It may be true that all events, however apparently casual or fortuitous, are governed by "natural laws;" it may be equally true that all events are determined, directed, or controlled by Divine Providence: but as long as some events depend on causes which are certainly known, and other events on causes which are not known, or on a combination of causes whose results cannot be foreseen, so long will there be room for the distinction between the _regular_ and the _accidental_ phenomena of human experience.

This distinction, indeed, is explicitly recognized in Scripture itself; for while it speaks of all events as being infallibly known to God, it speaks of some events that are _accidental_ with reference to man.[219] The unknown, unforeseen, and unexpected incidents of life, which constitute all that is apparently casual or accidental, may be, and we believe they are, really subject both to natural laws and to God's providential will; but they are removed far beyond our comprehension or control; and being so, they are admirably fitted, as a part of the complex scheme of His natural and moral government, to serve one of the most important practical ends for which it is designed, by impressing us with a sense of constant dependence on a higher Power, and of dutiful subjection to a superior Will.
But while, in this sense and to this extent, the doctrine of "Chance" is retained, it must be utterly rejected as a means of accounting either for the creation or government of the world.

For, on the supposition of a Supreme Being, there can be no _chance_ with reference to Him; and without such a supposition, we cannot account for the regularity which prevails in the course of Nature, and which indicates a presiding Intelligence and a controlling Will.

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