For your costly offering, and kind call to the pastorate of "The First
Church of Christ, Scientist," in Boston--accept my profound thanks. But
permit me, respectfully, to decline their acceptance, while I fully
appreciate your kind intentions.-If it will comfort you in the least,
make me your Pastor _Emeritus_, nominally. Through my book, your
text-book, I already speak to you each Sunday. You ask too much when
asking me to accept your grand Church edifice. I have more of earth now,
than I desire, and less of heaven; so pardon my refusal of that as a
material offering. More effectual than the forum are our states of mind,
to bless mankind. This wish stops not with my pen--God give you grace.
As our Church's tall tower detains the sun, so, may luminous lines from
your lives, linger, a legacy to our race.