How our hearts expand with gratitude and love when we think of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, and her redemptive work for the salvation of all mankind! Only gratitude to God for His everlasting goodness and love gave her the courage to share her spiritual revelation. In accord with this revelation, she gave us the true meaning of Church: the demonstrating through healing of man's eternal unity with Mind, God.
Mrs. Eddy embraced all mankind in one affection, pressing on until she had completed the writing of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This book makes known to all how we may worship God, Spirit, "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). But the full revelation of Church and its activity did not appear all at once to our Leader. Sixteen years elapsed from the time she first took out a charter for a church until the original edifice of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, became her prayer in stone.
Mrs. Eddy stood alone in those early days and was accustomed to turn to the Bible for comfort and guidance. She took one step at a time as indicated by divine wisdom, tested the merits of each, and went on from there. Upon founding her Church, our Leader did not see the necessity immediately for having an impersonal pastor, the Bible and Science and Health. The present form of church services, including the Lesson-Sermons contained in the Christian Science Quarterly, came from a grateful heart and as the result of many years of prayer in unity with God.
