Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/135



HROUGH the writings of Mary Baker on what she thought Quimby believed, “Quimbyism” and Quimby manuscripts came to have a factitious existence. Her writings were given into Quimby’s keeping and were doubtless copied by other patients; her explanations of his cures were often accepted instead of Quimby’s, even Quimby himself accepting them in part, flattered at the interpretation put upon him and his work. A curious commingling of mesmerism and religious faith resulted from the association of these distinctly differing minds, and the manuscripts handed from one to another perpetuated this confusion.

Mary Baker dwelt long under the influence of Quimby’s mesmeric belief and it came to have a great, though not supreme, significance in her later teaching, the significance of a counterfeit of the truth she was later to discover and proclaim. From 1862 to 1866 were for her so many years in the wilderness, after which came that search for the mountain which was to be her Horeb, and which had first been shown her by illumination when in Rumney she healed the child of blindness. A sublime faith held her firmly through this period of confusion as it did through subsequent travail