Urged on by the clergyman Mr. Maydig, the miracle worker Fotheringay decides to use his remarkable powers to make the Earth stand still. Just as Joshua, according to the Bible, was able to stop the sun, so Fotheringay is going to do likewise to the planet Earth.

It seems like a nice idea. Once the Earth stops turning, then time will also stand still. In theory, this will give Fotheringay more opportunities to transform people's lives by working miracles.

In practice, however, it doesn't work out quite like that. For once the Earth stands still, everything is hurled into the air with considerable force. Everyone and everything has been jerked forward at about nine miles per second, a much more violent force than if they'd been fired out of a cannon.

Fotheringay is miraculously able to avoid this mass carnage, which has wiped out the Earth's population. He does so by making the simple wish:

Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever else happens, let me down safe and sound.

But this isn't the last miracle that Fotheringay will work. That honor belongs to the fulfillment of his earnest desire that there will be no more miracles and that things will go back to how they were before he discovered his extraordinary power.

The next thing Fotheringay knows, he's in a pub, arguing about miracles with Toddy Beamish, just as he was at the beginning of the story.