Parker always believed, so
a friend has told me, that his visitor was a spiritual form from another
world. It is certainly true that many and many persons, whose life has
been destined to more than ordinary achievement, have had experiences of
voices or visions in their early youth.

At an early age Miss Baker was married to Colonel Glover, of Charleston,
S.C., who lived only a year. She returned to her father's home--in
1844--and from that time until 1866 no special record is to be made.

In 1866, while living in Lynn, Mass., Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Glover) met
with a severe accident and her case was pronounced hopeless by the
physicians. There came a Sunday morning when her pastor came to bid her
good-by before proceeding to his morning service as there was no
probability that she would be alive at its close. During this time she
suddenly became aware of a divine illumination and ministration. She
requested those with her to withdraw, and reluctantly they did so,
believing her delirious. Soon, to their bewilderment and fright, she
walked into the adjoining room, "and they thought I had died, and that
it was my apparition," she said.

THE PRINCIPLE OF DIVINE HEALING.

From that hour dated her conviction of the principle of divine healing,
and that it is as true to-day as it was in the days when Jesus of
Nazareth walked the earth. "I felt that the divine spirit had wrought a
miracle," she said, in reference to this experience. "How, I could not
tell, but later I found it to be in perfect scientific accord with the
divine law." From 1866-'69, Mrs. Eddy withdrew from the world to
meditate, to pray, to search the Scriptures.

"During this time," she said, in reply to my questions, "the Bible was
my only text-book. It answered my questions as to the process by which I
was restored to health; it came to me with a new meaning, and suddenly I
apprehended the spiritual meaning of the teaching of Jesus and the
principle and the law involved in spiritual science and metaphysical
healing--in a word--Christian science."

Mrs. Eddy came to perceive that Christ's healing was not miraculous, but
was simply a natural fulfilment of divine law--a law as operative in the
world to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. "Divine science is
begotten of spirituality," she says, "since only the 'pure in heart' can
see God."

In writing of this experience, Mrs. Eddy has said:

I had learned that thought must be spiritualized
in