Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/196

158 of themselves philosophically, the breach made in religious customs for the common man left him nothing. In giving up creed and catechism he could scarcely be expected to come into “living touch” with the philosophy of Germany. So the spectacle is presented of Puritan churches becoming Unitarian and Universalist, and presently a large percentage of the members of these, unable to feed on elevated ethical ideas, dropping off into Spiritualism. Yet Spiritualism, so bizarre and tempting, did not generally satisfy the religious need of the descendants of the Puritans. They had been used to the teachings of stern duty, and it was in their nature to show themselves capable of spiritual effort. Though often of but ordinary intelligence, the artisans and craftsmen and agriculturalists of that period had a deep capacity for religion.

Hiram Crafts was such a man, a Yankee workman transcendentalized. He was not singular, but a type of the man who was to be reached by Christian Science in the first twenty-five years of its promulgation. Out of the hunger of his heart for religion, he was drawn to a more intimate conversation with Mary Baker than he could gain at table, though he sat next her on the left hand and often lingered after supper for an hour of eager questioning and attentive listening. Nor was it singular that her first convert should be made in this way. This man had no intellectual antagonisms to overcome. He was simply hungry for spiritual experience, hungry to realize that personal communion with God that the religious movement of his times had led him to crave.