take this draught to acquit them of any accusation of adultery:" a belief which curiously reminds us of the old Jewish superstition, that the hips will fall away and the belly swell in the case of the adulterous wife who has taken the bitter water on a false pretence. Bosman himself has correctly observed on the remarkable similarity of the two procedures (D. C. G., p. 125).
A slightly different mode of trying suspected adultresses by ordeal prevails among the Ostiacks (in Northern Asia). Should an Ostiack entertain doubts of his wife's fidelity, he cuts ofl a handful of hair from a bear's skin, and takes it to her. If innocent, she receives it without hesitation; but if guilty, she does not venture to touch it, and is accordingly repudiated. The conviction reigns among these people, that were a woman to lie under these circumstances, the bear to whom the hair belonged would revive in three days and come to devour her (Bernard, vol. viii. pp. 44, 45).
More important, however, and more universal than any of the above means of communication from God to man, is the method of communication by miracles. There is probably no great religion in the world, the establishment of which has been altogether dissociated from miracles. They form the most striking, most indisputable, most intelligible proof of the divine will. Not indeed that there is any close logical connection between the performance of a wonder, and the truth of the wonder-worker's doctrines; but popular imagination jumps readily to the conclusion that a man, whom rumor or tradition has invested with supernatural powers over nature, must also be in possession of correct opinions, or even of superhuman knowledge, on the mysterious questions with which religion deals. Hence ecclesiastical historians, of all ages and countries, have sought to show that those from whom they deduced the systems in which they wished their readers to believe, were either themselves gifted with thaumaturgic faculties, or were the subjects of special marvels worked upon them. Such miracles have always served as their credentials, indicating their high character, and entitling them to demand the obedience of mankind to the commands they brought.
The establishment of Buddhism, for example, was attended by the performance of extraordinary miracles. Not only did the
