376 NATURAL SELECTION OR DEITY. 



count for by law many of the facts of nature, unhesitatingly 

 deny the operation of miracle in the present state of things. 

 And this denial is so expressed that it may be inferred by 

 the reader that supernatural interference in the past is also 

 to be included. In this way it happens that the teachings 

 of science come to be represented as hostile to the doctrines 

 and teachings of religion. Religion without miracle cannot 

 be. Has, then, science really destroyed miracle, as has been 

 affirmed, and is it really impossible that a scientific man can 

 be honest and upright and yet believe in miracle? 



Now I must not omit to state here that not one single 

 phenomenon peculiar to living beings has yet been adequately 

 explained by science, and although we may refuse to admit 

 the operation of miracle, we cannot adduce full and sufficient 

 arguments to justify our denial of the possibility of the 

 influence of forces and powers of the order supernatural, in 

 which also every kind of miraculous agency must unques- 

 tionably be included. "Vainly did we philosophers and 

 critical theologians over and over again decree the ex- 

 termination of miracles ; our ineffectual sentence died away, 

 because we could neither dispense with miraculous agency, 

 nor point to any natural force able to supply it, when it had 

 hitherto seemed most indispensable. Darwin has opened 

 the door by which a happier coming race will cast out 

 miracles, never to return." Sir Charles Lyell has remarked 

 that natural selection stands "nearly in the same relation as 

 the Deity himself to man's finite understanding." He 

 thinks that "the progress of events without direction or 

 plan" is the cause of the existence of living things. 



Strauss then, assures us " that the choice "lies between 

 the miracle4:he divine artificer and Darwin." He affirms, 



