● ● ● it.140 On the evidence of her own writings at this period, the confusion of thought in “Questions and Answers” must have become increasingly disturbing to her. At some point she added a brief preface to it, in an effort to clarify it in the light of her new convictions, and she made further revisions in the text itself.141
This was the manuscript of which she wrote in an early edition of Science and Health, “The only manuscript that we ever held of his [Quimby’s], longer than to correct it, was one of perhaps a dozen pages, most of which we had composed.”142 It is the manuscript that Mrs. Wentworth copied under the general title “Extracts from Dr. P. P. Quimby’s Writings.” Then followed the more specific title, apparently added by Mrs. Glover, “The Science of Man, or the principle which controls all phenomena.” The preface, signed Mary M. Glover, was followed by the fifteen questions and answers, identified as “P. P. Quimbys Mss.” A later copy, also in Mrs. Wentworth’s handwriting, ran the preface and the rest of the material together, with slight changes and without any attribution to either author.
What has not been generally understood is that The Science of Man which Mrs. Glover later wrote, used as a classbook, copyrighted, published, and eventually incorporated into Science and Health as the chapter called “Recapitulation,” was an entirely different work from this early hybrid product of the first stages of her transition from Quimbyism to Christian Science. She allowed Mrs. Wentworth to copy the earlier ● ● ●
140 The testimony on this is unanimous. Only Horace Wentworth (who was not a student) claimed otherwise. George Quimby wrote Miss Milmine in his March 13, 1906, letter: “Why don’t you find out certainly whether Mrs Eddy did teach from that article? . . . Ive only the Stoughton mans word for it.” George A. Quimby to Georgine Milmine Welles, 13 March 1906, Subject File, Georgine Milmine - Research Notes II, MBEL. On the other hand, Mrs. Glover did let her first two or three students read and study “Questions and Answers” for themselves, according to her correspondence with Sarah Bagley, and this may lie behind Horace Wentworth’s claim.
141 When an anonymous writer (probably Miss Milmine) wrote an article in the New York Times on July 10, 1904, drawing parallels between “Quimby’s” words in the newly discovered Wentworth “Questions and Answers” and Mrs. Eddy’s words in Science and Health, he or she very curiously attributed to Quimby statements from Mrs. Glover’s preface. [“True Origin of Christian Science,” New York Times, 10 July 1904, Sunday Magazine, pp. 1–2.] As a result some of the parallels are actually between words written by Mrs. Eddy at different periods of her life. Of course, this may be true even when the statements are taken from the body rather than the preface of “Questions and Answers.”
142 Mary Baker G. Eddy, Science and Health; With a Key to the Scriptures, 6th ed. (Boston: Mary Baker G. Eddy, 1883), vol. 1, p. 4 [bracketed text Peel’s].