of the evil spirits underlying, and upholding the dark and evil kingdom of Egypt's idolatry. The Lord states himself to have wrought these miracles for the double purpose of showing himself God in the midst of the land, and of executing judgment on Egypt's false gods. Modern infidels have tried to explain away the supernatural character of these works by reference to the ordinary plagues of the country. On this point Hengstenberg* justly observes, "There was here a particular reason for uniting the supernatural as closely as possible with the natural. Wellgrounded proof that Jehovah was God in the midst of the land could not have been produced by bringing upon Egypt a succession of strange terrors. From these it might only have been said that he had received only a momentary and external power over Egypt. On the contrary, if the events which periodically return, were shown to be under his immediate control, it would appropriately follow, that he was God in the midst of the land, and the false gods which had been placed in his stead, would be driven out of the jurisdiction hitherto considered as belonging to them." The manner in which each miracle struck at, and reduced to contempt, some object of popular superstition in Egypt, has been traced, in a very interesting way, by a recent American writer drawing his materials from Glieg. The first miracle destroyed the magicians' instruments of power; the second and third smote the Nile, the most revered and loved object of worship in the country; the fourth made the wonted services in the temple an abomination to the idolators themselves, and compelled the magicians to exclaim, "this is the finger of God;" the fifth struck at the fly-god of the Egyptians; and the sixth at their degrading and bestial system of brute worship. Of the peculiar fitness of the seventh miracle for the locality in which it was performed, the reader will receive a better impression when he is reminded that the Egyptian mode of propitiating Typhon, or the evil principle, was, by burning human victims and throwing their ashes up into the air, that evil might be averted from every place whither an atom was wafted. From the furnace, probably at this time† in constant use, Moses took an handful and flung it upwards. In consequence, boils and blains fell upon all the people. The ninth miracle was directed against Serapis, the supposed protector of Egypt from locusts. The eighth and tenth manifested the impotence of Isis and Osiris, the imaginary rulers of the elements and givers of light. In the eleventh miracle,

Egypt and the Books of Moses, ii. chap. 3.

+ The name, Baal Zephon (Exod. xiv. 2), shows that Typhon was at this time worshipped by the Egyptians.-See Jahn Archa. Heb. § 408.

and last plague in this fearful catalogue of woes, God avenged his cruelly wronged people, and struck consternation and sorrow deep into the hearts of their barbarous oppressors.* These tokens of their Redeemer's mighty power, which caused Moses to exclaim, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Glorious in thy holiness, fearful in thy praises, doing wonders," ought to have been a perpetual warning and preservative to the people from Egyptian superstition. When God brought Israel into the land which his own right hand had redeemed for them, he, in an equally signal manner, displayed his power over the objects of Canaanitish idolatry. The worship of the Amorites. was directed to the sun and moon, and to the stars as rulers of the elements. It was, then, no unmeaning but a inost easily intelligible display of Divine strength, which was given in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorite kings before the children of Israel, "and Joshua said before Israel, Sun, stand thou still in Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon, and the sun stood still, and the moon stayed till the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." The chief objects of Canaanitish worship were shown before all Israel to be under God's control, being compelled to witness, and to help forward their worshippers' defeat; while the hidden stars were declared to be powerless, in themselves, for ruling the elements, in that "the Lord cast down great stones from heaven that the Amorites died-more were they that died of the hailstones than they that the children of Israel slew with the sword."

In all this God claimed the fidelity of his chosen people on the ground that the gods of the nations were vain idols, and that to Him alone power appertaineth. At an after period, in the contest between his church, represented by Elijah, and the worshippers of Baal, the question, "who ought to be recognised as the true God," is put to the trial, "who can work wonders," and the miracle, "absolutely and simply," is appealed to by the servant of God as the final and satisfactory test that "the Lord is God, and none else." It is a trial of strength, and of strength alone. On the power of answering by fire, Baal's own element,† Elijah perils the whole question. Israel had forsaken the Lord to bow

* Can any one tell us whether the first-born among the Egyptians were not dedicated to, and placed under the peculiar tutelage of some one among the gods, chosen according to the parent's fancy? (Exod. xii. 12; Numb. xxxiii. 4.)

†The Tyrian Baal worshipped by Ahab has generally been identified, (and by Jahn, among others) with Hercules. Gesenius supposes the idol to have been the star Jupiter. 2 Kings xxi. 3, identifies Ahab's Baal with Manasseh's, and it (xxiii. 5) is called Baal the sun. Herodotus, who, 400 years after Ahab's time, undertook a voyage to Tyre for the express purpose of determining whether the Tyrian and Grecian Hercules were the same, found the Phoenician to be much the more

down before the imaginary god of strength and heat; and for their sin, to strong heat they had for three years been given over, till now their land was a wilderness of drought. Baal is at length to be shown as powerless to send forth his own element as he had been to mitigate its ardour. From the priests' ready acceptance of Elijah's challenge, and from the frantic earnestness of their invocation, we infer that they expected their demon god to answer by fire. It is not impossible* that Baal may, on former occasions, have "made fire to come down from heaven in sight of men." But now he is brought into open contest with the true Lord of heaven, who establisheth the proof of his own supremacy by suppressing contrary power, (Isa. xliv. 25, 26), and displaying his own ability to work. The "tokens of the liars are frustrated," and as the fire of the Lord fell, the people prostrated themselves on their face and said, "the Lord he is the God-the Lord he is the God."

In comparing the evangelical miracles with those of the Jewish dispensation, Mr Trench observes that "external nature is the haunt and main region of the miracle in the Old Testament, as in the New it is mainly the region of man's life in which it is at home."

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Israel, at the time of the Incarnation, had thoroughly learned the lesson that God is Lord of the whole earth, much else as it had left unlearned, and the whole civilized world had outgrown polytheism, however it may have lingered as a popular superstition. And thus the works of our Lord, though they bear not on their front that imposing character, which did those of old, yet contain higher and deeper truths. They are notably miracles of the incarnation of the Son of God taking our flesh, and who taking would heal it. They have predominantly a relation to man's body and his spirit. Miracles of nature take now altogether a subordinate place, though they still survive, and this while we could have ill afforded to lose them, for the region of nature must still be claimed as part of Christ's dominion,

ancient. In the temple he saw what might have awakened his suspicion as to the original character of the Tyrian idolatry-Ιδον [το ιρον] πλουσίως κατεσκευασμενον άλλοισι τε πολλοισι αναθήμασι και εν αυτω ησαν στηλαι. δυο, ἡ μεν χρυσου απεπθου η δε σμαραγδου λίθου λαμτιοντος τας νυκτας μεγαθος. Η. ii. 44. What was this but a representationof the sun's palace porch?

"Where when unyoked

His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave."

The sun seems to have been worshipped by the Phoenicians as the impersonation of strength (the strong man rejoicing to run his race) and its source, as we speak of his "invigorating beams." The name of Samson may have been given to meet this idea, by pointing out God as the source of strength; for the Philistines were not likely to worship Ashtaroth, the goddess of the groves (the moon), without worshipping also her lord the sun. We find 400 prophets of Ashtaroth side by side with Baal's 450, in that trial which took place on Carmel.

* See Bochart's Hierozoicon ii. 35.

though not its chiefest or its noblest province. Man, and not nature, is now the main subject of these mighty works, and thus it comes to pass that with less of outward pomp-less to startle and amaze— -the new have yet a deeper significance than the old.”*

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Admirable as these remarks are, yet we could have wished that Mr Trench had noticed the connection established by prophecy between the miracles of Christ and those of the Jewish dispensation. This bond of union gives to our Lord's works of power, in addition to their own "deeper significance," all the authority possessed by those earlier miracles of stupendous magnitude. Of all persons who have ever appeared in the world pretending to work miracles, or really working miracles, in proof of a divine mission, our Lord alone could appeal to a body of recorded prophecy delivered many hundred years before, and says he came into the world, and say, "in these ancient oracles, it is recorded that the Messiah, appearing among you at a time defined by certain signs and characters, shall be known by his performing not miracles generally, but such and such specific miracles. At a time distinguished by these signs and characters, I come, these specific miracles I do; and I exhibit the character of the Messiah delineated in those prophecies in all its circumstances." On this conformity of his miracles to their predicted character did our Lord require the Baptist to remain unshaken and submissive in his faith. It is impossible not to see that the performance by the prophets themselves, of acts irrefragably proving them commissioned by the God of heaven and of earth, rendered unnecessary a like demonstration of power by Him whom their predictions unmistakeably point out as the Son of God manifest in the flesh. If he did the works they foretold, which none other man could do, he need not repeat the works of these, His commissioned servants, to show that all power is His. And it is worthy of notice that he had declared that miracles of healing would be the characteristic token of his sojourn on earth by that prophet, whose mission from the Ruler of the universe was attested by the most stupendous act of power recorded in the world's history. Isaiah foretells Christ's miracles, and declares him God with us. Is it necessary that Christ should again reverse the earth's course to induce our belief that he is really what Isaiah declares him to be?

This is the true and sufficient explanation why the evangelical

* "Julian, the apostate, had indeed so little an eye for the glory of works like these, that in one place he says, (Cyr. 1. vi. adv. Jul.) Jesus did nothing wonderful unless one should esteem that to have healed some lame and exorcised some demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany, were very wonderful works.”—Mr Trench. + Horsley, Sermon.

miracles are less imposing in their exhibition of physical power than those of the Mosaic dispensation-even that by Christ fulfilling the works predicted of him by Moses and the prophets, all the glories of those ancient manifestations of strength are made to settle on his head. At the same time we may notice the fact that our Lord was met by no opposing body of wonderworkers claiming obedience to their authority as that upheld by the greater might. The hand of God was on the kingdom of darkness, dissolving its power of working on the material universe, and deceiving men by signs and wonders, leading to belief of falsehood. Horsley's well-known remarks on demoniacal possession are capable, we think, of a widely extended application, reaching to the whole system of pagan idolatry, claiming as that did in various quarters, support by miracles, and by inspired responses given at its shrines. Restrained either by prudence or by forceful constraint from offering open battle to Christ on the field of power, Satan betakes himself to subtlety, and thus attempts to draw over the credit of the Redeemer's miracles to himself.

"I hold those philosophising believers to be but weak in the faith, and not strong in reason, who measure the probabilities of past events by the experience of the present age, in opposition to the evidence of the historians of the times. I am inclined to think that the power of the infernal spirits over the bodies as well as the minds of men suffered a capital abridgment—an earnest of the final pulling down of Satan to be trampled under foot of man—when the Son of God had achieved his great undertaking-that before that event men were subjected to a sensible tyranny of the hellish crew from which they have ever since been exempt. As much as this seems to be expressed in that remarkable saying of our Lord, when the seventy disciples returned to him expressing their joy that they had found devils subject to themselves through his name. 'He said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.' Our Lord saw Satan fall from the heaven of his power. What won

der then that the effects should no longer be perceived of a power which he hath lost."-Horsley's Sermons.

The apostles are recorded to have met with an opposition, which was just sufficient to evince the superiority of the power which wrought with them. Simon Magus openly confesseth that God is with them; Elymas, like the Egyptian magicians, is made to feel in his own person "the finger of God;" the sons of Sceva are shamefully baffled in their essay to do like works with Paul. After this the miracles of Christ and his apostles are left alone in the field. How painfully the heathen, persisting in their unbelief, felt their inability to meet the miracles supporting Christianity with other well-authenticated works of power, we may gather from the strenuous endeavours made by them to get up something like a case of counter miracles. The lives of Vespasian, hailed as the "profectus Judæa qui rerum potiretur;" of Apollonius, the “ τί θεων τε και ανθρωπων μεσον;” and of Jamblichus give proof of such a desperate attempt to match the miracles of Christianity having been made by dying heathenism. Mr Trench gives one or two instances from the life of Apollonius of his miracles having evidently been constructed on the gospel narrative, as antagonist wonder-works. The following extract from Eunapius is at least an equally distinct and curious exhibition of the workings of Pagan rivalry. His disciples come to Jamblichus and say, Τι δητα μονος ω διδασκαλε θειοτατε τινα πραττεις οῦ μεταδίδους της τελειοτέρας σοφίας ἡμῖν. και τοι γε εκφέρεται προς ημας λογος ὑπο των σων ανδρατοδων ὡς ευχόμενος τοις θεοις μετεωρίζη μεν από της γης, πλέον η δεκα πήχεις εικαζεσθαι : το σωμα δε οἱ και ἡ εσθης εις χρυσοείδες τι καλλος αμείβεται: παυομένω