Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/218



THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF "SCIENCE AND HEALTH"—CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF METAPHYSICS—AS A RELIGION—AS A CURATIVE AGENT

book upon which Mrs. Glover had been at work for so long, was first published in 1875. For eight years she had been writing and rewriting, with unabated patience, and wherever she went she had enlisted the interest of her friends and had set them to copying her manuscripts and getting them ready for a possible printer. While she was staying with the Wentworths in Stoughton she carried her copy to Boston to look for a publisher, and when the printer to whom she showed it asked to be paid in advance, Mrs. Glover tried to persuade Mrs. Wentworth to lend her the money. Had Mrs. Glover then been successful in her search for a publisher, Christian Science in its present form would never have existed; for at that time she had not dreamed of calling the system anything but Quimby's "science."

By 1875, however, Mrs. Glover had persuaded herself that she owed very little to the old Maine philosopher, and when her book appeared she said no more of Quimby or of her promise to teach his science "to at least two persons before I die."

Neither Mrs. Glover nor the printer took any financial risk