necessary, indeed not possible, to give the information to the press before it was given to the Church. Christian Scientists, therefore, all over the world received the news from their readers’ lips. The attendants at the Mother Church were informed at the morning service, elsewhere the news was given out at afternoon or evening services. In Boston the morning services were conducted as usual. There is seldom any break in the formality of the Sunday worship, and on the morning of December 4, 1910, there was none until just before the pronunciation of the benediction. Then the first reader, Judge Clifford P. Smith, paused impressively after reciting “the scientific statement of being,”[1] and the reading of its correlative scripture, I John, Chapter III, verses 1, 2, and 3, which are:
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.
Those who had already bowed their heads for the benediction lifted them as the reader, refraining
- ↑ See page 275.
