To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him.

Taylor’s sentence frames continued human survival as an ongoing act of providence rather than a merely natural fact. In a world full of “chances and hostilities”—accidents, illness, violence, political upheaval, and moral peril—the sheer persistence of life appears, to him, as wondrous as the original act of creation. The comparison elevates preservation (sustaining, protecting, keeping alive) to the same theological magnitude as creation, implying that divine care is continuous, not confined to beginnings. Read more broadly, it also functions as a moral and devotional prompt: if life is repeatedly “given” through preservation, gratitude and humility are the fitting responses, and human security should not be presumed.