God was still the loving Father who was to be stormed by the power of prayer, and might be moved to listen. But this generation had learnt resignation, and a gentle whisper to God took the place of the urgent prayer in which Luther had "brought the matter home to his Lord God." The inscrutable ways of Providence had been imprinted by fearful lessons on the soul, and the progress of science gave such presage of the grandeur of the world's system, that the weakness and insignificance of man had to be more loudly proclaimed. The sinner had become more in awe of his God, the _naive_ ingenuousness of the Reformation was lost. The craving for marvels had therefore increased--increased in this generation--and zealously did they endeavour in indirect ways to fathom the will of the Lord. Dreams were interpreted, prognostics discerned; every beautiful feeling of the soul, every sudden discovery made by the combinations of the mind, were considered as direct inspirations from God. It was an old popular belief, that accidental words which were impressed on the mind from outward sources were to be considered as significant, and this belief had now become a system. As the Jutlander Steno--the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hanover, and acquaintance of Leibnitz--suddenly became a fanatic, because a lady had spoken out of the window some indifferent words, which he in passing by conceived to be a command from Heaven, so did accidental words sway the minds of the Pietists. It was a favourite custom in cases of doubt to open suddenly upon some verse in the Bible or hymn book, and from the tenor of the words to decide these doubts--the sentence on which the right-hand thumb was set was the significant one--a custom which to this day remains among the people, and the opponents of which, as early as 1700, called deridingly "thumbing." If any one had a call from the external world, the system was to refuse the first time, but, if repeated, then it was the call of the Lord. It may easily be conceived that the believing soul might, even in the first refusal, unconsciously follow a quiet inclination of the heart which had secretly said yes or no.