughts against individuals with the idea of destroying their harmful influence. Certainly they did not have Mrs. Eddy’s inspiration for such an endeavor, and in doing so must have departed from her teachings. But Mrs. Eddy had propounded not only the doctrine of Divine Mind governing all reality, she had indicated the rival force of illusion in the theory of mesmerism or animal magnetism and in the second edition of her book, the so-called Volume II, she had further indicated the working of this hypnotic force. She had come to see that manipulation is not the only method of hypnotism, but that the mind acts independently of matter for evil as well as for good. Now the little handful of struggling neophytes had not learned how to meet this evil and were doubtless more or less frightened at the notion of it.

Some of the students saw in the dereliction of Daniel Spofford the operation of malicious animal magnetism,^[5] and became much alarmed. Miss Lucretia Brown of Ipswich particularly declared that Mr. Spofford was causing her to suffer a relapse into ill health by calling upon her and suggesting that she was not in health. Miss Dorcas Rawson, who was one of the earliest students, was Miss Brown’s teacher and healer. She reported Miss Brown’s condition to Mrs. Eddy and the fact that Daniel Spofford had called upon Miss Brown. Miss Rawson suggested that he be restrained from malicious interference with her work. Miss Brown also urged it, as she declared she suffered much from his interference.

Mrs. Eddy had nothing to do with the suit at law which was presently brought by Miss Brown. She has always shown herself not only just, but admirably sane, in all her worldly transactions. So, instead of advising this suit, she advised against it, but was not insistent to the point of rupture. She was engaged with her own affairs and would not permit the frightened students to encroach too heavily upon her time. The suit brought by themselves and in their own folly bore all the marks of haste and fear. The bill of complaint drawn up by Miss Brown reads:

Humbly complaining, the plaintiff, Lucretia L. S. Brown of Ipswich, in said County of Essex, showeth unto your Honors, that Daniel H. Spofford, of Newburyport, in said County of Essex, the defendant in the above entitled action, is a mesmerist and practises the art of mesmerism and by his said art and the power of his mind influences and controls the minds and bodies of other persons and uses his said power and art for the purpose of injuring the persons and property and social relations of others and does by said means so injure them.

And the plaintiff further showeth that the said Daniel H. Spofford has at divers times and places since the year 1875 wrongfully and maliciously and with intent to injure the plaintiff, caused the plaintiff by means of his said power and art great suffering of body and mind and severe spinal pains and neuralgia and a temporary suspension of mind and still continues to cause the plaintiff the same. And the plaintiff has reason to fear and does fear that he will continue in the future to cause the same. And the plaintiff says that said injuries are great and of an irreparable nature and that she is wholly unable to escape from the control and influence he so exercises upon her and from the aforesaid effects of said control and influence.

The students thronged to Mrs. Eddy’s house before the suit was tried, beseeching her to join with them, to at least attend the hearing at the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem. She at last yielded to the extent of accompanying them on that morning in May, 1878. A new student, Edward J. Arens, argued the case. Mrs. Eddy was amazed at his arguments so contrary were they in their purport to her teaching, especially the argument that Miss Brown had no power to withstand the injuries she complained of. Nor was Mrs. Eddy at all surprised at the decision of the judge that it was not in the power of the court to control Mr. Spofford’s mind. “Most certainly it was not in the power of the court,” Mrs. Eddy declared to her students. She rebuked them severely, pointing out that the suit was but an exhibition of their own wilfulness in attempting to protect mind and health otherwise than as she had taught them. She returned to her home to insist for the future more strenuously, more decidedly, on her doctrine of meeting evil by resting in the confidence of Divine Love.

The student Arens, who argued what was called at the time the “Ipswich Witchcraft case,” had been received for instruction by Mrs. Eddy in the fall of 1877. He was a cabinet-maker of Lynn, an energetic, ambitious young man, and when he came into Christian Science he found Mrs. Eddy’s affairs in that languishing and entangled state to which Daniel Spofford had brought them. He wished to show his personal force, to push the sale of the book, and to realize for the cause of the book and the young society funds that would put life into its circulation and thus permit of a broader scope of activity. His efforts were more vigorous than well-advised, and two years later Mrs. Eddy wrote thus of his activity in her affairs:

“In the interests of truth we ought to say that never a lawsuit has entered into our history voluntarily. We have suffered great losses and direct injustice rather than go to law, for we have always considered a lawsuit of two evils the greater. About two years ago the persuasions of a student awakened our convictions that we might be doing wrong in permitting students to break their obligations with us. … The student who argued this point to us so convincingly offered to take the notes and collect them, without any participation of ours. We trusted him with the whole affair, doing only what he told us, for we were utterly ignorant of legal proceedings. It was alleged indirectly in the Newburyport Herald that we caused a bill to be filed in the Supreme Court to restrain a student of ours from practising mesmerism. That statement was utterly false. It was a student who did that contrary to our advice and judgment and we have the affidavit of the reluctant plaintiff certifying to this fact.”^[6]

The case directly referred to is “the Ipswich affair,” and the plaintiff, Miss Lucretia Brown. Other cases which Arens brought in Mrs. Eddy’s name were the suits against Stanley and Tuttle, referred to in a previous chapter, and a suit against Richard Kennedy brought in the municipal court of Suffolk county, Massachusetts, in February, 1878, to collect a promissory note made in 1870. The suit against Stanley and Tuttle resulted unfavorably because the defendants claimed that Mrs. Eddy had first instructed them to manipulate the head, and later instructed them to treat differently, without touching the patient, and they claimed to have been confused and to have received no benefits. In the case of Kennedy, judgment was awarded in Mrs. Eddy’s favor. The note for which suit was brought read:

In consideration of two years’ instruction in healing the sick, I hereby agree to pay Mary Baker Glover one thousand dollars in quarterly installments of fifty dollars, commencing from this date, February, 1870.

(Signed) Richard Kennedy.

In April Arens arranged a suit against Daniel Spofford to collect from him a royalty on his practise for unpaid tuition fees. This suit was dismissed for insufficient service. Barry’s suit against Mrs. Eddy was still dragging on and was not settled until October of the following year. Keeping in mind these suits at law, with their varying results for which the activity of Arens was responsible, the reader has a fairly clear idea of the maze of Mrs. Eddy’s affairs in the spring and summer of 1878. Arens had arrayed against her in a definite way the minds of Kennedy and Spofford, and Barry who knew them both well was in opposition on his own account.

It was at this time that George Barry wrote the following letter to Mrs. Eddy which, considering events about to befall, may illuminate what was always regarded as an inscrutable conspiracy. The letter shows the peculiar nature of young Barry and also, indirectly, the nature of others. It reads:

It is evident to me that you desire Dr. Kennedy to leave the city, and I think also it would be for your interest to accomplish this end. The relations between he and I are probably of a different nature from what you suppose, as I owe him a debt on the past, which, if driving him from Lynn will accomplish, it can and shall be done. He thinks I am your greatest enemy, and favor, if either, his side. Let him continue to think so; it will do me no harm. For my part I rather a person would come out boldly and fearlessly as you and I did facing each other, than to sneak like a snake in the grass, spitting his poison venom into them he would slay. I have said I owe Dr. Kennedy on an old score, and the interview I had with him last night has increased that debt, so that I am now determined, if it be your object also, as two heads are better than one, to drive him from Lynn. Why should we be enemies, especially if we have one great object in common? Perhaps we can be united on this, and the result may be that this city will finally be rid of one of the greatest humbugs that ever disgraced her fair face. All this can be accomplished but as I said before, it is necessary to be very cautious, and not let the fact of our communicating together be known, as a friend in the enemy’s camp is an advantage not to be overlooked.

This thoroughly detestable letter is so artless in its wickedness as to need no comment. It was without the shadow of a doubt an effort to inveigle Mrs. Eddy into a dishonorable correspondence with its wretched author. Whether or not it was a part of the forthcoming inscrutable conspiracy can only be conjectured. Mrs. Eddy’s reply to her erstwhile student was very brief: “We will help you always to do right; but with regard to your proposition to send Dr. Kennedy out of Lynn we recommend that you leave this to God; his sins will find him out.”

1. “Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 71.
2. Mr. Spofford recently made an affidavit to the effect that he met Mary Baker Glover in 1870, that she taught metaphysical healing from manuscripts the authorship of which she attributed to P. P. Quimby. Yet Daniel Spofford, shortly after his graduation from her class in May, 1875, unequivocally ascribed to this same Mary Baker Glover the authorship and discovery of Christian Science and signed his name to a resolution drawn up for the purpose of creating an organization of Christian Scientists. Mr. Spofford himself produces the data which contradicts his own affidavit. The author has recently visited Mr. Spofford at his present home in a country settlement between Haverhill and Amesbury. I went for the express purpose of asking him to explain the discrepancy between his statements of Mrs. Eddy’s teachings, the one in his affidavit printed in McClure’s Magazine for May, 1907, and the one in the resolution which he helped to draw up in 1875.   Mr. Spofford is to-day a man about sixty-five, slightly bent in carriage, with clear blue eyes and whitened hair. His manner is very gentle and courteous, and his personality sensitive and I should say, idealistic. Mr. Spofford made no immediate reply to my question as to the disparity. After some hesitation he turned from the question by saying, “I believe Mrs. Eddy is the sole author of ‘Science and Health’ and I believe it is the greatest book in the world outside the Bible. … I don’t wish it to be understood that I have said Christian Science was Quimbyism. I said that Mrs. Eddy taught some of the Quimby doctrine when I first knew her in 1870. Mrs. Eddy developed her own ideas and wrote her own book, ‘Science and Health,’ and I was the publisher of the first edition and I know that book thoroughly. I don’t confuse in my own mind the work of Quimby and of Mrs. Eddy. I don’t see why the world should do so. It is clear to me that Mrs. Eddy at first taught some of the ideas of Quimby; that later she abandoned those ideas entirely for her own, incorporating her own system of religious interpretation in her book.”   Mr. Spofford stated that he had been forced by persons who came into her circle to abandon Mrs. Eddy and the teaching of Christian Science. Mr. Spofford supplied the aforesaid magazine with a private letter of Mrs. Eddy to himself, written before her marriage to Dr. Eddy. In that letter occurs this passage:   “No student or mortal has tried to have you leave me that I know of. Dr. Eddy has tried to have you stay. You are in a mistake; it is God and not man who has separated us and for the reason I begin to learn. Do not think of returning to me again. … God produces the separation and I submit to it. So must you. There is no cloud between us, but the way you set me up for a Dagon is wrong, and now I implore you to return forever from this error of personality and go alone to God as I have taught you.” — Human Life, July, 1907.
3. From letters furnished McClure's Magazine.
4. Ibid.
5. Malicious Animal Magnetism is a term used in Christian Science, and perhaps it may be proper to define its significance, since it has been largely misapprehended in the public press of late. The word magnetism was first applied to a peculiar attraction of iron ore, so named because it was discovered in the city of Magnesia. Later the word animal was joined to it to define electrical experiments with an animal. This term, animal magnetism, eventually came to include the peculiar influence one person was able to exert over another by physical contact. In this sense animal magnetism is similar, if not identical, with the term mesmerism, referring directly to the experiments of Mesmer. The more modern term, hypnotism, has the peculiar significance of the power of mind over mind without the necessity of actual physical contact. … Through Mrs. Eddy’s teaching, the term animal magnetism has become broad enough to include any and all action of the human mind, applying it to that peculiar power, influence, or force which is possessed by the creature in contradistinction to the Creator. Since Christian Science has introduced the proposition that God is the only real Mind, the carnal mind in all its varied manifestations is naturally, in the interest of self-preservation, arrayed against it. Therefore, every wilful phase of this human opposition which is created by the introduction of Science is malicious. Hence the use of the term malicious animal magnetism. It is magnetism because it refers to a supposed power independent of God; malicious, in keeping with the Scriptural declaration, “The Carnal mind is enmity against God.” Mrs. Eddy refers to it as the human antipode of Divine Science. It is a term which is broad enough to include all that is opposed to God. It includes every phase of evil, every phase of human antagonism to truth. — From an interview with Alfred Farlow in Human Life, August, 1907.
6. “Science and Health,” third edition.