Testimony of Healing June 3, 1911 Issue

Mrs. Eddy says: "A just acknowledgment of Truth and...

Hovhanness G. Marcarian

Mrs. Eddy says: "A just acknowledgment of Truth and of what it has done for us is an effectual help" (Science and Health, p. 372). Therefore, with the realization that I ought to acknowledge and herald upon the housetops what Truth has done for me, I will speak briefly of some experiences that I have had, and which may be of some help to others.

In the winter of 1893 about one hundred and fifty Armenians were imprisoned in Cesarea, Asia Minor, as revolutionary suspects. After an absence of eleven years from my home I had just returned from Jerusalem to visit my parents, and being an entire stranger to the Turkish government officers, I was naturally considered a suspicious person, and was the first to be put in prison. After two months or so all the prisoners were sent to Angora, the capital city of the state by that name, which is the ancient Galatia to the church of which St. Paul wrote his epistle to the Galatians. While in the Angora prison, there came a rumor, through friends in the city, that as the result of an appeal by the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople, the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, had promised to release the Armenian prisoners at Angora on the Mohammedan or Turkish holiday called Ramazan Bayrame.

After a few days, when this subject was once more being discussed among the prisoners, realizing that we were then in the Lenten season, after proving through the Armenian church calendar that the Armenian Easter, the day of our Master's triumphant resurrection, was due fully a week ahead of the Turkish holiday, I said with deepest reverence: "I thank God that I was born and brought up a Christian, and during my stay in Jerusalem for seven years I have as archdeacon of the church served in the holy places where Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master, was born and buried; also where he trod, and in the garden of Gethsemane where he watched and prayed for all mankind. I did all this, for I believed him to be the Son of God." Although we were more than once plainly told by the prison officers that we would be sent to Constantinople to be thrown into the sea at the Bosphorus, yet I always believed that the Almighty would in His own time release us from this prison. Therefore I said, "I now know that Christ Jesus will come and release us on his blessed Easter day, and not let Mohammed come and free us on his holiday."

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