When I was eleven years old, I was hit by an automobile. According to eyewitnesses I went ten feet into the air and landed on my head. Although it was entirely my fault, as I had dashed across the street without looking in either direction, the man driving the car was understandably distressed. He happened to be the principal of my school, and apparently he feared a serious, not to say fatal, result. However I was not hurt. I was able to pick myself up, assure him I was all right, and apologize for my stupidity. He was speechless with relief.

During those few seconds in flight I had declared clearly and with absolute conviction, "God is with me." I've always been grateful for my spontaneous, unquestioning reaching out to God, but at the time I did not fully appreciate the ramifications of this incident.

Many years later I returned for a reunion of my high school graduating class. The same principal was still at the school. In chatting with me he mentioned the car incident; and then, with a glint in his eye, added, "I always say that if you're going to hit someone with your car, pick a good Christian Scientist!"

I laughed with him, but later I realized how significant that facetious remark was. I had not thought that he even knew I was a Christian Scientist, and I had certainly been unaware that he had attributed my protection to Christian Science. I saw then that my instinctive turning to God for help, as I had been taught to do from earliest childhood, and the resulting protection had been proof to those witnesses of the efficacy of Christian Science.

I felt a great surge of gratitude for those good habits of thought instilled in me as a child, both at home and in the Christian Science Sunday School. For, like other children brought up as Christian Scientists, I had early learned to understand my true selfhood as a child of God, reflecting His attributes and forever enfolded in His care. As a result of this training, young Scientists gain greater and greater facility in applying these truths in their daily experience and turn instinctively to God in moments of crisis.

Habits can be bad, or they can be good. The word "habit" means an aptitude or inclination for some action, acquired by repetition and resulting in facility of performance. It is certainly good to have an aptitude for consistent right thinking! Mrs. Eddy says, "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." ^{Science and Health, p. 62;} How much of this disciplined kind of thinking she expected, even from children! Christian Science stresses the importance of constantly holding one's thought to whatever is good if one would bring harmony into one's experience.

Conversely, it warns against allowing mindless repetition to become a habit, perhaps as a formula, which by its mere recital is falsely believed able to bring healing or protection through a kind of metaphysical mumbo jumbo. Mrs. Eddy makes her stand clear: "The mere habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circumscribed,—an error which impedes spiritual growth." ^{p. 2;}

Just a few years ago a sharp experience taught me the difference between "the mere habit of pleading" and true, consistent right thinking. While vacuuming down a staircase, I inadvertently pulled the cord to the machine too hard, and the tank, some six or seven steps above me, came crashing down on my right hand. I was most annoyed at this silly accident. After perfunctorily denying the pain and rather airily reciting, "There are no accidents in Mind," I went on with my work, simply putting up with the discomfort. It wasn't until later in the day that I found that the hand had become completely useless.

Then I realized how superficial my thinking had been when the accident happened. And suddenly I remembered the instantaneous result when, as a child, I had really turned unreservedly to God. As there was a church meeting that night and I was to give two reports, I knew I couldn't dillydally in reversing the error.

I turned to God in humility and eagerness. I thought of how the real man is the reflection of God, expressing true substance, Life, and intelligence. I saw that pain, inaction, weakness, helplessness, were the false testimony of material sense, not actual facts about myself. I realized that man as the reflection of God includes the substance of Spirit, which has nothing to do with flesh and bone and is indestructible, hence that matter has no intelligence to announce pain and no activity in itself to lose. Mind, God, governs all movement, and mortal mind belief cannot cause Mind's perpetual right activity to become inert.

I looked up the passage in Unity of Good where Mrs. Eddy tells how Jesus healed a man's hand by appealing to the laws of God. "The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, 'That withered hand looks very real and feels very real.'" ^{Un., p. 11;} I was amazed anew to see the consistent spiritual elevation of Christ Jesus thought. So strong and prepared was he that all he had to do was say, "Stretch forth thine hand," ^{Mark 3:5.} and the man's hand was restored.

The boastful evidence of injury no longer held any terror for me, and I went on to church, confident of the healing. By the end of the meeting I was using my hand in perfect freedom, and there never were any aftereffects, not even a bruise. I had received a needed reminder that the right thinking which Christian Science inculcates in us is not mere repetition of well-loved verses or the glib recital of metaphysical terms, but a deeper, purer, steadfast conviction of man's inviolable status as God's perfect reflection and a habitual spiritual readiness of thought that makes healing inevitable.