When a Christian Science practitioner is called upon for help, the patient does not —at least he should not—expect the practitioner to bring about his entire salvation. The practitioner's treatment may bring the patient a needed character change; it may even cause him to take on a whole new concept of living. Still, the patient, in asking for help, has a specific challenge that has impelled him to seek the healing prayer of an experienced practitioner.
The human life includes a bundle of beliefs wrapped in a personality and in need of transformation and spiritualization. It is a life's work to outgrow all the human notions that lack true and permanent substance. Each day an individual can progress in this gradual spiritualizing and Christianizing until he fully discovers his unchanging perfection in God's image. When that awakening process is specifically interrupted, the individual may find it helpful to seek the practitioner's aid in defeating whatever would claim to obstruct spiritual growth. The patient may view that obstruction as a discordant material condition, such as pain. The practitioner will recognize the problem as an erring concept held by a supposed mortal mind. Writing of this mind, Mrs. Eddy instructs, "Remove the leading error or governing fear of this lower so-called mind, and you remove the cause of all disease as well as the morbid or excited action of any organ." Science and Health, p. 377;
There will be, no doubt, many factors in any patient's life that deserve healing. But the practitioner's primary purpose is to dismiss the leading error underlying the difficulty. Removing any number of lesser errors will certainly be helpful to the patient's general sense of well-being, but until the primary error is dislodged, the patient will very likely continue to need the service of a practitioner.
