Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/172

134 steamed for Watt, natural scientific truth dawned on them, but each must apply himself to make clear his conception through years of careful elucidation and working out to a demonstrable point his scientific statement of principle. Mrs. Eddy writes:

My discovery that erring, mortal, misnamed mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, set my thoughts to work in new channels, and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is All and matter is naught, as the leading force in Mind-science.

Indeed her thoughts were to work in new channels. She had risen as it were from death. Her friends immediately set up an argument that she was self-deluded, that she ought to be flat upon her back, that she was defying the laws of nature. This clamor of fear had a temporary effect upon her; it bewildered her into some doubt of her ability to maintain her discovery, even into some doubt as to its basis in truth. Two weeks after she had risen from her prostration she wrote a letter which was a last backward glance to Quimby and Quimbyism, — and yet a letter which sounded the small notes of the clarion. The letter was written to a former patient of Quimby, for Quimby was now dead. He had died the preceding month and could not again obtrude his unformulated theories between her mind and its own spiritual apprehensions. Her discovery waited for her full comprehension and acknowledgement. Yet she wrote a letter which, had it been answered