ON page 90 of "Retrospection and Introspection" our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes: "Who can feel and comprehend the needs of her babe like the ardent mother? What other heart yearns with her solicitude, endures with her patience, waits with her hope, and labors with her love, to promote the welfare and happiness of her children? Thus must the Mother in Israel give all her hours to those first sacred tasks, till her children can walk steadfastly in wisdom's ways."
The Cause of Christian Science might be called our Leader's child, born into human experience through her spiritual understanding. Was it possible for anyone else to know the needs of the movement as she did, or better than she did? Let us never forget that The Mother Church and every By-law in its Manual came to human experience through Mrs. Eddy's understanding and demonstration of divine Love. They are the fruit of that wisdom which is instinctively protective, of that far-seeing love which cannot overlook the present needs of the babe to anticipate the needs of the adult. As we grow in spiritual stature, we shall value this love more and more, and begin to understand something of what it cost to found the Cause of Christian Science so that it might be established throughout future generations.
The enemy of Truth and Love would belittle the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, so that it might belittle her revelation; and thus attempting to separate it from its Discoverer, would then misinterpret and pervert the truth. Mary Baker Eddy, because she is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, must likewise always be the Leader of the Christian Science movement. Her personal presence is no longer with us; but as she says of herself in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 120), "Those who look for me in person, or elsewhere than in my writings, lose me instead of find me." Therefore Mrs. Eddy leads us through her writings, even as Jesus speaks to us to-day from the gospel pages. In the days following the ascension, the serpent of material sense put forth the suggestion that Jesus was not the Messiah or Christ; and this suggestion is dealt with by John in his first epistle when he says: "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son."
