Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/214

174 Baker’s family. As a matter of fact it only the more alienated them from Mary and her religion. Even Ellen Pillsbury came in after years to repudiate the healing, and repudiate it with resentment.

During the visit with her to Taunton this niece was detached in her affections from her aunt. Ellen was amazed at the simplicity and humbleness in which she found her Aunt Mary living at the home of the Crafts, was amazed at the social isolation, the rigorous application to a severe regimen of work which her aunt had imposed upon herself. Moreover, she resented a firm guidance which her aunt directed over her. All would have been made simple, beautiful, and acceptable had Ellen been able to imbibe the tenets of the faith which had healed her. But these she rejected. She returned to Tilton and ever after scoffed at the very mention of Christian Science. It was she who prevented her aunt Abigail in her last sickness from sending for Mary. She would turn pale with resentment when reminded that she had herself been lifted from a critical illness by her aunt. Her antipathy amounted to a passion, and was related with wonder by old neighbors. It is but another instance of many remarkable antagonisms which Christian Science healing has given rise to through its very unanswerableness. Ellen Pillsbury appeared to resent the notion that she was made to be a living witness of its power. She acted as the final disintegrating factor in Mary Baker’s home relations.

Shortly after Ellen Pillsbury returned to Tilton, Mary Baker severed her relations with the Crafts,