ZOROASTERISM THE SOURCE OF ORTHODOXY.

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the creation of God), Ahriman slew Abudad, the typal bull, the emblem of life, and Kajomorts, the androgynous or hermaphrodite (man-woman) type of the human race. From their seed, however, Ormuzd brought forth other creatures, weaker, it is true, and consequently less able to resist Ahriman and his Dews; who on their part opposed to Ormuzd's pure creation impure animals and baleful plants. Although pure and innocent, Meshia and Mesheané (Adam and Eve), the two protoplasts, offspring of Kajomorts, fell victims to the seductions of Ahriman-the woman first, as in Genesis-and by their fall became sinful and mortal, implicating their posterity in their own ruin. From that moment, all the individuals of the race of man are Darrands or sinners. Here, however, Honover, the Word of Ormuzd, interposes. One in mind with Ormuzd, he offers succour to the fallen race. If they courageously withstand Ahriman, they are saved; they will safely pass over the bridge Tshonivad, which unites heaven and earth, and enter into Paradise; while the wicked, the impious, hurled down into Duzakh, or Hell, will there be subjected to corrective discipline until their complete purification is effected. During 3000 years the world remains in its actual condition. Another period of the same duration follows, in which Ahriman overcomes Ormuzd and brings in the reign of evil. His tyrannical dominion cannot last. It will come to an end at the time appointed by Zervané Akerené; that is, at the end of the fourth period of 3000 years, or in all 12,000 years. From that moment Ormuzd reigns and rules without an assessor. Then he raises first Kajomorts, and afterwards the protoplasts, and finally all men, the bad as well as the good. The earth gives back their limbs, their bones, their blood, and with them their fire and their life. But before the definitive triumph of the Good Principle, there will appear three prophets, under the last of whom the earth, ravaged by all sorts of plagues, will recover its primeval beauty. After the resurrection, the final judgment takes place. The presiding judge is Sosioch, the last of the three

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SATAN'S BLOOD BLUER THAN ANY.

prophets. The righteous are received into Gorotman (Heaven), where Ormuzd sits on his throne. The same favour is bestowed on Ahriman and the wicked, after they have been purified by fire during three days and three nights. Then the earth will be the abode of unqualified bliss. All nature will be light. Ormuzd's laws will be universally obeyed, and human beings will with Sosioch live a pure and holy life, free from care and pain, wholly given up to the everlasting worship of Zervané Akerené, the Supreme Being, whence all existence ́

came.

What other things may exist in this sketch I wait not to declare, but beyond a doubt I am there, and there I am in the very condition in which I have been placed by the Christian Church from its origin to the present day; but to this point I shall shortly recur. Only, before I pass on, I beg you to note the ancientness of my pedigree. "Norman blood" is but as yesterday compared with mine. The outline I have given is necessarily concise, but did I not feel symptoms of old age creeping over me, I might be tempted to attempt a universal history in pictures, the products not of fancy or partizanship, but of my own human experience, with eye, ear, touch, taste, and inward no less than outward sense. But then I should have to call science to my aid, and describe the choirs innumerable of all grades of intelligence that people the starry firmament. In regard to them I make in addition but one remark, namely, that in neither the lower nor in the higher spheres is anything found so horrible as is the Satan of popular churches. The conditions of such a monstrosity are confined to the dark and turbid period of the last six thousand years of the earth's all but inconceivable duration.

ORIGIN OF JUDAISM AND POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 65

BOOK III.

PERIOD OF COMPOSITION: MY CONNECTION WITH THE BIBLE.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD TESTAMENT: THE SHEMITIC OR HEBREW ELEMENT.

SECTION I.

THE STRICT MONOTHEISM OF THE RELIGION OF MOSES.

Two great rivers, receiving tributaries from very large and very diverse districts of the earth, the Shemitic and the Aryan, discharge their mingled waters on the land of Canaan, so as to produce its oldest and its latest religion in their popular forms, the religion of Israel and the religion of the Christian Church. I repeat the phrase, "in their popular forms," because I wish from the first to draw attention to the important distinction that exists and must be recognized between, at the one extremity, the religion of Moses and the religion of the children of Israel, and, at the other, the religion of Jesus and the religion of the Christian Church. And this early notification is the more necessary, because it will assist me to shew you that the religion of Moses and the religion of Jesus are exempt from the recognition of a personal devil. Such an absence need not surprise you if you have attentively thought over what precedes. These two religions stand at the summit of all religions in being purely spiritual, profoundly practical, and essentially beneficent. As such, they imply in their authors the highest, the widest and the most living culture.

F

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ORIGIN OF MOSAIC MONOTHEISM.

Now it is a lesson taught by many parts of what goes before, that while the conception of a devil ensues from the dark side of the human mind, as acted on by the dark side of nature, so that conception sinks and disappears in the degree in which civilization becomes more real, more lofty and more benignant; suggesting and encouraging the belief that in the most advanced civilization I shall have ceased to exist. That civilization is represented by Moses in its initial stadium, and in its final issue by Jesus. When humanity has become all that it is capable of being and all that God means it to be, it will have utterly parted company with myself, and to it, as well as in fact, "God will be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 26). That final issue will be hailed by none more gladly than by me, if only because, when the shadows have passed away, I, as representing the race of man, shall have dropped all that is bad and dark, while holding fast to and consummating all that is good in human nature and in God's fatherly purposes respecting it.

The religion of Moses was not born in a day. Ages of comparative culture had passed before any one could, under Divine Providence, appear, able to own in his soul and proclaim with his lips Jehovah, that is the Living One, and, as such, the Life-giver. The Israelites, like their kinsmen of Canaan, worshiped in their earliest times a number of divinities, such as Baal, Moloch, &c. Abraham had indeed uttered the great thought, which was also to him a great discovery, or, if you will, a great revelation, that God was one, and that the one God had produced, and still sustained and governed, the universe. But this good seed fell into bad ground, and either perished or came up beset with tares. Certainly, in the interval between Abraham and Moses, the sons of Jacob worshiped, like other Shemitic tribes, their own peculiar divinity, the God of their race, their patron God, the God not so much of the universe as of their fathers. That God was to them "God of gods" and "Lord of lords," that is, the most powerful of surrounding divinities acknowledged by kindred tribes. (Exod. xviii. 11, xv. 11; Numb. xiv. 15; Judg. xi. 24.) At

THE NATION INFECTED WITH IDOLATRY.

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first, it may be inferred, from corruptions which, cropping out later, existed from very early ages-at first, I say, he was the "God of the hills," as contradistinguished from the "gods of the plains" (1 Kings xx. 23); but in time he became the God of heaven, who made himself known in thunder and lightning, who appeared in a pillar of fire, yea, who was himself the "devouring fire." (Exod. iii. 2, xix. 16-18, xxiv. 17; Numb. xvi. 35; Lev. x. 2.) He is a God of power; he is the Power (Al), the Almighty (Al Shaddai). Indeed, there are traces in the Teraphim, Cherubim and Seraphim, that the Hebrew forefathers worshiped several divinities, whom they afterwards allowed to sink into mere forms and symbols. They are even reproached with worshiping false gods, “the idols of Egypt," in the Wilderness. (Ezek. xx. 8, xiii. 24 ; Amos v. 26.) Throughout the long series of events which passed from the days of Joshua to the return from the captivity, the nation, both when united and when separate, was deeply and all but incurably infected with idolatry. The fact admits of no explanation, except on the assumption that the false worships which had been fostered, if not revived or even created, in Egypt, remained embedded in the heart of the people, notwithstanding the monotheistic teachings of Moses. About the tenth century before Christ, a strong protest began to be uttered against all religious falsities, and specially against false gods, as the too prolific source of the rest. That testimony was borne by the prophets-the wisest, most religious, most self-forgetful, and most heroic race of religious teachers that ever existed. Their appearance, as well as the tone of their instructions, pre-supposes great religious corruption in the heart and in the worship of the Hebrews. And then probably it was, during the classic period of Hebrew literature, that the first account of creation (Gen. i.-ii. 3) was, if not originally produced, yet wrought into the perfect form in which it now exists. In the use which is here (verse 1) made of the term God (Elohim, plural of Al, previously mentioned), there is a disclosure of high importance in the history of the religion