was the absorption unconscious and innocent, but quite the contrary. This is a serious charge to make, and unless all doubt is fairly and completely eliminated, should never be made at all. But all doubt has been eliminated, and Mrs. Eddy herself, like the purloiner of the chickens, has excluded the last vestige of doubt by her own letters and other writings. Mr. George A. Quimby, son of the old doctor, has these letters written by Mrs. Eddy to his father, in his possession. McClure quotes from them in his Magazine, and I quote from him. Remember that she had been his patient and then his most earnestly interested pupil, that she was most wonderfully healed by him, or claimed to have been, and was exceedingly grateful. In a letter written Dr. Quimby, January 12, 1863, she says:

"I am, to all who see me, a living wonder, and a living monument of your power. *** I eat, drink, and am merry, have no laws to fetter my spirit * * * My explanation of your curative principle surprises people especially those whose minds are all matter."

Evidently she is immensely enamored of that same curative principle. But what is that principle according to Dr. Quimby? We shall have to go back a little in the history. And as we go back we shall ask Mrs. Eddy to define this principle for us. In a letter published in the Portland Courier, Nov. 7, 1862, and quoted by McClure, she says:

"Three weeks since I quitted my nurse and sick room en route for Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical

depression I first visited P. P. Quimby; and in less than one week from that time I ascended by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum. To the most subtle reasoning, such a proof, coupled, too, as it is, with numberless similar ones, demonstrates his power to heal. Now for a brief analysis of this

power."

Then follows an extended argument to prove that it is not by Spiritualism nor animal magnetism that he heals the sick. Then she continues:

"But now I can see dimly at first, and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter, and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action; and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration, becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. (The italics in the next sentence are mine-author.) The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof); and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease. At present I am too much in error to elucidate the truth, and can touch only the keynote for the master hand to wake the harmony."

Then again, in the Portland Advertiser, as quoted by McClure, she says:

"P. P. Quimby stands upon the plane of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not identified with truth? And is not this the Christ which is in him? We know that in wisdom is life, 'and the life was the light of men.' P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulchre of error and health is the resurrection."

She writes repeatedly during the year 1863, begging for "absent treatment," referring to this form of treatment as "angel visits." In one of these letters she

says:

"I would like to have you in your omnipresence visit me at 8 o'clock this evening."

McClure's Magazine, February, 1907, quotes from several of her letters written Dr. Quimby, and I quote briefly from McClure. Under date of April 5, 1864, she writes:

"I met the former editor of the Banner of Light, and he heard for once the truth about you. He thought you a defunct Spiritualist. Before I quitted him at Brunswick he had endorsed your science and acknowledged himself as greatly interested in it."

Again, April 24, 1864:

"Jesus taught as man does not, who then is wise but you? Posted at the public marts of this city is this notice, Mrs. M. M. Patterson will lecture at the Town Hall on P. P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease, as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping Spiritualism."

From a letter written in May, 1864, it appears she has been sick again. In this letter the following striking sentence occurs:

“I am up and about today, i. e., by the help of the Lord (Quimby)."

Now, after all this, and she could not possibly make it any stronger, and after Julius A. Dresser, a disciple of Dr. Quimby's, has made public certain of her letters, in her madness, and her plea is almost one of insanity, she writes as follows to the Boston Post:

"Did I write those articles purporting to be mine? I might have written them twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until his death in 1865. He was illiterate and I knew nothing then of the Science of Mindhealing, and I was as ignorant of Mesmerism as Eve before she was taught by the serpent. Mind Science was unknown to me, and my head was so turned by animal magnetism and will-power, under his treatment, that I might have written something as hopelessly incorrect as the articles now published in the Dresser pamphlet. I was not healed until after the death of Mr. Quimby; and then healing came as the result of my discovery in 1866, of the Science of Mind-healing, since named Christian Science."

If this is not a plea of guilty as charged in the indictment, then it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand or define such a plea. The ancient African admits that he may have stolen the chickens, "But, Boss, if I did, I sho' must have been walkin' in my sleep, 'case I don't recollec' nuthin' 'bout it." Keeping these last few sentences in mind, compare that

which has gone before with the following. In 1887 she writes:

"I never heard him (Quimby) intimate that he healed disease mentally. *** During his treatments I felt like one having hold of an electric battery and standing on an insulated stool. His healing was never considered or called anything but Mesmerism."

But she has already said:

"The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof); and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease."

Could the case by any kind of possibility be made any stronger? She convicts herself. "I may have stolen the chickens, but I don't recollec' nuthin' 'bout it." Her own contradictory statements invalidate her claims to originality, much more so to inspiration. She is fairly and hopelessly caught with the goods on her! She claimed that Quimby got his ideas from her, but if he, as she charged, practiced Mesmerism, how about this claim? Did he get that from her too? But take her letters, written about him and to him, and see if they could possibly have been written by master to pupil! For instance, in an early letter to the Portland Courier, sometime after her alleged healing, we find her using the following language:

"Now, then, his works are but the result of superior wisdom, which can demonstrate a science not understood. * * * I can see dimly at first, and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works. * * At present I am too much in error to elucidate the truth, and can touch