Many years ago an undiagnosed, extremely painful disease kept me bedfast for several weeks; and finally when all seemed lost because I was so weak from pain I could no longer move, I asked for the Christian Science Hymnal, and in a very weak voice started to sing some of my favorites. While I was singing, my husband arrived. He came and sat beside me and sang with me. This broke the mesmerism, and in a few days I was up and around.

However, before the healing was complete, I realized what had brought me to such a state of suffering. I had gone back to my home town while my husband was an officer serving in France, and when he returned he bought, without consulting me, a new house in a distant city where he was to be employed. The house was attractive and adequate but not in a location that I wanted to live in. I said very little, but resentment rankled in my thought for several years, and the resultant suffering proved to me that it would have been much better if I had worked out this problem in Christian Science with patience and love. With this healing came the opportunity to purchase a much larger and better house with more pleasant surroundings.

A few years later my husband and I had the wonderful experience of class instruction, and this helped us greatly when our little daughter was healed of a serious illness and my husband was healed of heart trouble. At a time when another undiagnosed sickness caused me great pain, a new meaning came to me of the third commandment which begins (Ex. 20:7), "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."

We are told in the first chapter of Genesis (verse 27), "God created man in his own image." On page 31 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, "Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh." His own words read (Matt. 23:9), "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."

Reasoning from cause to effect, I began to see that since God is my true and only Father, I was entitled to take His name, which is Spirit and Love, and that I, as His child, could not claim His name in vain or without the good results which I had naturally inherited. In this case the good result was the cessation of the pain which had been troubling me on and off for several months.

During a time of severe mental anguish about eighteen years ago, I was suddenly stricken with a heart attack and paralysis of my legs. A dear daughter-in-law was the only person with me, and she knew almost nothing about Science; but I asked her to find hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal expressing gratitude, and she sang with me most of the night. A practitioner, who was also a dear friend, was called, and the healing was so quick that I was able to be up and to attend to necessary duties the next day.

Later the same practitioner drove fifty miles to another city in which I was working to answer a call for help. Before she arrived I had lost consciousness; but as the result of her work, I was well the next morning and went to an early meeting at the office of the dean of women. (I was at that time serving as director of a sorority house.) I can never express enough gratitude for the loyalty and untiring work of practitioners.

A few years ago I was healed in about two weeks of what I believe was bursitis and of a painful condition of the jawbone. These healings were accomplished with the help of a practitioner.

I am filled with boundless gratitude to God, for Christ Jesus and his teachings, for Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, whose courage and steadfastness enabled her to write and to teach the truths of Science so that we may understand and use them, for the privilege of teaching in the Sunday School many years, and for membership in The Mother Church and a branch church.

(Mrs.) Miriam C. Dalton, San Francisco, California