f
their brother. Immediately on their going to the sacred place
appointed for inquirers, they heard a voice saying: "The candle is
going out; let not the light be extinguished in Israel." By these
words they were assured that the sickness was not unto death. Acha
recovered.

Plutarch wrote a treatise on the ceasing of oracles; and Van Dale, a
Dutch physician, published a volume to prove that they did not cease
at the dawn of Christianity, as had been supposed by early Christians.
Malthus laboured to prove that there were real oracles, such as could
not be reasonably attributed to any artifices of priests or
priestesses; but he thought several of the oracles became silent
before the Church and the prayers of saints. A pious missionary in
India gave it as his opinion that the devil gave oracles there, but
that he became meek wherever the gospel was preached. This religious
man was not singular in his opinion, for most of the Fathers of the
Church believed it was the devil that gave oracles. Pagan priests went
to sleep in their temples, that they might receive responses in their
dreams, and that they might with greater certainty play the prophet.
The sibylline oracles were held in so great veneration among the
ancients, that nothing of importance was undertaken without consulting
them.

That divination was used and believed in by the Hebrews, is proved by
the Scripture injunctions against divinations. The Jews were told not
to have among them any that used divination, or any observers of
times, or enchanters, or witches, or charmers, or consulters with
familiar spirits, or wizards, or necromancers, or star-gazers, or
miracle-mongers, or seekers of oracles.

One species of divination was performed by laying an agate stone on a
red-hot hatchet. This is known as Axinomancy. The agate was called
sacred, as it was regarded as a preservative against the poison of
reptiles. Pliny has written a whole chapter on the virtues of agates.

There was an art among the Greeks known as Alectoromantia, by which
future events were made known by means of a cock's movements. A circle
was made on the ground, and divided into twenty-four equal parts, in
each of which spaces was written one of the letters of the alphabet,
and upon each of these letters was laid a grain of wheat. This done,
the fowl was turned loose, and watched to ascertain the order in which
the grains were picked up. The letters corresponding to those grains
were formed i