Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation, who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as astrologers, seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of "Mind and Matter." The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the various titles of "wise men," "soothsayers," the former being acknowledged as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. "Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are _soothsayers, like the Philistines_." 8. "Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made." There were also wizards, astrologers, "star-gazers" (Is. xlvii. 13), spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and "the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that _selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts_." Nahum iii. 4. All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile deceptions and heinous crimes, to the "selling of families and nations," and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles, visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank, of modern times. In visiting these pretenders, in order "to worm out the secrets of their trade," the writer has not only been assured by them in confidence that the above is true, but he has met distinguished characters there, face to face,--the minister of the gospel, the lawyer, the judge, the doctor, and what _ought_ to have been the representative intelligence of the land,--consulting and fellowshiping with ignorant fortune-tellers. "Ignorant?" Yes, out of the scores whom I have seen, there has not been one, male or female, possessing an intelligence above ordinary people in the unprofessional walks of life, while the majority of them were in comparison far below the mediocrity. If ignorance alone patronized ignorance, like a family intermarrying, the stock would eventually dwindle into nothingness, and entirely die out. Before the "captivity" the Jews had their wise men, and on their exodus they reported the existence of the magicians or magi of Egypt.