There is a striking instance of this antagonism carried on by visible agencies, instrumentalities, and events, in the narrative of the plagues of Egypt, under the immediate direction of the Messenger Jehovah, after his appearance to Moses in the burning bush; of which plagues it was repeatedly declared to be the object on the one hand to convince the children of Israel, and by rehearsal to their descendants to convince them that he was indeed Jehovah; and on the other, to cause Pharaoh and the Egyptians to know that he was the Self-existent, and to cause his name to be declared throughout all the earth. Pharaoh, and the priests of Baal, and the wise men, the sorcerers and magicians, like Ahab and the prophets and votaries of Baal in his time; and Nebuchadnezzar and the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers and Chaldeans of his, were to witness miraculous and resistless proofs that Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham and Israel, was the only living and true God, the Creator, proprietor, and ruler of the world, and that their idolatry was an imposture and a cheat. In this, as in the other and all similar instances of a public formal conflict of the great antagonists and their agents, to determine which should be acknowledged as supreme, and be obeyed and worshipped, the demonstrations on the part of Jehovah were resisted, step by step, by the Adversary and his party, till they were overpowered, shown to be false pretenders, terrified, exposed, and confounded. Jehovah directed Moses and Aaron, when they appeared before Pharaoh, and were required by him "to show a miracle" in support of their pretensions, to cast down the rod they were to carry, and it should become a serpent--the animal with which the name and personal history of Satan were intimately associated, and whose visible form was familiar among the material images, representative of him under the name of Baal, from the earliest times; the animal which he entered and actuated in Eden, and which, doubtless, he could enter and actuate again, and by jugglery employ rods in his exhibition. "And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent;" as much as to say, Here is a miracle, producing before your eyes the god, the visible image and representative of the god whom you worship. But we may suppose Pharaoh to have said, This we can do: this only shows the power of our god, and is to no purpose as evidence on your side. "Then Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers, and the magicians of Egypt did in like manner with their _enchantments_; for they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents." This satisfied him. Similar feats had probably often satisfied him before. Visible effects of power in the production, apparently, of living animals, were manifest to his senses. The sequel, in the fact that "Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods," belonged to another category. If he regarded it as the