Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/309

Rh method of New England. This is not the basis of the present Christian Science church, but the organization continued in existence for about thirteen years when the church was reorganized.

For a year and a half the church carried on public meetings in the parlors of the various members. Not until December, 1883, were regular services held in a public hall. The first public meetings of the church were convened at Hawthorne Hall on Park street, Boston, and that hall, which has since been demolished, was the real cradle of the church. Mrs. Eddy was the active pastor from the date of organization and regularly preached a Sunday morning sermon. Even before the church regularly engaged a hall in Boston she preached at Parker Fraternity building, making the trip to Boston from her Lynn home for this purpose. On the morning of each Sabbath her students would seek her and find her sitting with closed eyes, deep in meditation. Urging her to eat, to dress, to make preparation for the delivering of her sermon, they expressed much love in solicitation. She would, however, send them away, demanding silence and time for thought. On the railway train from Lynn to Boston the students would join her. She was always faultlessly dressed and usually in a mood of spiritual gaiety.

In the pulpit there was never a trace of fatigue. It has been said that her sermons were exhilarating and moved her audiences to emotional exaltation; yet in the same breath critics add that she brought forward only the healing phase of her teaching, seldom touching on religious questions, such as