All the multitude of false religions that have been believed since the world began have been introduced by the power of this principle. _Miracles believed_, lie at the foundation of all religions which men have ever received as of Divine origin. No matter how degrading or repulsive to reason in other respects, the fact of its establishment and propagation grows out of the belief of men that supernatural agency lies at the bottom.[5] This belief will give currency to any system, however absurd: and without it, no system can be established in the minds of men, however high and holy may be its origin and its design. [5] Mohammedanism is no exception: as the wonders reported by the false prophet, though unseen, were _believed_. 'The Koran,' he said, 'is itself a miracle!' Such, then, is the constitution which the Maker has given to the mind. Whether the conviction be an intuition or an induction of the reason, God is the primary cause of its existence; and its existence puts it out of the power of man to accept a revelation from God himself, unless accompanied by miracle. If, therefore, God ever gave a revelation to man, it was necessarily accompanied with miracles, and with miracles of such a nature as would clearly distinguish the Divine character and the Divine authority of the dispensation. The whole fulness and force of these deductions apply to the case of the Israelites. The laws of their mind not only demanded miracles as an attestation of Divine interposition; but at that time, the belief existed in their minds that miracles were constantly performed. Although they remembered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet they likewise, as subsequent facts clearly attested, believed that the idols of Egypt possessed the attributes of Divinity. The belief in a plurality of gods was then common to all nations. And although this error was corrected, and perhaps entirely removed, by succeeding providences and instructions, from the minds of the Jews; yet, before the miracles in Egypt, while the God of Abraham was, perhaps, in most cases acknowledged as their God, the idols of Egypt were acknowledged as the gods of the Egyptians, and probably worshipped as the divinities who had power to dispense good and evil to all the inhabitants of that land. And in common with all Egypt, they, no doubt, believed that the acts of jugglery, in which the magicians, or priests of Egypt, had made astonishing proficiency, were actual miracles, exhibiting the power of their idols, and the authority of the priests to act in their name.