Once I heard an experienced Christian Scientist say that gratitude is a law. I had always known at a simple, grass-roots level what he meant, but the infinite, ever-widening, ever-developing meaning of gratitude was not brought home to me until some years later.

I was living alone in London with my twelve-year-old son, and I had been very earnest in my study of Christian Science. One night, on returning home late from visiting a friend, I saw my bus approaching on the other side of the road. I had started to run across the road when suddenly a car traveling at great speed came toward me. I ran back to the footpath, only to find that the car swerved the same way, trying to miss me. It hit me full force, but as it did, I found myself declaring with great clarity, "This isn't happening!" That instantaneous recognition—based on the spiritual fact of the allness of God, good—undoubtedly saved my life. However, my face was injured.

I was taken by ambulance to a nearby public hospital, where I was placed in a ward with many other patients. I refused all medication and injections, and the medical staff accepted my request very understandingly. I lay in bed all night simply flooded with gratitude. I've never known such a feeling: "Thank God, I'm alive!"

My main concern had been, of course, for my son. During my four days at the hospital, he was lovingly cared for by some sweet businesswomen who lived in the same house with us.

A Christian Science practitioner visited me regularly while I was in the hospital. Though I knew that my face had been injured, I firmly refused to look into a mirror. I was relying completely on God, confident that He would fulfill His promise in a verse from Job, which the practitioner had quoted: "Then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear." ^{Job 11:15.} Indeed, during the four days I was there, I felt such overwhelming gratitude that I was totally without fear; I was happy and genuinely uplifted. And this feeling of uplift was steadfast.

The following Saturday when a friend came to take me home, I glanced around the ward and noticed that all the beds were empty except one, which held a senior, resident patient. I asked the nurse about this. She replied that the doctors didn't know what had happened, but that suddenly every patient had recovered and gone home!

My face was clear, and there were none of the bruises that had been predicted by the doctor. Two weeks after my release from the hospital I was able to appear in a television play I had been scheduled to take part in, and I had no sign of any injury.

After I had been through this cleansing and uplifting experience, the flooding of gratitude stayed with me. It brought with it another feeling, deep and pure, of great humility, and a real certainty that the all-potent divine Principle was operating, not only in the lives of my son and me but for all who opened their thought to accept it.

These marvelous realizations lifted my son and me to a more spiritual standpoint from which to approach our lives, and a great deal of progress took place that could never have been achieved by human means alone. Doors began to open for us both on an international level. Eventually opportunities came for the development of a wonderful professional start for my son and for continuing progress in my own work. It was as though a huge stone had been rolled away from our lives. I felt as if we personally did nothing but stand aside and witness the miraculous events that unfolded from our profound gratitude. It was not so much a metaphysical argument as a deeper feeling of closeness to God, of His allness and my oneness with Him, that had opened up the way. The deep and cleansing drafts of spiritual love had washed away self-pity, arrogance, pride, and resentment—all of which would block spiritual progress.

And after all, all true progress is spiritual. It is not by any means intellectual, not the result of human reasoning and plotting, but the falling away of these so that our true nature as God's spiritual expression appears. The danger in intellectualism is that it can crystallize into pride and cold, hard detachment, which are high attenuations of materialism. Mere material intellectualism is an element of the carnal mind, or mortal mind, which would argue that there is intelligence or power apart from God.

In Timothy we are told that God "giveth us richly all things to enjoy." ^{I Tim. 6:17.} The worth evident in beautiful music, wonderful literature and art, glorious architecture, belongs to everyone to love and appreciate. But the appreciation of spiritual good is the quintessence of gratitude. If, as I was once told, "complaining is the snoring of mortal mind," then surely expressions of appreciation and of gratitude for spirituality must be songs of joy from an awakened spiritual consciousness.

At the time of the dedication of the Extension of The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, the members of her Church sent a telegram to Mrs. Eddy. One comment in that message captures for me the demand to bring gratitude and the spirit of meekness to all that we do: "Naught else than the grandeur of humility and the incense of gratitude and compassionate love can acceptably ascend heavenward from this house of God." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 37.} Gratitude and humility go hand in hand with gladness, joy, and repentance—or the yielding of encrusted human opinions to the tenderness of infinite Mind.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.

"This is what is meant by seeking Truth, Christ, not 'for the loaves and fishes,' nor, like the Pharisee, with the arrogance of rank and display of scholarship, but like Mary Magdalene, from the summit of devout consecration, with the oil of gladness and the perfume of gratitude, with tears of repentance and with those hairs all numbered by the Father." ^{Science and Health, p. 367.} Let us then awake to every shred of good surrounding us—from the beautiful smile of a child to the love that reflects divine Love, which is everywhere and all powerful. Let us feel that deep sense of gratitude flowing through us—that highest gratitude, which is indeed a law.