This is the ninth and final instalment in a series by F W Boreham from his essay The Long Arm of Coin-cidence, soon to be included in the forth-coming book, The Best Essays of F W Boreham.And there is a third class of coincidences. Here, for example, are a number of people gathered together in the house of John Mark in Jerusalem. Peter is in prison and these good men and women have met to pray for him. And, whilst they pray, a great light illumines the darkness of the dungeon. Angels appear: chains fall: gates fly open: Peter escapes!
Every person of any spiritual experience at all has met with such coincidences. One has prayed and things have happened. One has been profoundly moved to write a certain letter or to pay a certain visit. The letter or the visit proved to be the very thing that the grateful recipient most sorely needed. Or one has been perplexed; has sought guidance; and, 'o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent', the Kindly Light has led in the most wonderful way. When we approach these sublime coincidences, we shed our sense of surprise and yield instead to adoration. We feel that we are merely beholding, on the most exalted plane, the operation of the law of cause and effect. The forces at work in producing the coinciding factors are so obvious that we no longer consider the resultant coincidences as coincidences at all.
F W Boreham, ‘The Long Arm of Coincidence’, I Forgot to Say (London: The Epworth Press, 1939), 87-96.
Image: Peter's escape from prison.
