The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 06
CHAPTER VI
ILLUMINATION AND BACKWARD TURNING
IN threading the labyrinth of a mind to find its starting point upon a new phase of existence, it is frequently most difficult to lay hold of the silken clue which guided it to the gateway out of a maze of turnings. Every life has its moments of revelation when it would seem proper to start away upon the higher adventures of the soul; but seldom does a human being go forward without hesitation, leaving the past with its thousand detaining hands by an irrevocable decision. Having received the vision, beheld the clear trail of a path up the mountain, the pilgrim soul, with mystifying impulses which it cannot itself understand, obeying instincts which lie too deep for scrutiny, will almost invariably turn backward on the road of experience to reembrace its wornout illusions and weep at its old tombs. Finding the old life and its associations as disappointing and unprofitable as ever, it will agonize once more over its mistakes, and putting them off again one by one, will back away toward its future, with face set miserably upon the past. Not until the past smites him, will the pilgrim, with a sudden realization of himself, turn right about and rush for his mountain. Now he must search again for the path. His search may be weary and performed in humility, but the path once found will never again be forsaken for that pathless wilderness where each human being experiences doubts and despairs.
When Dr. Patterson removed from Groton he
engaged board for himself and his wife at the home
of Mr. and Mrs. John Herbert at Rumney Station.
The house was a substantial frame dwelling of the
Colonial type with comfortable chambers looking
out upon broad lawns. The family life at first
appeared to be as broadly harmonious as the fashion
of its dwelling. Mrs. Patterson's invalidism,
however, soon aroused comment among the frequenters
of the home. As the frail, delicate woman had been
criticized by the thoughtless mountaineers of Groton
who in their rugged health believed the handsome
doctor to be a martyr to the whims of an exacting
invalid, so in Rumney she was criticized by the gossiping
ladies of the boarding-house. If Dr. Patterson,
obedient to his better instincts of courtesy, picked
up his wife's handkerchief, or readjusted her shawl,
they were jealously observant, or if in hearty buoyancy
he displayed the tenderness of strength toward
weakness and lifted Mrs. Patterson in his arms to
carry her up-stairs, they sat silently disapproving.
For such misinterpretation of her invalidism and
lack of appreciation of her character she was
misunderstood in that neighborhood for half a
century. Often a nervous sufferer, she soon felt the
wisdom of retiring from this atmosphere and
persuaded the doctor, who contemplated locating in
Rumney, to procure a cottage in Rumney village about a mile back in the hills. This cottage occupied
an eminence near the edge of the town and
commanded an agreeable view. It was a pretty home,
as her Groton home had been, and her blind servant
was still with her and gave her devoted care.
The blind girl, Myra Smith, has described in detail Mrs. Patterson’s persevering efforts to recover her health both at Groton and in Rumney, and her account is interesting because of the light it throws on that period of Mrs. Eddy’s life, and especially because of the edification it may be to other invalids. She has related that Mrs. Patterson faithfully observed the laws of hygiene. Every morning, even in the depth of winter when the weather was severely cold in that mountainous climate, Mrs. Patterson was lifted from her bed into a chair, wrapped in blankets. Her chair was then drawn out into the veranda, where she remained as long as she could sit up, drinking in deep breaths of pure air and feasting her eyes upon the beauty of the hills.
Her room meanwhile was thrown wide open to admit a free current of air and streams of sunshine. Her bed was redressed for the day and when the apartment was restored to a proper temperature the invalid returned to it. She was then bathed, rubbed in alcohol, reclothed, and again lifted into her bed. She had a mattress that could be elevated at the head and many of her hours were passed in the half-reclining attitude in which it was possible for her to read, write, or even receive callers when not suffering too great pain. She ate sparingly and according to a strict diet, imposing upon herself a severe regimen of which water, coarse bread, and natural fruits were the principal articles of nourishment.
Beside attention to hygienic regulation of bathing, eating, and going into the fresh air, Mrs. Patterson received homeopathic treatment from Dr. Patterson, and she herself read books on homeopathy. But for all this, the spinal weakness was not overcome and the nervous seizures continued to occur with increasing violence. Mrs. Patterson was wasting to a shadow under the most careful nursing, and her life was being consumed in ineffectual efforts to appease the ravishment of pain.
While she was still in this condition of ill health, Dr. Patterson left her alone with her servant and took a journey to Washington. His journey was made primarily to carry out a commission for Governor Berry of New Hampshire, who had a fund to be distributed to loyal Southerners. This commission enabled him to push a project of his own, for he had been excited by the news of the fall of Sumter, when South Carolina, having seceded, had fired the first shot in the American Civil War, and it was Dr. Patterson’s hope to secure an appointment on the medical staff of the army. But going out to view the battle of Bull Run, he strayed too far into the Confederate camp and was captured and made a prisoner, presumably as a spy. He was taken to Libbey, the famous Southern war prison, where his experiences were hard and bitter as were those of all who endured like captivity.
Mrs. Patterson read his name in the list of prisoners furnished in press dispatches. She could do nothing to aid him though her sympathy for him was keen as expressed in letters written at this time in the effort to stir her relatives to activity in his behalf, for in spite of his many shortcomings, in all personal relations he had invariably been kind to her and she had for Dr. Patterson a true wife’s devotion. It was at about this time that she heard from her son for the first time since he had been taken from her in Groton. He had enlisted and gone to the front. How intolerable it seemed to her to lie sick and inert in that lonely cottage, with husband and son caught in the maelstrom of her country’s agony,— how desolate and dreary her days may be imagined. Bedridden in the remote mountain village, with little or no company but that of her maid, she was once more thrown back upon herself, and forced by desolation and pain to seek God for comfort and grace to endure her lot while the world was unfolding famous pages of history.
The world, in the persons of the great folk of the vicinity, came to her occasionally. Her maid recounted the grand airs, the rustling garments and the consequential stir created by the calls of certain great dames who kept up the punctilious formality, if not neighborly charity, of remembering what was due Mrs. Patterson, born Baker, also sister of the wealthy Mrs. Tilton. But these intrusions of the world were few and far between.
Meantime Mrs. Patterson read her Bible day by day. At this time she more earnestly than ever pondered the cures of the early church. She has written in “Science and Health”[1] how in childhood she often listened with joy to these words falling from the lips of her sainted mother, “God is able to raise you up from sickness.” She also declares how she dwelt upon the meaning of this passage of Scripture which her mother so often quoted, “And these signs shall follow them that believe; they shall lay hands upon the sick and they shall recover.” Some of her early experiences now came back to her. She recalled how through her mother’s advice to rest in God’s love she had been able to recover from the fever brought on by religious argument with her father and pastor. She also recalled how she had subdued the insane man in Tilton when she was a schoolgirl and brought him into a state of calmness and tranquillity when every one else had fled from him in terror. She remembered her exalted religious state at the period of both these cures and endeavored to determine whether such cures depended upon extreme intensity of faith or whether a calm sense of assurance might not as surely reach God’s attention. While studying and meditating on these apparent miracles of faith in her own experience and striving to connect them with the manner and method of the New Testament cures, a singular event befell which gives verity to Mrs. Eddy’s assertion that for years before the discovery of Christian Science she had been searching for spiritual causation for disease and a spiritual method of cure.
Aside from the calls of her aristocratic neighbors, she was not entirely forgotten by the village. The children, picking berries along the road, would often stop to talk to “the good sick lady” and often repeated at home or in the houses where they sold their berries what she said to them, how her blue eyes shone upon them, and how her thin hands touched their little brown ones with thrilling sympathy.
So by the love of the children a gentle rumor of saintliness was spread through that region and if Mary Baker thought upon the saintliness of her mother, some dwellers of the countryside came to think of Mrs. Patterson as a saint and to go to her for advice and comfort. Among those who sought her aid was a mother carrying her infant, a child whose eyes were badly diseased. The mother was a simple working woman, so simple that she could still believe there was a relation between piety and power. She wept as she laid her babe on Mrs. Patterson’s knees and implored her to ask God to cure its blindness.
Mrs. Patterson was touched by the woman’s faith and the child’s apparent need. She took the babe in her arms and looked into its eyes. She saw they were in such a state of inflammation that neither the pupil nor the iris was discernible. She reflected that Jesus had said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not.” “Who,” she asked herself, “has forbidden this little one, who is leading it into the way of blindness?” Mrs. Eddy has stated that she lifted her thought to God and returned the child to its mother, assuring her that God is able to keep his children. The mother looked at the child’s eyes and they were healed. This apparently miraculous happening struck awe to Mary Baker as well as to the mother.
Here was a clear manifestation of God's eternal laws of health made to the mind and consciousness of Mary Baker. She had invoked God's mercy and power and the response had come almost instantly. She believed and yet was bewildered. Here was vision, apocalypse. God had healed the child and despite that fact she was still enchained with pain. She had understood for the child, but could not, as yet, understand for herself. She had momentarily struck the harmonious chord, and a spontaneous healing had resulted. She saw there was a path out of her wilderness, but its beginning for her own feet was not clear. The detaining hands of the past and experiences she was about to go through were to impede her progress toward the clear understanding of truth.
During the previous autumn Dr. Patterson had been much interested in circulars describing the healing powers of one Phineas P. Quimby of Portland, Maine. This Quimby had a peculiar reputation. To some minds he was a charlatan, nothing more, a man who had learned some tricks of mesmerism by which he amazed the hearts of the ignorant. To other minds he was a humane, self-sacrificing man of rare endowments who through abstruse study had become acquainted with secret laws of nature by which he was able to restore the sick to health. From time to time the newspapers printed accounts of him, now ridiculing him and now extolling him.
Dr. Patterson had been inclined to take a favorable view of him and defend him against derision. Being himself unable to cure his wife as he had confidently expected to do, he felt much interest in the accounts of Quimby’s cures. It did not matter if Quimby were a mesmerist, or a Spiritualist, or if he transmitted magnetic currents. The thing was he cured. People went to him and got well. It was very much in this matter with Dr. Patterson as in all the affairs of life, a case of “lo here, lo there!”
So the doctor had written Quimby in the fall of 1861, telling him that his wife had been for many years an invalid from a spinal disease, and that having heard of his wonderful cures, he desired to have him visit her; or if Quimby intended to journey to Concord, he would carry his wife to him. Quimby replied that he had no intention of making a trip to Concord, that he had all the business he could attend to in Portland, but that he had no doubt whatever he could effect Mrs. Patterson’s cure if she would come to him.
Dr. Patterson, however, had, as has been related, projects of his own which more and more took possession of him as he read the news of Lincoln’s inauguration and the call for troops to defend the Union. He was full of his proposed trip to Washington, and the preliminary visit which must be made to Concord. These plans required all the funds and energy he had to bestow.
Mrs. Patterson read the Quimby letter with its closing assurance many times. She asked herself often if it were not possible that this man withheld his real experiences from his public circular because of their sacredness, if it were not likely that by piety and prayer, rather than by mesmerism, he had learned the power of healing. This was a perfectly consistent speculation, for from her childhood, from the days of her studying with her brother and later with her pastor, she had been taught to look for a law of cause and effect. Now here was a man healing, she reflected, and there must be a law to govern his cases. Moreover it was natural to her to take the religious view, that this law was only understood through revelation, and to credit Quimby with having received the revelation. She was a sincere Christian and believed healing without medicine must be done by God.
Still it was the law she sought for. It was not enough for her that here and there a miracle of piety could be performed by those who gave their lives up to prayer. She had come to understand that, where the Hebrew prophets had occasionally and sporadically made God’s will prevail in a so-called miracle, Jesus of Nazareth had never failed in invoking health and sustenance. He had cured the most desperate diseases with the same readiness as the mildest; He had blessed the poor food and abundance had been found to feed the multitude. Yet here she, Mary Baker, lay on a bed of pain and in sore need of means. Did God withhold from her His bounty because she was a sinner? Like Job, she knew in her heart this was not true. Then where was the fault and what was the law?
Mary Baker had performed certain cures from which she argued as from the sure ground of experience, but these healings were incidental and accidental and she scarcely knew how they had occurred except that she knew they had happened when her thoughts were associated with God. She pondered after this fashion: Laws of God are immutable and universal. Then because His laws are so fixed and so infinitely operative, man by studying them has built up the sciences, as mathematics and mechanics. But in physics he is still crying out for the philosopher’s stone and in medicine for the elixir of life. “I know there is cause and effect in the spiritual world as in the natural!” she would exclaim to herself. “I know there is a science of health, a science of life, a divine science, a science of God.”
But it did not enter Mary Baker’s mind in that hour that by this assertion she had declared herself the discoverer of a great truth, that by this affirmation of faith she had pledged herself to find the way and prove what she had declared. She was to herself only a woman in extremity, hungering for truth. In Portland, Maine, was a man whom she now began to endow with her own faith. If she could get to him, she would question him and find out if he had come close to God’s heart. If he had, how humbly she would beg him to teach her and guide her and how joyfully would she follow! In May of 1862 she wrote a letter to Dr. Quimby, a letter which doubtless surprised that gentleman. She stated her confidence in his possession of a philosophy and that she wished to come to him to study and be healed.
She now began to make preparation to visit Quimby. She requested her sister to come to her aid and her sister responded. She rose from her sick bed and started on the journey though she accomplished it by a somewhat circuitous route. Mrs. Patterson dismissed with love her blind servant so long faithful. Her household goods were packed up and sent to Tilton and she returned with Abigail to her home. On the way to Tilton she explained to her sister her wish to visit Phineas P. Quimby; but Abigail demurred. She said Quimby was a mesmerist and Spiritualist, a quack scientist who had traveled around New England with a youth giving exhibitions in hypnotism.
“Why, Mary,” she said, “how can you desire to visit such a charlatan, — you with your mind, your talents, your religion, you who have always resisted these doctrines of animal magnetism and the professions of Spiritualism?”
“I certainly do not want mesmerism or Spiritualism,” said Mary, “but I somehow believe that I must see what this man has or has not. I am impelled with an unquenchable thirst for God that will not let me rest. Abigail, there is a science beyond all sciences we have ever studied. It is Christ’s Science. There is a fundamental doctrine, a God’s truth that will restore me to health, and if me, then countless thousands. Has this man Quimby discovered the great truth or is he a blunderer, perhaps a charlatan as you say? I must know.”
“Mary, dear,” said her sister, “you are excitable and intense. You have lived so long alone in the hills reading and thinking you are morbid. You should not have been left to yourself so long.”
“Then you must go with me to Portland to make up for neglecting me. You will go, won’t you, Abigail?”
“Indeed I will not,” cried the energetic Mrs. Tilton. “You shall go to Dr. Vail’s water-cure at Hill, which is a respectable sanitarium. I will hire you a nurse and rent you a cottage there. We shall see what a physician and hospital care can do for you.”
“But have I not faithfully taken medicine and lived according to hygienic rule for years?” asked Mary. Then turning suddenly to her sister, she asked, “Abigail, do you doubt the power of God?”
“I do not, but I believe God helps those who help themselves.”
“So He does, sister, when they come into harmony with His law; that I know,” answered Mary quietly.
Abigail Tilton’s words had a way of driving home and sticking there, like arrows shot into a target. She was a woman of common sense and she proposed to exercise common sense now for her sister. She would hear nothing of Quimby. When Mrs. Tilton had employed a young woman, named Susan Rand, to go to Hill with Mrs. Patterson, had engaged a conveyance to carry her there comfortably, and had instructed the driver to be most careful with his charge, then she supplied her sister with funds sufficient for her stay, felt that she had performed her duty, and washed her hands of the event.
Mrs. Patterson arrived at the sanitarium exhausted with the journey. The driver lifted her out of the carriage rudely and set her upon her feet upon the ground. Mrs. Patterson turned and sped up the steps like a deer, collapsing in the waiting room of the hospital. The utter misery of that collapse was like death settling down upon her. Thus far she had come in her belief that God was going to help her and to help her now. But here God seemed to be forsaking her. She could only reiterate to herself in gasping weakness, “I know God can and will cure me, if only I could understand His way.” But she was in the midst of the doctors again who believed in quite different agencies. She must now submit to the water-cure, the fad of the period.
They carried her to one of the little cottages and instructed her attendant in the system of nursing prevailing at the water-cure. For several weeks the treatment was continued with little result. Mrs. Tilton’s common sense was failing its purpose once more. Then Mary Baker asserted her family spirit. She had wanted to go to Portland to see Quimby, and she determined she would go without further discussion. She wrote him in August that she would try to come to him, though she could sit up but for a few minutes at a time, and she asked him if he thought she would be able to reach him without sinking from the effects of the journey. Quimby replied so encouragingly that she completed her arrangements.
Mrs. Patterson arrived at the International Hotel, Portland, in October, 1862. Here in this hotel Dr. Quimby, doctor by courtesy only, had his offices. In his reception room his patients gathered and sat by the hour, talking and visiting, discussing the doctor’s sayings and their own illnesses. And in this reception room on the morning in October, when Mrs. Patterson arrived, were a number of patients together with his son George, a young man scarcely turned twenty-one, who then acted as his father’s secretary.
Mrs. Patterson was assisted up the stairs to this room and her extreme feebleness was marked by all. Dr. Quimby came from his inner office to receive the new patient and she beheld for the first time the man she believed a great physician. He was of small physique, with white hair and beard, level brows, and shrewd, penetrating eyes. He was healthy, dominant, energetic. He had the eye of the born hypnotizer, the man who can persuade other wills to obey his own, especially the wills of the sick and mentally disordered. But his face was kindly and his expression sincere.
Mary Baker was at that time a frail shadow of a woman, an abstracted student, given to much thinking and prayer. With great blue eyes, deep sunk, yet arched above with beautiful brows, she looked into the friendly face bent above her and she looked with the deep intense gaze of the seer.
- ↑ “Science and Health,” p. 359.