On the morning of the dedication of the Chicago church, November 14, 1897, I was in my bedroom in the third story of our house (the house is three stories and basement). I was getting ready to go to the morning service, and my little daughter, five years old, was playing about, when suddenly I felt a silence. I instantly noticed that the child was no longer there and that the window was open.

I looked out and saw her unconscious form on the ground below, her head on the cement sidewalk. Instantly I thought "All is Love."

As I went down-stairs the entire paragraph in "No and Yes," p.19*, beginning, "Eternal harmony, perpetuity, and perfection constitute the phenomena of Being," came to me and took up its abode with me, and with it the clear sense of the great gulf fixed between the child and the lie that claimed to destroy. The child was brought in, and as she was carried up-stairs she cried. As she was laid down the blood was spurting from her mouth and had already covered her neck and shoulders. I instantly said, "There is one law— God's law—under which man remains perfect," and the bleeding immediately stopped.

The child seemed to relapse into unconsciousness, but I declared, "Mind is ever present and controls its idea," and in a few moments she slept naturally. During the morning she seemed to suffer greatly if she was moved at all, and her legs seemed paralyzed—lifeless. In the afternoon all sense of pain left, she slept quietly, and I went to the afternoon service, rejoicing greatly in my freedom from the sense of personal responsibility.

When I returned she sat in my lap to eat some supper, with no sense of pain, but still unable to control her limbs, which presented the appearance of entire inaction.

At eight o'clock she was undressed without inconvenience, and there was no mark on her body but a bruised eye. During the day she had not spoken of herself. At eleven o'clock, when I went up-stairs, I found her wide awake, and she said, "Mamma, error is trying to say that I fell out of the window, but that cannot be. The child of God can't fall; but why do I lie here? Why can't I move my legs?"

The answer was: "You can move them. Mind governs, and you are always perfect." In a moment she said, "I will get up and walk." It seemed to require one or two trials to induce her legs to obey, but she rose, walked across the room and back, climbed into bed, stretched her legs out and said, "I knew error could not talk!"

She then sat up, ate a lunch, fell into a natural slumber, and woke bright and happy in the morning.

For two days there was an uncertainty of movement, a seeming inability to walk in a straight line, but she moved about constantly, frequently rebuking the error aloud and declaring, "Love helps me walk."

On Wednesday harmony was established. Some weeks after her little sister said to her: "You did fall out of the window, didn't you?" But the reply was: "My body fell, but I am not in my body. Can God's child fall?" And the little three-year-old answered: "No, because God is good."

[Republished from the Christian Science Journal.]

* The citation from No and Yes references an earlier edition. Please refer to page 10 of the current edition.