Article May 2, 1931 ISSUE

Individual Experience

ADELINE THERESA RICKER

Paul's exhortation, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure," calls for individual effort and overcoming. In obeying this call, the experience of each student of Christian Science is his own. It differs from that of every other, in that each individual is distinct from every other. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 588) Mrs. Eddy refers to "man and woman unchanged forever in their individual characters; and in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 236) she points out that a certain reference in Science and Health "will greatly aid the students in their individual experiences." Thus a special value attaches to each student's testimonial. It is unique; but it can also reach and help one's neighbor through its general likeness to his own experience.

Can any student of Christian Science, then, consent to withhold his individual testimony to the healing and saving power of his acquaintance with God, however limited that may be, when he realizes that there can be no other testimony just like it? There may be some spiritual truth revealed in one's experience through which another may hear God speaking to him at just the point where he needs a helping hand. Thus are we stewards of God's Word. One of the most convincing proofs of the universal truth of Christian Science is the satisfying results that follow obedience to its teachings along any line of human experience.

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