In the history of Christian Science the event has crucial importance. It is at this point in her autobiography that the discoverer of Christian Science breaks off to say:
It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man’s real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. It is “as a tale that is told,” and “as the shadow when it declineth.” The heavenly intent of earth’s shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being.8
As George Glover vanished with Mahala Cheney into the west, he might almost have been that young Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, who was carried into the wilderness in order to make way for the true son of promise. That, at least, was the way it would look to some in the future who accepted the promise.
The immediate effect of George’s removal was to plunge Mrs. Patterson into almost total invalidism. Family letters report this change for the worse and also the fact that Patterson was now having to give virtually all his time to looking after his bedridden wife.
As a result he was unable to pay Martha Pilsbury the interest on the mortgage, and this in turn caused his sister-in-law grave financial difficulties. “What shall I do,” she wrote George Baker, “foreclose at once? I suppose I can do this as he has broken his obligation by not paying annual interest.” But she pitied him. Mary was sick, he was unable to work, and “I expect they are brought to absolute want!”9
Martha had a new loss of her own to mourn in the death of her daughter Mary, which occurred just about the time that young George moved west. For Mrs. Patterson, too, the death of this enchanting little niece to whom she had felt so close must have been one more cause for ● ● ●
8 Mary Baker Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection (Boston: Christian Science Board of Directors, 1920), p. 21.
9 Martha Baker Pilsbury to George Sullivan Baker, 27 April 1856, 1920.015.0016, LMC.