Powers, the priesthood, which represented the latter, had everywhere become the subject of the former. It is no less clear that this subjection was repaid with support. This condition of things was most clearly expressed as well as most powerfully established in the position of the Roman Emperor, who, as he received the tribunitial power, which in union with the consular was distinctive of the imperial dignity, from the Senate, so received also the supreme authority in matters of religion which belonged to the Pontifex Maximus. This authority had indeed been in its origin and its descent from age to age in the Roman city distinct from secular power, but henceforth became practically united with the civil principate. That undivided supremacy betokened the ultimate constitution of the heathen State, antecedent to the coming of Christ, in what concerns the relation between the two Powers. According to this, the Civil Power prevailed over the Spiritual, and casting off the subjection to religion in which itself had been nurtured, directed all its actions to a temporal end. Far otherwise was it with that people which Moses, under the divine command, had created according to the pattern which he saw in the Mount. Chosen by God to conduct the race of Abraham out of captivity into the promised land, he alone in the history of the Israelitic race united in himself the three powers bestowed by unction of Priest, of Prophet, and of King. These powers he left to the people he was forming, but did not deposit them all in the same hands. His creation of the priesthood in the tribe of Levi, and of the high priesthood in the person of his brother Aaron and his lineal descendants, stands without a parallel in all the history of the world before the coming of Christ as an act of transcendent authority. For instead of the original priesthood of the first-born, which he found existing as it had been transmitted from the earliest time, he selected a particular tribe, which was not that of the first-born, to bear from that time forth the priesthood among the children of Israel; and further, he selected a particular person in that tribe, his brother Aaron, to erect in him the high priesthood, the most characteristic institution of the Jewish people. In like manner he took the ancient institution of sacrifice, dating, as we have seen, from Paradise itself, and formed it into an elaborate system to be carried out day by day through the whole succeeding history of his people, by priests springing from the person of the first High Priest. At the door of the Tabernacle, in the presence of all the assembled tribes, Moses invested Aaron with the priestly garments, especially the ephod, bearing attached to it the Rational, which contained the twelve stones indicating the twelve tribes of the holy nation, by which the High Priest, consulting God, issued the oracle of doctrine and truth. Moses further set the mitre on his head, bearing on its golden plate the inscription,