The "calculation of chances" has been reduced to something like scientific accuracy;[218] and it has been applied, with beneficial effect, to the insurance of life and property on land and at sea. Even the casual events of human history may be said, in a certain sense, to be governed by fixed laws. The _aggregate result_ in such cases may be tolerably certain, while the _individual cases_ are very much the reverse; and hence human wisdom, proceeding on a well-ascertained body of _statistics_, may construct a scheme for securing some against the evils to which they would otherwise have been liable, by means of the sacrifices of others, who would not have been in fact, although they might have been, for ought they know, liable to the same. But what is this, if it be not a practical acknowledgement of the uncertainty in which all are placed in regard to some of the most important interests of the present life? or how can it be said that chance or accident is altogether, and in every sense, exploded, when large bodies of men are found to combine, and that, too, at a considerable personal sacrifice, for the express purpose of protecting themselves, so far as they can, from the hazards to which they are individually exposed?
In the sense above explained, we cannot consent to discard "Chance" altogether, either at the bidding of those who resolve everything into "natural laws," or even in deference to the authority of others who ascribe all events to Divine Providence. 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.