The Jewish government therefore was then a true theocracy. Moses, however, was never pontiff, and Aaron, who was pontiff, was never chief nor legislator. After that time we do not find any pontiff governing. Joshua, Jephthah, Samson, and the other chiefs of the people, except Elias and Samuel, were not priests. The Jewish republic, reduced to slavery so often, was anarchical rather than theocratical. Under the kings of Judah and Israel, it was but a long succession of assassinations and civil wars. These horrors were interrupted only by the entire extinction of ten tribes, afterwards by the enslavement of two others, and by the destruction of the city amidst famine and pestilence. This was not then divine government. When the Jewish slaves returned to Jerusalem, they were subdued by the kings of Persia, by the conqueror Alexandria and his successors. It appears that God did not then reign immediately over this nation, since a little before the invasion of Alexander, the pontiff John assassinated the priest Jesus, his brother, in the temple of Jerusalem, as Solomon had assassinated his brother Adonijah on the altar. The government was still less theocratical when Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, employed many of the Jews to punish those whom he regarded as rebels. He forbade them all, under pain of death, to circumcise their children; he compelled them to sacrifice swine in their temple, to burn the gates, to destroy the altar; and the whole enclosure was filled with thorns and brambles. Matthias rose against him at the head of some citizens, but he was not king. His son, Judas Maccabæus, taken for the Messiah, perished after glorious struggles. To these bloody contests succeeded civil wars. The men of Jerusalem destroyed Samaria, which the Romans subsequently rebuilt under the name of Sebasta. In this chaos of revolutions, Aristobulus, of the race of the Maccabees, and son of a high priest, made himself king, more than five hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem. He signalized his reign like some Turkish sultans, by cutting his brother's throat, and causing his mother to be put to death. His successors followed his example, until the period when the Romans punished all these barbarians. Nothing in all this is theocratical. If anything affords an idea of theocracy, it must be granted that it is the papacy of Rome; it never announces itself but in the name of God, and its subjects live in peace. For a long time Thibet enjoyed the same advantages under the Grand Lama; but that is a gross error striving to imitate a sublime truth. The first Incas, by calling themselves descendants in a right line from the sun, established a theocracy; everything was done in the name of the sun. Theocracy ought to be universal; for every man, whether a prince or a boatman, should obey the natural and eternal laws which God has given him. THEODOSIUS.