EGYPTIANS.—The Egyptians also had their magicians from the remotest antiquity. Though these magicians were unable to contend with Moses, they were greatly superior to the Chaldean Astrologers, the Persian Magi, and the Indian Gymnosophists; they appear to have possessed a deeper insight into the arcana of nature than any other professors of the art. By what extraordinary powers their rods were changed into serpents, the waters of the Nile into blood, and the land of Egypt covered with frogs, has much perplexed wise and good men. Of all the methods of solution which the learning and piety of either Jewish or Christian commentators have applied to this difficult problem, none appears so consonant with the meaning of the sacred text, and at the same time liable to so few objections, as this; that the magicians were not, in the present case, impostors, and that they really accomplished, by means of supernatural agents, the wonders recorded by the inspired penman[26]. Earth, air, and ocean, may contain many things of which our philosophy has never dreamt. If this consideration should humble the pride of learning, it may remind the Christian that secret things belong not to him, but to a higher power. It was maintained by the Egyptians that besides the Gods, there were many demons which communicated with mortals, and which were often rendered visible by certain ceremonies and songs; that genii exercised an habitual and powerful influence over every particle of matter; that thirty-six of these beings presided over the various members of the human body; and that by magical incantations it might be strengthened, or debilitated[27], afflicted with, or delivered from diseases. Thus, in every case of sickness, the spirit of presiding over the afflicted part, was first duly invoked. But the magicians did not trust solely to their vain invocations; they were well acquainted with the virtues of certain herbs, which they wisely employed in their attempts at healing. These herbs were greatly esteemed: thus the _cynocephalia_, or as the Egyptians themselves termed the _asyrites_, which was used as a preventive against witchcraft; and the _nepenthes_, which Helen presented in a potion to Menelaus, and which was believed to be powerful in banishing sadness, and in restoring the mind to its accustomed, or even to greater cheerfulness, were of Egyptian growth[28]. But whatever might be the virtues of such herbs, they were used rather for their magical than for their medicinal qualities; every cure was cunningly ascribed to the presiding demons, with which not a few boasted that they were, by means of their art, intimately connected.