The second miracle was directed against the river Nile, another object which they regarded with religious reverence. This river they held sacred, as the Hindoos do the Ganges; and even the fish in its waters they revered as objects of worship. They drank the water with reverence and delight; and supposed that a Divine efficacy dwelt in its waves to heal diseases of the body. The water of this, their cherished object of idolatrous homage, was transmuted to blood; and its finny idols became a mass of putridity. The third miracle was directed to the accomplishment of the same end--the destruction of faith in the river as an object of worship. The waters of the Nile were caused to send forth legions of frogs, which infested the whole land, and became a nuisance and a torment to the people. Thus their idol, by the power of the true God, was polluted, and turned into a source of pollution to its worshippers. By the fourth miracle of a series constantly increasing in power and severity, lice came upon man and beast throughout the land. 'Now, if it be remembered,' says Gleig, 'that no one could approach the altars of Egypt upon whom so impure an insect harboured, and that the priests, to guard against the slightest risk of contamination, wore only linen garments, and shaved their heads and bodies every day,[7] the severity of this miracle as a judgment upon Egyptian idolatry may be imagined. Whilst it lasted no act of worship could be performed; and so keenly was this felt, that the very magicians exclaimed--"This is the finger of God!"' [7] Every third day, according to Herodotus. The fifth miracle was designed to destroy the trust of the people in Beelzebub, or the Fly-god, who was reverenced as their protector from visitations of swarms of ravenous flies which infested the land, generally about the time of the dog-days, and removed only, as they supposed, at the will of this idol. The miracle now wrought by Moses evinced the impotence of Beelzebub, and caused the people to look elsewhere for relief from the fearful visitation under which they were suffering. The sixth miracle, which destroyed the cattle, excepting those of the Israelites, was aimed at the destruction of the entire system of brute worship. This system, degrading and bestial as it was, had become a monster of many heads in Egypt. They had their sacred bull, and ram, and heifer, and goat, and many others, all of which were destroyed by the agency of the God of Moses. Thus by one act of power Jehovah manifested his own supremacy, and destroyed the very existence of their brute idols.