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 foreshadowed by a system of celestial signals. There is a touch 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 communications from God to man which are made by ordeals. Ordeals were of various kinds, according to the nature of the issue to be tried. Did one man charge another with some kind of disgraceful conduct, the accuser was summoned to put his words to the test of a single combat, in which truth was held to lie on the side of the victor; was an old woman suspected of witchcraft, she was thrown into the nearest pond, with thumbs and toes tied together, where her floating was regarded as certain evidence of her guilt. Innocence of legal crime, or in the case of women, of adultery, has very frequently been established by the method of ordeals. Several authors have noticed the ordeals in use among the natives on the west coast of Africa. One of them, writing of Sierra Leone, informs us that if an accused person can find a chief to patronize him, he is permitted to clear himself by submitting either to have a hot iron applied to his skin, or to dip his hand in boiling oil to pull out some object put into it, or to have his tongue stroked with a red-hot copper ring. Since his being burnt is considered as a proof of guilt, it would not appear that the chances of escape were great. "Upon the Gold Coast, the ordeal consists in chewing the bark of a tree, with a prayer that it may cause his death if he be not innocent." In the neighborhood of Sierra Leone, a very peculiar ordeal is practiced, that, namely, of drinking water prepared from the bark of a certain tree, and termed "red water." Before taking it, the drinker repeats a prayer containing an imprecation on himself if guilty. Should this decoction cause purging or pains in the bowels, it is a proof of guilt; should it, on the contrary,