Article July 19, 1999 Issue

PUNY OR POWERFUL?

J. Anthony Periton

When I was a university student in Britain, I spent one summer in Canada working on a road crew. The foreman had looked me up and down and said, "We'll take you on, but you won't last longer than four weeks." I think he saw me as a puny Britisher and didn't think I could survive the work.

Well, the work was pretty tough. We were working in heavy clay, digging the foundations of Bailey Bridges. I knew, however, that strength was not a physical endowment, but came from God. I was studying the Bible and the works of Mrs. Eddy, who discovered Christian Science. I came across this statement in Science and Health: "In mathematics, we do not multiply when we should subtract, and then say the product is correct. No more can we say in Science that muscles give strength, that nerves give pain or pleasure, or that matter governs, and then expect that the result will be harmony. Not muscles, nerves, nor bones, but mortal mind makes the whole body 'sick, and the whole heart faint;' whereas divine Mind heals" (p. 219). That helped me understand the true sense of body—that man is not composed of matter but is a spiritual structure, a spiritual idea of God. I was also very touched by a hymn that was a great strength to me: