66.) In other cases a finger is substituted for the hand, as when the magicians of Pharaoh said: "This is the finger of God" (Exodus viii. 19), and the two tables of testimony are said to have been "written with the finger of God" (Exodus xxxi. 18); in the same manner Christ said: "If I with the finger of God cast out devils." (Luke xi. 20.) What makes this reference to finger and hand in Eastern magic and in biblical language peculiarly interesting is the fact that neither Greeks nor Romans ever referred in like manner to such an agency. It is evident that these nations, possessing the ancient wisdom of the East and the revealed knowledge of the chosen people, were alone fully acquainted with the power which the hand of man can exercise under peculiar circumstances, and hence looked upon it in God also, as the instrument by which visions were caused and miracles performed. Hence, no doubt, also the mysterious hand, which from time immemorial has been used as one of the emblems of supreme power, often called the hand of justice, but evidently emblematic of the "hand of God," which rests upon the monarch who rules "by the grace of God." Magnetizers connect all these uses made of the hand with their own method, which consists almost invariably in certain passes made with the whole hand or with one or more fingers. Whatever may be thought of this connection between the meaning of the "hand" in biblical language, and the magnetism of our day, there can be no doubt as to the fact that the ancients were already quite familiar with the phenomena which have startled our century as something entirely new. The so-called temple-sleep of the Greeks was almost identical with modern somnambulism; the only essential difference being that then the gods of Olympus were seen, and lent their assistance, in the place of the saints of the Middle Ages, and the mediums of our own day. Incense, mineral waters, narcotic herbs, and decoctions of Strychnos or Halicacabum, were, according to Pliny, employed to produce the peculiar sleep. ("Hist. Nat." l. xxi. ch. 31.) The patients fell asleep while lying on the skins of recently killed animals in the Temples of Æsculapius, and other beneficent deities, and in their sleep had dreams with revelations prescribing the proper remedies. The priests also, sometimes, dreamt for their visitors--for a consideration--or, at least, interpreted the dreams of others. Even magnetism by touch was perfectly familiar to the ancients, as appears from words of Plautus: "_Quid, si ego illum tractim tangam, ut dormiat?_" (What if I were to touch him at intervals so that he should fall asleep?) Plutarch even speaks of magnetizing by touching with the feet, as practised by Pyrrhus. Other writers discovered that the Sibyls of Rome, as well as the Druids of the Celts, had been nothing more than well-trained somnambulists, and ere long distinct traces of similar practices were found in the annals of the Egyptians also.