Article November 26, 1927 Issue

Following the Leader

PERLY H. ALLISON

When the writer was a child she, with others, used to play a game called "Follow the leader," which may offer a helpful illustration to the student of Christian Science. The leader in this game stood out before the others and went through certain motions which all must perform or else be "counted out." If he ran or walked, the others needs must do likewise, stepping exactly where he stepped—failing which, they were out of the game for the time being.

Many hundred of years ago, when mankind was sinking deeper and deeper into the mire and quicksands of materialism, there came one, Christ Jesus, who was to be a leader to all men of all nations, of all generations, and who was to present an exact, demonstrable knowledge of God, Love—a knowledge that all can understand and prove real and true; and he may be said to have left a clear trail blazed through the jungle of mortal, material sense. As the years sped by, the rank grass and entangling vines of self-love, greed, lust, jealousy, hate, hypocrisy, love of aggressive domination, cruelty, and fear, covered the trail from the sight of men, and they ceased to travel that path, though some of them searched long for the waymarks Jesus had left along the trail he had broken, the trial of complete mortal self-denial.

Then came one who knew in her heart that the trail was still there if she could but find it. So she searched and searched,—all alone,—groping her way through the tangled undergrowth, amid the darkness of human belief, until her search was rewarded, her watchfulness blessed by the light of Truth pointing the way! Then she commenced—first alone—to clear that long-lost trail of the dense undergrowth of material beliefs which had so long overshadowed and hidden it. That patient, loving heart, whose long search for her Master's footprints was so highly rewarded by success, was the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, she who again is leading mankind out of the jungle of false beliefs into the sunlight of God's wide spaces of Truth and Love, and who, receiving the name of Leader from thousands of grateful hearts, says with deepest humility in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 34), "Follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ."

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