Jacob's exclamation after a dream experience, "Surely the Lord is in this place," comes gratefully to my thought, replacing a false picture, when I pass a point on the highway at which I was involved in an automobile accident. Through a shower of breaking glass I was thrown some distance, striking the frozen ground with my head and shoulder, and was rendered unconscious. The car remained upright and my four passengers were little the worse for the experience. Even the young lady who sat in the front seat with me had not a cut or a scratch. I was most grateful for this, and for the understanding of Truth which the daily study of the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly had afforded me.
The first thing I was conscious of was the remark of a kindly person that I must be taken to a hospital at once. Immediately the statement from our textbook (Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, p. 397) came to me, "Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why." As I obeyed the first part of this injunction audibly and the second part mentally, the incredulous looks on the faces of my auditors made me aware that in addition to my being covered with blood, one eye was fast swelling and closing up. Then came the admonition, "Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind" (ibid., p.393), and, as I held closely to this manner of thinking, I could actually feel that swelling subside. An hour later, when I arrived home, there was no swelling, and the next morning the abrasion was gone.
At first it seemed that no one would take me to my home, some twenty miles distant, because they felt that I should go to a hospital; and I do not know the kindly workmen who finally took me in their already overcrowded car, but my gratitude to them is unbounded. What my mirror recorded was almost overwhelming until I recalled the Bible message, "God ... will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." One gash had gone through the ear and into the neck below and it seemed that surely surgery would be needed to draw together the segments of that ear. Then there occurred to me the incident in Luke, where it is recorded that Jesus healed the man's ear which had been cut off. This had required no time, no surgery—just the understanding of the allness of Love. So I cleansed all these cuts as well as possible, covered them, and went to bed. All night long terrifying pictures paraded through my thought, and all night long Truth answered each suggestion, until at daybreak I saw clearly that if this experience could leave in my thought no wrong effect, no fear, no resentment, no blame, it surely could leave no scar on my body, since Science and Health assures us that "mortal mind and body are one" (p. 177). When I awakened I found all the cuts healed over and the ear drawn together as firmly as any surgeon's stitches could have held it. No one notices the very thin line where this cut was, unless attention is particularly called to it. And there are no scars noticeable from the eight or ten cuts about my face and head, some of which had looked quite serious. This accident occurred late one Sunday night, and the next Sunday morning I attended church with very little evidence of the experience.
