We think it would be scarcely possible to find a more pointed illustration of the purifying, humanising, and refining nature of Christianity, than to observe the course pursued by this story. Among Buddhists the false king is vivified by a crafty rogue’s infused soul; among Jews he is a transformed devil; but among Christians he is an angel of light. SORTES SACRÆ It is not an uncommon case, nowadays, for pious persons at times of great perplexity to seek a solution to their difficulties in their Bibles, opening the book at random and taking the first passage which occurs as a direct message to them from the Almighty. The manner in which this questioning of the sacred oracles is performed is serious. A considerable time is previously devoted to prayer, after which the inquirer rises from his knees and consults the family Bible in the way described. Whether such a manner of dealing with the Word of God be under any circumstances justifiable, I do not pretend to judge. St. Augustine in his 119th letter to Januarius seems not to disapprove of this custom, so long as it be not applied to things of this world. Gregory of Tours tells us what was his practice. He spent several days in fasting and prayer, and in strict retirement, after which he resorted to the tomb of St. Martin, and taking any book of Scripture which he chose, he opened it, and took as answer from God the first passage that met his eye. Should this passage prove inappropriate, he opened another book of Scripture. The eleventh chapter of Proverbs, which contains thirty-one verses, is often taken to give omen of the character of a life. The manner of consulting it is simple; it is but to look for the verse answering to the day of the month on which the questioner was born. The answer will be found in most cases to be exceedingly ambiguous. The practice of consulting certain books for purposes of augury is of high antiquity. Herodotus speaks of the custom, and of the fraud of Oxomacritus, a celebrated diviner, who made use of Musœus for reference, and who was driven out of Athens by Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, because he had been detected inserting in the verses of Musœus an oracle predicting the disappearance in the waves of the islands near Lemnos. Homer, and afterwards Virgil, were the poets most frequently consulted, but Euripides was also regarded as divinely inspired to foretell the future.