In June, 1899, the God-directed Leader of our movement, Mary Baker Eddy, in a message to The Mother Church (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 125) wrote: "Brethren, our annual meeting is a grave guardian. It requires you to report progress, to refresh memory, to rejuvenate the branches and to vivify the buds, to bend upward the tendrils and to incline the vine towards the parent trunk." It may be said that the Annual Meeting on June 5 fulfilled in large measure our Leader's hope, for the reports from the officers of The Mother Church and from the Field bore heartening evidence of wise planting, careful husbandry, and encouraging fruitage in the vineyard of scientific Christianity this past difficult year.
In committing to these pages the reports read at the meeting, it is hoped that the many thousands of Mother Church members in all parts of the globe may share in the uplift and joy of this inspirational occasion. In spite of curtailed wartime transportation, the great edifice of The Mother Church was filled with happy, grateful Christian Scientists, who greeted with customary enthusiasm all evidences of the spiritual progress of their great movement.
The meeting was opened with the singing of Hymn No. 208, "O gentle presence, peace and joy and power," the words of which were written by our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy. The retiring President, Mrs. Daisette D. S. McKenzie, then read the following passages from the Bible with correlative passages from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy:
