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The priests, as the inquirers, naturally proceeded direct to the particular god whose representative they claimed to be, and the development of an elaborate ceremonial in the temples in connection with the oracles was a further factor that must have influenced the gradual abandonment of the custom, at least as an element of the official cult.
It has no living oracles left; and its memory survives only in the doctrinal treatises of the elder and younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and Emmons. It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the merits of the system in question.
The people call him Grandfather Lu. He is very wise and powerful. And therefore the people still stream into Grandfather Lu's temples to obtain oracles and pray for good luck. If you want to know whether you will be successful or not in an undertaking, go to the temple, light incense and bow your head to earth. On the altar is a bamboo goblet, in which are some dozens of little lottery sticks.
It was no unnatural transition from the received belief in dreams, to the idea that they might become the medium of seeking instruction from the gods: hence the institution of oracles, whose responses were given in dreams; and the addition of sleeping chambers to many temples, such as those in Epidaurus and at Oropos.
If we listen to the Delphic oracles of diplomacy on this subject of the Balance of Power, we shall understand that in nine cases out of ten a man invoking this phrase means that he wants the Balance of Power to be favourable to himself. It is not so much an exact equipoise that he desires, as a certain tendency of the scales to dip in his direction.
These oracles they from Apollo heard, And brought from Pytho home the perfect word: The heaven-appointed kings, who love the land, Shall foremost in the nation's council stand; The elders next to them; the commons last; Let a straight Rhetra among all be passed.
The responses of the oracle were given from the trees, by the branches rustling in the wind, the sounds being interpreted by the priests. But the most celebrated of the Grecian oracles was that of Apollo at Delphi, a city built on the slopes of Parnassus in Phocis.
During the time of the games a busy commerce was carried on; and in a spacious hall appropriated for the purpose, the poets, philosophers, and historians were accustomed to read their most recent works. The habit of consulting the same oracles in order to ascertain the will of the gods was another bond of union.
He finds authority for the story of the tower of Babel in the oracles of the Sibyl, which we now know to be Jewish forgeries, but which professed to be and were regarded by the less educated of his day as being the utterances of an ancient seeress.
How could God allow the wicked and dissolute Romans to prosper and the chosen people to be oppressed? The Hellenistic writers of Sibylline oracles and the Hebrew writers of Apocalypses, imitating the doom-songs of Isaiah and Ezekiel, announced the coming overthrow of evil and the triumph of good.
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