taken from them by a cause that also proceeds from _somewhere_--i e., from an unknown cause--i e., from the Divine will. Chloroform comes from a visible agent, from the doctor or nurse, or at least from a bottle, which can be taken up or left alone at our own choice. If we swallow this, the cause of death is known, and is evidently not divine; but if we go into a house where scarlet fever is raging, although we are in that case voluntarily running the chance of taking poison quite as truly as if we swallow a dose of chloroform, yet if we die from the infection, we can imagine the illness to be sent from God. Wherever we think the element of chance comes in, there we are able to imagine that God rules directly. We quite overlook the fact that there is no such thing as chance. There is only our ignorance of law, not a break in natural order. If our constitution be susceptible of the particular poison to which we expose it, we take the disease. If we knew the laws of infection as accurately as we know the laws affecting chloroform, we should be able to foresee with like certainty the inevitable consequence; and our ignorance does not make the action of either set of laws less unchangeable or more divine. But in the "happy-go-lucky" style of thought peculiar to ignorance, the Christian disregards the fact that infection is ruled by definite laws, and believes that health and sickness are the direct expressions of the will of his God, and not the invariable consequence of obscure but probably discoverable antecedents; so he boldly goes into the back slums of London to nurse a family stricken down with fever, and knowingly and deliberately runs "the chance" of infection--i e., knowingly and deliberately runs the chance of taking poison, or rather of having poison poured into his frame. This he does, trusting that the nobility of his motive will make the act right in God's sight. Is it more noble to relieve the sufferings of strangers, than to relieve the sufferings of his family? or is it more heroic to die of voluntarily-contracted fever, than of voluntarily-taken chloroform?