where the priests traded off promised benefits for real beef; coining blessings into cash on the nail; a very thorough humbug. Such public religious ceremonies as the heathen had were mostly annual, sometimes monthly. There were also daily ones, which were, however, the daily business of the priests, and none of the business of the laymen. To return to the subject.
All the heathen oracles, old and new (for abundance of them are still agoing,) sibyls, auguries and all, show how universally and naturally, and humbly and helplessly too, poor human nature longs to see into the future, and longs for help and guidance from some power, higher than itself.
Thus considered, these shallow humbugs teach a useful lesson, for they constitute a strong proof of man’s inborn natural recognition of some God, of some obligation to a higher power, of some disembodied existence; and so they show a natural human want of exactly what the Christian revelation supplies, and constitute a powerful evidence for Christianity.
All the heathen religions, I believe, had oracles of some kind. But the Greek and Latin ones tell the whole story. Of these there were over a hundred; more than twenty of Apollo, who was the god of sooth-saying, divination, prophecy, and of the supernatural side of heathen humbug generally; thirty or forty collectively of Jupiter, Ceres, Mercury, Pluto, Juno, Ino (a very good name for a goddess that gave oracles, though she didn’t know!) Faunus, Fortune, Mars, etc., and nearly as many of demi-gods, heroes, giants, etc., such as Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Trophonius, Geryon, Ulysses,
