Teacher: Christian Science Healing

More about:

Teaching Christian Science

Certificate from Massachusetts Metaphysical
College granted to Mrs. Camilla Hanna,
signed by Mary Baker Eddy

Her teaching method was Socratic - i.e., questions and answers - often starting with the question, “What is God?” One student recalled that after the first three lessons she told her class: “Now go home and take your first patient.”* Her students did just that, and healings resulted.

After graduating, many Primary class students went into the public practice of Christian Science healing and were entitled to add the letters CS (“Christian Scientist”) after their names. Once a graduate had established a proven record of healings, she or he was eligible to enroll in the Normal class, which prepared students to teach and allowed them to add either “CSB” (“Bachelor of Christian Science”) or “CSD” (“Doctor of Christian Science”) after their names. A number of them opened Christian Science Institutes around the country and taught students of their own.

Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, first edition

Their teaching, however, sometimes drifted from what they had been taught. In 1896 Mary Baker Eddy turned to the issue of correct teaching, as she had repeatedly over the past decade. She edited and published her articles, addresses, and selected letters in a book, Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896. She felt this book would serve to refresh her followers’ understanding of Christian Science as taught by her. When the anthology was published in 1897, she suspended all teaching for a year, asserting: “The Bible, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and my other published works, are the only proper instructors for this hour.”

In 1898 she provided for all Christian Science Primary and Normal class teaching to be conducted under the authority of her church’s Board of Education.

Also in 1898 she gathered a select group of nearly seventy students for a special Normal class, the last classroom teaching she would ever give. She said that her work with that class had an effect on the entire Christian Science teaching field.