their knees. The divination was now successful, and they dared not repeat it!" (Ibid., Proleg. p. 197).
Here it seems that heaven was merely called in to give its sanction to a foregone conclusion.
The Singhalese have a curious method of discovering, by a species of divination, what god it is who has caused the illness of a patient. "With any little stick," says Knox, "they make a bow, and on the string thereof they hang a thing they have to cut betel-nuts, somewhat like a pair of scissors; then holding the stick or bow by both ends, they repeat the names of all, both god and devils: and when they come to him who hath afflicted them, then the iron or the bowstring will swing" (H. R. C., p. 76).
Divination, as is well known, was regularly practiced by the ancients, who read the will of the gods in the entrails of animals, and who employed, as a help in forseeing the future and guiding their conduct, the class of professional diviners known as augurs.
Another method, by which it has often been supposed that God entered into communication with man, is that of the movements of the stars and planets. Hence the pseudo-science of astrology, which was so much cultivated in the middle ages before its supersession by astronomy. In India, observes Karl Twesten, the stars were very early consulted as oracles. Manu excludes astrologers from the sacrifices; and in later times astrology became very general. According to Twesten, there is an astrologer in almost every Hindu community, who is much consulted, and determines the favorable moment for every important undertaking (R. I., p. 285). Antiquity, wide extension, and great persistency may all be pleaded on behalf of the notion that terrestrial events are forshadowed by a system of celestial signals. There is a toueh of astrological belief in the evangelical narrative that the birth of Christ was intimated to the Magi by a star in the east.
Sometimes, when it was desirable not to ascertain future events, but to decide between guilt and innocence, truth and falsehood, the divine Being himself was called in as umpire, and was supposed to convey his judgment by the turn of events in a pre-arranged case. This is the theory of those communi-
