A regular contributor to magazines

Robert Peel is a very thorough historian. I like the way he traces the unfolding events of Mary's life from Baker to Glover to Patterson, from single to married to widowed and remarried, while also seeing the trend of things. This trend was of a woman on a journey of discovery, a woman being prepared for her great life's work as the "general" of a great army (- Peel's description: Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 197).

I am impressed that Mary was such a regular contributor to the newspapers and magazines of her day, no matter where she was living and in what circumstances. Isolated as she may often have been physically, she seems never to have let go of an intense interest in the events of the world. An example is her poem of 1861, a "Sonnet to Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont" (ibid. p. 197), written during the tragic Civil War. 

I love the inclusion of several photographs in this latest edition. They provide excellent context for the period under consideration. 

Peel calls the year 1853 "Wilderness" (see Chapter 4). This was the year she married Daniel Patterson. She was thirty-two. Later, Mary Baker Eddy would give the world a definition of Wilderness in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 597), viz.

        Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.

Nine years later, in her physical extremity, she would take treatment from the magnetic healer, Phineas P. Quimby. Unfortunately, what seemed at first to be a miraculous recovery, soon faded and “the unhealed past rose up again, and old ills began to return” (Peel, p. 238).

Many years later, Eddy penned an editorial in a magazine of her own about some of the misinformation surrounding her relationship with Quimby and especially to his influence (if any) on her discovery of Christian Science – see below. 

Julie Swannell

"ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY"

BY THE EDITOR. 

From the December 1883 issue of The Christian Science Journal 

A word of facts about the old gentleman in question. We knew Dr. Quimby well for three years before his death; was his patient. He helped us; but our case relapsed. We helped some patients of his that he could not help. He never told us, or any one, to our knowledge, that he treated disease mentally: he was an acknowledged mesmerist, and manipulated his patients. He commenced miscellaneous writings after we saw him: had no school education, but had a sound mind, and many advanced views on healing. We caught some of his thoughts, and he caught some of ours: and both of us were pleased to say this to each other. He never claimed what others claim for him. He never systematized his writings; never verbally or by manuscripts communicated to any one, to our knowledge, how he healed; never took students, or presumed to establish a system of his own. We have asked him how he healed; but he never gave us to know.

It was after the death of Dr. Quimby that we discovered the science of metaphysical healing, and named it "Christian Science." Ours is a purely mental method of treating disease, and there is ample proof of its science.