represent them as returning very soon after the siege. As for the Jews, the destruction of the Temple—that symbol of the law—only made them more scrupulous in their obedience to the Law. The great school of Gamaliel was set up at Jabneh, where lectures were delivered on all the minutiae of Eabbinical teaching, and the Jews were instructed how to win the favour of Jehovah by carrying out to its last letter the smallest details of the Law. And because this, minute as it was, did not comprehend all the details of life, there arose a caste, recruited from all tribes and families alike, which became more holy than that of the priests and Lévites—the caste of the Eabbis, the students and interpreters of the Law. The Rabbi had, besides the written law, the Tradition, Masora, or Cabala, which was pretended to have been also given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and to have been handed down in an unbroken line through the heads of the Sanhedrim. The growth of the Rabbinical power does not date from the destruction of the Temple; it had been slowly developing itself for many centuries before that event. In the synagogues which were scattered all over Palestine, and wherever the Jews could be got together, the learned Rabbi, with his profound knowledge of the Law, written and oral, had already, before the destruction of Jerusalem, taken the place of the priests and their sacrifices ; so that, in spite of the fall of the Temple, the spiritual life of the Jews was by no means crushed out of them. Rather was it deepened and intensified, and their religious observances more and more invaded the material life. The Rabbinical tribunals usurped entire rule over the Jews. Like the Scotch elders, they had power to summon before them persons accused of immorality, persons who neglected their children, persons who violated details of the Law. They could also impose on offenders punishment by scourging, by censure, by interdict, by the cherem, or excommunication, which inflicted civil death, but for which pardon might be ob