Abundant giving - ample supply

I ask myself, is this book of the month (The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany Part I) all about giving? Fair chance! I have just now read Holiday Gifts on page 20. “The holidays are coming,” it says. Now this was written in October 31, 1904. In an era when folk actually made gifts with their own hands, was this due advice re Christmas gifts, or perhaps Thanksgiving gifts first? “Send no gifts to her the ensuing season, but the evidences of glorious growth in Christian Science.” 

We of this era can still give her the fruits of her labours for us in our own “glorious growth.”

Giving and receiving. Of course, Malachi 3:10 comes to mind: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

“In the year 1902 our Leader saw the need of a larger edifice for the home of The Mother Church…” we find on page 22. Now I had often wondered if Edward Kimball had, on his own initiative, put forward the motion reproduced beginning on page 7 of our book. So it seems that Mrs. Eddy made the need known, and her faithful stewards saw to it that it was put to the members.

In a letter of greeting to Mrs. Eddy at Annual Meeting 1905, we find this delightful sentence (p. 24): “As the walls are builded by the prayers and offerings of the thousands who have been healed through Christian Science…” Why wouldn’t they give to this great cause – they have been healed by it!

In April the next year (1906) the Board of Directors announced that the building would be dedicated on Sunday, June 10 that year!  How the people worked and prayed!  Send no more money, they are told, sufficient funds are in hand!

An Editorial of June 9, 1906 stated, in part:

   “The significance of this building is not to be found in the material structure, but in the lives of those who, under the consecrated leadership of Mrs. Eddy, and following her example, are doing the works which Jesus said should mark the lives of his followers. It stands as the visible symbol…”

Joyce Voysey