Nearly related to the supposed influence of priests over physical suffering, is their supposed power to foretell the future. Here, however, a number of unauthorized and schismatic priesthoods often enter into competition with those sanctioned by the state. Technically, they would not be termed priests at all; but tested by the true mark of priesthood, the gift, alleged by themselves and admitted by others, of forming channels of communication from the celestial powers to man, they are entitled to that name, and this although they may perhaps receive no regular consecration to their office. The Roman Senate during the Empire came into frequent collision with these irregular priests. It endeavored from time to time to combat the growing belief in the unorthodox practices of astrologers and magi, by decreeing their expulsion from Italy, and occasionally by visiting some of them with severer penalties; but such endeavors to stem the tide of popular superstition are naturally useless (Tac. Ann., ii. 32; xii. 52). Magic of some description is universal. In New Zealand the priest "seems to unite in his person the offices of priest, sorcerer, juggler, and physician." He predicts the life or death of members of his tribe (N. Z., p. 80). By the Kafirs the prophet is consulted on all kinds of domestic occasions, and (while the people beat the ground in assent to what he says) he is held to see in a vision the event which has led to the consultation (K. N., p. 167 ff). The inhabitants of Sierra Leone have other methods of divining. Their diviners make dots and lines in sand spread upon a goat's skin, which dots and lines they afterwards decipher; or they place palm-nuts in heaps upon a goat's skin, and by shifting them about suppose that an answer is obtained (N. A., vol. i. p. 134). The heathen Mexican had the habit, on the birth of a child, of consulting a diviner in order to ascertain its future. The diviner, having learnt from the child's parents the hour at which it was born, turned over his books to discover the sign under which its nativity had occurred. Should that sign prove to be favorable, he would say to the parents: "Your child has been born under a good sign; it will be a senor, or senator, or rich, or brave," or will have some other distinction. In the opposite case he would say: "The child has not been born under a good sign; it has been born under a disastrous sign." In some circumstances there was hope that the evil might be remedied; but if the sign were altogether bad, they would predict that it would be vicious, carnal, and a thief; or that it would be dull and lazy; or possibly that it would be a great drunkard; or that its life would be short. A third alternative was when the sign was indifferent, and the expected fortune was therefore partly good and partly bad. The diviner, in this case and in that of a bad, but not hopelessly bad, sign, assisted the parents by pointing out an auspicious day for the baptism of the infant (A.