It was only at a much later period that a distinction was made between White Magic and Black Magic. This arose from the error which gradually overspread the minds of men, that such extraordinary powers--based, originally, only upon extraordinary knowledge--were not naturally given to men; but, could only be obtained by the special favor of higher beings, with whom the owner must needs enter into a perilous league. If these were benevolent deities, the results obtained by their assistance were called White Magic; if they were gods of ill-repute, they granted the power to perform feats of Black Magic, acts of wickedness, and crimes. Christianity, though it abolished the gods of paganism, maintained, nevertheless, the belief in extraordinary powers accorded by supernatural beings, and the same distinction continued to be made. Pious men and women performed miracles by the aid of angels and saints; wicked sinners did as much by an unholy league with the Evil One. The Egyptian charmer, of Apulejus, who declared that no miracle was too difficult for his art, since he exercised the blind power of deities who were subject to his will, only expressed what the lazzarone of Naples feels in our day, when he whips his saint with a bundle of reeds, in order to compel him to do his bidding. Magicians did not change their doctrine; they hardly even modified their ceremonies; their allegiance only was transferred from Jupiter to Jehovah, even as the same column that once bore the great Thunderer on Olympus, is now crowned by a statue of Peter Boanerges. Nor has the race of magicians ever entirely died out; we find enough notices in classic authors, whose evidence is unimpeachable, to know that the Greeks were apt scholars of the ancient Magi and transferred the knowledge they had thus obtained and long jealously guarded, to the priests of Egypt, who in their turn became the masters of the two mightiest nations on earth. First Moses sat at their feet till, at the age of forty, he "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and could successfully cope with their "magicians and sorcerers." Then the land of the Nile fell into the hands of the Romans, and poverty and neglect drove the wise men of Egypt to seek refuge in the capital of the world, where they either lived upon the minor arts and cunning tricks of their false fate, or, being converted to Christianity, infected the pure faith with their ill-applied knowledge. Certain portions of true magic survived through all persecutions and revolutions; some precious secrets were preserved by the philosophers of later ages and have--if we believe the statements made by trustworthy writers of every century--ever since continued in the possession of Freemasons and Rosicrucians; others became mixed up with vile superstitions and impious practices, and only exist now as the Black Art of so-called magicians and witches.