In this case, be it noticed, there is no provision for the woman who thinks her husband has bewitched her, as in the holy Bible there is no law for the woman who conceives she has cause for jealousy; nor, although she is supernaturally punished, is there any indication of any punishment falling on the male culprit who has perhaps seduced her from her allegiance to her lord and master. Throughout Europe, when under the sway of Christian priests, trials by ordeal were quite common. It was held as a general maxim that God would judge as to the righteousness or unrighteousness of a cause. The chief modes of the Judicium Dei, as it was called, was by walking on or handling hot iron; by chewing consecrated bread, with the wish that the morsel might be the last; by plunging the arm in boiling water, or by being thrown into cold water, to swim being considered a proof of guilt, and to sink the demonstration of innocence. Pope Eugenius had the honor of inventing this last ordeal, which became famous as a trial for witches. Dr. E. B. Tylor, whose information on all such matters is only equalled by his philosophical insight, says of ordeals: "As is well known, they have always been engines of political power in the hands of unscrupulous priests and chiefs. Often it was unnecessary even to cheat, when the arbiter had it at his pleasure to administer either a harmless ordeal, like drinking cursed water, or a deadly ordeal, by a dose of aconite or physostigma. When it comes to sheer cheating, nothing can be more atrocious than this poison ordeal. In West Africa, where the Oalabar bean is used, the administers can give the accused a dose which will make him sick, and so prove his innocence; or they can give him enough to prove him guilty, and murder him in the very act of proof. When we consider that over a great part of that great continent this and similar drugs usually determine the destiny of people inconvenient to the Fetish man and the chief--the constituted authorities of Church and State--we see before us one efficient cause of the unprogressive character of African society." Trial by ordeal was in all countries, whether Pagan or Christian, under the management of the priesthood. That it originated in ignorance and superstition, and was maintained by fraud, is unquestionable. Christians, when reading of ordeals among savages, deplore the ignorance and barbarity of the unenlightened heathen among whom such customs prevail, quite unmindful that in their own sacred book, headed with the words "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying," occurs as gross an instance of superstitious ordeal as can be found among the records of any people. BIBLE WITCHCRAFT. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Ex. xxii. 18).