In Egypt the spheres of the State and of the Church maintained some independence of each other. Vast as was the sovereignty of the Pharaohs, it was not such as to encroach upon or absorb the functions of the priestly caste. In Babylon, however, still another condition prevailed. Here the priesthood was the ruling order; the religious element dominated the secular. The palace was a part of the temple. It is noticeable how strongly in the prophetic descriptions of Babylon the Chaldean element is emphasized. It is styled “the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,” “the land of the Chaldeans,” marking thus the supremacy of that order of soothsayers, sorcerers, and professors of magic and occult science. Babylon was a theocracy, but the god who ruled it was the prince of darkness, not Jehovah. The Church governed the State, but the Church was one that incarnated the spirit of worldly-mindedness, not heavenly-mindedness. So that, in an altogether peculiar and special sense, it was the rival and counterfeit of the true Church of God, giving exercise to the religious instincts of men sufficient to satisfy conviction and quiet conscience, while debasing them by turning them into the channels of lust and sensual gratification. Yet, as a matter of fact, the domination of Babylon proved less hurtful to the Jewish nation than did the hostility of any other of their great enemies. The form of worldliness which the Israelites encountered in Egypt was such as almost to make them forget their bondage in remembering the enjoyments they had found there. Their actual experience in Babylon during the years of their captivity, the lessons they learned and the comparisons they drew when brought into personal relationship with its life, left no lingering love of idolatry and cured them forever of any desire to worship its gods.