f the case: it was not at all metaphysi-
cal or scientific; and from his remarks I inferred that [10]
his writings usually ran in the vein of thought presented
by these. He was neither a scholar nor a metaphysician.
I never heard him say that matter was not as real as Mind,
or that electricity was not as potential or remedial, or
allude to God as the divine Principle of all healing. He [15]
certainly had advanced views of his own, but they com-
mingled error with truth, and were not Science. On
his rare humanity and sympathy one could write a
sonnet.

I had already experimented in medicine beyond the [20]
basis of _materia medica_,--up to the highest attenuation
in homoeopathy, thence to a mental standpoint not un-
derstood and with phenomenally good results;(7) mean-
while assiduously pondering the solution of this great
question: Is it matter, or is it Mind, that heals the [25]
sick?

It was after Mr. Quimby's death that I discovered,
in 1866, the momentous facts relating to Mind and its
superiority over matter, and named my discovery Chris-
tian Science. Yet, there remained the difficulty of ad- [30]
justing in the scale of Science a metaphysical _practice_,

[Page 380.]

and settling the question, What shall be the outward [1]
sign of such a practice: if a divine Principle alone heals,
what is the human modus for demonstrating this,--in
short, how can sinful mortals prove that a divine Principle
heals the sick, as well as governs the universe, time, [5]
space, immortality, man?

When contemplating the majesty and magnitude of
this query, it looked as if centuries of spiritual growth
were requisite to enable me to elucidate or to dem-
onstrate what I had discovered: but an unlooked-for, [10]
imperative call for help impelled me to begin this stu-
pendous work at once, and teach the first student in
Christian Science. Even as when an accident, called
fatal to life, had driven me to discover the Science of
Life, I again, in faith, turned to divine help,--and com- [15]
menced teaching.

My students at first practised in slightly differing
forms. Although _I_ could heal mentally, without a sign
save the immediate recovery of the sick, my students'
patients, and people generally, called for a sign--a ma- [20]
terial evidence wherewith to satisfy the sick that something
was being done for them; and I said, "Suffer it
to be so now," for thus saith our Master. Experience,
however, taught me the impossibility