ion in the rigid theologies of the time. She
had sought help from accepted religion and religion had had nothing to
give her. We have to read between the lines and especially to evaluate
all this period in the light of "Science and Health" itself to
reconstruct the movement of her inner life, but beyond a doubt her
thought had played about the almost tragic discrepancy between her own
experiences and the love and goodness of God. She had known pain and
unhappiness in acute forms and had found nothing in what she had been
taught ample enough to resolve her doubts or establish her faith.

She found in Quimby's philosophy a leading which she eagerly followed.
Now for the first time she is really set free from herself. A truer
sense of dramatic values would have led Mrs. Eddy herself to have made
more of the unhappy period which began to come to an end with her visit
to Quimby and would lead her disciples now to acknowledge it more
honestly. It is a strong background against which to set what follows
and give colour by contrast to her later life. The twice-born from Saul
of Tarsus to John Bunyan have dwelt much upon their sins and sorrows,
seeking thereby more greatly to exalt the grace of God by which they had
been saved. Mary Baker Eddy came strongly to be persuaded that she had
saved herself and consequently not only greatly underestimated her debt
to Quimby, but emptied her own experiences of dramatic contrasts to make
them, as she supposed, more consistent, and her disciples have followed
her.

As a matter of fact, though her life as a whole is not an outstanding
asset for Christian Science and is likely to grow less so, one must
recognize the force of a conviction which changed the neurotic Mrs.
Patterson of the fifties and sixties into the masterful and successful
woman of the eighties and nineties. She belongs also to the fellowship
of the twice-born and instead of minimizing the change those who seek to
understand her, as well as those who seek to exalt her, would do well to
make more of it. She did that herself to begin with. No master ever had
for a time a more grateful disciple. She haunted Quimby's house, read
his manuscripts, wrote letters for the paper, "dropped into verse" and
through her extravagance "brought ridicule upon Quimby and herself."

Quimby died in 1866, accompanied to his last resting place by a tribute
in verse from his grateful pupil. Mrs. Eddy had at the time apparently
no thought of contin