It is a conviction that permeates the writings of the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science: we live in a time of massive, significant transition for mankind. "Truth's immortal idea," Mary Baker Eddy writes, "is sweeping down the centuries, gathering beneath its wings the sick and sinning." Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 55 Such statements refer to something much broader than Mrs. Eddy's own efforts in getting the Church of Christ, Scientist, started. She was apparently seeing divine Truth acting on the whole of human consciousness. She wrote once of Truth standing "at the threshold of history." The coming of the Comforter that resulted in establishing Christian Science was bringing immense change to all of human thinking. It was shaking the very foundations of materialism.
On the occasion of a "new" Journal that seeks, among other things, to take account of changes in science, theology, and medicine which are indicative of this transition, we look as always to Mrs. Eddy for direction. Before her, of course, there was no Christianly scientific statement of Science. At the outset she was alone in standing for the spiritual idea in its fullness. She therefore reasonably asked for understanding of what had been accomplished, required a loyalty that could neither be mesmerically erased nor faded out by the mere passing of time.
Even while she turned Christian Scientists to the Manual of The Mother Church for the rules of church government and away from dependence on her person, she never relinquished the role of Leader. In fact, the Church Manual includes By-Laws that, taken together, make clear the continuing place she expected to hold in the Christian Science movement (see, for example, Art. XXII, Sects. 1 and 2, and Art. VIII, Sect. 6). This had nothing to do with maintaining some personal sense of position. As Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, she expected an honest, natural acknowledgment of her province as Leader, the one to whom anyone attempting to practice Christian Science would naturally first turn for the definition of what it is and how it is to be lived.
