Article July 11, 1931 Issue

Item of Interest

The gavel always used by the President of The Mother Church at the Annual Meeting and handed by the outgoing President to the incoming President as a symbol of office has a history which is set forth in part on pages 171 and 172 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany."

This gavel was given to Mrs. Eddy by one of her faithful students who was then President of The Mother Church. A few days afterward, upon the occasion when visiting Christian Scientists were at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1904, Mrs. Eddy presented this gavel and the case in which it was inclosed to The Mother Church through its President.

As described in Miscellany, the case is of rosewood. The wood of the head of the gavel came from a timber which grew in Connecticut, and was used in the construction of the first chapel of Yale College, built in 1761. This timber was one of the principal beams carrying the roof of the chapel or Athenaeum, as it was called. The wood in the handle was grown on the farm at Bow, New Hampshire, where Mrs. Eddy was born.

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