Memorable passages in Peel's "Years of Trial"

Here are some passages that caught my attention in Peel’s book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial -

Page 140: “The miraculous was not an exception to universal law, but an illustration of it.”

Page 140: Mrs. Eddy saying that the only treatment she gave a woman suffering from a cancer which had “eaten its way to the jugular vein”, was to turn away and know “in the most positive way that God knew nothing of such a thing.” The only treatment, but what exact knowing of God's truth!

Here, we are reading about the time Mrs. Eddy was preaching in Boston. When she could not preach, others filled in for her. One of these was Andrew P. Peabody. Note #5 on page 350 tells us about him:

This remarkable personage at the age three was racing through full-length books of every description, reading them as easily upside down as right side to. At seven he memorized the entire Bible with scarcely any effort. At nine he was teaching classes in arithmetic and writing his cousin, “I am perfectly satisfied that Colburn's Arithmetic is founded on an excellent plan, and that it will be of great use in instructing those who know nothing of Arithmetic.” At twelve, when already proficient in Latin, Green, French, and German, he was admitted to Harvard College. He was deeply loved by several generations of Harvardians, and a plaque in Appleton Chapel announces that “for thirty-three years he moved among the Teachers and Students at Harvard College and wist not that his face shone.”

Ah yes! [Ed. At the foot of page 158 and on to page 159, Peel describes the stark difference between Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College and Harvard College “across the Charles River.” The latter, Peel describes as fitting the “familiar definition of the ideal college as consisting of] Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a student at the other.” This quote sticks in my memory as something that needs explaining. Up till now I have never looked up Mark Hopkins, but this time I have. Encyclopedia Britannica puts the quote exactly, I trust:

Mark Hopkins, (born Feb. 4, 1802, Stockbridge, Mass., U.S.—died June 17, 1887, Williamstown, Mass.), American educator and theologian of whom U.S. President James A. Garfield, a former student, once declared, “I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus, and libraries without him.” 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Hopkins-American-educator-and-theologian

Britannica.com says, of his teaching, that it included moral philosophy, theology, piety; and that moral values were stressed as much, or more than, intellectual achievements.

It seems to me that one would need to be a student of literature to comprehend what Peel says on pages 164 and 165. And one could add considerably to his knowledge of literature (or is it philosophy?) if one looked into those remarkable men and their work. No women!

But one woman was giving mankind a truth far ahead of the teaching of those men. Speaking of Mrs. Eddy's classes in Christian Science, Peel avers that, “Many a college education of four years' length has produced less fundamental change in a person's thought processes and life attitudes than did Mrs. Eddy's twelve lessons” (page 166). She was giving the world the truth of being, which she consolidated in the scientific statement of being - see her Science & Health, p. 468.)

A major part of Eddy's teaching was to establish a correct concept of God. I ask myself, What was my concept of God when I was led to Christian Science? Well. I had had an experience where I knew that God was communicating with me, and I could communicate with Him. So I would say that my concept of God was a wonderful sense of good, an almost overwhelming joy of knowing that God was a real presence and could influence my thinking and my life.

Another reference that has stayed with me is on page 171. It is somewhat of a rebuff to us when we complain of the heat. Peels writes, “When the summer heat caused a certain amount of restiveness in one of her classes, Mrs. Eddy asked dryly, ‘Shall we move to some cooler part of the city, or shall we remain and make our own atmosphere?’ The restiveness stopped.”

Joyce Voysey