112 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



laws and no exceptions to their application. 

 But no sooner does the scientist confess, as 

 Professor Plate has done, that a lawgiver 

 underlies the laws, than he is forced to acknow- 

 ledge the possibility of miracles, inasmuch as 

 this lawgiver, having some higher supernatural 

 object in view, may will to set aside the laws 

 of nature under exceptional circumstances. 1 

 Plate is quite right in saying that belief in 

 miracles cannot be uprooted by logic, especially 

 as a miracle is no arbitrary and capricious 

 interference with the orderly course of events 

 in nature. That miracles are not of frequent 

 occurrence is obvious, therefore Plate can 

 scarcely require us to have daily opportunities 

 of observing them ; but one who seriously 

 is in search of truth must ask himself whether 

 history does not supply us with some undoubted 

 instances of setting aside the laws of nature. 

 The resurrection of Christ, which is the histori- 

 cal foundation of all Christianity, is a miracle 

 of this kind. 



In the last section of his speech, Plate attacked the 

 'rock of the Christian Theory of the Universe.' He 

 says : c Father Wasmann calls the Church the rock 

 round which the waves surge. I feel bound to con- 

 tradict him. Think of the first wave in the time of 



1 My third opponent at the evening discussion, Professor Fr. Dahl, 

 upheld the possibility of miracles in his work on The Necessity of Religion, 

 p. 107, 1886. 



