Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/89

Rh the Fox sisters of Rochester had startled the world with the story of their “rappings.” That the “undiscovered country” should be rapping to our world attention seemed almost more wonderful than if Mars should be found to-day to be signaling our planet.

London was no less excited over this topic than New York or Boston. Mediums developed on all sides. They saw “the vanished hand” and heard “the voice that is still.” In London they handled red-hot coals and unfastened cords and bonds, they caused musical instruments to be played by unseen touch and the ringing of bells to sound upon the air. Poyen and Andrew Jackson Davis published books on mesmerism or animal magnetism. The cure of disease by clairvoyant diagnosis and mesmeric healing was quite commonly given credence. Were such ideas reconcilable with religion? They speculated on it under the very altar, though New England was not peculiar in this respect. However, it is a just assertion that not to have heard such discussions or not to have been interested in them, was not to have lived at all in the consciousness of the time.

Mary Baker did live in that consciousness, fully and deeply. Just as she lived in the consciousness of political struggle, just as she drank in the new literary atmosphere of that glorious school of New England writers, she was aware of that oscillation in religious notions. Every circumstance of her education and breeding had given her the habit of dealing with life in a large way. She who dared to