s shall lead you unto all
Truth.' But the dove has long since disappeared, and there remains now
but the rod and the inscription. It is natural that the children of the
school should apply the admonition to the rod, ignorant that the rod was
but the supporter of a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Thus has the pious
design of inculcating a Divine lesson left only an emblem of mysterious
terror. In some way, too, has the magic wand lost its religious
significance and become but a dread implement of the occult.

Yet we might trace the origin of the magician's wand to the very same
root as that of the iron rod of the Hanover schoolhouse. We may find it
in the olive-branch brought by the dove into the ark--a message of
Divine love and mercy--and therefore a connecting-link between human
needs and desires and superhuman power. To construe a mere symbol into a
realized embodiment of the virtue symbolized were surely as easy in this
case as in that of the Eucharist.

But if this suggestion of the origin of the magician's wand be thought
too hypothetical, there will be less objection to our finding it in
Aaron's rod. Moses was commanded to take a rod from the chiefs of each
of the twelve tribes, and to write upon each rod the name. The rods were
then to be placed in the Tabernacle, and the owner of the one which
blossomed was designated as the chosen one. The rod of the house of Levi
bore the name of Aaron, and this was the only one of the twelve which
blossomed. Here once more was the rod used to connect human needs with
Divine will; but now a special virtue is made to appear in the rod
itself. This virtue appeared again, when Pharaoh called all the
sorcerers and magicians of Egypt to test their enchantments with
Aaron's. All these magicians bore wands, or rods, and when they threw
them on the ground the rods turned into serpents. Aaron's rod also
turned into a serpent, and swallowed all the others. Now, here we find
two things established. First, that even in these early days necromancy
was a profession, and the rod a necessary implement of the craft; and,
second, that the rod was esteemed not merely an emblem of authority, or
a mere ornament of office, but as a thing of superhuman power in itself
although the power could only be evoked by the specially gifted.

We find the beginning of the idea in the story of Moses' rod which
turned into a serpent when he cast it on the ground at the Divine
command. This was what led up to the t