I have been studying Christian Science for over a half century, and I feel that it is high time I share my gratitude for a very sacred healing I have had.

I was born in a country that became a violent enemy of my parents' native country. As a child I witnessed massacres and deportations at the hand of that nation. Our own family underwent much persecution and suffering, and my brothers and I were left without our parents.

Finally, after spending a few years in an orphanage, I moved to a neutral country. By then I was a young woman. A Christian Scientist introduced me to Science. She also helped me learn typing and shorthand. I started work as typist-translator in an import-export firm.

One day a young man who was a native of the country I still regarded as an enemy came to work in the same office. I ignored him for some time. Yet almost daily while I was studying the Bible Lesson (outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly), pondering references from the Bible and from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the words "Love thine enemy" kept coming to me. I ignored the call, but the words began coming oftener and louder. Finally I read Mrs. Eddy's beautiful article "Love Your Enemies," which begins on page 8 of her book Miscellaneous Writings. Even so, when I thought about this young worker in our office, I simply shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, "I do not hate him. I am just indifferent."

But the still small voice would not give me peace. One night I had a real struggle with myself. I burst out, "All right, God, what do You expect me to do? Do You expect me to thank the young man for his country, for his government, which destroyed my parents? Do You expect me to thank him when my three brothers and I were left orphans in the streets of his hostile country?" Tears flowed as I yielded to the pent-up self-pity that seemed to pour out of me with a vengeance.

After I had sobbed for I don't know how long, a kind of quiet, if not peace, came over me, and a little voice said, "How did that young man know, when he was born, what his nationality was?" This was a startling thought. I reasoned, "Yes, how does any one know, when he is born, what nationality he is?"

The words of St. Paul "I was free born" came to me more strongly than ever (Acts 22:28). I saw the spiritual fact that I, too, was born free and that the young man at my office was born free—that all people are created free in their true being as God's children. I saw the imposition that we place on ourselves and others when we brand people enemies. The next day I went to the office and greeted my colleague warmly as though I were greeting a brother.

And that was the end of my seeing people as belonging to this nation or that nation. It was also the end of my identifying a nation by its acts of inhumanity. This healing brought home to me the need for praying still more earnestly the "Daily Prayer" from the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy (Art. VIII, Sect. 4): " 'Thy kingdom come;' let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin; and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!"

Having had a problem of this magnitude permanently resolved in a spiritually scientific way, I could never be grateful enough for Mrs. Eddy's precious discovery, Christian Science. It is good to belong to the Church of Christ, Scientist—a church that teaches and promotes self-government of the individual, thereby raising hope for better governments throughout the world. And I am grateful to add that since coming into Christian Science I have had no major physical ills to meet. My health has remained sound, whereas in the distant past I had suffered from typhus and malaria in their worst stages and had reached a skin and bones condition. I am profoundly grateful for this precious Science.

AGNES T. MANUELIAN
Phoenix, Arizona