Of the peculiar fitness of the sixth plague (the seventh miracle), says the writer before quoted, the reader will receive a better impression, when he is reminded that in Egypt there were several altars upon which human sacrifices were occasionally offered when they desired to propitiate Typhon, or the Evil Principle. These victims being burned alive, their ashes were gathered together by the officiating priests, and thrown up into the air, in order that evil might be averted from every place to which an atom of the ashes was wafted. By the direction of Jehovah, Moses took a handful of ashes from the furnace (which, very probably, the Egyptians at this time had frequently used to turn aside the plagues with which they were smitten), and he cast it into the air, as they were accustomed to do; and instead of averting evil, boils and blains fell upon all the people of the land. Neither king, nor priest, nor people escaped. Thus the bloody rites of Typhon became a curse to the idolaters; the supremacy of Jehovah was affirmed, and the deliverance of the Israelites insisted upon. The ninth miracle was directed against the worship of Serapis, whose peculiar office was supposed to be to protect the country from locusts. At periods these destructive insects came in clouds upon the land, and, like an overshadowing curse, they blighted the fruits of the field and the verdure of the forest. At the command of Moses these terrible insects came--and they retired only at his bidding. Thus was the impotence of Serapis made manifest, and the idolaters taught the folly of trusting in any other protection than that of Jehovah the God of Israel. The eighth and tenth miracles were directed against the worship of Isis and Osiris, to whom and the river Nile they awarded the first place[8] in the long catalogue of their idolatry. These idols were originally the representatives of the sun and moon; they were believed to control the light and the elements, and their worship prevailed in some form among all the early nations. The miracles directed against the worship of Isis and Osiris must have made a deep impression on the minds both of the Israelites and the Egyptians. In a country where rain seldom falls--where the atmosphere is always calm, and the light of the heavenly bodies always continued, what was the horror pervading all minds during the elemental war described in the Hebrew record--during the long period of three days and three nights, while the gloom of thick darkness settled, like the out-spread pall of death, over the whole land! Jehovah of hosts summoned Nature to proclaim him the true God--the God of Israel asserted his supremacy, and exerted his power to degrade the idols, destroy idolatry, and liberate the descendants of Abraham from the land of their bondage.