"Chance" is a disreputable word, I know.  It is supposed by many
pious persons to be improper and almost blasphemous to use it.  But
I am not one of those who share this verbal prejudice.  I am
inclined rather to believe that it is a good word to which a bad
reputation has been given.  I feel grateful to that admirable
"psychologist who writes like a novelist," Mr. William James, for
his brilliant defence of it.  For what does it mean, after all, but
that some things happen in a certain way which might have happened
in another way?  Where is the immorality, the irreverence, the
atheism in such a supposition?  Certainly God must be competent to
govern a world in which there are possibilities of various kinds,
just as well as one in which every event is inevitably determined
beforehand.  St. Peter and the other fishermen-disciples on the Lake
of Galilee were perfectly free to cast their net on either side of
the ship.  So far as they could see, so far as any one could see, it
was a matter of chance where they chose to cast it.  But it was not
until they let it down, at the Master's word, on the right side that
they had good luck.  And not the least element of their joy in the
draft of fishes was that it brought a change of fortune.