Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/229

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GERMINATION AND UNFOLDMENT
189

He was alert, active and clear-headed, and Mrs. Glover was persuaded by Miss Bagley to accept him with her as a student. The winter evenings were passed in conversation on metaphysics. The Socratic method of teaching was necessarily adopted by Mrs. Glover, as she had as yet no text-book. These early talks were later systematized, the dissertations were dignified into the form of lectures. And these lectures some of her early students declare to have been illuminating and inspirational beyond valuing in money.

Her dissertations as well as her writings were beginning to unseal the fountains of her inspiration. She had arrived by this winter’s work at a clear standpoint. She could now definitely wrap in words the spiritual concepts which had before been elusive and intangible. She was beginning to lay hold of the technical processes of her work. From this standpoint she lifted her eyes to a far horizon. The work now opened up before her, the work of promulgation.

By the spring of 1870 she had completed a manuscript which she entitled “The Science of Man.” This manuscript was copyrighted but not published until some time later. “I did not venture upon its publication until later,” she says, “having learned that the merits of Christian Science must be proven before a work on this subject could be profitably published.”[1]

It was first issued as a pamphlet and is advertised in the first number of the Christian Science Journal. It was later converted into the chapter Recapitula-

  1. Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 53.