Sweet society, precious children, your loving hearts and deft fingers distilled the nectar and painted the finest flowers in the fabric of this history,—­even its centre-piece,—­Mother’s Room in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.  The children are destined to witness results which will eclipse Oriental dreams.  They belong to the twentieth century.  By juvenile aid, into the building fund have come $4,460.[B] Ah, children, you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our race!

Brothers of the Christian Science Board of Directors, when your tireless tasks are done—­well done—­no Delphian lyre could break the full chords of such a rest.  May the altar you have built never be shattered in our hearts, but justice, mercy, and love kindle perpetually its fires.

It was well that the brother whose appliances warm this house, warmed also our perishless hope, and nerved its grand fulfilment.  Woman, true to her instinct, came to the rescue as sunshine from the clouds; so, when man quibbled over an architectural exigency, a woman climbed with feet and hands to the top of the tower, and helped settle the subject.

After the loss of our late lamented pastor, Rev. D.A.  Easton, the church services were maintained by excellent sermons from the editor of The Christian Science Journal (who, with his better half, is a very whole man), together with the Sunday School giving this flock “drink from the river of His pleasures.”  O glorious hope and blessed assurance, “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Christians rejoice in secret, they have a bounty hidden from the world.  Self-forgetfulness, purity, and love are treasures untold—­constant prayers, prophecies, and anointings.  Practice, not profession,—­goodness, not doctrines,—­spiritual understanding, not mere belief, gain the ear and right hand of omnipotence, and call down blessings infinite.  “Faith without works is dead.”  The foundation of enlightened faith is Christ’s teachings and practice.  It was our Master’s self-immolation, his life-giving love, healing both mind and body, that raised the deadened conscience, paralyzed by inactive faith, to a quickened sense of mortal’s necessities,—­and God’s power and purpose to supply them.  It was, in the words of the Psalmist, He “who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.”

Rome’s fallen fanes and silent Aventine is glory’s tomb; her pomp and power lie low in dust.  Our land, more favored, had its Pilgrim Fathers.  On shores of solitude, at Plymouth Rock, they planted a nation’s heart,—­the rights of conscience, imperishable glory.  No dream of avarice or ambition broke their exalted purpose, theirs was the wish to reign in hope’s reality—­the realm of Love.