Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/112

74 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.