n. Syntax was spiritual order and
unity. Prosody the song of angels and no earthly or inglorious
theme."[26]

[Footnote 26: "Retrospection and Introspection," 1909.]

_Her Education: Shaping Influences_

It is not fair to apply critical methods to one who confesses that most
of the knowledge she had gleaned from school books vanished like a
dream, but there is much in Mrs. Eddy's writing to bear out her
statement. Those who knew her as a girl report her as irregular in
attendance upon school, inattentive during its sessions and far from
knowing either Greek or Latin or Hebrew. "According to these schoolmates
Mary Baker completed her education when she had finished Smith's Grammar
and reached Long Division in Arithmetic." The official biography makes
much of an intellectual friendship between the Rev. Enoch Corser, then
pastor of the Tilton Congregational Church, and Mary Baker. "They
discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the
family. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school
clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed
out the old philosophic speculations without rancour or irritation."[27]

[Footnote 27: "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," Sibyl Wilbur, 4th edition.
Christian Science Publishing Company.]

There is little reason to doubt her real interest in the pretty rigid
Calvinistic theology of her time. Indeed, we could not understand her
final line of religious development without taking that into
consideration. Milmine suggests other forces which would naturally have
influenced a sensitive and curious girl; for example, the current
interest in animal magnetism, a subject which dominated certain aspects
of her thinking to the end. Milmine suggests also that she may have been
considerably influenced by the peculiar beliefs of the Shakers who had a
colony near Tilton. The Shakers regarded Ann Lee, their founder, as the
female principle of God and greater than Christ. They prayed always to
"Our Father and Mother which art in heaven." They called Ann Lee the
woman of the Apocalypse, the God-anointed woman. For her followers she
was Mother Ann, as Mary Baker was later Mother Eddy. Ann Lee declared
that she had the gift of healing. The Shakers also made much of a
spiritual illumination which had the right of way over the testimony of
the senses. The Shakers called their establishment the Church of Christ
and the original foundation the Mother Church.