When Mary Baker Eddy organized her Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, she was divinely inspired to include a weekly testimony meeting as one of its regular services.
In the early days of the Christian Science movement these meetings were held on Friday evening, and it was the custom to take up the usual church collection. When Mrs. Eddy became aware that a collection was being taken, she wrote to The Mother Church (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148), "I specially desire that you collect no moneyed contributions from the people present on these occasions." And on the following page is the inspired directive: "Invite all cordially and freely to this banquet of Christian Science, this feast and flow of Soul. Ask them to bring what they possess of love and light to help leaven your loaf and replenish your scanty store. Then, after presenting the various offerings, and one after another has opened his lips to discourse and distribute what God has given him of experience, hope, faith, and understanding, gather up the fragments, and count the baskets full of accessions to your love, and see that nothing has been lost."
Upon receiving this letter, The Mother Church, obedient to the request of our Leader, discontinued the collections at the Friday meetings. Later, when the Order of Service for the Wednesday Meetings in The Mother Church and Branch Churches was placed in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy (p. 122), no provision was made for a collection.
