Paul was my Christian hero, when he looked down into the stillness of a great soul and said, “all these things cannot move me”; and yet I can almost see the thoughts which accompanied that saying, falling down into that deep well, splash the water up into his eyes.
Wisdom lives near the bottom of human life that with humility it may ascend to the gate of heaven. . . . All things shall work together for good to those who love Him. Engrave this upon your banner, you tried and tempted, life-tossed hero.114
There were depths in traditional Christianity open only to experience, not to theory.115
In the year 1864 it was still considered a scandalous thing that a woman should give a speech in public. In that very year Charles Sumner, veteran warrior for the black man’s rights, uttered a shocked protest at the suggestion that Julia Ward Howe should give “readings” before a group of the élite in the parlor of her Washington friend, Mrs. Sprague.
Yet on January 10 Mrs. Patterson again took her courage in her hands and gave her second public address in Portland, this time before the Spiritual Association in Mechanics Hall. Her talk “drew together a very respectable audience,” according to one newspaper account, which then continued:
This lady is not in the habit of public speaking, at least we should judge so from the tone of her voice which was too feminine to fill the hall. She possesses a symmitrical and graceful form, and her manners were modest and unassuming. Her intellectual culture appears to be good, and her spirit touched to very fine issues, but she spins an ● ● ●
114 M. M. Patterson, “Opportunity and Courage,” Portland Daily Press, 27 October 1863, p. 2.
↑115 In an essay entitled “Der Szientismus,” the church historian Karl Holl noted with some surprise that the Christian doctrine of redemption through suffering continued to play a part in Mrs. Eddy’s thinking after her discovery of Christian Science and that it was possible to find a logical connection between this doctrine and her basic metaphysical position. Karl Holl, “Der Szientismus,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 3, Der Westen (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1928), pp. 460–479. Her use of the word “Wisdom” in the quoted passage on Paul relates her to the Christian tradition rather than to the gnostic self-sufficiency implied in Quimby’s use of the word.
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