NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

was a large collection of manuscripts, original and revised, containing the whole theory of mental healing and Christian Science; and that what Mrs. Eddy used was the essential terminology, the methods, and the reasonings which establish the principle that "all causation is mental" in the origination and cure of disease.]

Writing to another man, George Quimby said in part:

"The basis of the whole misunderstanding has been that everything that has emanated from the Eddy side has been taken for God's truth, and everything that has been stated in opposition to her has been pronounced and believed to be lies. By assuming all she has said as true, on the start, it doesn't leave much for the other side.

"To begin with, you must understand that I was with my father during the term he was in Portland, and had had an intimate personal acquaintance extending over two or more years with Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Patterson). I am not stating hearsay, but personal knowledge. As I was father's clerk, bookkeeper and sec'y, and as it was the wish of his life that I take his place and carry on his work, I ought to know what he believed and claimed, and how he treated the sick, and what be wanted me to learn. I have a package of Mrs. Eddy's letters to my father, covering a period from 1862 to 1864. . . In all her letters she gives him full credit for discovering and reducing mental healing to a science. . . . This Mrs. Patterson knew, and this she learned from him, not as a student receiving a regular course as she taught in her college, but by sitting in his room, talking with him, reading his Mss., copying some of them, writing some herself and reading them to him for his criticism. In that sense she and many others of his patients were his pupils, in the same way that the disciples were pupils of Jesus. I have heard him talk hours and hours, week in and week out, when she was present, listening and asking questions. After these talks he would put on paper in the shape of an essay or conversation what subject his talk had covered. These writings we would then copy into blank books. . . Five or six were written before Mrs. Patterson came to Portland.

"Now, I have had since the article appeared in The Times several letters from Mr. Wentworth, who claims to have the document from which The Times gave extracts. I wrote him and asked him to give me the `Questions and Answers' of which there purported to be fifteen, and also the beginning of the `Answers.' He did so. I have in my possession the original of these questions and answers.

"Mrs. Eddy did live in Stoughton. She did board with those people. And it does not seem possible nor probable to me that they would absolutely lie about this matter-I mean as to where they obtained the paper. If they did not get it from Mrs. Eddy, where did it come from?. They never saw father, and father wrote the original article, and I have it before me now, and it is dated Portland, Feb. 1862. .

"If he was a mesmerist or spiritualist, what did he write that for? And why did he say in his Circular to the Sick, which he issued from 1860 to 1865, 'I give no medicine and make no outward applications. I tell the patient his feelings, and my explanation is the cure'? Why did he do this? Because that was his method and no one knew it better than Mrs. Eddy.

"In your statement of Mrs. Eddy's offer to print father's writings, if any such existed, and because her offer was not accepted it proved there were no such writings, you did not give her whole offer which was, `provided' she first be allowed to examine them and see if they were not some she left with him! Just think of it! my letting her, or any one else, have Mss. I knew were father's because I saw him write them, and copied many of them myself, to see if she didn't write them and leave them with him."