The Church of St. Bunco Part 2

The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression, I first visited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I ascended by a stairway of one-hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving _ad infinitum_.... I have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism, and for a brief period I have felt relief ... but in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments, because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involve us. My operator believed in disease independent of mind; hence I could not be wiser than my teacher. But now I can see, dimly at first, and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth, which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action, and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof), and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease."

The communication of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy--then Mrs. Mary M.

Patterson--which she published in the Portland _Courier_, was criticised, the next day, November 8th, 1862, by the Portland _Advertiser_. In reply to that paper she said:

"P. P. Quimby stands upon the plain of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not identified with truth, and is not this the Christ which is in him?... P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of error, and health is the resurrection.... But light s.h.i.+neth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not."[14]

Dr. Quimby having died on the 16th of January, 1866, Mrs. M. B. G.

Patterson--not to be Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson Eddy until 1867--"sent to me," says Mr. Julius Dresser in his _True History of Mental Science_, "a copy of a poem she had written to his memory." With the poem was sent the following letter:

LYNN, February 15, 1866.

MR. DRESSER:

"_Sir_,--I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much loved friend, which perhaps _you_ will not think overwrought in meaning: _others_ must, of course.

"I am constantly wis.h.i.+ng that _you_ would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

"Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.

"The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed _alone_, and _will_ walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly.... Now can't _you_ help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?...

"Respectfully, "MARY M. PATTERSON."

The poem by the lady destined to become Mrs. Eddy, author of _Science and Health_, was published by her, with her name attached, under the caption of

"LINES on the death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, _who healed with the Truth that Christ taught, in contradistinction to all Isms_."

"Did sackcloth clothe the sun, and day grow night, All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes, When Truth, receding from our mortal sight, Had paid to error her last sacrifice?

"Can we forget the power that gave us life?

Shall we forget the wisdom of its way?

Then ask me not amid this mortal strife-- This keenest pang of animated clay--

"To mourn him less: to mourn him more were just, If to his memory 'twere a tribute given For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven--

"Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul, Growing in stature to the throne of G.o.d.

Rest should reward him who hath made us whole, Seeking, tho' tremblers, where his footsteps trod."

MARY M. PATTERSON.

The complete ident.i.ty of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson with Mrs. Mary Baker G.

Eddy has been fully established by the highest Christian-Science authority in the world--Mrs. Eddy herself. In a letter dated March 7th, 1883, addressed to the Boston _Post_, she said:

"In 1862 my name was Patterson, my husband, Dr. Patterson, a distinguished dentist. After our marriage I was confined to my bed with a severe illness, and seldom left bed or room for seven years, when I was taken to Dr. Quimby and partially restored. I returned home, hoping once more to make that home happy, but only returned to a new agony to find that my husband had eloped with a married woman from one of the wealthy families of that city, leaving no trace save his last letter to us, wherein he wrote: 'I hope some time to be worthy of so good a wife.' I have a bill of divorce from him...."

In her letter to the Boston _Post_ Mrs. Eddy made some other interesting a.s.sertions. She said:[15]

"We never were a student of Dr. Quimby. Dr. Quimby never had students to our knowledge. He was somewhat of a remarkable healer, and at the time we knew him he was known as a mesmerist. We were one of his patients."

What an astonis.h.i.+ng look these statements by Mrs. Eddy in 1883 have, when compared with the statements of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson from 1862 to 1866.

Let us see.--

_Statement of 1883._

"At the time we knew him [Dr. Quimby], he was known as a mesmerist."

_Statement of 1866._

"Dr. Quimby healed with the truth that Christ taught, in contradistinction to all Isms."

"Rest should reward him who hath made us whole, _seeking, tho'

tremblers, where his footsteps trod_."

On March 7th, 1883, Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy made, in the Boston Post.

_This Statement._

"We had laid the foundation of mental healing long before we ever saw Dr. Quimby.... We made our first experiments in mental healing about 1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science which, if understood, would heal all diseases."

In October, 1862, the same lady, through the Portland _Courier_, made

_This Statement._

"I can see, _dimly at first and as trees walking_, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth, which he opposes to _the error of giving intelligence to matter_, changes the currents of the system. The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him. This is a science capable of demonstration to those who reason upon the process."

Then, in the Portland _Advertiser_, came Mrs. Eddy's extraordinary comparison of Dr. Quimby's words and deeds with those of Christ, and

_This Statement._

"P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of error, and health is the resurrection."

On the publication of Julius A. Dresser's _True History of Mental Science_--to which reference has been made in our previous chapter--Mrs.

Eddy was greatly exercised over it. In her _Christian Science Journal_ for June, 1887, she devoted the leading article, under her own name, to the Dresser pamphlet.

This little thing was a calm statement of facts, proved as they were given. From the facts, Dr. Quimby's theory was drawn, and Mr. Dresser frankly recounted what the general reader would consider Dr. Quimby's foibles and prejudices, as well as his doctrines and gifts. The pamphlet contained Mrs. Mary M. Patterson's opinion of Dr. Quimby in 1862, and her poem of 1866. It agreed with what was then the substance of her own a.s.sertions, by summarizing Dr. Quimby "as the first person of this age who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring forth a true science of life, and openly apply it to the healing of the sick."

But, in criticising Mr. Dresser's quiet monograph, the amiable "Mother of Christian Science," proclaimed that Mr. Dresser had "let loose the dogs of war."; had unleashed a "pet poodle," alternately "to bark and whine" at her "heels"; and she identified the "pet poodle" with a certain "sucking litterateur," who had renounced allegiance to her.[16] But when her preliminary high-tide had ebbed a little, her pen dropped this:

"Did I write those articles in Mr. Dresser's pamphlet, purporting to be mine? I might have written them, twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until his death, in 1865. He was illiterate, and knew nothing then of the science of Mind-healing; and I was as ignorant of mesmerism as Eve before she was tempted by the serpent."

Those Patterson-Eddy "articles," then--no possible mendacity being adequate to their extinction--have been grudgingly and angrily admitted by their author to be genuine. But she would ignore them on the ground of "mesmerism." Her "head," she says, "was so turned by Animal Magnetism and will power" under Dr. Quimby's treatment, that she "might have written something as hopelessly incorrect" as the articles referred to.

But _was_ Mrs. Mary M. Patterson under "mesmeric treatment," or _did_ Mrs.

Mary Patterson Eddy ever really _believe_ she was under such treatment, when with Dr. Quimby? And was she then a truly "ignorant Eve," without a fig-leaf of knowledge pertaining to mesmerism? In 1862 she thought _not_, and we have seen that, in writing her first newspaper letter on Dr.

Quimby, she turned her thought into these words:

"I _have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism_, and for a brief period I have felt relief ... but in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments, _because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involve us. My operator believed in disease independent of mind; hence I could not be wiser than my teacher._"

Mrs. Patterson continued her letter by saying what has already been quoted in full--that Dr. Quimby cured her by "a great principle" of "science,"