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This variety was known in early times to the Jews–as early, indeed, as the era of the Grecian Pericles, if we are to believe the Talmud. It is known familiarly to this day amongst Polish Jews, and is called Bathcol, or the daughter of a voice; the meaning of which appellation is this:–The Urim and Thummim, or oracle in the breast-plate of the high priest, spoke directly from God. It was, therefore, the original or mother-voice. But about the time of Pericles, that is, exactly one hundred years before the time of Alexander the Great, the light of prophecy was quenched in Malachi or Haggai; and the oracular jewels in the breast-plate became simultaneously dim. Henceforwards the mother-voice was heard no longer: but to this succeeded an imperfect or daughter-voice, (Bathcol,) which lay in the first words happening to arrest the attention at a moment of perplexity. An illustration, which has been often quoted from the Talmud, is to the following effect:–Rabbi Tochanan, and Rabbi Simeon Ben Lachish, were anxious about a friend, Rabbi Samuel, six hundred miles distant on the Euphrates. Whilst talking earnestly together on this subject in Palestine, they passed a school; they paused to listen: it was a child reading the first book of Samuel; and the words which they caught were these–And Samuel died. These words they received as a Bath-col: and the next horseman from the Euphrates brought word accordingly that Rabbi Samuel had been gathered to his fathers at some station on the Euphrates.

Here is the very same case, the same Bath-col substantially, which we have cited from Orton’s Life of Doddridge. And Du Cange himself notices, in his Glossary, the relation which this bore to the Pagan Sortes. ‘It was,’ says he, ‘a fantastical way of divination, invented by the Jews, not unlike the Sortes Virgilianae of the heathens. For, as with them the first words they happened to dip into in the works of that poet were a kind of oracle whereby they predicted future events,–so, with the Jews, when they appealed to Bath-col, the first words they heard from any one’s mouth were looked upon as a voice from Heaven directing them in the matter they inquired about.’

If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical miraculous is at all gone out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize a large imitation. But, even apart from that, the superstition is common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of this sort in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are prone. But a mode of questioning the oracles of darkness, far more childish, and, under some shape or other, equally common amongst those who are prompted by mere vacancy of mind, without that determination to sacred fountains which is impressed by misery, may be found in the following extravagant silliness of Rousseau, which we give in his own words–a case for which he admits that he himself would have shut up any other man (meaning in a lunatic hospital) whom he had seen practising the same absurdities:–

‘Au milieu de mes etudes et d’une vie innocente autant qu’on la puisse mener, et malgre tout ce qu’on m’avoit pu dire, la peur de l’Enfer m’agitoit encore. Souvent je me demandois–En quel etat suis-je? Si je mourrois a l’instant meme, serois-je damne? Selon mes Jansenistes, [he had been reading the books of the Port Royal,] la chose est indubitable: mais, selon ma conscience, il me paroissoit que non. Toujours craintif et flottant dans cette cruelle incertitude, j’avois recours (pour en sortir) aux expedients les plus risibles, et pour lesquels je ferois volontiers enfermer un homme si je lui en voyois faire autant. … Un jour, revant a ce triste sujet, je m’exercois machinalement a lancer les pierres contre les troncs des arbres; et cela avec mon addresse ordinaire, c’est-a-dire sans presque jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m’avisai de faire une espece de pronostic pour calmer mon inquietude. Je me dis –je m’en vais jeter cette pierre contre l’arbre qui est vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d’une main tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si heureusement qu’elle va frapper au beau-milieu de l’arbre: ce qui veritablement n’etoit pas difficile: car j’avois eu soin de le choisir fort gros et fort pres. Depuis lors je n’ai plus doubte de mon salut. Je ne sais, en me rappelant ce trait, si je dois rire ou gemir sur moimeme.’–Les Confessions, Partie I. Livre VI.