Chance is a word which ought to be banished from the Christian vocabulary. It is utterly contradictory to reason, opposed to experience, and subversive of revelation. To suppose that he who created the world has wholly and forever abandoned it, is improbable; and to imagine that the regular movements of nature, and the course of events--the whole train of causes, and the incalculable variety of dependent consequences, are merely fortuitous, seems absurd as well as impious. Uncertain and confused as were the opinions of the pagan nations of antiquity, few of them totally denied some kind of superintending providence; and many of their ablest writers reasoned in defence of it in the most forcible manner. "What," said the emperor Marcus Antoninus, "would it concern me to live in a world void of God and without Providence?" In order to form clear conceptions of this, and of every other subject connected with the peace of our minds and the immortal interests of man, we must apply to the Scriptures for information. Hope, conjecture, plausibility--all became pleasingly absorbed in the splendour of truth; which, with the brightness of a sun beam, writes upon the inspired page the doctrine of an universal and particular providence. It appears, indeed, so fundamental to the system of Christianity, and so consonant to the wisdom and goodness of God, that if it were possible to adduce "solid objections against its reality, one of the richest sources of consolation to the human race would be forever lost--some of our dearest hopes would be undermined, and despondency shed disastrous gloom over the whole scene of life. It is the happiness of Christians to know, that nothing can escape the eye, nothing can disarrange the schemes, or thwart the purposes, of the eternal mind; and that the same general law which regulates the flight of an angel, or the affairs of an empire, connects even the fall of a sparrow with the plans of heaven. It is their privilege to feel assured, that the events which appear contingent or accidental to us, are equally ordained with those which seem the most orderly and regular. The arrow may be shot at a venture, but the Supreme Ruler guides it through the air. So sings the poet; "Through all the various shifting scene Of life's mistaken ill or good, Thy hand, O God, conducts unseen The beautiful vicissitude. All things on earth, and all in heaven, On thy eternal will depend; And all for greater good were given, And all shall in thy glory end."