Now Quimby, through his own native force and such a combination of circumstances as occurs only once in long periods of time, stood upon the threshold of just such a revolution in the history of faith and mental healing as this. He anticipated the method and supplied the material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. He was not selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. He was more interested in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have probably come of his work save its somewhat vague and loose continuance in the thought and teaching of a small group. (It is doubtful if New Thought, which as we shall see grew out of his work through his association with the Dressers, would have come to much without the stimulus of Christian Science against which it reacted.) Some one was needed to give the whole nebulous system organization and driving force and above all to make a cult of it. _Outstanding Events of Her Life: Her Early Girlhood_ Mary Baker Eddy did just this and Christian Science is the result. It is idle to calculate the vanished alternatives of life but in all probability she never would have done it without Quimby. She and her followers would do far better to honestly recognize this indebtedness. It would now make little difference with either the position of their leader or the force of their system but it would take a pretty keen weapon out of the hands of their critics and give them the added strength which thoroughgoing honesty always gives to any cause. There is, on the other hand, little likelihood that Quimby's persuasions would ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in Mrs. Eddy so creative a disciple. The outstanding facts of Mary Baker Eddy's life are too well known to need much retelling here. The story of her life and the history of Christian Science as told by Georgine Milmine in _McClure's Magazine_ during the years of 1907-8 is final. It is based upon thorough investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts. The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and the church have been involved confirm both the statements and conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which Mrs. Eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated.