● ● ● spotless bedroom with a framed text on the wall: “He shall give his angels charge over thee.”101
Soon Mrs. Glover had converted her hostess from a belief in spiritualism to acceptance of the new Science. Young Kennedy, who was working in a box factory, would join the two women in his free time for hours of eager study and discussion in what they called the “garden room.”102 Late at night, as they pored over the Bible and her manuscripts in the lamplight, it would seem as though a world of unimaginable wonder were opening up to them.
Back on May 30, while she was still at the Webster house, Mrs. Glover had received a telegram summoning her to Manchester to help a friend of the Websters, Mrs. Mary G. Gale, who was critically ill with pneumonia. She had gone and healed her immediately, and Mrs. Gale’s subsequent letters poured out her gratitude for the healing.103 But while she was there, Mrs. Glover had noticed a small child in the house playing with a book, and when she picked up the book she read with delight the title A Dictionary of the Bible, edited by William Smith and published only the year before in Hartford, Connecticut.104 Mrs. Gale ordered a copy for her and it arrived while she was at Miss Bagley’s.
Up to this time she had had to carry on her writing without concordances or any of the normal aids to biblical study. Now she at least had one reference work to abet her, and her direct and indirect references to Smith’s Dictionary even in the last edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures show that she valued its aid. She was especially pleased to find the text of Genesis 6:3, “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh,” rendered, “And Jehovah said, My spirit shall not forever rule [or be humbled] ● ● ●
101 Mary Beecher Longyear, The History of a House (Brookline, MA: Zion Research Foundation, 1925), p. 3. The Bagley house, together with several others where Mrs. Eddy once lived, is maintained by Longyear Museum today.
102 [Longyear, The History of a House, p. 63.]
103 Mary G. Gale to Mary Baker Glover, 30 May 1868, Subject File, Mary Gale, MBEL. On August 18, 1868, she wrote, “I feel dear Mrs. Glover that I owe you all I am able to do for you and then my debt would never be discharged.” Mary G. Gale to Mary Baker Glover, 18 August 1868, Subject File, Mary Gale, MBEL.
104 Mary Baker Eddy to William and Frederica L. Miller, May 1905, L09567, MBEL.