Article May 8, 1971 Issue

From Persecution to Restitution

ARWYN BARNES

When I was a small child, my family and I lived as Christian Scientists in a farming community where certain religious and ethnic minority groups were defined by contemptuously spitting on the ground. There was much harassment, persecution, and lack of socioeconomic opportunity.

An epidemic of polio erupted, and my brother and I contracted the disease. To the astonishment of our neighbors, who insisted we would not live, or if we did live we would be crippled, we were out playing in the yard several days later, 100 percent free from any aftereffects.

The absolute fact was that we were held forever as the perfect, spiritual ideas of God, Mind—held in His well-being, comfort, and safety. As a result of the knowledge of this fact we regained our health. Through the days and nights it took to gain our freedom, my mother held to our correct identity by using the facts of "the scientific statement of being" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. This statement begins: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." It ends: "Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual."^{Science and Health, p. 468;}

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

From Persecution to Restitution

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access