Pagan _Sortes_. 'It was,' says he, 'a fantastical way of divination,
invented by the Jews, not unlike the _Sortes Virgilianae_ of the
heathens. For, as with them the first words they happened to dip into
in the works of that poet were a kind of oracle whereby they predicted
future events,--so, with the Jews, when they appealed to _Bath-col_,
the first words they heard from any one's mouth were looked upon as a
voice from Heaven directing them in the matter they inquired about.'

If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical
miraculous is at all gone out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge
may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize
a large imitation. But, even apart from that, the superstition is
common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant
persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no
practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and
abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first
present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of
this sort in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are
prone. But a mode of questioning the oracles of darkness, far more
childish, and, under some shape or other, equally common amongst those
who are prompted by mere vacancy of mind, without that determination to
sacred fountains which is impressed by misery, may be found in the
following extravagant silliness of Rousseau, which we give in his own
words--a case for which he admits that he himself would have _shut
up_ any other man (meaning in a lunatic hospital) whom he had seen
practising the same absurdities:--

'Au milieu de mes etudes et d'une vie innocente autant qu'on la puisse
mener, et malgre tout ce qu'on m'avoit pu dire, la peur de l'Enfer
m'agitoit encore. Souvent je me demandois--En quel etat suis-je? Si je