Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/58

28 “fond of investigating abstruse metaphysical principles and schooled himself by intense and incessant study.” Mary corresponded with her brother and also with her cousin who was at college and her fame gradually spread as a young prodigy of learning whose writing fell naturally into poetry and whose thought was forever brooding on spiritual matters.

In spite of her intelligence, Mary Baker’s spiritual experiences continued to be grave and unusual, as had been her “Voices.” She was what her family thought morbidly devout, reading her Bible with absorbed interest, making its characters the familiar friends of her mind. When she discovered that Daniel prayed seven times daily, she formed the habit of doing so likewise. A curious fact is that she kept a record of these prayers in order to examine herself from time to time to learn if she had improved in grace. This was kept up through a number of years and was doubtless her first effort at composition. Her phrases were formed on the style of the psalmist and the prophets. So, when with his cousin, Albert commented on the unusual diction of Mary’s letters, he declared he could only account for it by the habit she had of constantly reading her Bible and writing and rewriting prayers in emulation of David.

Her religious experience reached a grave crisis when she was twelve years of age, though she did not unite with the church until five years later at Sanbornton Bridge. While still in Bow, writing and studying, her father’s relentless theology was alarmed at her frequent expression of confidence in God’s