Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/165

Rh While held in this state she still ascribed her cure to Quimby. His thought, his personality, was still obtruding itself between her and God. He was squarely in the light. Her religious peace, her faith, her spiritual being were threatened. Her anguish was intolerable and to no one could she turn for counsel to obtain relief.

Out of this smothered torment in which she sounded a deeper hell than Calvinists had ever imagined, she was lifted suddenly by a physical shock which set her free for her great discovery and revelation. This shock was caused by an accident which carried her to death’s door and from which she recovered in what seems a miraculous manner on the third day following.

This accident has been called, with various shades of sentiment, the “fall” in Lynn. To many thousands that fall with its subsequent uplifting has been the fall of their own torment, mental and physical, and the uplifting of their lives with Mary Baker Eddy’s. The incident or event, as one may look upon it according to his own experience, was recorded in the Lynn Reporter of Saturday morning, February 3, 1866, as follows:

Mrs. Mary Patterson of Swampscott fell upon the ice near the corner of Market and Oxford streets on Thursday evening and was severely injured. She was taken up in an insensible condition and carried into the residence of S. M. Bubier, Esq., nearby, where she was kindly cared for during the night. Dr. Cushing, who was called, found her injuries to be internal and of a severe nature,