"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it. Every law of time
and space, of magnitude and mass is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables
you to do is clearly not of this world." - ACIM

Just as, if anything matters, death matters; if anything matters, miracles matter.

Thus, how tremendous A Course in Miracles, and Christianity must be, if they be true.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles, - by H.G. Wells
A Pantoum In Prose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35nQow13N0 - Youtube Audio Book
https://tinyurl.com/Man-WhoCould-Work-Miracles-pdf - .pdf

IT IS DOUBTFUL whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to
him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe
in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most convenient place, I must
mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red
hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles. His name was George
McWhirter Fotheringay−−not the sort of name by any means to lead to any
expectation of miracles−−and he was clerk at Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted
to assertive argument. It was while he was asserting the impossibility of
miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers. This
particular argument was being held in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy
Beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective "So /you/
say," that drove Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience.

There were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord Cox, and
Miss Maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of the Dragon.
Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr. Fotheringay, washing glasses;
the others were watching him, more or less amused by the present ineffectiveness
of the assertive method. Goaded by the Torres Vedras tactics of Mr. Beamish, Mr.
Fotheringay determined to make an unusual rhetorical effort. "Looky here, Mr.
Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's
something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will, something
what couldn't happen without being specially willed."

"So /you/ say," said Mr. Beamish, repulsing him.

Mr. Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silent auditor,
and received his assent−−given with a hesitating cough and a glance at Mr.
Beamish. The landlord would express no opinion, and Mr. Fotheringay, returning to
Mr. Beamish, received the unexpected concession of a qualified assent to his
definition of a miracle.

"For instance," said Mr. Fotheringay, greatly encouraged. "Here would be a
miracle. That lamp, in the natural course of nature, couldn't burn like that
upsy−down, could it, Beamish?"

"/You/ say it couldn't," said Beamish.

"And you?" said Fotheringay. "You don't mean to say−−eh?"

"No," said Beamish reluctantly. "No, it couldn't."

"Very well," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Then here comes someone, as it might be me,
along here, and stands as it might be here, and says to that lamp, as I might do,
collecting all my will−−Turn upsy−down without breaking, and go on burning steady,
and−−Hullo!"

It was enough to make anyone say "Hullo!" The impossible, the incredible, was
visible to them all. The lamp hung inverted in the air, burning quietly with its
flame pointing down. It was as solid, as indisputable as ever a lamp was, the
prosaic common lamp of the Long Dragon bar.

Mr. Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one
anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp,
ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more or less. Miss Maybridge
turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. A faint
cry of mental distress came from Mr. Fotheringay. "I can't keep it up," he said,
"any longer." He staggered back, and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell
against the corner of the bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out.

It was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole place would have been in a
blaze. Mr. Cox was the first to speak, and his remark, shorn of needless
excrescences, was to the effect that Fotheringay was a fool. Fotheringay was
beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition as that! He was astonished
beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. The subsequent conversation threw
absolutely no light on the matter so far as Fotheringay was concerned; the general
opinion not only followed Mr. Cox very closely but very vehemently. Everyone
accused Fotheringay of a silly trick, and presented him to himself as a foolish
destroyer of comfort and security. His mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he
was himself inclined to agree with them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual
opposition to the proposal of his departure.

He went home flushed and heated, coat−collar crumpled, eyes smarting and ears red.
He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it. lt was only
when he found himself alone in his little bed−room in Church Row that he was able
to grapple seriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ask, "What on earth
happened?"

He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with his hands in
his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seventeenth time, "I didn't
want the confounded thing to upset," when it occurred to him that at the precise
moment he had said the commanding words he had inadvertently willed the thing he
said, and that when he had seen the lamp in the air he had felt it depended on him
to maintain it there without being clear how this was to be done. He had not a
particularly complex mind, or he might have stuck for a time at that
"inadvertently willed," embracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of
voluntary action; but as it was, the idea came to him with a quite acceptable
haziness. And from that, following, as I must admit, no clear logical path, he
came to the test of experiment.

He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he felt he did
a foolish thing. "Be raised up," he said. But in a second that feeling vanished.
The candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy moment, and as Mr. Fotheringay
gasped, fell with a smash on his toilet−table, leaving him in darkness save for
the expiring glow of its wick.

For a time Mr. Fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "It did happen,
after all," he said. "And 'ow I'm to explain it I don't know." He sighed
heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a match. He could find none, and he
rose and groped about the toilet−table. "I wish I had a match," he said. He
resorted to his coat, and there was none there, and then it dawned upon him that
miracles were possible even with matches. He extended a hand and scowled at it in
the dark. "Let there be a match in that hand," he said. He felt some light
object fall across his palm, and his fingers closed upon a match.

After several ineffectual attempts to light this, he discovered it was a
safety−match. He threw it down, and then it occurred to him that he might have
willed it lit. He did, and perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet−table
mat. He caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities
enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you
be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a
little black hole in the toilet−cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a
time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met
his own gaze in the looking glass. By this help he communed with himself in
silence for a time.

"How about miracles now?" said Mr. Fotheringay at last, addressing his reflection.

The subsequent meditations of Mr. Fotheringay were of a severe but confused
description. So far, he could see it was a case of pure willing with him. The
nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at
least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned
a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he
miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth−brush. Somewhen
in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will−power must be of a
particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had certainly had
inklings before, but no certain assurance. The scare and perplexity of his first
discovery was now qualified by pride in this evidence of singularity and by vague
intimations of advantage. He became aware that the church clock was striking one,
and as it did not occur to him that his daily duties at Gomshott's might be
miraculously dispensed with, he resumed undressing, in order to get to bed without
further delay. As he struggled to get his shirt over his head, he was struck with
a brilliant idea. "Let me be in bed," he said, and found himself so. "Undressed,"
he stipulated; and, finding the sheets cold, added hastily, "and in my
nightshirt−−no, in a nice soft woollen nightshirt. Ah!" he said with immense
enjoyment. "And now let me be comfortably asleep. . . . ."

On 4/19/2023 14:00, Miracles Are Seen In Light wrote:

> "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
> be added to you."
> - Jesus Christ, Matt 6:33, New Testament, Holy Bible
> https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A33&version=NKJV

How long does it take; to seek and find "the kingdom of God?"

Bump