I am one of the students' students who had not visited Boston nor Pleasant View until I attended the Board of Education in January. I had long desired to see the Mother Church; but when urged to go for that purpose alone always replied, "Not now. It seems to me something in the trend of my work will take me to Boston before many years, and then I will see it." And, in the course of divine direction, it so occurred.
M. and I arrived on the Friday evening prior to the examination. Saturday we set out, in the rain, to find the Church and Christian Science Publishing Society. Following the directions given, we came into Falmouth Street opposite Mechanic's Building, and looking up, both exclaimed, "There's the Church!" Yes, there it stood, two blocks away—our own dear Church! There is no mistaking it. It is so like the picture, yet more beautiful,—like a pure thought rising up amidst darker surroundings. The bright colors of the windows excite the admiring attention of all passers. Inside, these windows form a beautiful and striking contrast to the softened tints of everything else in the Church. Truly, as the Mother said, "Both within and without the spirit of beauty dominates the Mother Church, from the Mosaic flooring to the soft shimmer of its starlit dome" (Pulpit and Press, p. 4). Yet, with her, we feel "there is a thought higher and deeper than the edifice," it is the out-pouring love and gratitude to the Mother-love, to which this "Prayer in Stone" rises in virgin testimony. It is the surge of this thought that makes the heart swell and the eyes fill as we pass through its arched doorway, up the winding stair and through the fresh atmosphere prevading every part of its spotless interior from vestry to Mother's Room. We go to Mother's Room for the first time, with its miniature in thought, caught from the faithful picture given in the Christian Science Journal; and we find this externalized and enlarged in transcendent beauty and purity, symbolic of the child-love. We note at each visit, that the copy of Science and Health lying on the cabinet, is always open where these words are written, "We should strive to reach the Horeb height where God is revealed and the corner-stone of all spiritual building is purity." We wonder if the Mother left it open there, and purposely, when she visited the room. The bee-hive, setting in the window where is the picture of the little girl reading Science and Health to the old gentleman, sends a thought back to the Sunday School children at home, and how delighted they would be at the opportunity to visit this endeared spot.
A cherished tie was formed this day at the Christian Science Publishing House. I had always felt the workers there were not strangers to me, and I felt for them a Christian love. I wanted to go in and express this, but reasoned that they were busy business people, constantly meeting Scientists from different parts of the Field, and it was too much to expect them to pay us any particular attention, so I went in intending to make my purchases and come directly away, if they appeared pre-occupied. But when M. and I entered we were met by so many friendly inquiries, smiling faces, words of welcome and hearty handshaking and expressions of brotherly and sisterly love, that we were assured the hearts of these faithful ones who stand guard over our precious literature, beat in sympathy with its nearest and remotest readers. I cannot tell what a sweet and comforting and cementing sense this is to me.
