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The role of Founder
Originally published in the 1977 pamphlet titled “Mary Baker Eddy: Discoverer, Founder, Leader”
To find or discover a truth is one thing; to found or establish it in human experience is another. Usually the functions are divided between two kinds of people: thinkers and doers, visionaries and organizers, scientists and technologists, prophets and prelates, explorers and settlers.
Among religious leaders, Mary Baker Eddy is almost unique in combining both functions in her dual role of Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Mark Twain, for all the ferocity of his criticism of her at times, nevertheless admitted a little ruefully that if she was judged by her achievements it was thirteen hundred years since the world had produced anyone who could even approach her stature. The implicit comparison was to Muhammad, who thirteen hundred years earlier had launched the Islamic religion as a new world force.
It is only, however, as a development of Christian history that Mrs. Eddy's work both as Discoverer and as Founder can be properly understood. It was a Christian truth she discovered, a Christian church she founded. The continuity of her work with that of the Founder of Christianity relates her more closely to Paul and Luther than to Muhammad—while, in another sense, it relates her to the universality of a Copernicus or an Einstein.
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1977 - PAMPHLET
Mary Baker Eddy: Discoverer, Founder, Leader
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