The student of Christian Science is grateful that Mrs. Eddy has provided for qualified Christian Science practitioners to help others in need of healing. But he is not deceived into assuming that he himself is not or cannot be a practitioner, or practicer, of this Science, and thus help himself. As a matter of fact, it is not intended that just a special few should be arbitrarily designated as professional healers, while all others maintain their status as students and church members merely by study, church attendance and activity, and right living.
In proportion to his understanding each student can and must treat and heal himself. One of the purposes of Christian Science is to enable him to do this. When his healing endeavor needs support or sufficient opportunity for effective self-treatment is lacking, the student asks for assistance from others having greater understanding or freedom of opportunity. These others are qualified through knowledge and experience and because of detachment from the problem. Those who have had class instruction in Christian Science may, if they are ready, be listed in The Christian Science Journal as full-time practitioners. But any earnest student, no matter how long he has studied, whether or not he has yet had class instruction, has the right to call upon his own God-given understanding, his own reflected intelligence and skill, purity and love, and so seek to bring about his own healing.
The giving of a treatment, in other words, is not necessarily one person helping another. It is basically and primarily the individual student's realizing the truth of God and of man's relationship to Him. Even when a student does have help from another, he should be applying his own knowledge as best he can. If this were not true, it would suggest that healing, even salvation itself, is accomplished only through others. And this is contrary to Christian Science teaching. The Christ, which is the appearing of Truth to human thought, comes to each one individually. Salvation is individual because it depends solely on thought, and thought obviously is individual. For the same reason—everything taken into consideration—healing is individual, even though we may avail ourselves of help from others in lifting thought to a more spiritual level where the healing takes place.
