Almost twenty-two years ago, while she waited for a car on Huntington Avenue, opposite The Mother Church, a Christian Scientist noticed an oldish man, having a very beautiful face and very white hair, looking intently at the church buildings. What attracted her attention particularly was that he continued looking at them or one of them in a way that was meditative and even rapt. So, after a few moments, she said to him, "That is a beautiful building, is it not?; Pausing a moment impressively, he said, "I wonder if you know how beautiful it is!" She replied, "I think so; it is my church." Then he spoke in this way: "It isn't my church, but I knew Mrs. Eddy. I knew her before that church was built; I knew her when she first came to Boston. She had nothing then but her faith in prayer, but she had that, and she prayed. Her prayers were answered. They brought her the interest of people, and she taught them to pray, but they had little else than their prayers. After a while they needed a church; they had little money, but they had their prayers; and they built a church out of prayers. Pretty soon, there were more Christian Scientists in Boston, and they needed a bigger church; still they did not have much money, but they knew how to pray and the value of prayer; and soon these prayers built the larger church. That church, too, is built of prayer. I am not a Christian Scientist, but I believe in God and always have. Sometimes my faith grows weak, and when my faith weakens I come up here and look at these buildings that prayer has built, and I go away heartened."
Primarily, the foregoing incident presents a deeply felt tribute, by a disinterested observer, to Mrs. Eddy and to the other Christian Scientists who acted with her in 1893-1894 and in 1903-1906, for the construction of these edifices. Further, although this observer had not become a Christian Scientist, he had become a witness for Christian Science. He attributed definite results to its prayer; and he avowed, with deep sincerity, that these evident results had furnished an abiding inspiration to him. He may not have known particularly the Christian Science concept of prayer, but probably he felt or knew that Mrs. Eddy and her followers could say, as Paul had written, "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also" (I Corinthians 14:15).
The original structure of The Mother Church cost much less than its extension. It cost less than the building in sections, finished in 1908, 1910, and 1914, which The Christian Science Publishing Society has outgrown. Yet, the achievement of the comparatively few Christian Scientists in 1893-1894 is, and will continue to be, one of the most assuring and impressive demonstrations of Christian Science. In that experience they encountered and dispelled the arguments and obstacles which may offer resistance to any such undertaking. Even the economic and financial depression now coming to an end, and now needing to be ended consciously, was exceeded relatively by the more acute "panic of 1893."
