Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/58

30 Falmouth and Norway Streets held large crowds of people, either coming from a service or awaiting admission to one. As all the services were precisely the same in every respect, nobody attended more than one, so that there were well over thirty thousand people who witnessed the opening. Not only did these include Scientists from all over the world, and nearly all the local Scientists, but many hundreds of other faiths, drawn to the church from curiosity, and from sympathy, too.

It spoke much for the devotion of the members to their faith, the character of the attendance. In those huge congregations were business men come from far distant points at personal sacrifices of no mean order; professional men, devoted women members, visitors from Australia, from India, from England, from Germany, from Switzerland, from South Africa, from Hawaii, from the coast States.

They gave generously of their means in gratitude for the epoch-making event. The six collections were large, and when the plates were returned after having been through the congregations, they were heaped high with bills, with silver, and with gold. Some of these contributions were one-hundred-dollar bills. Without ostentation and quite voluntarily the Scientists gave a sum surpassing some of the record collections secured by evangelists for the work of Christianity.

Though the church was filled for the service at half past seven, and hundreds had to be turned away, by far the largest crowd of the day applied for admission at the ten o'clock service, and it was representative of the entire body of the Christian Science church.

Before half past seven the chimes of the new church