A Great Leader

True leadership is one of the greatest of qualities. Because of this it is also one of the most uncommon. It requires a degree of self-abnegation which is rarely met with, and it requires likewise an understanding of Principle which is coincident with the self-abnegation. The great leader is, therefore, as rare as the great man. Thus you may have a great soldier, like Napoleon, who is morally deficient in the virtues which go to make a great man. Napoleon, in particular, had the power of dominating those who came in contact with him, but his leadership was not true leadership, because it was instinct with self-interest. Thus the very limitations which prevent him being a great man, prevented him being a truly great leader. Washington and Lincoln were great men and great leaders. If you should search the annals of history you would not find greater. The one led his country in a tremendous revolutionary struggle for freedom, the other led his country in a terrible struggle to prove whether it, having achieved freedom, should impose slavery on others.

Twelve years after Lincoln was born in Kentucky, there was born, on a New Hampshire farm, a woman who was to surpass Washington or Lincoln in the power of leadership, and whose work was to free human thought as theirs had been to obtain political and social liberty. Mary Baker, afterwards Mrs. Eddy, was the daughter of one of the Puritan farmers of New England. Born of the Puritan stock, trained in the Puritan tradition, she became through this ancestry an inheritor of the Puritan ideals, ideals in which truth and liberty were regarded as the hallmarks of the state. Mrs. Eddy, however, possessed qualities far above these. Truth, purity, self-sacrifice, liberty, these were the breath of her nostrils. In addition to all this she was endowed with an understanding of Principle which had not been seen since the first century. She was a leader not of the type of Napoleon or Cæsar, rather of the type of Washington or Lincoln, but she surpassed these in the clarity of her metaphysical understanding, an understanding so clear that on page 34 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 she was able to say, "Finally, brethren, wait patiently on God; return blessing for cursing; be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good; be steadfast, abide and abound in faith, understanding, and good works; study the Bible and the textbook of our denomination; obey strictly the laws that be, and follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ." This saying she repeated on page 4 of the Message for the following year, "Competition in commerce, deceit in councils, dishonor in nations, dishonesty in trusts, begin with 'Who shall be greatest?' I again repeat, Follow your Leader, only so far as she follows Christ."

It was this quality in Mrs. Eddy's leadership, a quality which assured her followers that she really desired them to follow Christ rather than herself, which made her the tremendous moral force she is in the world. Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, might whisper perpetually that she was not what she seemed, might dip its venomous tongue in scandal and bear false witness recklessly, but all this was futile in its intent because she understood the meaning of the gospel she preached, namely, that a man had no enemy but himself, inasmuch as she saw that every malicious utterance was merely the sting of the viper turned against itself, since the man armed with Truth was immune from successful attack. "Simply count your enemy," she wrote, on page 8 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in the process."