and not matter, and God is the only Intelligence, and there is but one God, hence there are no believers!” That is the answer. “So far as this statement is understood, it will be admitted,” said Mrs. Glover; and who shall say that she is not right?
Among the many incidental ideas which Mrs. Glover added to Quimbyism is her qualified disapproval of marriage. Quimby had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage; and although Mrs. Glover had twice been married, and became a wife for the third time a year later, she believed that marriage had not a very firm spiritual basis. In defining the real purpose of marriage she said nothing about children. “To happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage.” “The scientific morale of marriage is spiritual unity. . . . Proportionately as human generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually discerned.”[1]
In addition to the development of her “science,” Mrs. Glover described a later discovery in regard to it. Some of her “false students,” she said, were substituting mesmerism for “science” when healing the sick. The chapters called “Imposition and Demonstration,” and “Healing the Sick,” are largely taken up with an account of how this false doctrine, which is a perversion of Christian Science, originated, and a warning of its evil effects. This practice of mesmerism was the forerunner of what she later called “Malicious Animal Magnetism.” The
- ↑ In a chapter called “Wedlock,” in Miscellaneous Writings (1897), Mrs. Eddy, after an evasive discussion of the subject, squarely puts the question: “Is marriage nearer right than celibacy? Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while Science indicates that it is not.” Also: “Human nature has bestowed on a wife the right to become a mother; but if the wife esteems not this privilege, by mutual consent, exalted and increased affections, she may win a higher.”
