895."
The beautiful souvenir is encased in an elegant plush box.

Accompanying the stone testimonial was the following address from the
board of directors:

BOSTON, March 20, 1895.

To the Reverend Mary Baker Eddy, our beloved teacher and leader:

We are happy to announce to you the completion of The First Church of
Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

In behalf of your loving students and all contributors wherever they may
be, we hereby present this church to you as a testimonial of love and
gratitude for your labors and loving sacrifice, as the discoverer and
founder of Christian Science, and the author of its text-book, "SCIENCE
AND HEALTH WITH KEY To THE SCRIPTURES."

We therefore respectfully extend to you the invitation to become the
permanent pastor of this church, in connection with the Bible, and the
Book alluded to above, which you have already ordained as our pastor.
And we most cordially invite you to be present and take charge of any
services that may be held therein. We especially desire you to be
present on the twenty-fourth day of March, eighteen hundred and
ninety-five, to accept this offering, with our humble benediction.

Lovingly yours,

IRA O. KNAPP,
WILLIAM B. JOHNSON,
JOSEPH ARMSTRONG,
STEPHEN A. CHASE,
_The Christian Science Board of Directors_.

REV. MRS. EDDY'S REPLY.

BELOVED DIRECTORS AND BRETHREN:--

For your costly offering, and kind call to the pastorate of "The First
Church of Christ, Scientist," in Boston--accept my profound thanks. But
permit me, respectfully, to decline their acceptance, while I fully
appreciate your kind intentions.-If it will comfort you in the least,
make me your Pastor _Emeritus_, nominally. Through my book, your
text-book, I already speak to you each Sunday. You ask too much when
asking me to accept your grand Church edifice. I have more of earth now,
than I desire, and less of heaven; so pardon my refusal of that as a
material offering. More effectual than the forum are our states of mind,
to bless mankind. This wish stops not with my pen--God give you grace.
As our Church's tall tower detains the sun, so, may luminous lines from
your lives, linger, a legacy to our race.

MARY BAKER EDDY.

March 25, 1895.

From Canada to New Orleans, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean,
the author has received leading newspapers with uniformly kind and
interesting articles on the dedication of the Mother church. They were,
however, too vol