Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/387

Rh scrutinized by legal eyes. A paroxysm of doubt among his fellow trustees followed with the result that all surrendered their trusteeship and returned to the donors the funds which had accrued for the church building.

Undismayed by this action Mrs. Eddy rose to the demands of the situation. She employed an attorney to search the statutes of Massachusetts for a law by which her contemplated gift to the church might be made good and valid. Her lawyer very shortly put his finger upon the necessary legal enactment, a statute seldom resorted to, which seemed a providential decree for this emergency. This statute provided that trustees might be deemed a body corporate for the purpose of holding grants and donations without the formal organization of a church. So on September 1, 1892, Mrs. Eddy again conveyed her gift of ground, which was now valued at twenty thousand dollars, to four new trustees who were Ira O. Knapp, William B. Johnson, Joseph S. Eastaman, and Stephen A. Chase. These trustees pledged themselves to erect upon this lot a church building.

That no doubt might exist in the minds of her students throughout the United States and elsewhere that her purpose was entirely unselfish and that it was for the ends to which they all looked, Mrs. Eddy now counseled a reorganization of the Boston church as a Mother Church, which should draw its membership from Christian Science churches throughout the world. Thus by her advice twelve students came together and perfected such an organization which so satisfied the wishes of her