Article December 19, 1908 Issue

AMONG THE CHURCHES

Final negotiations for the purchase of three lots on the southwest corner of Second and Laurel Streets, which are to be used as a site for a handsome new church edifice to be erected by First Church of Christ, Scientist, have been completed. The property was purchased by John S. Hawley, a member of the church congregation, who paid eight thousand dollars cash for the three lots and donated them free of all encumbrance to the church. This liberal donation places the church in a position where it can go ahead with the erection of the new edifice as soon as the church officials so desire. The property has a frontage of one hundred feet on Laurel and one hundred and fifty feet on Second.—San Diego Union.

On Wednesday [Oct. 28] Aldershot Christian Scientists assembled in their own Freehold Hall for the first time. The tiny one-room gathering of three years ago has grown to the big meeting of Wednesday, a meeting which marked impressively the growth of the creed in this district.

Prior to the month of November, 1905, little was known in Aldershot of the creed, based upon scientific Bible teaching, as expounded by Mrs. Eddy in America. But during the month mentioned the first Christian Science service was held in an upper room at 11 High Street, then known as the School of Music. Only a few weeks after this first gathering it became necessary to hire the music room on the ground floor, and later on the Sunday services were held in the public room of the Cecil Restaurant. The local Christian Science membership was now assuming proportions warranting its formal organization as a society, this being effected under the title of Aldershot Christian Science Society. Less than four months later the society, overflowed to the Masonic Hall, in Station Road, and a Reading Room was opened to the public on Feb. 27, 1907. The idea of testimony meetings did not mature until April, 1906, when the first was held one Wednesday at the Cecil Restaurant, but since then testimony meetings have been held periodically. The strength of the organization become very apparent when on April 15, 1907, Bicknell Young, C.S.B., lectured in the Theater Royal to an audience well over a thousand strong; and again on April 24 of this year, when Edward A. Kimball, C.S.D., spoke to a similar gathering. Nothing has seemed to stay the vigorous growth of this new-world cult, and in August, 1908, the members of the society met on their own premises, having in April purchased the property in Grosvenor Road. Workmen were set on to demolish the studio in the rear of the building in July, and the structure of the new hall, which heard a song of praise for the first time on Wednesday, was then started upon. The edifice is of brick, and quite unpretentious on the outside, but the inside, though plain, is very tasteful.

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