On September 14, 1863, in asking for an "absent treatment," Mrs. Eddy wrote: "I would like to have you in your omnipresence visit me at eight o'clock this evening." In a letter dated Warren, May, 1864, she writes that she has been ill, but adds, "I am up and about today, i.e., by the help of the Lord (Quimby)." In the quotation from Retrospection and Introspection above, Mrs. Eddy associates Quimby with spiritualists. Yet, forty years ago, she delivered a public lecture to prove that he was not a spiritualist. She records the event in a letter to Quimby, dated Warren, April 24, 1864:
Jesus taught as man does not, who then is wise but you? Posted at the public marts of this city is this notice, Mrs. M. M. Patterson will lecture at the Town Hall on P. P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease, as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping Spiritualism.
Quimby's manuscripts, his defenders assert, clearly show that when Mrs. Eddy knew him he had dropped mesmerism for his new system. In 1859—three years before he ever saw Mrs. Eddy—he clearly distinguished between physical and spiritual healing—between the permanent healing of disease through God, Wisdom, or the Christ method, and its temporary and ineffectual healing through ignorance, symbolically called Beelzebub.
The question is asked me by some, is the curing of disease a science? I answer yes. You may ask who is the founder of that science? I answer Jesus Christ. Then comes the question, what proof have you that it is a science? Because Christ healed the sick, that of itself is no proof that he knew what he was doing. If it was done, it must have been done by some law or science, for there can be no such thing as accident with God, and if Christ was God, he did know what he was doing. When he was accused of curing disease through Beelzebub or ignorance, he said, If I cast out devils or disease through Beelzebub or ignorance, my kingdom or science cannot stand, but if I cast out devils or disease through a science
