Mother Eddy's lack of memory, however, has had its plenary compensation. Her imagination has more than made up for it. The surcharge of this illimitable faculty has enabled her to produce one of the greatest works of fiction ever conceived on earth, or possible to any other planet. This arch-angelic romance, dimly and very distantly founded on fact, bears the esoteric title of _Retrospection and Introspection_. It is not in the usual form of a novel, but was evaporated by Mrs. Eddy as her corporal and spiritual biography, after she had dropped Dr. Quimby from her powers of research, and had built up her grand theological and financial industry, "Christian Science." From an attentive reading of this personally conducted and authorized volume, we know the light in which the hallowed lady wishes to appear, and we know a good deal more if we read between the lines. At eight years of age--if we can only credit true piety hitched up with lost memory--a heaven-selected little girl, Mary Baker, "repeatedly heard a voice," calling her "distinctly by name, three times in an ascending scale." At first she thought it was a human voice; but in due season--for the call came many times--she, her mother and her cousin, Mehitable Huntoon, learned better. Then her mother read to her the Hebrew story of little Samuel, and advised her to respond to the voice, saying, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." Finally the chosen virgin took this advice, whereupon the voice "came no more" to her "_material_ senses." Its mission had been fulfilled. Such is the opening legend told to the marines of the Church Scientist, in that juicy book, _Retrospection and Introspection_.[17] Still, in these days of "Spiritual manifestations," the numerous believers in messages from "the summer land" would account, in a quite simple way, for the voices calling little Hebrew Samuel and little New-England Mary. But not so Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. "Am I a believer in Spiritualism?" she asks. "I believe in no ism.... As I understand it Spiritualism is the antipode of Christian Science."[18] Ah, it was no voice of common, finite spirit, that came to the high and mighty founder of an "absolutely scientific religion." So there is but one conclusion she gives us to draw: _the voice was directly the voice of God_. The Infinite and Omniscient, the All-in-All, spake to the girl of nine years, as a miraculous call to her divine work. At that time, she tells us, her father thought her "brain" was "too large for her body."[19] The old gentleman was doubtless right. It looks, too, as if the brain of his blessed daughter, with the entire head containing it, has been rapidly enlarging ever since.