The unmistakable inference was that Mrs. Eddy was making her book out of the ideas contained in the original Quimby manuscript. Mrs. Clapp, with the irreverence of girlhood, had scant respect for the weighty ideas contained in the Quimby-Glover book, and there was one particular idea which she used to scoff at and make fun of to her intimates. It was to this effect:
“The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary than would be the process of taking a fish out of water every day and covering it with dirt to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native element.”
Years afterward, Mrs. Clapp picked up a copy of “Science and Health,” and opened it to this identical sentence which had so often excited her girlish derision. It is on page 41, edition of 1898.
When Mrs. Wentworth died, in 1882, and the property was divided, the son Horace laid claim to the copy of the Quimby manuscript. He wanted it because it was in his mother’s handwriting (with the exception of Eddy’s corrections), and it would be a souvenir of her. He kept it with no other thought until now.
“But of late years,” said Mr. Wentworth, “as I have seen the amazing spread of this delusion, and the way in which men and women are offering up money and the lives of their children to it, I have felt that it is a duty I owe to the public to make it known.
“I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Eddy, no axe to grind, no interest to serve, I simply feel that it is due the thousands of good people, who have made Christian Science the anchorage of their souls and its founder the infallible guide of their daily life, to keep this no longer to myself. I desire only that people who take themselves and their helpless children into Christian Science shall do so with a full knowledge that this is not a divine revelation, but simply the idea of an old-time Maine healer.”
It may be assumed then, as proven, that as in 1868, 1869 and 1870 Mrs. Glover (Eddy) was teaching a system of mental healing she, at the time, said she had learned from Dr. P. P. Quimby, she couldn’t have discovered it herself in 1866. It now becomes interesting to know if there is any similarity between what we may call Quimbyism and Christian Science, between the teaching of Mrs. Glover-Eddy in 1870 and her teaching now.
On the outside, this Quimby-Glover manuscript is entitled, “Extracts From Doctor P. P. Quimby’s Writings,” and at the head of the first page, on the inside, it is further entitled, “The Science of Man, or The Principle Which Controls all Phenomena.”
There is a preface of two pages with Mary M. Glover’s name signed at the end. The “Extracts” are in the form of fifteen questions and answers, covering about thirty large pages, and are labeled, “Questions by Patients and Answers by Dr. Quimby.” The document contains an elaboration of Dr. Quimby’s mental healing system as taught by Mrs. Eddy, by her own acknowledgment, as late as 1870.
The contents of this Quimby-Glover manuscript having been communicated to Mr. George A. Quimby of Belfast, Maine, son of Dr. P. P. Quimby, he says, having compared it with his father’s writings in his possession, that it is a precise copy of them. He further says that an opportunity was afforded Mrs. Eddy to copy his father’s writings, as his father was accustomed to lend his manuscript to his patients, one of whom Mrs. Eddy was.
A perusal of this manuscript in comparison with Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and Health” shows, that every basic idea of Christian Science as a healing system was bodily appropriated by her from Dr. Quimby’s manuscripts and not obtained, as she says, by revelation from God. As contained in the manuscript and as taught by Dr. Quimby, there was no suggestion of a religious character to his teachings; the religious phase was an afterthought of Mrs. Eddy’s, as a means of facilitating the sale and distribution of her profit-yielding, copyrighted and “inspired” writings.