Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/174

136 God had laid a work upon her. The truth of spiritual being had illumined her and to acquaint humanity with this truth became imperative.

Some years after this period, when her work had begun to make headway, the patient of Quimby to whom she had written came forward to harass her with a pamphlet in which he displayed her former eulogies of Quimby and her letter to him asking him to take up Quimby’s work. She replied to this pamphleteer in the article on “Mind Healing History” in the Christian Science Journal, from which a quotation is given in regard to the manuscript controversy. In it she says:

Was it an evil hour when I exchanged poetry for Truth, grasped in some degree the understanding of Truth and undertook at all hazards to bless them that cursed me? Was it an evil hour when I discovered Christian Science Mind-healing and gave to the world in my work called “Science and Health” the leaves that are for the “healing of the nations.” Was it for some strange reason that the impulse came upon me to endure all things for Truth’s sake? Does ceaseless servitude while treading the thorny path alone and for others’ sake arise from a purely selfish motive? After the death of the so-called originator of mind-healing it required ten years of nameless experience for me to reach the standpoint of my first edition of “Science and Health.” It was after the death of Mr. Quimby and when I was apparently at the door of death that I made the discovery of the Principle of Divine Science. After that it took ten years of hard work before the first edition of “Science and Health” was published in 1875.