most cordially invite you to be present and take charge of any services that may be held therein. We especially desire you to be present on the twenty-fourth day of March, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, to accept this offering, with our humble benediction.
| Ira O. Knapp, | Joseph Armstrong, | |
| William B. Johnson, | Stephen A. Chase, |
REV. MRS. EDDY'S REPLY
Beloved Directors and Brethren: — For your costly offering, and kind call to the pastorate of “The First Church of Christ, Scientist,” in Boston — accept my profound thanks. But permit me, respectfully, to decline their acceptance, while I fully appreciate your kind intentions. If it will comfort you in the least, make me your Pastor Emeritus, nominally. Through my book, your textbook, I already speak to you each Sunday. You ask too much when asking me to accept your grand church edifice. I have more of earth now, than I desire, and less of heaven; so pardon my refusal of that as a material offering. More effectual than the forum are our states of mind, to bless mankind. This wish stops not with my pen — God give you grace. As our church's tall tower detains the sun, so may luminous lines from your lives linger, a legacy to our race.
March 25, 1895.
