- rifice of a bullock; or with that of the Fijian who, when his
friend is ill, blows a shell for hours as a call to the disease-maker to stop burning the sick man's rubbish, and as a sign that presents will speedily reach his hands. Nay, the very missionary who relates this Fiji custom gives at least one proof of his fitness to understand the native mind, in a passage showing that in reference to beliefs like these his own was almost on a par with it. A war, of which the missionaries disapproved, had been going on for four months, "and the end of it was, the war was raised against ourselves. After they had been fighting for months among themselves, contrary to all our entreaties, God commenced to punish them with a deadly epidemic in the form of dysentery." Now, the conviction that diseases are punishments sent by some god, or at any rate direct results of an intention on the part of some god to harm the sufferer, is at the root of the priestly, as opposed to the scientific, treatment. For if God punishes with a deadly epidemic, it is an obvious inference that the mode of cure and of prevention is not to take physical remedies, and observe physical precautions, but to avoid the sin for which the punishment is given. And this is the common conclusion of the savage and the Christian, though the superior information of the Christian renders his conduct self-contradictory and confused, where that of the savage is logical and simple.
Nearly related to the supposed influence of priests over physical suffering, is their supposed power to foretell the future. Here, however, a number of unauthorized and schismatic priesthoods often enter into competition with those sanctioned by the state. Technically, they would not be termed priests at all; but tested by the true mark of priesthood, the gift, alleged by themselves and admitted by others, of forming channels of communication from the celestial powers to man, they are entitled to that name, and this although they may perhaps receive no regular consecration to their office. The Roman Senate during the Empire came into frequent collision with these irregular priests. It endeavored from time to time to combat the growing belief in the unorthodox practices of astrologers and magi, by decreeing their expulsion from Italy, and occasionally by visiting some of them with severer penalties; but such endeavors to stem the
