Gillian Gill, author of the 1998 biography Mary Baker Eddy (Perseus Books), also spoke at the Boston Public Library reception. In concluding her brief sketch of Mrs. Eddy's accomplishments, she referred to the church edifice built in Boston in a way that brought spiritual perspective to church building everywhere: "The main message Mrs. Eddy sent to her Church [on the occasion of the dedication of the Extension of The Mother Church] was not a sense of triumph, and certainly not of personal glory for herself as Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Buildings, however grand and soaring, she insisted in her own radical, uncompromising style, are at best a symbol of God's love and power; at worst, a spiritual snare. What matters, [Mrs. Eddy] said, is not stone and marble and mosaic, but 'self-abnegation, hope, faith; love catching a glimpse of glory.'*"
* The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p.6.
