ble regularity and uniformity, are
utterly exclusive of everything like chance or accident in any
department of Nature. Instead of ascribing the creation of the world to
a fortuitous concourse of atoms, modern speculation would refer it to "a
law of development" such as is able of itself to insure the production
of astral systems in the firmament, and also of vegetable and animal
races on the earth, without any direct or immediate interposition of a
higher power; and instead of ascribing the events of history and the
"progress" of humanity to a fortuitous or accidental origin, modern
speculation would refer them to "a law of social or historical
development," such as makes every succeeding state the natural, and,
indeed, necessary product of a prior one, and places the whole order of
sequences--whether physical, moral, political, or religious--under the
government of "natural law," as contradistinguished from that of a
"supernatural will." There is thus a manifest tendency to resile from
the old theory of Chance, and to take refuge in the new asylum of Law,
Order, or Destiny. There is, apparently, a wide difference between the
two contrasted systems; and yet the difference may be, after all, more
seeming than real: for both the old doctrine of "chance" and the new
theory of "development" are compelled to assume certain conditions or
qualities as belonging to the primordial elements of matter, without
which it is felt that neither Chance nor Fate can afford a satisfactory
account of the works either of Creation or Providence. The one party
spoke more of "Chance," the other speaks more of "Law;" but both were
compelled to feel that neither Chance nor Law could _of themselves_
account for the established order of Nature, without presupposing
certain conditions, adjustments, and dispositions of matter, such as
could only be satisfactorily explained by ascribing them to a wise,
foreseeing, and designing Mind.

In the present state of philosophical speculation, which evinces so
strong a tendency to reduce everything to the dominion of "Law," it may
seem unnecessary to refer to the doctrine of "Chance" at all; but
believing as we do that there are, and ever must be, certain events in
the course of life, and certain facts in the complex experience of man,
which will irresistibly suggest the idea of it, even where the doctrine
is theoretically disowned, we think it right to lay down a distinct and
definite position on this subje