“I know a religious man who had designed to serve God in the secular life,” writes Paciuchelli (_In Jonam_, vol. i. p. 9); “he once poured forth his prayers to God, and asked that he might be permitted, if it were His will, to fulfil some desire or other that he had. Having asked the opinion of certain persons of authority, he was recommended, after the most sacred service, to open the Missal and to take note of what should first arrest his attention. He followed this advice, and lo! the first words which presented themselves to him were those of our Lord to the sons of Zebedee, in St. Matt. xx. 23, ‘Ye know not what ye ask’; from which he gathered clearly that were his wishes to be gratified, his eternal welfare would be imperilled.” I have heard of a young man in doubt as to his vocation for holy orders, when he found his desire strongly opposed by his parents, inquiring of his Bible in a similar spirit and manner, and reading, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” I have been told of another man in somewhat parallel circumstances, having lately awakened to religious convictions after a life of great laxity, who sought guidance in the same manner, and read, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.” A story of the baleful effects of this practice among Scotch Presbyterians appeared in a collection of _Legends of Edinburgh_ by a recent writer. The story related how a designing mother persuaded her reluctant daughter into a marriage with a wealthy but dissipated youth, the son of their employer, towards whom the girl felt great repugnance, by manipulating the Sortes Sacræ so as to make the girl read, “Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, and go, and let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the Lord hath spoken.” As the name of the young woman was Rebekah, the sentence seemed to her to be a message from heaven. Gregory of Tours mentions a couple of instances of omens taken from Scripture. The one was that of Chramm, who had revolted against his father Clothaire, and who marched to Dijon, where he consulted the Sacred Oracles, by placing on the altar three books, the Prophets, the Acts, and the Evangelists. In like manner, according to Gregory, Merovius, flying from the wrath of his father Chilperic, and Fredigunda, placed on the tomb of St. Martin three books, to wit, the Psalter, the Kings, and the Gospels, and kept vigil through the night, praying the blessed confessor to discover to him what was to happen to him. He fasted three days and continued incessantly in prayer; then he opened the books, one after another, and was so dismayed at the replies which he found, that he wept bitterly beside the tomb, and then sadly left the basilica.