He reminds the reader that up until then he had not given any credit to God or religion for anything good that had happened to him. He had just figured that it all happened by chance. In Starr's opinion, " his efforts will be fruitless if he sets about them without a due regard for Providence- (Starr 327). Crusoe does submit, though, that "after I saw Barley grow there I began to suggest, that God had miraculously caus'd this Grain to grow and that it was directed purely for my Sustenance- (Defoe 58). But as he thinks on things, he remembers having shaken out a bag of corn and decides that the seeds must have fallen there and grown themselves. So he discounts the providence of God in this situation when he realizes that it would be common for the barley to grow if the seeds were planted. Retrospectively, Crusoe notes that he "ought to have been thankful for so strange and unforeseen Providence for it was really the Work of Providence that 10 or 12 Grains of Corn should remain unspoil'd- because if the seeds had landed anywhere else at that time of the season, the climate would have been too hot for them to survive in the dirt and would never have grown (Defoe 58).
Further into the tale, Crusoe contracts a severe fever that almost claims his life. He divulges to the reader that he has "never had so much as one thought of it being the Hand of God, or that it was a just Punishment for [his] Sin- (Defoe 65). As he recovers, he identifies a few experiences he has had on the island in which Providence may have played a part "the day he was shipwrecked and in danger of drowning so near the island, the time the corn started to grow under the rock, and once when an earthquake almost ruined his small cave dwelling and could have buried him alive. All these events made him pause to wonder if some divine power was in control at those times (Defoe 65-66). As J. Paul Hunter states, "Crusoe views each subsequent tragic event as punishment for his rebellion, and at last concludes that real deliverance from his plight (both physical and spiritual) is only possible when he resigns himself completely to the will of God- (Hunter 342).