Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/115

Rh to eat without a master; for the new-born understanding that food could not hurt us, brought with it another point, viz., that it did not help us as we had anticipated it would before our changed views on this subject; food had less power over us for evil or for good than when we consulted matter before spirit and believed in pains or pleasures of personal sense. As a natural result we took less thought about "what we should eat or what drink," and fasting or feasting, consulted less our stomachs and our food, arguing against their claims continually, and in this manner despoiled them of their power over us to give pleasure or pain, and recovered strength and flesh rapidly, enjoying health and harmony that we never before had done.

The belief that fasting or feasting enables man to grow better, morally or physically, is one of the fruits of the "tree of knowledge" against which Wisdom warned man, and of which we had partaken in sad experience; believing for many years we lived only by the strictest adherence to dietetics and physiology. During this time we also learned a dyspeptic is very far from the image and likeness of God, from having "dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, or beasts of the field"; therefore that God never made one; while the Graham system, hygiene, physiology, materia medica, etc., did, and contrary to his commands. Then it was that we promised God to spend our coming years for the sick and suffering; to unmask this error of belief that matter rules man. Our cure for dyspepsia was, to learn the science of being, and "eat what was set before us, asking no question for conscience' sake; yea to consult matter less and God more."

In the latest editions, Mrs. Eddy relates this incident, but does not connect herself with it. "I knew a woman," she says, "who, when quite a child, adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia," giving the incident merely as an illustration of Christian Science healing.

At present, Christian Scientists date the dawn of the new era from February 1, 1866, on the evening of which day Mrs. Eddy fell on the ice. She says in Retrospection and Introspection:

It was in Massachusetts, February, 1866, and after the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P. P. Quimby, whom Spiritualists would associate therewith, but who was in no-wise connected with this event, that I discovered the Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing, which I afterwards