elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to include religion and
theology and even created his own distinctive metaphysics. He
distinguished between the mind and spirit; he must of course discover in
personality a power superior to fluctuating mental attitudes. He called
his system a science since he was trying to reduce it to a system and
discover its laws. He found a parallel to what he was doing in the
narratives of healing in the Christian Gospels and claimed Christ as the
founder of his science.[23]

[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, p. 185.]

All belief opposed to his was "error"; "Truth" was naturally opposed to
error. He subordinates the testimony of the senses to the necessities of
his system; he defines God variously as Wisdom, as Truth, possibly as
Principle though his use of the word Principle is far more intelligible
than Mrs. Eddy's.[24] He increasingly identifies his system and the
teachings of Jesus and ends by calling it "Christian Science."[25]

[Footnote 24: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 309.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 388.]

In substance in the more than 400 closely printed pages of the Quimby
manuscripts as now edited we discover either the substance or the
suggestion of all that Mrs. Eddy later elaborated. Now all this,
confused as it is, brings us to the threshold of a distinct advance in
mental and faith healing.

_Mary Baker Eddy Comes Under Quimby's Influence_

Practically faith and mental healing had depended, till Quimby took it
up, upon persons or objects. The saint or the healer worked through
personal contact; the shrine must be visited, the relic be touched. Such
a system was naturally dependent upon accidents of person or place; it
would not be widely extended nor continued nor made the basis of
self-treatment. But if what lay behind the whole complex group of
phenomena could be systematized and given real power of popular appeal
through its association with religion it would possess a kind of
continuing independence, conditioned only by the willingness of people
to be persuaded of the truth of its philosophy or to answer to its
religious appeal. It would then become a mental and spiritual
discipline to be written into books and taught by the initiated. As far
as it could be associated with religion it would become the basis of a
cult and it would have an immense field.

All difficult or chronic or obscure illnesses would offer an opportunity
to its propagandists, and the necessary obs