Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/240

200 thought he would get out of Mrs. Glover’s class in metaphysics. He replied that he didn’t think about it at all, that he joined because his sister asked him to. When he actually cured a girl of dropsy as a result of his first grappling with Mind Science, he was so surprised and frightened that he washed his hands of it forever.

It was not by overstating what Mrs. Glover had taught them, but by misstating her teaching, through misapprehension or through wilful distortion, that some of these earlier students became ineffectual and subsequently, through chagrin, were entirely estranged from the cause which they had at first so ardently espoused. One of the rebellious students was Charles S. Stanley, brother-in-law of the seaman Tuttle. He was a shoe-worker and a Baptist. The healing of his wife had led him to seek admittance to the class Mrs. Glover was conducting. After some questioning she admitted him, only to find him argumentative, controversial, determined to discuss dogma from the standpoint of a Baptist rather than a Christian. In the class were men and women, mostly shoe-workers. These students had various religious creeds; there were Methodists, Unitarians, Universalists, and others. The controversial Baptist affected the harmony of a class where other members had risen above creed into the consideration of pure Christianity. His arguments recurred from day to day until Stanley broke away from Mrs. Glover’s teaching without completing her course of instruction. Indeed she dismissed him for lack of teachableness, though he insisted he knew all there