● ● ● thunder, or to attempt to teach what I did not understand. Whereas I do claim to understand the Moral and Physical Science that I teach.82
In a letter to Mrs. Mary Ellis a few days later, Mrs. Glover described the newspaper controversy as another excitement for Lynn, to take the place of the Reverend Mr. Cook’s philippics against immorality the winter before, and then she burst out, “O, Mrs Ellis, God is my helper and I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”83 Certainly it seemed that the wrath of man was praising Him, for all copies of the weekly Transcript containing her article were sold out by the next day, so keen was the interest.
The next week Wright returned to the fray, treating the Lynn public to liberal quotations from Mrs. Glover’s manuscripts, which he had earlier promised not to make public in any way. After ridiculing these passages he challenged their author to raise the dead, walk on the water, live twenty-four hours without air, and perform various other feats to prove her claims to inspiration—evidently, forgetful that it was Satan who challenged the Founder of Christianity to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple in order to prove that he was the son of God.
Even as a request for controlled experiments to prove the scientific validity of the new teachings, Wright’s challenge left something to be desired. Mrs. Glover pointed out reasonably enough in a passage written two or three years later that her teachings at this period would have to be accepted “on the inductive method.” The proof of even a part involved the whole Principle and made possible a presumptive acceptance of the whole:
Admitting the entire grounds of the science of being, it quickly follows our poor demonstration looks us in the face; but to this we reply, enough has been understood and proved, to reveal it science, and to prove, measurably, the blessing it brings. When speaking of this ● ● ●
82 Mary M. B. Glover, “To the Public. Moral Science and Mesmerism,” Lynn Transcript, 3 February 1872, p. 2. This article is also reprinted as Appendix 2 in Norman Beasley, The Cross and the Crown: The History of Christian Science (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1952), pp. 569–572.
83 Mary Baker Glover to Mary Ellis, 6 February 1872, L05663, MBEL. [See Psalms 54:4, 42:11, and 43:5.]