Article June 13, 1931 Issue

Arrested

JOSEPH G. ALDEN

The word "arrested" has come to have a rather forbidding sound because it is so commonly associated with crime. But in its original significance it has quite a different meaning. One dictionary defines "arrest," in part, as the "act of stopping, or restraining from further motion." In this construction the word takes on somewhat more of a mental meaning.

This meaning of the word came to a student of Christian Science as he attended a Christian Science service in a penal institution. A young man who was incarcerated there was present and seemed very much interested in the reading of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly. He stopped after the service to exchange a greeting with the visitor, and as he closed the conversation remarked, "It was a happy day for me when I was arrested." Suddenly the word "arrested" took on a higher meaning for the student.

If one reads the Bible with a view to discovering its hidden spiritual meanings, one will find instances where someone seeking to make a physical arrest was himself mentally arrested by a higher power. Saul, for instance, armed with authority, started for Damascus to arrest the Christians of that city, who were becoming so numerous and outspoken as to challenge the established authority of the Sanhedrin. On the way something happened to Saul—a challenging, illuminating experience; and when he arrived at Damascus he was no longer Saul, the avenging officer from Jerusalem, but Paul, who himself had been arrested by Christ, Truth, on the way thither, and was later to become the humble and devoted disciple of the Master. From that day to the end of his ministry Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, never ceased to be a willing prisoner in the bonds of Truth, which had dawned on his awakened vision as a light from heaven that day on the Damascus road.

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