In a poem about Jesus' healing ministry, New England poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, "The power that filled his garment's hem / Is evermore the same." Quoted in Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 53. In 1868 Whittier personally experienced Christian healing.
That summer he'd been coughing a lot, as he had the preceding winter. During this time, Mary Baker Eddy and a friend of hers called on him at his home. The encounter is described in a biography of Mrs. Eddy: "Although the day seemed warm to the visitors, they found him in a closed room huddled over the fire, with a hectic flush and coughing continually." Apparently the poet was quite irritable and not ready for company. But as Mrs. Eddy ". . . shared with him some of her ideas, so congenial to his own half-held faith in divine healing, his face changed and, in her own words, 'the sunshine of his former character beamed through the cloud.' When she rose to go he went to her with both hands extended and said, 'I thank you, Mary, for your call; it has done me much good.' A neighbor noted that following the visit he seemed completely recovered." Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (1966; Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1972), p. 223 .
Recalling the occasion, Mrs. Eddy writes, "About 1868, the author of Science and Health healed Mr. Whittier with one visit,at his home in Amesbury, of incipient pulmonary consumption." Pulpit and Press, p. 54. The phrase, "with one visit," is reminiscent of something else she wrote in Science and Health: "If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine." Science and Health, p. 365. Much of the healing work Mrs. Eddy did was "accomplished at one visit." And she wrote Science and Health with the hope that those who read it would follow, as she did, Jesus' example of healing quickly through the power of divine Love.
