tihvary of Che ^theological ^^mimvy PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PURCHASED BY THE HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND BL 1515 .M65 Mills, Lawrence Our own religion in ancient Persia OUR OWN RELIGION IN ANCIENT PERSIA NOV 1 1913 OUR OWN RELIGI IN ANCIENT PERSIA BEING LECTURES DELIVERED IN OXFORD PRESENTING THE ZEND AVESTA AS COLLATED WITH THE PRE-CHRISTIAN EXILIC PHARISAISM, ADVANCING THE PERSIAN QUESTION TO THE FOREMOST POSITION IN OUR BIBLICAL RESEARCH BY Dr. LAWRENCE "mills PROFESSOR OF ZEND (aVESTa) PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD TRANSLATOR OF THE XXXl^^' VOL. OF "tHE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST " EDITOR OF THE PAHLAVI TEXTS OF YASNA I, 5-25, 5+-? I WITH COLLATION OF ALL MSS. IN Z.D.M.G. TRANSLATED IN J.R.A.S. AUTHOR OF "the FIVE ZARATHUSHTRIAN GATHAS " OF A SECOND EDITION OF THE SAME IN ENGLISH VERBATIM AND FREE METRICAL AUTHOR OF "ZARATHUSHTRA PHILO THE ACH^MENIDS AND ISRAEL " OF "the ESCHATOLOGY of THE AVESTA COMPARED WITH DANIEL AND RPVELATIONS " OF " YASNA I. WITH THE AVESTA PAHLAVI PERSIAN AND SANSKRIT TEXTS AND WITH THE AUTHOr's SANSKRIT EQUIVALENT" OF "the SANSKRIT EQUIVALENT OF YASNA XXVIII XXIX XLIV (z.D.M.G.)" OF "a DICTIONARY OF THE GATHIC LANGUAGE OF THE ZEND AVESTA " BEING VOL. III. OF "tHE FIVE ZARATHUSHTRIAN GATHAS " ETC. PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY PREFACE. This collection of separate University Lectures here brought together under one cover, hardly needs any introductory statements, for I have been obliged to explain in the course of editing them particulars usually reserved to a preface. I have been especially careful to forestall any criticism on the part of my readers in regard to the unavoidable repetitions. Sometimes years have passed between the occasions upon which the several treatises have been delivered, and I could not eliminate all allusion to previously stated facts without tearing the lectures to pieces. Moreover, some of them have been read aloud to audiences in Bombay, and this mode of extending my teaching may be repeated, in which case the connection of thought between the lectures will not be so apparent, and the disfigurement of repetition will disappear. Yet while apologising for such occasional redundancy, I must add that I endeavour to increase the directness of the pointing, and also to expand the issues at every recurrence. There are, however, several interior considerations in the treatment of the subject of which large numbers of my readers may have had no opportunity whatever to become aware, nor of what I have endeavoured to do to meet the obligations which rest upon me with regard to them. Without meaning to be in the smallest degree irre- sponsive, some scholars may well share in that general apathy upon these subjects which it is the one object of these pieces to dispel, — for I wish above everything to vi Preface. arouse and fix attention upon these matters as being of paramount and immediate interest. The epoch-making chain of ideas lies clearly before us in the chapters ; — and if they are not astonishing, then I have failed in my effort to express myself, or else the susceptibility of my public is at fault. My ' opposition ' may object that by my own showing we possess these doctrines now ; — and they may ask : ' where is the use of reviving their historical origin'; — we are, moreover, ' used ' to them. I answer that this latter in one sense of it is not the fact ; — our long-standing indiffer- ence is not the result of a real familiarity. We need these discussions now to dispel our sinful inattention.* Take what I regard as the finest product of the entire systeni, next after, or next before, the beautiful thought of the ' Attributes ' as the ' Archangels ' ; — I refer to the ' sub- jective recompense ' ; — how many myriads of refined dis- ciples need just such relief as this doctrine offers, namely, ^ the view that both Heaven and Hell lie chiefly within ourselves? It is nothing less than splendid as an intellect- ual result, making Avesta far and away the deepest and most refined lore of all equal antiquity ; — for the Avesta is the ' document ' of such a necessary thought — that is to say, its first full presentation in the history of religious distinctions. Where has even the early Bible anything to compare with it?t It is now widespread, of course, among the more enlightened of the clergy, but I very greatly doubt whether the main body of the laity feel it as they should. The threats of a flaming Hell may be * What right have we to neglect matters which concern not only the past record of our own spiritual development but its present healthfulness ? t It was directly in connection with this crucial characteristic that an incident occurred which greatly surprised and charmed me. Having come into contact with a group of young academic Frenchmen, my son lent a copy of my Gathas to one of them. On returning the book, the reader cited with much interest Yasna 46, where the souls of the evil are their own executioners. Out of all the 650 pages the keen-sighted young Parisian instantly fixed his attention upon this. Preface. vii more effective toward the embruted masses, but the time has surely come when every human being should be forced to understand that his good or evil thoughts, words, and deeds are actually preparing and moulding his eternal future destiny ; — that they constitute the very quintessence of Heaven or Hell ;— and they will surely bring their own reward or their own revenge, as being the central element in the ' orreat assize ' and the ' last sentence.' * But we have our 'opposition,' some of whom may be honesdy alarmed at the distraction of attention from the primary question of ' conversion ' f and the long-established views which tend to bring it on, while others care only for the academical prominence of their personal studies. Their first tactics might be these : — while acceding at once to the undeniable identities between the chief doctrines of the Avesta and the Exilic Bible, they might retort that there has been 'no historical connection between them.' But this is exactly the grandest assertion which could possibly be made in the entire connection. If the identities exist without ' historical connection,' then they arose spon- taneously, irresistibly, and inevitably from the instincts of universal human nature — a proposition which takes its place among the very highest themes in a serious psychology and natural philosophy.^ The history of the human soul is acutely involved. If this absence of historical connection can be accepted, we have here the one paramount curiosity of all religious literature, so par-eminence — a truly magnificent fact, deeply touching us at every moral fibre. I call upon all labourers in this field to fix their attention closely upon it, and to pursue it exhaustively as a matter of urgent duty. The second device, whether honestly presented or not. -x- Not only does the Avesta preserve the first effective apphcation of these vital opinions, but we actually need Avesta to-day to enforce them upon us. We are not at all so fully 'used' to them as we suppose, — far from it. t And with this alarm I have full sympathy ; see the Second Lecture. % See Zarathiishtra, Fhilo, the Ach(Bmenids, and Israel^ 1905-6, vol. i. \' i i i Preface. is to accede aeain to the identities, but ascribe them to the iiitluence of Judaism upon Persia. Here again we have something as startling in the way of propaganda as the other was important as an element in the original development of man from an inferior condition, — and it is difficult to decide which of the two is the most inter- esting. If the Jews taught all Persia the illustrious catalogue, this not only shows what the Jews believed during the time that they were Persian citizens, but it presents a result of religious propagation beyond con- ception for all time, ancient or modern. What ardent missionary will not kindle with enthusiasm over such an opinion ? Israel was then in that case not only stated to be, but proved to be, 'a light to lighten the Gentiles,' with results incalculable ; — how can religious teachers venture to neglect such a thino- ? * While upon a third hypothesis, I do not know what they would like to say. To accede to the identities, and acknowledge that they all come from Persia, would be to avow a debt of relioious p^ratitude which accordincr to one view involves our everlasting salvation ; — recall the tur- moil of the Pharisees in the riot reported in Acts xxiii when St. Paul appealed to their sentiment in this matter of the resurrection \ — see the author of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he rests our very salvation upon that article of the Creed. No self-respecting historian could conceal such a theme for a moment if he were really aware of its existence ; — while my own theory leaves it alniost equally imperative. For if the Persian creed helped on, defended, and en- couraged — perhaps saved — the Jewish which was original with the Captives, this was in its turn a momentous and an effective reality. Whichever view we take of it, the system of eschatological ideas, whether studied in connection * If the vast Persian Empire was taught futurity by a handful of inspired captives, surely this was a religious result unequalled in ' missionary ' records. Preface. ix with Judah or not, is in a good sense of it sensational to the last degree ; — to neglect it would be folly, to suppress it would be crime. Scores of seminaries of relieious learning are touching upon the subject every year ; — let them now dwell upon it and search it well as a prime duty, for by universal verdict it involves the history of all moral life in man. Even literary persons bereft of all immediate interest in theology do not fulfil their scope of enterprise until they examine this most striking of all literary rarities. What I have to say as to the identities of the Avesta and the Veda is in the same general line, though of course to us at least the interests involved in Avesta are incredibly more acute than any which concern the Veda. Yet as Avesta and Veda are but parts of one and the same original lore, Veda itself has some share in the great propaganda. Though upon the view that it was Israel who taught Persia her eschatology, we can hardly see how Israel could have imparted that same eschatology to the still more distant Indians with whom she had no such connection as she had with Persia. My policy in view of my ' opposition ' has been two- fold, or rather it has been one single policy in two branches. I have been compelled to be both compre- hensive and then impartial (see my chapter on Avesta's history). I have represented nearly every serious exegetical possibility, ancient or modern, with my own opinions independent of each. Though I have met with some small combinations who will not let me even ao-ree with their own teachers, their falsifying is so irresponsible that it does little harm ; — I warn all readers of their petty irregularity (see Chapter XL), while I express my profound gratitude to the eminent persons who have shown their deep appreciation of my results in this truly dangerous task. As I have treated my subject upon a scale never before attempted, I have been exposed to the inevitable poignant jealousies which utterly dethrone the sanity of X Preface. those who harbour them, — yet never has work been re- ceived with such an impressive recognition. With regard to the Appendix, 1 have only to say that it grew naturall)' out of niy previous labours. I entered upon the entire investigation in i873(?)-76, while working up a history of the Gnostic philosophy, and it is congruous enough that I should conclude this collection with one further attempt to harmonise philosophy with religion. L. M. M. Oxford, I'ebnia)y^ 1913. CONTENTS. Preface PAGES v-x FIRST LECTURE. Zarathushtra and the Bible .... 1-33 (Re-edited from the Nmeteenth Century Review of 1894, and from The Open Court of 1909. ) Supplementary to the same .... 34-3^ SECOND LECTURE. Continued recapitulation with expansions and fresh pointing ....... 39~49 THIRD LECTURE. The Philosophic Initiative of Avesta . . . 50-66 FOURTH LECTURE. The Avesta and the Veda ..... 67-97 FIFTH LECTURE. "^ God has no Opposite (an interlude) . . . 98-102 SIXTH LECTURE. Supposed and real uncertainties of the Avesta . 103-120 SEVENTH LECTURE. The Moral Idea in the Gatha reviewed . EIGHTH LECTURE. Immortality in the Gatha . 121-127 128-138 NINTH LECTURE. Behistun and the Avesta . XI 139-145 xii Contents. TENTH CHAPTER. I'ACIES A GENIAL EPISODE ...... '46-1 5 I ELEVENTH CHAPTER. A Chapter in Avesta's History . . . .152-168 APPENDIX. TWELFTH LECTURE. God contemplated as almighty and superpersonal — defined from universal nature — He is not the \vorld-soul ...... 169-180 THIRTEENTH LECTURE. God as almighty, superpersonal and illimitable, further defined from universal naiure . . • 1S1-187 A Summary with an Application .... 188-193 OUR OWN RELIGION IN ANCIENT PERSIA* (ZOROASTER (ZARATHUSHTRA) AND THE BIBLE). By Professor Mills. [(This essay, which is here for the fourth time edited in EngHsh and enlarged, was, in its original form, delivered twice as a public lecture before distinguished audiences in Oxford some years ago. It was soon after, or before, printed in the Nineteenth Cejttitry Review oi ]^x\u2L.Yy, 1894, also in its shorter form ; — and later, with the consent of the editor of that periodical and of the author, it was translated into Gujarati by Mr. D. N. Coorlawala, an accomplished Parsi of Bombay. In the second edition, see the Open Court of July, 1909, I mentioned that, as I then remem- bered, it was Mr. Palanji Madan who translated it. I am now happy to correct myself, while I repeat what I then wrote in recognition of the important service rendered by Mr. Palanji Madan in translating my XXXIst Volume of the Sacred Books of the East into Gujarati so far as the translation of the Gathas extended in that work. That translation of this essay into Gujarati was published by the Trustees of the Sir J. Jejeebhoy Translation Fund of Bombay in a large edition. The late very distinguished Editor of the monthly mentioned seemed gratified that the article was to be thus reproduced in that Oriental language, and he would beyond a doubt not object to this enlarged edition of it appearing as a ' University Lecture ' here. * The third edition appeared in the Asiatic Quarterly Review for October, 191 1, and in a later number under the title 'The pre- Christian Religion in Ancient Persia.' 2 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. (It has also just lately been translated Into Italian by a talented author, entirely upon his own suggestion and initiative, and has now been issued in that form,— and also by a gifted French auditor, but not yet published in that language.) Those who may happen to compare this lecture with its original in the Nineteenth Century Review or in its Gujarati translation, will notice at once that it has been re-arranged, and somewhat amplified, and also that I seem to have altered my opinions somewhat as to one of the essential points, since I delivered the piece first, and since I gave it to the eminent publication. This, however, is more apparent than real, although I have certainly felt, and somewhat pointedly, the necessity for putting the possible, or probable, independent oright of our Jewish immortality in a clearer light. Readers will also easily recognise the later insertions, from the difference in the stylistic flow of the language, as a later and to some extent a more pointed animus imparts greater pungency and vivacity to one's mode of expressing one's self.)] LECTURE. Many interested but necessarily hasty readers of the Zend Avesta overlook the fact that in the ancient docu- ments comprised under that name we have works of many different ages ; and even scholars eminently endowed with the critical faculty as applied to other specialities sometimes fall into a similar error, and ignore a characteristic which the Avesta possesses in common with nearly all other writings of its description ;— for they sometimes turn over its pages without perceiving, or seeming to perceive, that from leaf to leaf matter comes before them made up of fragments nearly or quite dissimilar, and sometimes separated as to the dates of their authorship by many hundreds of years. They are accordingly apt to make themselves merry over absurdities which prevail in the later but still genuine Our Own Religion in Ancietit Persia. 3 Avesta, as if they were peculiar to the original Zoroastrian writings.* But the author, or authors, of the earlier Avesta had no immediate or certain connection with the superstitions of later centuries ;— and as to these quaint myths and trivial ceremonials which are preserved in the less original Avesta, are we not apt to exaggerate the disadvantages which they bring with them ? How can their presence affect the value of the nobler elements in these relics of ancient faith ? We are pained to read them, but analogous superfluities survive in many modern systems. And indeed some of the cruder passages in the Zend Avesta which describe the battle with the Demon of Putrefaction, and which might seem to some of us most grotesque, were hardly superfluities, for they showed a sanitation which it would be better for us to follow rather than condemn. f In tracing the fol- lowing analogies, which I take from the genuine, yet still newer, Avesta J as well as from the Gathas, I shall leave out * It is even not uncommon to speak, or write, of the Avesta as if it were identical with the later Zoroastrianism, the revived system of Sasanian times, which is, however, as difTerent from both the earlier and the later Avesta as the ' Lives of the Saints,' for instance, are from the New Testament record. f Consciously or unconsciously they anticipated much modern theory upon this subject, and led the way in the most practical of all sciences — sanitation, — and their suggestions as to this particular seem to some disinterested critics to have been indirectly reproduced in the Book of Leviticus. \ The earlier Avesta consists of the Gathas, the remnants of the original hymns of Zarathtishtva, and his immediate associates or fol- lowers. They are most dissimilar to the rest of the Avesta and still more so to the apocryphal Zoroastrianism. They were carefully trans- lated by me in the Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXXL, so long ago as October 1887, and their Zend, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and Persian texts were edited, and the first three translated, by me with a Commentary in my Study of the Gathas, some 650 pages, 1902-04. They may be provisionally placed at about 700 to 900 b.c, though they astonishingly ignore the cults of Mithra, Haoma (Soma), and of the sun, moon, etc., etc., which might argue a still earlier date for them. The remaining parts of the Avesta are of different ages, say in their origins at least from 600 to 300 B.C., while, as in the case of every other ancient book, interesting additions of an indefinitely later origin occur here and 4 Our Own Religion in Ancient Perisa. these inferior details generally, abandoning them as rare morsels to the collectors of ancient bits. What is here intended is to call attention to the little-known, though long since reported, fact, that it pleased the Divine Power to reveal some of the fundamental articles of our Catholic creed first to Zoroastrians, though these ideas later arose spon- taneously and independently among the Jews ;— secondly, I wish to emphasise the peculiar circumstances of this separate origin among the Jewish tribes of the Exile ;— and thirdly, I wish to show that the Persian system must have exercised a very powerful, though supervening and secondary influence upon the growth of these doctrines among the Exilic and post- Exilic pharisaic Jews, as well as upon the Christians of the New Testament, and so eventually upon ourselves. After this brief preface let me proceed at once to cite the documental facts as to the whole system, only remarking that they are practically uncontested by any persons whose views are worth considering, for it is by no means necessary just here to go into the closer technical linguistic distinctions* in such a delineation as this. Let us now first trace the Iranian ideas where their analogy with the Jewish seems most important. To begin with our excerpts from the Sacred Book of the Iranians, we may consider the connection where it is also most obvious, that is to say, as to the Nature of the Deity. I, First of all He is Sjiprenze^ and therefore One. The usual throng of sub-godlets which appear with Him no more impair His Supreme Unity than our own Archangels impair the Supreme Unity of Jehovah of Hosts or of our own misunderstood Tri-Unity. There can be but there. Some writers, while holding the Gathas to date from about 700 B.C., put even vigorous parts of the later but still genuine Avesta at a thousand years later. What happened then in that long gap ;— did Iranian literature produce nothing ? * While even the original passages could be learned by any apt scholar with a competent teacher in the course of a very short time. Our Own Religioti in Ancient Persia. 5 one* ' Greatest of the Gods who made the others, with this earth and yon Heaven, who made man, and amenity for him.'t But He is a moral God, His Supremacy is Hmited — by His own character, which is not irrationally dishonest ; — for He is not logically responsible either through origination ^t,.^/,, or through permission, for the existence of sinners and their sufferings, the Universe being divided into two immense departments. 'There were two first Spirits, a better (they two), and an evil, as to thought, as to word, and as to deed, — and when these two spirits came together to make life and non-life (they arranged) what at the last the world should be, — the best life of the faithful, but for the faithless the worst mind ' . . .\, — a doctrine of mighty import indeed — and consequence, and we must discuss it fully and at once. For it would be a clumsy history of philosophy which would allow the present noble monotheism of the Parsis to cheat us of the speculatively precious element of dualism as it >^ exists in their genuine writings, {a) [(As regards the later doctrinal development among the Zoroastrians whereby they entirely extinguished the vital elements of Dualism, making the Supreme Good God at last completely vic- torious, all evil beingr eliminated in the final restorations see just below ; — but this was hardly a part of the original concept.)] To resume. The good and morally Supreme Ahura is exalted as the one only real God in our modern sense of the term ; — but He was One in adoration as well as in definition, supreme because His 'goodness' makes Him great, 'His Unity' being that of His Truth, Bene- volence, Authority, and sacred Energy ; see above and below, — though the equally original evil God, as being * See also the very name of the so-called and really one God ; — it was Elohim, meaning ' Gods,' — and it once referred to a recognised plurality in Deities ; — while Ahura created the highest of the sub-gods, even Mithra, at times otherwise His close companion. t See Behistun. Dualism in the Inscription ? — Auramazda is i/ signally the creator of what is ' good.' — ' He did not make evil ' as \ Yahveh Elohim is said to have done in Isaiah xliv., xlv. X See Y. XXX, 4. 1 6 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. independent, limits Him, completely exculpating Him from all share in crime ; — in fact, entirely aside from any personal Devil, He would be sufficiently limited by His own Attributes*; see above. {b) Does analogy fail tis here as between the Iranian and Jewish concepts ? — and if so, to what extent ? The Jewish pre-Christian, but post-Exilic thought was doubtless as replete with diabolic demonism as the Chris- tian and the post-Christian, though that of the Christian epoch was obviously under the control of the exorcising Redeemer. Does this last particular, which implies the inferiority of Satan, destroy all analogy here between Iran and Christian Israel as to this essential matter? — Not fully, in the sense in which we should here view the matter. Though Angra Mainyu was obviously inferior to Ahura in power, neither one of the two could be logically regarded as the possible annihilator of the other ; so that the one inferior in power was to a certain point independent ; — the Saviour might temporarily frustrate, or seem to frustrate his, Satan's, malign purposes, but He plainly could not annihilate him, — otherwise he would at once have done so. — (What is eternally original could not logically be regarded as coming to an end through the power of any other being, though an eternally Original force might yet of course be inferior within the scope of its legitimate effec- tivity to another equally independent force, — for there can be but one all-inclusive force which has no inferior ; — yet there can be relatively independent and eternal forces which have no immediate connection with one another, and here inferiority and superiority are greatly widespread ;— but such a force could have never met any other in the past capable of annihilating it, otherwise throughout a past eternity the meet- ing must have taken place with the result under considera- tion); — No theology should, however, be pushed too closely to all its logical results ; — and we might indeed even infer such an ' annihilation ' of the evil powers from those 'restora- * As a God of Honour. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 7 tions ' of all men ;— see above ; — and this from some expres- sions made use of even in the later but still genuine Avesta as well as in the Gathas themselves, together with those in the later Zoroastrianism ;— see above and below; — though, as seen above, this would sacrifice all logic, — for if the Good God could save all men, He should have done this earlier in their career. To allow human, or other spiritual beings to commit revolting crimes for the purpose of letting them see through experience how evil sin is, would be a policy ot which a Good and Omnipotent God would hardly be capable. [( — And who of us really believes that he was i* — )] But if, on the contrary, the Good Iranian God, even He of the Gathas, is indeed to bring in universal salvation at the end of any period, however restricted or protracted this period might be supposed to be, then, in that case, the difference between such a phase of Zarathushtrianism and some forms of Judaism and of liberal post-Christianity in this respect 7^//^, and they, these systems, are here, if only illogically, one, — and but for the 'forever and forever' of the Gathic Iranian Hell, one might yet claim for the analogy between the systems a persistent validity even as to this fundamental particular. But no similarities, however protrusive, should blind us to the real and apparently radical difference here between the creeds as mainly expressed by their original authorita- tive exponents ; — and the striking facts of opinion, as they existed among important sections of both parties, remain in all their monumental force. {c) Can we not, however^ in regard to some large sections of the early Jewish population, modify this apparent differe7ice from an opposite and unexpected quarter, abysmal though the difference referred to may well seem to most of us to be ? — It is rather a colossal question never before, so far as I am aware, mooted ;— but we must grapple with it none the less. Is, then, Yahveh Elohim Himself (m) always actually so supreme as to be independent of all limitation on the part 8 Ou7'' Oivn Relio-ion in Ancient Persia. s of the evil Gods of the Gentiles? If not, were not the Jews themselves sometimes in a certain essential sense of it 'dualists'? I very seriously raise the solemn question whether the Jewish writers of the Old Testament earlier or late at all really believed their YaJiveh Elolilm to be absolutely supreme in so far as to have been the creator of either Satan, or of Baal, or of any of the Demon-gods. We know indeed that they, the Jewish prophets, accredited the existence of these Beings as a matter only too emphatically real, and by no means uninterruptedly regarded them as being altogether creatures of the imagination (see the frequent comparison of them with Yahveh Elohim). But when, and in so far as, they thus believed them, these gentile gods, to be really existing spiritual beings, in how far did they then suppose their own Yahveh Elohim to have been their original creator, either bringing them into existence as being holy in their nature be- fore a fall like ' Lucifer's,' or causine them to arise as beinsf originally of evil character ? — The question is very serious. The foolish relief offered us by the doctrine that Yahveh Elohim, as God the Father, was not responsible for the fall of beings who He foresaw would become evil when He created them, is no longer available, and could not have long continued to satisfy any sober-minded sage ;— but if the leading Jews in large numbers thus in due sequence uncon- sciously, or openly, rejected the view that their good God Yahveh originally created the Evil Gods of their enemies — directly or indirectly, in any shape or chain of causality or responsibility whatsoever, then such ancient Israelites were in verity, though they may not have been consciously, dnalists,^ not far indeed from the type of Zarathushtra ; — they held to the existence of a Being, or Beings, who was, or who were, originally evil, and so they held, to an original * Recall also the very expression ' God ' .'applied to Satan as the ' God of this world.' If Satan was a 'God of this world,' and Yahveh was the ' God of Heaven, we have here at once something extremely like the ' Pair ' at Y. XXX. Otir Own Religion in Ancient Persia. "k^ evil principle, which is dualism, and that dualism remains one of the most interesting suggestions which have ever been presented, and one indeed which, in its elements, if not in its detail, is still unconsciously but largely followed.* So much for this most fundamental of all discriminations. Others of the utmost interest offer themselves here at once as being closely connected, — but, in the leading of a more stringent logic, we should postpone them for later expansion, now facing that other most practical of doctrines which often really gives the whole discussion its immediate importance ;— and this is the great question of the Human Itmnortality /—although many might indeed well say that the two subjects could be profitably studied quite apart,— and, in fact, that they ought to be so studied separately. II. I fear that we too little realise how very uncertain the doctrine of a future life was in the minds of pious jews, even at the time of our Lord. The Sadducees, as we understand, believed in ' neither angel, nor spirit, nor resurrection,' and they quite held their own with the Pharisees ; — see even the street riot of Acts xxiii. ; — several princely high - priests were of their clique, the entire party of the Asmonaean or Hasmonaean princes inclined to this opinion. It seems to many of us most curious that the sect among the ancient people of God, which especially claimed the title of ' purists 't and sticklers for the ancient Pentateuch, should have been well- nigh absolute disbelievers in what are now considered to be the essential elements of religion ;— see also the expression 'who only hath immortality,' and also 'who brought life * What is the present advancing pessimism (so called) but the recognition of the original necessity of evil co-existing with good ? The Avesta here anticipates momentous distinctions ;-recall the later schemes of the Gnostics ; — as to which see also Jakob Boehine, Fichte and Hegel. Some writers have here indeed compared the supposed Baby- lonian dualism especially m regard to Isaiah xliv., xlv., etc., but such ' pairings ' of the throngs of Gods should hardly be here mentioned. f Though the name, being derived from the proper name of some prominent teacher, Zadok, did not necessarily imply any especial claims to ' Righteousness'; — yet the force of the word, as analogously elsewhere in similar cases, was doubtless sometimes felt. lO Oiir Ozvn Religion in Ancient Persia. and immortality to light' through the gospel, as if the subject had been till lately obscured. If such a state of things existed at the time of our Lord, when both the doctrine of immortality and that of resurrec- tion had long been familiar as theories, what must have been the condition of opinion upon these subjects while the influence of the Pentateuch, in which these doctrines were not distinctly revealed at all, was as yet not affected by the large addition to canonical Scripture made later ? Few scientific theologians will deny that the full doctrine of a conscious and accountable immortality was scarcely mentioned before the later Isaiah*; that is to say, not before the Captivity, whereas the Zoroastrian scriptures are one mass of spiritualism, referring all final results to the heavenly or infernal worlds.— We shall return to the details for their necessary amplification further on. {a) This is, however, also the proper place to emphasise the main essential moral and intellectual elements of this future immortality which we have indeed already inclu- sively adumbrated. In close accordance with the moral character of God is the deep subjectivity of the Religion. Holiness is prayed for, and Heaven and Hell are chiefly mental states : — ' O Asha (Angel of the Holy Law), shall I see thee, and Vohumanah (the Good Mind), I finding Sraosha (God's Heeding Ear and man's), the way to Ahura (or 'finding His throne'), Y. XXVIII. 5. The last line in the passage cited above, Y. XXX. 4, seems to imply that the future life of the righteous was the 'Best Mind'; from this the word 'Best' occurs as used by the Persians for ' Heaven.' Rewards and punishments are self-induced, Y. XXXI. 20 ; * and this which is your life, O ye vile, with (your) own deeds your own souls have brought you.' 'Cursed by their souls and selves (their being's nature) in the Druj- ■■'■ The future existence of souls after death was as dim in the pre- exilic Bible, as it was in the older Greek classics ; — in fact this latter, the Greek immortality, seems to show rather the more of animation. Our Ozvn Religion in Ancient Persia. \ i Lie-Demon's Home at last their bodies lie (or, ' their citizenship (?) is)/ Y. XLVI. 12 ?* III. Having endeavoured here at the outset to engage- attention by putting the two most vital elements into point, we can now return to the scarcely less imposing extended detail which presents itself in regard to the chief concepts already touched upon. {a) Ahura Mazda, the Living Lord, the great Creator (or possibly the ' Wise One '), has a most Bountiful, or most Holy Spirit, who is sometimes identical with Him, and there is precisely the same difficulty in distinguishing between Ahura and His Holy (?) Spirit, which meets us in the Semitic when we endeavour to decide positively in the analogous obscurity. (Often we cannot tell whether Yahveh's attribute or His creature is meant.) YasnaXXVni, i : ' With hands outstretched, I beseech for the first (blessing) of Thy most Bounteous or (holy) Spirit.'* See also Yasna L i : ' I invoke, and I will complete my sacrifice to Ahura Mazda, the Creator, the radiant, the glorious, the greatest and the best, the most firm, (who sends His) joy-creating grace afar, who made us and has fashioned us, who has nourished and protected us, who is the most bountiful (the most holy) Spirit.'f ib) In the seven Bountiful (or 'holy') Immortals (the Amshaspends of literature) we have a union which re- minds us of the Sabellian Trinity (Yasht XIII. 82): — ' We sacrifice to the redoubted guardian spirits of the Bountiful Immortals who are glorious, whose look itself has power (their look produces what they wish), who are lofty and coming on to help us, who are swiftly strong and divine, everlasting and holy, who are Seven, j; and all of one thought, of one word, and of one deed, whose thought is the same, whose word is the same, and whose * About 700 to 900 B.C., or earlier. f Somewhat later. \ Literary confusion ; — they were seven only with Ahura. 12 0?^r Oivii Religion in Ancient Persia. deeds are the same, who have one Father and Commander, Ahura Mazda ; — each of whom sees the other's soul re- volving good thoughts, thinking of good words, contem- plating good actions, whose abode is the Home of Sublimity (or 'Song'), — and shining are their paths as they come down to us to offerinor.'* While they are thus unified, Ahura Mazda being illogically-included within their number, they are yet separate. Vohumanah is the divine benevolence, the good mind of the Deity, likewise alive within His saints, and later personified as a separate Archangel, while even in the Gathas it represents the holy or correct citizen. Asha, the Vedic Rita, is the divine Order, the sym- metry and perfection in the Law, the ritual, and in the soul, while at the same time a poetically personified Arch- angel. Khshathra is His sovereign power realised in a kingdom of righteousness, and yet also poetically per- sonified. Ar(a)maiti is our energetic zeal and piety, the Active mind, inspiring energy of the Deity first thought of as the ' ploughing of agriculture '; to aratrum, and from this latter called the ' earth ' in both Veda and Avesta, as against the non-toiling and theft-murder schemes of the raiding Turks. She is also in figurative conception God's daughter, and this even in the Gfithas, where ' God ' is otherwise only in general the ' Father of the good,' the Fire being ' God's Son,' exclusively in the later Avesta. She is also implanted within the minds of the faithful as a divine inspiration. Haurvatat is God's Perfection consummated through His foregoing Truth, Love, Power and Vital Energy, while the name is borrowed, or promoted from the haurvatat ' wholesomeness ' — i.e., ' the health and success ' of man. [(It was God's completeness like that of man's as reflected in the body's health, then soon perfected in the weal of soul and mind as well as of body, an idea evidently necessary to the roundness of the scheme, and added '•'■ Say 300 to 100 B.C., in its origins at least, or greatly earlier ? Our Oivii Religion in Ancient Persia. 13 in most modern theologies)]; — while Ameretatat is their Immortality, God's Eternity and man's Death's absence, a veritable victory over death begun in its long postpone- ment to old age here,— which last was indeed the original point-meaning of the word,— but continued in eternal Deathlessness in a future state/'' From the second to the seventh they are therefore the personified thoughts sent forth from the mind of God to ennoble and redeem His people. That the general de- scription of such notorious and striking conceptions as ( these, immensely widespread as they were in the dominant power of Asia, and lying at the logical root of Zoro- astrianism, should have become known to the Jews of the Captivity and to their descendants before the date of some, if not all, of the Exilic Prophets, is scarcely less than certain, for they were also signally identified by the dis- tant Greeks with the general theology of Persia far and wide, without distinction of provinces —and the Greeks also heard of them, in their deepest and purest sense, before the date of Daniel (see the ' invaluable' passage in Plutarch evidently reproducing the ideas of Theopompus, whom he quotes, also cited by me elsewhere). If the priests of Cyrus conferred to the smallest degree with those of Ezra, then not only the Gnostics felt its influence, but the pre- Christian and Christian theology. And in the Book of Tobit, which also contains prominently the name of an Avesta demdn, we have an allusion to these Sevent Spirits (chap. xii. 1 5) at Ragha, the Zarathushtrian centre (let it be noticed), one of whom, those Spirits, Is actually mentioned as Raphael, the Jewish Archangel, so positively ' identify- ing ' the two ' sets ' of ' Seven Spirits,' though in a somewhat * The ' hundred autumns ' of the Rik were the hope of all, and this idea of a prseternaturally extended life upon earth — that is to say, of a ' temporal immortality ' — merged into that of another ' deathless- ness ' beyond the grave, becoming an universal aspiration with the Irano-indians, as it is, indeed, elsewhere ;-for what nation ever existed without some form of it ? t One edition (!) omits the word ' Seven ' amply supplied elsewhere. 14 Oiir Oivn Religion in Ancient Persia. loose manner. So also in Zechariah (iv. lo) we have the ' Seven which are the eyes of the Lord, and which run to and fro upon the earth '; — and this is further expanded in Rev. V. 6 : ' And I saw in the midst of the throne a Lamb standing as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the " Seven Spirits " of God sent forth into all the earth.' (How sublime it all becomes when we look upon it in the light of parallel development in unassisted growth.) — [((^) Negative arguments as regards the extent of terri- tory reached by these doctrines, drawn from the absence of the named 'Seven' from the Inscriptions, are the mistakes of non-experts, as well as are the negative arguments with regard to their dates. These names are equally absent from large portions of the Avesta, and no inference can be made from their absence from the Inscriptions. (Certainly not, as we may pause to state, upon the ground that they, the Inscriptions, are in themselves a completed unit, while they yet omit some of these personifications, which should, as an objector might suppose, be included within all complete documents dealing with the Iranian Religion, and that, on the other hand, the portions of the Avesta which omit these personifications are but parts of a whole, and therefore might not be expected to contain allusions even to leading concepts ; — this negative point has little force, from the fact that the Achsemenian Inscriptions, while perhaps the most important and extensive of sculptured writings upon rocks are yet, nevertheless, necessarily very circumscribed when regarded as literature. (And how long must it have taken to complete them, by workmen who could neither read nor write in any language, while the composers also should not have been expected to mention all particulars.)) The number ' seven,' together with the very names of the Ameshas, though not visible upon the Inscriptions, found, as we have seen, its way to distant shores, and the report of Plutarch just cited, concerned, as we have also emphasised, the general religion of all Persia, so that it Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 15 could not have been intended to exclude that form of the so widely extended Faith which prevailed about Behistun and Nakhsh i Rustam. And that these same ideas at least, which are expressed in the names of the Amesha Spentas were prominent in Farsistan is illustrated by the fact that two of them are combined in the name of an Emperor, Artakhshatra, which is Asha (A[r]sha) plus Khshathra. [{-To be complete it may be well to pause here again for a moment, and on the other hand guard my readers aofainst a false identification. In the case of Arachosia the eastern province (better Harachosia, as the first s of the Indian Sarasvati requires a corresponding organic Ji), the name stands only as Harauvati upon Behistun, so in the Elamatic (Susian) there is no h, for the organic second ' ^ ' of Sarasvati ; h appears only in the Babylonian ;— though in other cases '/^' is a letter easily dropped; see India — (Greek) — instead of Hindia ; com- pare Hindoo and SitidJm. I think we had better restore the ' h' and read Harauhvati. Otherwise Harauvati might be simply the equivalent of Av. Ha(u)rvatat(l), Indian Sarvatati, the fifth Amesha. Religious names were not unusual when applied to countries ; recall Arminiya (adj.), which seems clearly related to Ar(a)maiti, the fourth Amesha ; — see also the name of the great Province of Azarbaijan (Adarbaijan), named from the ' Fire-altars.' But, as said, these remarks are a mere interlude. — )] Angra Mainyu does not indeed occur upon the Inscription, but His Chief Creature, the Female (.?) Devil of Deception, the drauga — draogha — that is, the Drzcj(k), see above — is present everywhere, though her, or ' his ' (?), essential characteristics are more frequently expressed under the verbal than under the nominal form. ' He lied' thunders everywhere from the monumental surfaces ;-those reprobations must have been constantly repeated in greatly varied forms ; and these ideas in their original, or later, shape may well have helped to mould Jewish and Christian expressions. i6 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. Mithra and Anahita too seem to have stepped bodily out of the Avesta. Many turns of speech are strikingly common to the Avesta and the Inscriptions.)] To resume. IV. Then as to the attributes of God more definitively considered in their relation to man ;— He is our Creator (so already necessarily alluded to above upon the Attri- butes), and perhaps also, in a theological sense, sovereign; cf. Yasna XXIX. 4 in S. B. E. XXXI., and in the Gathas : — ' The Great Creator is most mindful of the utterances or commands which have been fulfilled beforehand hitherto by demon-worshippers, ■^- and by faithful men, and of those which shall be fulfilled by them hereafter; — He, Ahura, is the discerning arbiter, so shall it be to us as He shall will (see also Y. XXXI. 14). — He is omniscient (see Y. XXXI. 13, 14). Wt. \s our lawgiver {\.Y^^y^\. 11) and teac/ier {Y.'X.'X.yil.^; Y. XXXII. 13).— Hewillestablisha/§zV^^^v/^;;/(Y.XXVIII. 4). It is for the poor (Y. XXXIV. 3) : " What is your king- dom, what are your riches, that I may become your own in my actions with the righteous order, and thy good mind, to care for your poor?" (Y.LI 1 1. 9): — "O Mazda, Thine is the Kingdom, and by it Thou bestowest the highest of blessings on the right-living poor." — It is endangered, and yet in the end victorious. It has a propaganda (Y. XXXI. 3) : " With tongue of thy mouth do thou speak, that I may make all the living believers." God is our friend, protector, strengthener, and unchangeable (Y. XXXI. 7). " These, O Spirit, mayst thou cause to prosper, Thou, who art for every hour the same." — He is owr Judge (Y. XLIII. 4).'" — There is a day or period of judgment (Y. XLIII. 5,6): " Yea, I conceived of Thee as Bounteous, O Ahura Mazda, when I beheld Thee as supreme in the actions of life, when, as rewarding deeds and words. Thou didst establish evil for the evil, and blessings for the good by Thy great virtue or ' great wisdom ' in the creation's final change. In which last * These Gathic passages may be placed at about 700 to 900 b.c. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 1 7 changing Thou shalt come, and with Thy bounteous Spirit, and thy sovereign power (see also Y. XLIV. 19).' V. Then to return for expansion to the evil element in the dualism, we have again, upon the other hand, the more detailed description of Satans counter-activity toward man. While criticism casts its doubt upon the presence of Satan in the serpent of Genesis, we gather from the Genesis of the Avesta that the Scriptural reptile may well be recog- nised as that 'old Serpent, the Devil.' A serpent tempts in Genesis, and the consequence is sin and the expulsion from Eden. In the Vendldad, the Evil Spirit* opposes every good object of creation, and the implied consequence is an expulsion ; — the point is closer here. Vendldad I. Ahura Mazda said unto Zarathushtra Spitama : ' I, O Zarathushtra Spitama, made the first best place, which is Airyana Vaejah, — thereupon Aiigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit) created a counter-creation, a serpent in the river, and frost made by the demons. . . . The third place which I, Ahura Mazda, made the best was Mouru ; thereupon Afigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit) created a counter creation, which was backbiting and lust. . . . The fifth place which I, Ahura Mazda, made the best was Nisaya ; thereupon, in opposition to it, Afigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit), full of death, created a counter creation, which was the curse of unbelief. ... As the seventh best place I, who am Ahura Mazda, created Vaekereta . . . there- upon, in opposition to it, Aiigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit), full of death, created the evil fairy who clave to Keresaspa. . . . As the ninth place, I, who am Ahura Mazda, created Khnefita as the best . . . thereupon Afigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit) created a counter creation, the inexpiable deed of Sodomy f . . . etc' * Though hardly Azhi Dahaka, who was nevertheless a serpent. i About 500 to 300 B.C. ; in its main prior elements greatly earlier ; but, except where guarded by the metre, extraneous matter universally finds its way in places into ancient texts ; — many portions of the later Avesta must have been repeatedly, seldom fatally, written over, 2 1 8 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. These memorable fragments must have struck the atten- tion of every learned Jewish scribe who studied the Lore of his great Persian Protectors ;— and what Zarathushtrian who was at all religiously instructed had not at least known of these items in their earlier form ? — See the allusions to them swarming everywhere. [a) Then the Asmodeus (Asmodai) of the Book of Tobit (see above) is positively the Aeshma-daeva of the Avesta and Aeshma was the Wrath-demon of Invasion contend- ing with the Seven Spirits in the Gathas, as he did with other fell aims against the same Seven Spirits in Tobit (see Y. XXVIII. 7, etc. ; — see above and below). {b) A ' fall of man ' is included in the successive expulsions just above related, but we have also in the original Avesta, which was written still earlier than the Vendidad, a fall of man, as of spiritual beings, distinctly stated (Y. XXX. 3) : — ' Thus are the primaeval Spirits (see above) which, as a pair, each independent in his actions, have been famed of old (as regards) a better and a worse, as to thought, as to word, and as to deed ; and between these Two, the demons (or 'their worshippers') could make no righteous choice, since theirs (was) deception ; — as they were questioning (in their hesitation) the Worst Mind approached them that he might be chosen. — Thereupon they rushed together unto Aeshma, the Demon of Rapine, that they might pollute the lives of mortals.' {c) So much for the more definitive, and, so to speak, * applied,' attributes of the Evil Deity, the ' God of This World! The fell characteristics here manifested are not indeed so categorically arranged in a recognised order in the Gathas, nor in the later, but still genuine, Avesta. The 'Good' Immortal Seven are so constantly presented together in those productions that a formal correspond- ence in antithesis is more nearly approximated in the later Zoroastrianism, yet we may easily trace out a marked and most important informal grouping of the opposed intel- lectual forces even in the Gathas. As Aiigra Mainyu Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 19 there is opposed to Ahura Mazda, the One, the first, being the God of Heaven, and the second the God of Hell, so the Druj Lie -demon of the Infidels is opposed to Asha (Arsha) the Truth - Law everywhere ; — the Akem, evil, (sometimes called Achishta= ' the worst') Mind is opposed to Vohu Manah, the Good Mind, at times Vahishta, 'the best.' The Dush-Khshathra = evil Kings, are opposed to Khshathra, Archangel of the Sovereign Authority ; Taromaiti, surpassing insolence, is opposed to Ar(a)maiti, the zealous Piety ; while Av(a)etat= ' dejection,' etc., opposes Hauravatat the Universal Weal of Health and of Salvation, and Ameretatat, the deathless-long-life, here and hereafter, is opposed everywhere by Merethyu, * death,' etc. VL As to Soterioiogy, a virgin conceives. It is not how- ever, to produce Zarathushtra, but the restoring Saviour of the latter age ; — nor does she conceive without seed although she is still a virgin. She conceives from the seed of Zarathushtra, which has been miraculously preserved. The details, which show a gross deterioration from Gathic times, are presented in their rounded form only in the Bundahish, which is perhaps as much as a thousand years later than the date of the original passages in the genuine but still later Avesta. ' Zarathushtra approached his wife Hvov . . . the angel Neryosangh received the brilliance and strength of that seed, and delivered it with care to the angel Anahid, and in time it will blend with a mother. Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine myriads of the guardian spirits of the saints are intrusted with its protection' (see the Bundahish. vS. B. B., vol. v., p. 144). It is preserved in the Lake Kasava till, at the end of the earthly cycle, a maid Eretat-fedhri, bathing in the lake, will conceive from it, and bring forth the last Saoshyant, or future benefactor, while two of his predecessors are similarly engendered. These several items are likewise visible in a scattered state in the ancient but still com- paratively later Avesta. In Yasht XIII. 142, we read : 20 Oitr Ozvn Religion 211 Ancient Persia. ' We worship the guardian spirit of the holy maid Eretat- fedhri, who is called the all-conquering, for she will bring him forth who will destroy the malice of the demons and of men.'* While in Yasht XIX. 92, we read that — ' Astvat-ereta (the Saviour of the Restoration) will arise from the waters of Kasava, a friend of Ahura Mazda, a son of Vispataurvairi, the all-conquering, knowing the victorious knowledge which will make the world progress unto perfection.' t And in Yasht XIII. 62, we learn that many myriads of the spirits of the faithful watch over the seed of Zoroaster. | [(That we have here the hope of a virgin-born Redeemer admits no doubt. Whether such intimations, repeated under various forms, came from the hint of the Israelitish prophets or vice versa is of course a question, but that Zoroastrian or Mazda-worshipping Magi, if they came from the East to do honour to the virgin-born babe of Beth- lehem, were familiar with them is certain. And as they expected a virgin-born Saviour themselves, it is but reason- able to suppose that this pious hope may well have lain at the foundation of their divine call to discover him who was born ' King of the Jews.')] VII. According to the record, evil Powers aroused themselves at the birth of the Semitic Deliverer, and so at Vendidad XIX., 43 we have : ' He shouted, and shouted forth again, he Aiigra Mainyu, the evil Spirit who is full of death. He pondered, and he pondered deeply, the demon of the demons, and he thus said, he who was the evil-minded Angra Mainyu, "What! will the demons be assembled in an assembly on the top of Arezura,'^§ they the wicked, evil-minded T . . . * In its origin, say 300-500 B.C. (?), or greatly earlier. t In its origins, at about 300-500 B.C. ; the much later repetition of this myth argues its long previous growth through centuries. I Compare this drivel with the grandeur and simplicity of the Gatha, S.B.E. XXXI., pp. 1-194. $ Recall the ' exceeding high mountain.' Our Own Relip;ion in Ancient Persia. 21 'i They rushed and they shouted,^ they, the demons, wicked, evil-minded, and with the evil eye : — ' Let us assemble in an assembly on the top of Arezura, for born indeed is He who is the holy Zarathushtra of the house of Pourushaspa. Where shall we find destruction for Him ?— He is the demon's wounder,— He is the demon's foe.*' He is Druj of the Druj (a destroyer of the destroyer). Face downward are the demon-worshippers, prostrate is- the death-demon,^ and down is the DraoQ-ha of the lie.'* {a) Then as to the Temptation.— \{ owx Lord approached that great event in the spirit of a wide humanity, one would surmise that he felt some sympathy with sages who had gone before Him in similar signal encounters, — and there exists a temptation of Zoroaster of which He may have known through supernatural cognition, and to which for colour that of Hercules, for instance, bears no comparison. The myth containing it doubtless expresses in its fragments what was once a real struggle, which, if it in any sense saved Zoroastrianism, was one of the world's crises. Zoroaster is besought by the Evil One to abjure the holy Mazdayasnian religion, and to obtain a reward such as an evil ruler got (Vend. XIX. I ). A rally from a first defeat having been made, Angra Mainyu, the evil Spirit coming from the ' north region of the North,'f orders the Lie-demon to assault and slay the holy Zarathushtra, now no longer just born, but in the vigour of his age. The demon, again discouraged, returns to Angra Mainyu. She says : ' O baneful Evil Spirit, I see no death for him, for glorious is the holy Zarathushtra.' J Zarathushtra (seeing through their thoughts, says within himself) : ' The Demons plot my death, they, evil-doing as they are.' * In its origin, say about 300 or greatly earlier (?). The foot-note signs expressed in letters refer in each case to the corresponding analogy ; see the note below, p. 23 ; (recall, ' cried with a loud voice '). t An accursed quarter. X Recall : ' I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.' 2 2 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. Then Angra Mainyu again heads the throng. ' He (Z.) arose, he went forth uninjured ^ by their plan and the hardness of their words. And Zarathushtra let the Evil Spirit know :— ' O evil-minded Angra Mainyu, I will smite the creation made by demons ; I will smite the Nasu (putrid demon) ; I will smite the evil fairy (that seduced the early sages), till the Saviour is born victorious from the waters of Kasava, from the utmost region of the East.*— And Angra Mainyu answered, shouting as he spoke : — ' Slay not my creatures,^ holy Zarathushtra. Thou art Pourushaspa's son, for from thy birth have I invoked (thee).*' t Renounce the good religion of those who worship Mazda.' Obtain the rewardJ which Vadhaghan, the murderous (ruler), gained.'— And Zarathushtra answered : 'Never shall I abjure the good faith^ of those who worship Mazda : (no), let not my body, nor my life,! "^^ "^Y senses fly apart.'— And to him then shouted the Evil Spirit of the evil world : With whose word wilt thou thus conquer ?— With whose word will thou abjure ? With what weapon as the best formed wilt thou conquer these my creatures ?- And Zarathushtra answered :— 'With the sacred Haoma plant, with the mortar, and the cup, with the word which God pronounced.* With these my weapons (will I slay thee), they are best. With that word shall I be victor, with that word shall I expel thee,°' with this weapon § as the best made, O evil Angra Mainyu. The most bounteous Spirit forged it'^ ; in boundless time He made it ;— and the Bountiful Immortals gave it, they who rule aright, who dispose (of all) aright.' * A blessed quarter. t First aorist mid. ' All these things will I give thee.' X Other translators introduce an 'if to gain a better meaning ' Not if my body, nor my life, nor my senses fly apart.' § Recall ' the sword of the Spirit.' Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 25 And Zarathushtra chanted :— ' As the higher priest is to (be revered and) chosen, so let the lower chief (be one who serves) from the righteous order, a creator of mental goodness, and of life's actions done for Mazda, and the kingdom ° is to Ahura, which to the poor may give their nurture.'*— Here we may well introduce the closing verse of the chapter (XIX. 147) : f— ' The demons shouted, the demons rushed, the evil- doing and the wicked ; they rushed and they fled to the bottom of the place of darkness ; that is, of frightful Hell.'P Few Medo-Persian subjects in the streets of Jerusalem being presumably Mazda-worshippers, like their Emperors, here lingering in the Persian subject city soon after, or long after the Return, could have failed to know this striking myth probably in a much fuller form ;— and none who knew it could have failed to tell it, if creeds were at all discussed. VIII. We can now trace the records of the soul's indi- vidttal experiences in its salvation, and here the astonishing subjectivity of the system comes once more fully out. In Vend. XIX. 7,0, the soul is met on its arrival after death at the Chinvat, or Judge's, Bridge by a female form accom- panied with dogs,;}: and in Yasht XXII. we learn who this female was. It was none other than the believer's conscience. * The texts cited are all of them metrical, from this the rhythm of the renderings. t For detailed analogies in the above citations, which are not very close, recall perhaps '^" the exceeding high mountain '; •''" cried with a loud voice, My name is Legion, for we are many '; '"'' Art thou come hither to destroy us before the time ?' ''^'^ Death and Hell shall be cast into the lake that burneth '; "=' ' The Holy One '; "^' was led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil'; 's)«And the devils besought Him,' etc. ; •'^" I know Thee who Thou art'; "" All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me '; 'J" I will give Thee this authority'; "'"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God'; ""It is written'; <'°" Get thee hence'; '"''The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God '; '°" him only shalt thou serve '; "'"Then the devil leaveth Him '; ' into the abyss.' X Related to Cerberus (?). 24 Our Oiun Religion in Ancient Persia. The figure presents the typical features of female attractive- ness ;-she is beautiful, she is noble, and in the flower of her youth.-' What maiden art thou,' he asks her, ' who art the most beautiful of maidens that ever I have seen ?— And she, who is his conscience,* answers : ' I am verily, O youth, thy conscience, thy good thoughts, and words, and deeds, thy very own.' But he asks her :— ' Who hath desired thee hither with his love, coming with thy majesty, thy goodness, and thy beauty, triumphant and an enemy of grief?' And she answers : — 'Thou hast loved me and desired met hither, O youth, even thy good thoughts, and words, and deeds. For when thou sawest idol-worship . . . thou didst desist, chanting the Gathas, and sacrificing to the good waters and to Ahura- Mazda's fire, contenting J the righteous saint who came to thee from near and from afar.— It is thus that thou hast made me, who am lovely, still more lovely, and me who am beautiful hast thou made still more beautiful, and thou hast made me who am beatified still more beatified . . . through thy good thoughts, and words, and deeds,' (Here we may observe, in passing, the same element of pleased surprise which we have in the sublimer Matthew XXV. z^] \ the soul is incredulous: 'When saw we Thee a hungered and fed Thee ?',— and the answer is, ' Thou hast fed and lodged Me ;' so here there is surprise : ' Who hath desired thee hither with his love ?' And the answer is: 'Thou hast;— for thou didst content the righteous man coming from near and from afar.') As the soul proceeds further, it passes the Judge's Bridge and comes before the golden throne, where the Good Mind is seated § (Vend. XIX. 31). He rises to meet it, and welcomes it: 'When didst thou come hither from that perishable world to this imperishable world ?';-and the saints who * Some writers render, the believer's ' soul '; others, the believer's self,' so varying the identical idea, t ' Invited me.' \ The later Zoroastrianism explains ' lodged and entertained.' § Recall the ' Son of Man ' ;— V.M. also equalled ' the good man.' Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 25 have passed away before him ask him the same : — ' How long was thy salvation ?' Then said Ahura Mazda : * Ask him not what thou asketh of that cruel way which is the dividing- of the soul and body' (Yasht XXII.). -And the first step, as he advances, places him in the entrance of the three-fold Heaven, which is again the Good Thought, and the second step places him in the Good Word, and the third in the Good Deed. — Then the soul passes on contented to the souls of the saints, to the golden throne of Ahura Mazda, and to the golden thrones of the Bounti- ful Immortals, and to the abode of Sublimity (or 'Song'), even to the home of Ahura Mazda and His blest* (Vend. XIX. ^iZ)- ^ corresponding evil spirit awaits the wicked ; a hideous female is his conscience, — the wicked and Angra Mainyu mock him, and he rushes at last into the Hell of evil thoughts, and words, and deeds. j" IX. Corporeal resurrection seems to be placed after the reception of souls into Heaven as if they returned later to a purified earth.J As to this doctrine, — which is, properly speaking, not identical with that of ' immortality,' but which may be said to be closely associated with it, — aside from the constant implication of it throughout, we have in Fragment IV., ' Let Angra Mainyu, the evil spirit, be hid beneath the earth, — let the Daevas disappear, let the dead arise, and let bodily life be sustained in these now lifeless bodies.' And, in Yasht XIX. ^2)^ we have resurrection together with millennial perfections: — 'We sacrifice unto the Kingly Glory which shall cleave unto the victorious Saoshyant and His companions, when He shall make the world progress unto perfection, and when it shall be never dying, not decaying, never rotting, ever living, ever useful, * About 300 B.C., in its origins at least, probably greatly earlier, f A perhaps misunderstood echo of this would be Rev. xxii. 11 : ' He that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still :— and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.' \ Recall the same uncertainty among Christians as to the detail of their future beatification. 26 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. having power to fulfil all wishes, when the dead shall arise, and immortal life shall come, when the settlements shall all be deathless.' Contrast this with the earlier Scriptural passages, void as they are of any genuine statement of this important dogma ;— compare these, then, with statements which appear after the return from the Captivity, a captivity during which the tribes had come into intimate contact with a great religion* in which the passages cited express predominant convictions ;— what do we find in them ? First, we have the jubilant hope expressed by the later Isaiah: 'Let thy dead live, let my dead body arise; — Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust ; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the shades.' And then the full statement in Daniel : ' And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.'— And yet God's people, as we have seen above, had by no means universally accepted the meaning of this language even at the time of Christ. We draw the inference — the religion of the Jews was originally Sadducaic.^ X. Such then are the historical literary facts, — uncon- tested for the most part, the great mass of them (see above), and also incontestable ; — and this, whatsoever may be their possible or impossible, exterior historical connection or disconnection with the Hebrew theology, or with our own. The points deduced from them clearly show that they contain the very most essential elements of 'our own religion ' in its advanced, if still formative, condition, from the date of the Captivity, or before the time of Christ, and after the Restoration from the Exile. [(—Let us now for convenience compactly collect the points made in the above copious citations. First of all there was God's unity as the greatest of the deities and with a name far more appropriate than our own for Him.— He has the Attributes - Within a vast Empire in which they had become citizens, t Sadducees before Zadok. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 27 of Justice, Benevolence, Authority, Inspiring Energy (compare the Holy Spirit), Universal Weal and Eternity. There were these latter at times personified as Archangels : so, rhetorically or otherwise ; — there was His 'creationism ' of ' this world and yon Heaven,' as of man, with optimistic aims and results, no evil appearing as His product, and of the other Gods and Archangels, these last having been at first His Attributes ;-there was a human Immortality also certified as to the eternity of its duration by the application of the word ' Amesha ' in the next oldest portion of the Avesta to the 'Immortal' Archangels, 'amesha' being an adjective to Ameretatat.— There was a dominant subjective susceptibility in all the three personified better elements, God, the Archangels, and sanctified man, extending to thought, word, and deed.— There was a Demonology with the most pronounced Satan of all literature, a very ' God of this world ' as against the ' God of Heaven.' He has his evil Attributes in antithesis to the beneficial ones of Ahura Mazda. One of them is positively personified in the Gathas, and perhaps two of them ; — there is a fall of man as of other spiritual beings from successive Edens through his, Angra Mainyu's, malign influence.— There was to be a judgment personal and universal, discriminating thoughts, words, and deeds, with an approval experienced in the saved man's soul, and Continued as a recompense,— and also a future Heaven itself partly con- sisting in the person's own good thoughts, and words, and deeds, but with various additional particulars of beatifica- tion. Millennial periods of intermitting righteous felicity here intervene, with a final restoration upon a renewed and supernaturally beatified earth. This latter seems to take place as a sequel to the first beatific reception of the soul in Heaven, a resurrection being an essential element in this restoration, while the entire redemption is brought about by a Virgin - born Beatifier. (—There may be some possibility of a ' sevenfold ' gradation of 28 Oiir Own Religion in Ancient Persia. felicity, in connection with the Seven Karshvars of the Earth, or with the Seven Spirits) ;— For the evil, a corres- ponding Hell exists in equal grade.— These are, as I need hardly repeat, the vital essentials of ' our own religion ' as it existed in its earlier stages in the Exilic period during and after the Captivity and before Christ, being conspicu- ously manifested in the orthodox Pharisaism, while these elements existed in the Persian documents for unknown previous ages; — see also the Veda at places.* — )] {a) It can now be fully seen why I used the expressions in the title to these lectures. Contrary, however, to many acute and sincere searchers, I hold that the two forms of this same religion were originally each of separate origin — see again above and below,— each being a regularly spon- taneous and parallel development from unchanging universal laws, proving the original man-unity, and strongly sup- porting the view that it was impossible to prevent the origin and development of similar ideas, entirely aside from all borrowing of them from one nation to another. [b) But while I hold that these views arose from 'parallel development' having been caused by the dis- astrous afflictions of the Captivity, I lay no illogical straw in the way of those who hold to the view that the doctrines were, under God, taught directly to the Jews by their protectors. In fact, I would strenuously repeat, and with emphasis, what I wrote in 1894— viz., the principle, that any, or all of the historical, doctrinal, or hortative state- ments recorded in the Old or the New Testament might, while fervendy believed to be inspired by the Divine Power, be yet freely traced, if the facts would allow of it, to other religious systems for their mere mental initiative, — that the historical origin of particular doctrines or ideas which are expressed in the Old or the^ New Testament does not touch the question of their inspiration, plenary or otherwise— (^) [(That, for instance and to illustrate, as St. Paul freely discloses his mental peculiarities, and (as to * Further citations on the contents of the Vedas are given later in the lecture bv the author upon ' The Avesta and the Veda.' Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 29 citations) quotes a poet of his youth, so our Lord Himself also reveals a mental constitution, and to a certain degree expressed, as all others express them, the convictions and enthusiasms which he has absorbed from earlier associa- tions. And still more than this, unless we are prepared to accede to a docetic heresy doubting the very reality of our Saviour's human nature, every sentiment of veneration ought to induce us to trace, if it be possible to trace them, not only the fountain-heads of His human convictions, but the supplying rills of His expression. (—If we carefully study the genealogy of His body, with how much greater earnestness should we examine that of His mind.—) For it was His thoughts, humanly speaking, and sometimes His earlier ones, which not only constituted a part of His momentous history, but actually determined His career. In the source of His thoughts, therefore, the great motives of His subsequent history are to be sought. {d) Recall, for instance, what I also have just alluded to above * in the citations as to the recorded temptation of the Persian Saint : — as He was gathering up his re- solves for such a mental scene as that described in the fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel ; see above,* in which He purposed to meet in one decisive encounter a spiritual power which, as He believed, was threatening His creation, as there had been something memorable of a similar kind in the experiences of prophets of kindred religions, and if these were known to Him, as I have suggested, through His omniscience, t it does not seem to me to be at all deniable that such preceding * temptations ' (as He revolved them, with all that they signified) in- fluenced Him, — if He possessed that larger intellect which could see over the trivial paraphernalia of superstition, and look at the soul struggling in its sincerity for spiritual life, and for the spiritual lives of many who revered it, then the humblest of His forerunners must have led Jiim on.. It would seem, therefore, to be a very pious act to search, * Page 21. t See the Talmud article by Dr. Deutsch (Remains, 1874). 30 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. diligently for everything which Christ hallowed by His reverence, and it would seem a very mistaken religious sentiment which would arrest one in such a course.)] Reflections. I The most obvious place to search for the doc- trines and opinions amid which our Lord grew up, has been, as of course, the Jewish literature of His period, and of that which preceded His appearance ; — this has been examined to a considerable extent, and much of the greatest interest has been brought to light ;— the theologies of Babylon and Egypt should be also searched as well as those of Greece and Rome. From India we have what seem a throng of rich analogies from the Buddhist Scriptures, but our highest authorities upon the subject are, or were, inclined to doubt the possibility of the historical connection ; there remains then this ancient Persian theology, where, as we have seen, an effective historical connection amounts, at one stage of it at least, to historical identity, — and it is as such, I believe, uni- versally recognised. Cyrus took Babylon, say, about the year 539 B.C., and with it the Jewish slave colony, whose tribes continued to be Persian subjects till the Ach^emenian power broke. Jeremiah, foreseeing this future invasion of the dominant and resdess Aryan, voiced his anathemas against his Semitic Babylonian oppressors in view of it ; — the ' Kings of the Medes ' were to avenge him, and in due course they did so, and later sent the Jewish people back from their Captivity, rebuilding the Holy City when it had become an ' heap,' decreeing also the restoration of the Temple. The later Isaiah speaks in most astonishing terms of this Restorer ; — the Book of Nehemiah discloses further scenes with Persian monarchs ; — section after section of the Bible dates from their reigns, while Magian* priests, who were of the * The word ' Magian ' is with little doubt Avestic ; the Maga was •the Holy Cause,' occurring repeatedly in the Gathas ; the changed suffix ;( in Magn is of no importance, and the of the Avestic moghu Our Oivn Religion in Ancient Persia. 31 religion of Cyrus, came later to do honour to the Son of \ Mary, and one of the last words uttered by Christ upon the Cross was in the Persian tongue.- [( — The fact that Cyrus may have coquetted politically with the Babylonian priest- hood, if it be a fact, is one which redounds somewhat to his credit and corroborates our argument. How much better that he should show some respect to the religion of his fallen enemies, who now became fully acquiescent in their submission, than to crush them all wholesale with the usual slaughter. Were it even true that he was accurately depicted upon a stele as present at the worship of one of their chief deities, this would be but one proof the more of his considerate courtesy. He did not conquer to annihilate. Whether the precise form of Mazda- worship now upon the Inscriptions was that of Zoroaster exactly or not is just at this point of our inquiries again a question which we need only glance at, as it is of little moment. f It seems likely, indeed, that it was an especially original form of Mazda-worship remaining undeveloped in an original sim- plicity, while elsewhere throughout Media and South Persia the particulars of the general creed advanced till they became identified with those of the Zoroaster of Plutarch. But whether this were the fact or not, it must have pos- sessed the main features which have been more or less exactly preserved to us in the Zend Avesta. — )] Further. The word Mazda (perhaps -ddh), meaning ' the Great Creator,' or 'the Wise One,' is, as said above, with Ahura, the Life-spirit-lord, an especially well-adapted name for God, much more so than a name derived results from epenthesis ; cf. vohu for vahu, Sk. vasu ; gh also=Gathic g. Maga, as being pre-Gathic by centuries, may have been carried down to Akkad by Turanians; cf. Y. 46, 12. Some writers have, I believe, assumed that the expression rab mag in Jeremiah could not have originated from across the border ; that it was purely Semitic ; — but no one doubts that the Magi of the Gospels were Aryan and Persian. And they naturally came into once-Persian Judaea. Here is the same -word as mag beyond all doubt non-Semitic: the viag of rab mag may well be one of the hundred odd Persian words in our Semitic Bible. ■'' Luke xxiii. 43. I^a.ra.dise = Av. paivi-d{a)eza. t See my remark in Vol. XXXI., S.B.E., Introduction, p. 30. 32 Our Own Religion in Ancie^it Persia. from a Healhen Deity, it being the name used for Him by that great Mazda-worshipper, who, under the providence of Go5, determined the entire later history of the Jewish people. For had Cyrus, the Mazda-worshipper, not brought the people back, the later prophets might not have spoken at Jerusalem, nor might Jesus have been born at Bethlehem, nor taught in the region. Indeed, the influence of the Great Restorer and his successors over the city was so positive that in the opinion of some writers Jerusalem was for a considerable period after the Return in many respects almost 'a Persian city.'* * The Age of the Gathas. — I have omitted to place the present note under the text, not wishing to accumulate too much of such matter at the foot of the pages. My argument for the age of the Gathas has been very carefully thought out. First, any verbal statement within the Hymns them- selves directly mentioning their age would be regarded by me as a mere curiosity aside from internal evidence ; — it is what the documents reveal of themselves, as it were, in passing and without intention, which alone possesses validity in my eyes. Secondly ,—?iS to this internal evidence.— Are the Gathas the produc- tions of a person or persons living amid the actual scenes to which they unconsciously allude ? If they did so allude to interests which were real, immediate, and vital, the Hymns must have been composed in a language generally spoken as vernacular at the time. Reasons : — -first (a), they are tivice formally addressed to assemblies ' coming from near and from far ' (see Y. XXX., i, and Y. XLV., i ) ; secondly {h\ they dMude pointedly in the first, second, and third personals to persons immediately and^ vitally involved in the religions-political situation of which the Hymns are the expression (see Y. XXVHL, 8, ' to Vishtaspa and to me,' ' to Frasha- oshtra and to me ';— see even a vocative in Y. XLVL, 15,16); while their whole tone, so personal and at times impassioned, clearly precludes the hypothesis of a ' dead language ' in a scene so rudimental and in a climate so severe as Iran, where energies would be directed rather to the necessities of life than to a hyper-artificial literature of such a character as would use a dead language for a careful imitation. Even in swarming India a fabricated structure exactly of such a type as the Gathas would be if artificially composed, is really unheard of. There was nothing there like such a supposed worked-up romance. Sanskrit when a dead language was, indeed, widely used ; but never in close fraudulent imitation of a personal crisis. It would have demanded inimitable art to imagine and fabricate such a forgery. If, then, the Author or Authors of the Gathas used a language familiarly spoken at the time, we know at once when they used it. For, thirdly, no one Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 2iZ doubts the date of the Achaemenian Inscriptions, nor that the language in which they were sculptured was that spoken by Darius and the Persians of his day and neighbourhood ;— and this language is well preserved on the mountain rocks ; — but upon comparing it with the Gathic we see that it appears in a form much degenerated from it. Two hundred years, say, more or less, are needed as time to account for the change ; for that change was almost as great as that from Anglo-Saxon to Elizabethan English. If, then, the Gathic language was in vernacular use at the time at which the Gathas were written, and that vernacular could not have prevailed at Behistun later than 200 years (about) before Darius had his Inscriptions chiselled, we have at once the latest date at which the Gathas could have been produced, say 700 B.C. To suppose them written in a vernacular near the time of Christ is therefore wholly absurd, for the Gathic language had been dead for centuries, Pahlavi having taken its place ;— and to regard them as having been written in a dead language preserved among the priests is likewise excluded by the nature of the compositions ;-see above. The language must, indeed, have lingered amid the priestly schools as Sanskrit and Latin did, and much later Avesta must have been written or rewritten in it. For such matter as we have throughout the later Avesta would be naturally reproduced from time to time amid the priestly schools written over in the then 'dead language'; cp. again the Sanskrit literature. Yet the intense ' personality,' so to express it, of the Gathas could hardly have been so radically reconstructed, much less fraudu- lently originated, with the metres, had he even so much desired it, by anyone living at the time of Christ ;— [(such an hypocrisy would imply an advanced cynicism incredible in the circumstances)] . Pious fraud of the type indicated would have also no visible motive ; — and without such an artificial misrepresentation intentionally practised, the authorship of the Gathas at about the time of Christ is unthinkable. Even if the allusions to the Gathas which occur in the other books may have been, some of them, later inserted and in- corporated with them, yet it cannot be denied that they pointedly sug- gest a very early date for them ; — while the full view that the Gathas were genuinely composed at the time of Christ by a then living Zara- thushtra of a then living Frashaoshtra and Jamaspa, etc., needs hardly to be considered; see above; — no living poem composed in a contemporaneous national crisis could have been popularly spoken in an unknown tongue. And as to the pevsonality of Zarathushtra, — not only is it irresistibly implied in every allusion to the Persian reHgion from Herodotus down, but we have Zarathushtra mentioned by Plutarch as if his name were positively familiar to Theopompus, circa 350 b.c. To sum up : the Gathas could not have been written in a vernacular tongue later than 700 b.c, and they may have been written much earlier; — and they could not have been written in the ' dead language ' at all. SUPPLEMENTARY LECTURE TO THE FIRST [{Fearing to include too many points in summing up» I have separated some remarks which originally appeared in the main body of the First Lecture, but which may yet be useful. Should this Lecture be read publicly in Bombay, where that much-appreciated honour has already been con- ferred upon some of my well-meant productions,* the main points of the previous Lecture should be here recapitu- lated. )] Many indeed have been the erroneous statements made by well-meaning tyros in Christian pulpits, as by my- self too, once among them, with regard to the ' impossibility ' of all later connections between our great doctrines and analogous truths once held by nations foreign to the Jews who may yet have been brought into connection with them ; and the fervent novice may well be pardoned if, in his first sincere efforts, he is too decided in a negative sense ; but In men of maturer years let us hope for better things. For surely — to be sentimental, if only for a moment, — the first object of religion next after the suppression of unlawful violence or appropriation should be the suppression of inaccurate statement, and to deny without any effort to become an expert what every expert knows to be the truth is, so it seems to me, to commit a crime in the name of Christianity for which Christianity will be one day called upon to account. It is therefore to help the Church against well-furnished gain- sayers, and to re-establish her character for conscientious investigation, that Christian specialists in Orientalism have * Indeed, without any previous knowledge of it on my part. 34 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 35 given the best years of their lives, — to save the endeared religion which once inculcated every honourable principle from continuing herself to be a victim if not the agent of that most sinister of equivocations known as ' pious fraud.' * My procedure is thus, I hope, now clear to all. The connection between Persia and Israel has been found to approach identity, as was only to be expected from the fact that the two nationalities, — if indeed the Jewish could really be called a ' nationality,' — were parts of the same Empire for close on, or more than two hundred years. As this is a point unquestioned a posteriori, so the doctrinal analogies were as probable a priori as presuppositions, as they have been proved to be historically actual through our Oriental research. And with this, note the unparalleled expressions of theological sympathy. If we have found a pictorial sculpture representing Cyrus as worshipping in a Babylonian temple, a sort of political manifesto, t — and, if we regard this as showing clearly a strong leaning toward the Babylonian Baal-worship, what shall we say as to the astonishing language of this same Cyrus, with that of Darius, and Artaxerxes recorded in our Bibles, re-reading also what the Jewish prophets and historians have left written in response to it. I hardly think that anything of their kind approaches these extended statements in the history of literature as an expression of religious identity of feeling between two peoples similarly situated, or even more closely connected, certainly not at their date ; — that is, not, when all the other circumstances are held in view. Recollect that the Bible is beyond all other documents regarded as hyper-sacro- sanct, and by nearly, or quite one-third the human race ; — even sceptics as to its detail acknowledge harmoniously * To emphasise such a point should be hardly our secondary object throughout such discussions as the present, t See above. 36 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. its unspeakable influence— then let us re-read attentively what the Bible records of its own great Jewish- Persian Emperors. The psychology of the development was, more distincdy, this : — During the shock and sorrows of the Captivity God's people turned their thoughts from earth to Heaven, — ^just as we so often do, — for the eventualities had proved that the emporal rewards so persistently promised to the 'righteous,' had in some way, and for the time being, proved illusory. Then came their Deliverer with His thronging forces, and with a change in their immediate circumstances which micrht well have re-assured them that the Psalmist had indeed 'never seen the righteous forsaken'; see above. And also that very same enormous event, which might well have convinced them that this world should at last show them better times as a reward for their fidelity, actually itself brought with it the same setded and worked- out doctrine of another life which the Jews had just ac- quired, but which had been believed in from their birth by those same large masses recruited from all parts of the Iranian Empire, while priests of this Immortality accom- panied every battalion, or made many groups for each corps, with an illustrious King of Kings at the head of all of them, who never dictated a word for an Inscription without attributing every victory to the ' Life-Spirit- Lord, the Great Creator, Auramazda '; see Behistun and else- where. What wonder then, as I have so often implied, that the Jews listened to the unconscious expressions of their new-found friends, whose fire-altars at times glowed at evening widely, and that, listening, they began the more to vie with these Persian fellow-believers in the hopes and fears of what was now the common Faith, — and so the doctrine grew. While the historically more con- servative party amidst the Jews, that of the Zadokians, (the Sadducees) clung with aristocratic tenacity to the old simplicity, and opposed this growing Zoroastrianism of the masses. Yet the new views, adapted as they were to Ottr Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 37 appeal to the feelings of an afflicted humanity, prevailed^ having first concentrated themselves in a sect which termed itself, or which was termed by its indignant predecessors Pharisees, Farsees, Persians,^ hardly 'separatists, ' ' dividers.' f So that, at the time of Christ, it could be said, and upon His own authority, that 'the Scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat,' and it was from him ' who lived a Pharisee ' that our own future hopes were chiefly handed down to us. J For additional literary focus to our results, I would say, as if speaking from the orthodox point of view, that while the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are un- rivalled in their majesty and fervour, constituting perhaps the most impressive objects of their kind known to the human mind, and fully entitled to be described as ' inspired,' yet the greatly more widely-extended, and as to certain particulars, long prior religion of the Mazda-worshippers was supremely useful in giving point and body to many loose conceptions among the Jewish religious teachers, and doubtless also in introducing many good ideas which were entirely new, while as to the doctrines of immortality and resurrection within a restricted sphere the most important of all, it certainly assisted and confirmed, though it did not positively originate belief. But the greatest and by far the noblest service which it rendered was the quasi-origination and propagation of the doctrine that 'virtue is chiefly its own reward,' even in the great religious reckoning, and 'vice its own punishment.' The time is now past, let us hope for ever, when the Christian apologist recoiled from recognising the very im- * The modern name of the original province of Persia is Favsistan. \ It is bad etymology to trace words to an abstract. \ Of course our Lord Himself as an eschatologist adhered to the tenets of the Pharisees ; — this while He denounced the practices of some of their chiefs who were contemporaneous with Him. 38 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. portant services which have been rendered to the holy faith by peoples foreign to the Jews. And surely no one will look askance at the happy fact that not only a small nation to the west of the Jordan held to those great truths on which rest our hopes beyond the grave, but that the teem- ino- millions of Persia also held to them in successive generations long earlier than the prophets. These con- siderations entitle their ancient lore to our veneration and investigation. It now lies open not merely to the laborious specialist but to the intelligent student,— and it is to be hoped that from the mass of human energy devoted to so much that is trivial, some fraction may yet be spared for the study of this rich and influential monument of the past which holds such a conspicuous place among the records of our own religious history. SECOND LECTURE. CONTINUED RECAPITULATION WITH EXPANSION, AND FRESH POINTING. Anyone who has been disposed to treat this great subject with respect has already seen what my plain issue is. I do not in any way object to my readers or hearers denying any possible or probable original influence of the Persian theology upon the Jewish-Exilic. I wish simply to place in clearest light the undeniable fact that two such systems existed, one in North Persia,* — and the other in Perso- Babylonia and in Jerusalem, and that they contained certain crucial and fundamental elements which were ap- proximately identical. There can be no doctrine more angularly practical than that of the one-God-ism t with creationism, and this was expressed by the Persian in a manner which left no room for a plurality ; — Ahura was supreme as the 'greatest of the gods,' having created the others as Yahveh created our own Archangels t : ' He made this earth and yon heaven ' ; 'He made man and amenity for him ' ; Genesis is not stronger ;| while the elohist in Genesis uses the plural § word for the Deity. As regards an outcropping dualism in the one and the fundamental dualism of the other, see the first Lecture. So also for the animated personal immortality |j with judgment, * Or focussed there while universally diflfused throughout Persia. t There can be but one ' greatest ' ; see the First Lecture. ;[ Both from the same source (?). § In some occurrences actually meaning a literal ' plurality.' II Some critics may, indeed, be surprised that I make so much of * Immortality ' when placing it among such supreme principles as Truth, Love, Order, and Energy ; but manifestly ' Immortality ' gains 39 40 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. etc. These vital constituent elements, then, exist in the two systems as a matter of fact, and their identity is unquestioned totally aside from all external historical mfluence, mutual or other, between the two. [(But a very urgent moral side-question may here arise among circles acutely interested in the immediate applica- tion of these supposed or real facts to individual believers, especially to the young. ' May it not be dangerous ' — so they might say — ' to our practical results to occupy the attention of the young or simple with religious matter even when it is only externally foreign to their desired personal experience, if it be outside of the point of immediate con- version or edification ?' My more advanced readers may, indeed, not understand why I pause to notice such a suggestion, but I do so, nevertheless. — and I would answer the query first of all with an emphatic acquiescence. Scientific religionists will not deny that the most solemn and beneficial effects result from our manifold forms of Christianity far outweighing their defects ; — and God, if He is anywhere as a spiritual force, is in the immediate application of the good elements here. To block the application of holy ideas is to negative their value. All the greatest historical doctrinal truths of the most sacred systems are in themselves of infinitesimal value aside from what they effect in the moral redemption and edification of man. The salvation of one human soul from sin, so to speak of it, is of more importance than all the doctrines of all the religions without it. Better by a heavy multiple that the young romanist should never hear a word of ' reforma- tion,' nor the young liberal a word of ' Church ' than that the new-born hunoer for holiness in either of them all its dignity as an effort to justify our creation. How else, says the religionist, can we possibly acquit the Author of our being ? All men born into the world should each certainly be willing to bear his share of fraud, bereavement, illness, and poverty ;— but none the less the doctrine of a judgment on high, with rewards and punishments m a future state has its chief value to us in rectifying the uni\ersal sense of wrong. Immortality with a judgment well expressed a keen moral idea. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 41 should be baffled by conflicting claims. Let me not be misunderstood. Settled interior tendencies to sin are the cause of the worst of human sorrows. With universal goodness spurring on activity, almost the entire mass of calamities would be forestalled ; — and while completeness could never be reached owing to unavoidable pain and bereavement, — yet a state of great happiness could always be indefinitely evermore approached. So much for the immediate as the focus of benefits. Yet closely linked with it is that past which the present becomes at every moment. And this for every reason demands our earnest attention, for it not only helps on the present, but is pregnant with the future. As the perfection of human character is the most wonderful work of God, it manifestly both encourages and guides us in the present to study its history, and this wherever it may be found, though, again, we should first arduously examine that past which lies nearest to us — once more x\\^ immediate.)^ After this, to shut out the great events which have transpired of this nature in places even far distant, and in times long gone by, is not to be permitted, for the broadening of our minds demands it. Of all the ancient religions of the earth the Persian should be the dearest to Jews and Christians on account of its close intimacy with their own, and also because of its depth, i.e., its 'interior' spirit. For we can freely claim that the Zend Avesta is the ' earliest docu- ment ' of interior religion searching the ' thoughts, words, and deeds.' See also the emphatic iteration of personal religious hopes in the Inscriptions. — Egoistic they may be, but there is no mistaking their sincerity. And there is also no vulgarity in numbers here, for who of us has not felt aglow at the 'multitude whom no man can number,' presumably, among the ' saved '; and coarseness is especially excluded from religious statistics when the widening of numbers carries with it the narrowing of ' perdition.' Here, again, Persia fills out our sphere of vision. No- where else on the face of the earth had such numbers been 42 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. affected by such views. They were in general characteris- tic of all Persia (see Plutarch*). If God was anywhere present in any human event He was active at the taking of Babylon, even when regarded as an external circumstance. How much more if the Persian army was animated, if only dimly, with an interior faith. Had Cyrus failed there, where would our post- Exilic Judaism and our pre-Christi- anity have been now as historical facts ?+ Somewhere, doubtless, and in some form,^ — but where ? Cyrus and his successors not only saved the Jewish national existence, but restored the Jewish worship with its very Temple. Time likewise works with these considerations of vast populations. If but one in a thousand J among the Persian public had ever really felt the effective influence of these interior ideas, yet that alone must have accumulated to a vast psychic force within successive generations. Political motives doubdess played the larger part with the Emperors in determining upon the Restoration of the Jews, yet it is wholly unreasonable for us to suppose that religious sentiment had nothing to do with it. Recall the altogether remarkable statements in the Book of Ezra — the announcement by Cyrus himself, the requests for Jewish prayers by his successors. See also the marked friendship between the Persian and the Jew as opposed to the bitterness of the as yet unconquered Babylon. To ignore what Persia did under the hand of God for the Jews as for ourselves would be more than ingratitude ; —to deny it would be sacrilege, impugning either the Divine omnipotence or benevolence in one of their most glorious manifestations. * As noticed above at the head of the supplementary Lecture, I have been much gratified to know that some of these Lectures have been read aloud to sympathetic audiences in Bombay ;— and I am pleased to hope that others of them may be so honoured. It is this which explains the recalling of ideas already once before expressed. I am reminded of the continual repetitions inevitable in a volume of sermons. t See the first Lecture. X Are more than this average affected by Christianity ? Our Own Religio7i in Ancient Persia. 43 If it was at all effective in the sense which I have urged, it cannot be described as less than the most wonderful pre-Christian religious work of the Divine Power outside of Israel.* Arithmetic itself becomes sacrosanct.t As to both of these elements — ' numbers ' and ' time ' — Israel stood far in the second place, owing her supremacy- alone to the intensity of her religious feeling. Being insignifi- cant in numbers, she also reached these results much later. Her immortality was for the most part a dim, shadowy, half-conscious state very like the classic Hades — with little judgment and heaven or fiery hell, and with but transient gleams of vivacity.:}: [( — This is notorious.§ Let the reader take up his pre- Exilic Bible and read Kings and Chronicles — ten chapters at a time — he will be profoundly struck with this marked negative peculiarity : — the evil kings did their ' evil ' in the sight of the Lord, died, were buried in their appropriate sepulchres, ' slept with their fathers,' and their varying sons reigned in their stead ; — so the good kings did ' good ' in the sight of the Lord, died, and were buried in their several tombs, and where is there any judgment for the evil or for the good, and where any Hell for the one or Heaven for the other — the 'Semitic future state' before the exile ignored or scarcely hinted at these last, as every scholar knows. || Look at the very Ten Commandments — the place, of all others, where we should most expect to find it — where is there '■' Can even this exception hold as valid ? t If this interior system operated upon a vast population tenfold, if not a hundredfold, more numerous than any other analogously affected, then every century through which that influence has persisted multiplies the bulk of this effect ; — but this system had been at work in Persia for prehistoric periods ; — the numbers seriously influenced must therefore have been very great. To the element of numbers must therefore be added that of time, which, indeed, combines with it. X Expansions to the first Lecture. § And it was preached in my pulpit close on forty years ago, the speaker not having been then thought particularly 'broad.' II And as has been long since popularly ceded. 44 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. any Last Judgment, even there ? — where is there any just re- ward or punishment ? — The future state is not even men- tioned. Who has not been shocked by this ? It was during the horrors of the Exile that God's people began to doubt whether, indeed, the righteous ' never was forsaken ' in this life ; — like ourselves, when similarly situated amidst financial ruin,'-- they turned bitterly to God, and sang the finest, if, at the same time, the most terrific, of their hymns (see Ps. cxxxvii., with its close, if, indeed, that close be genuinet). [Then, soon after, we begin to hear of ' awaking from the dust,' of a judgment, rhetorically majestic beyond description (see Daniel ; — ' Revelation,' is its echo) ; then we first hear of a 'golden age,' culminating in the thousand years of Chiliasm (N.T.) ;— then, first, the angels assume their names and forms, becoming 'princes'; — then a con- scious ' immortality ' becomes defined ; — then the Saviour was ' promised long ' — and ' the Gentiles were to rejoice in His light,' and 'the earth' — not alone Judsea — 'was to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.' It soon became a complete pre-Christianity, with the known results.)] J But may not the Persian system, in spite of all just said above, have likewise acquired these views suddenly ? — By no means ; for such beliefs as these — a God-Unity, a developed Angelology, an Immortality, Resurrection, Judg- ment, a Heaven (of recompense) with a definitive Hell, a millennial Restoration with a virgin-born Restorer — inexor- ably presuppose far-distant antecedents foreshadowing- their coming-on in the same literature in which they became at last embodied, unless that literature conspicuously lacks suck antecedents. In Persia this foreshadowitig stares zis in the * Reprinted from the First Lecture. t [(Hell itself was not quite quick enough for their fierce ven- geance.)] \ Extract from a speech delivered in London at a reception kindly given by the late Mr. N. M. Cooper {a leading Parsi), at which Sir George Birdwood and Professor Moulton were also guests, in June, 1 910, — and from articles elsewhere communicated. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 45 face ( — see also the Rig Vedci), btU in pre-Exilic Israel there is no trace of it.' * [( — Interlude and Excursus, with continuous recapitula- tion, upon the sepai^ate and parallel movement . The Religions were the same — that is to say, as to their main higher elements, and this without external historical connection within historic or even otherwise ' memorial ' times, for it was seventy odd years before Babylon became Persian, after the Jews arrived there. Do we think that we have any right to ignore this or to belittle it, in- volving, as it does, a most signal work of God, and dealing, as no other question does, with the human psychic unity, new to Israel, immemorial in Iran?; — and do we regard these facts as only fitted to arouse our orthodox suspicions ? I think, on the contrary, that we shall be called to account for it if we neglect them.— If these vast multitudes of persons — on one side vast — in those regions throughout such long periods of time were so marvellously reached by them, elaborating them further to quasi-identical conclusions — recall the list above — in places and times so far separated from each other that neither one of the two races had, up to a certain date, ever yet heard popularly of the other, speaking reciprocally un- known tongues, and yet evolving views so essential to spiritual growth, — surely this proves that this development was inevit- able and beneficial. Please to remember that I am not here vapidly considering loose items in credulity upon the other life which are well-nigh universal to mankind, no nations having ever appeared without them vaguely founded upon dreams and diseased visions, — I am dealing with two closely compacted systems symmetrically filled out as if carefully pre-arranged, also established, and only with these. That God- Unity has with it a definitive Angelology, its personalities approaching identity with the Godhead as At- * One would say, indeed, that these tendencies must have long been latent among the keen-witted Jews awaiting only the first stir to .burst them into bloom. 46 Our Own Religion in Ajicient Persia. tributes, or included with Ahura as if in an Heptade, — for He is, later, if only through confusion of ideas, 'one of a Seven', — an Immortality WM a Resurrection, — a forensic Judgment with a plain heaven, and a condemnation uuith a positive Hell,"'''" — a restoring benefactor, who was to be born out of the common course, a renewed earth in a paradise, which, with all the inevitable accretions of grotesque puer- ility, yet became marvellously effective none the less in a superior spiritual sense, — and all this in parallel development absolutely without any (?) previous immediate external com- munication between the two. I call this a ' marvellous phenomenon ' indeed, and as solemn as it is wonderful, dealing also with the psychic unity in a manner otherwise unknown ; — and yet all of it is marred or lost the moiitent we trace all these identities to one and the self-same receyit exterjtal, historical, tactual connection, the one set of ideas having merely migrated in the mass, so to speak of it, with some suddenness from Persian Babylonia to Babylonian, and later ' Persian,' Israel, — mechanically borrowed. The migration of good ideas is indeed to be desired, and we have long endeavoured to further it even with mis- sionary zeal,t but certainly it is a different thing from the spontaneous origin of these views out of the primaeval psychic human forces. As the ' wonderful phenomenon ' first of all proves that these views were inevitable in the unend- ing cycles of creation, so they contain elements of supreme utility, as no one wishes to deny, they being, in fact, the secondary utterances of the Beneficent Deity, and this not- withstanding the encrustations of erroneous acceptations, all centring in the unsurpassable doctrine of subjective recom- pense which no religion had ever expressed so fully as the Iranian. Such, then, is the 'phenomenon,' the original self-growth of these compacted thoughts from forces con- * With a subjectivity almost organic in the Iranian coming less obviously to light in Israel ; — recall ' he went to his own place,' one of the very few Semitic occurrences. \ Recall the great work of S. J. Mills. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 47 stitutionally present in the human personality, dormant even in the animal, — and coming inevitably into apex and activity in the course of ages in parallel developments more rapidly indeed, where the first 'spring' of them was strongest. — )] But the other enormous, if secondary, question now comes back upon us with accumulating force : — did or did not the so widely extended, and yet compactly moulded Aryan creed in which the Israelites were engulfed, so to speak of it, during their first Exilic centuries in Persian Babylon exercise any later and supervening beneficial in- fluence upon these already accepted but new-found similar convictions among the Jews? Every conceivable circum- stance affirms the reciprocal influence of the two systems, the one upon the other, — and in view of the very great superiority in the position of the recently successful Persians to that occupied by the handful of mourning captives, that influence upon the side of Persia must have been preponderating. Here was Israel upon the one side, for long pre- Exilic centuries without a pointed hope of any such an Immor- tality as most of us hold dear, without a definitive Judgment, without a Resurrection, without a clear Heaven, a Millen- nium (or a Hell), yet suddenly at once awakened to these expectations by a calamity which had brought swift ruin upon their remnant, while their status was, at times, much like that of slaves, or worse* ; — and vis-a-vis to them were Median multitudes — military, civil, priestly, princely, with their illustrious Imperial figure at their head — and these, only a few brief decades later on, swarming in the streets and roads of Persian Babylon, the city with its province now from that time on the Persian capital. Aryans to a man, these Medo- Persians — as we might almost say of them — they had long since been possessed with that same hope of full future conscious life beyond the grave which the Jews had just acquired — with much * Expansions and repointings of particulars already hinted at above, and here supposed to have been earlier orally delivered. 48 Ozcr Ow?i Religion in Ancient Persia. emotion, let us believe.* With what surprise, then, grow- incr to astonishment, must the excited Semites of the early Captivity have first discovered this grateful fact! Here they were themselves just new-born novices, as it were — a grouplet of beginners in a full system of Immortality — doubt- less also much affected by the impression that their views were a new discovery, and stirred to their utmost depths with all the emotional effects of regeneration in its train. But when the Persian army appeared, whose victory and continued presence were hailed as their temporal salvation, they discovered, to their amazement, that their own fresh ideas upon futurity were an ancient creed with their new- found friends, and that they were held almost universally — not always, of course, with that personal fervour which the Jews then felt as neophytes, — but that they were most certainly held with ponderous conviction by the very chief representatives of the new Babylonian life, who would be, of course, the so-called Magian priesthood. Everything, as regarded also from every reasonable point of view, looks rather toward this later influence of the o-reat religious patron nation upon their once suffering, but now grateful, proteges, while but few have suggested the other direction to the current. 'Affection,' alone of itself, must have had something to do with the intricate psychic motions inevitably stirred within the one party in the vivid situation. The signal Conqueror of their op- pressors would be naturally the object of their enthusiasm, as would be, indeed, the leading personages in his garrisons. Think of the change which Cyrus occasioned in their cir- =■'• These are the obvious ineffaceable facts which the most ultra- conservative of all historical theologians will not, because he cannot, attempt to dispute, they being the A B C of all historical religious knowledge upon the points. No Bible-class, nor indeed should any Sunday-school instructor, be without this knowledge as to this most solemn circumstance. It was Our Own religion in a friendly race ;— and this should be rather more than less pressing upon the attention of every student of our Holy Faith, teacher or taught,— that is to say, so long as we hold to this spontaneous growth of Immortality among the Jews. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 49 cumstances at his advent, and see how they recalled it in Isaiah xliv.-xlv. My claim in argument is, therefore, for a very strong and completely surrounding and enveloping later and supervening influence of the North Persian One- Godism, Angelology, Immortality, Soteriology, Judgment, Resurrection, Millennium, Heaven, and Recompense, upon the same slightly earlier developments in Israel during the Captivity. [(-But let me also not be misunderstood here once again while repeating a principle which I hold to be crucial in all these discussions. Many have, indeed, held, and still hold, to the striking opinion, so often here noticed to refute it, that this entire scheme of Persian theology and eschatology, not only subsequently confirmed, defended, and encouraged — in a word, ^ saved' these views within the Jewish Pharisaism — a proposition which we may accept — but that the Persians originally and first of all taught the Jews these things in their full, definite, out-formed shape, as a whole, through dominant influence or through charm. I do not regard it as being at all a just or honourable thing to lay one illogical straw in the path of those many who have held, or still hold, to such a view, if they hold to it with honesty. A^iy so-called, or real., divine authority, through inspiratio7i or the like, has, as I Jirmly hold with the most advanced of opponents, little, if anything, to do with the fact that po7^tions of the mere mental ideas involved have been impar^ted through various sources wholly unconnected with any previous especial development of the faith concerned. Inspiration has, as I contend, nothing whatsoever to do with the question of the mental channels through which the bare ideas of any good creed may have been imparted to a favoured race or people ; — and much do I deplore the prevalence of a contrary im- pression.*-)] * See these remarks in other words at the close of the first Lecture. Repetitions of an admonitory nature and the recalling of ideas are here unavoidable, for the reasons already stated. 4 THIRD LECTURE. THE PHILOSOPHIC INITIATIVE OF AVESTA IN THE LIGHT OF APPLICATION, WITH CONCURRENT RECAPITULATION, ESPECIALLY ADDRESSED TO PA RSI S.* I. What — so some of us may inquire — is practically after all this value of Avesta upon which such emphasis is laid ? Professors of philosophy in the central home of learning would not ask of us such a question; — but it is still well worth our while to suppose it put and to answer it, — for those who wish to name it may be reassured at once. The intellectual initiative of Avesta was, like its fellows, a condensed psychic force, evolving almost untold results even in economics. The immeasurable financial, political, and educational force in Christianity surpasses that of Avesta, but yet it affords us a lead in our discussion here. Thousands of mil- lions could hardly stand as a proper expression for the hard results of the Christian system ;t--and Zarathushtrianism once scored as heavily, for in remoter influence^ it once helped the other on. — Avesta has been this eminent initial force in history ;— and history, let us remember, is the compact summary of crucial facts. Christianity, let us claim it, has been the most potent of all forces to restrain murder, rapine, theft, and arson; — but Zarathushtrianism * As an appeal for a higher appreciation of their impressive lore, t What was Church property once worth, — and what is it not worth yet ?— in buildings, lands, hospitals, organisations for collecting funds, etc. I Beyond all question. 50 Our Oivn Religion in Ancient Persia. 51 was before it in the same line of preventive causality without immediate early historical connection,* and by assisting oained an after-share in the results. The Nature of the Psychic Forces here. {a) We open the Avesta, and first of all we meet, imme- diately upon its folios, what I have already described in much detail above. t — It was a God, who is supreme indeed over the good creation, but saved through limitation from all responsibility for the evils which so unjustly liamper us, with regard to which He was neither implicated through origination nor permission, these evils being, as we have later discovered, inherently necessary to existence. And surely this was the first clue ever given to this now inevitable opinion .'* — No one before our sage had so traced all our woes to the counter-creative activity of an independent Evil Spirit, who was also necessarily original and eternal, | — and who upon his part was within his limits verily an evil * God of this world,' — a scheme which was beyond all question first motived by a school of which Zarathushtra became the leading mind. No one has ever doubted that the Evil God was thought of because the evils of experience seemed utterly incompatible with the absolute omnipotence of any good Supreme Being§ ; — therefore that scheme initiated within all known history the entire clearness of modern conclusions on this subject. The idea may have been mooted earlier, but we have no record of it. {b) The Archangels also of this Supreme Being who in * Zaruthushtrianism was identical with Christianity only in the immemorial fundamental elements in prehistoric ages from which each developed ; see above and throughout. t But which we cannot name too often, — so, necessarily also when we wish to link it in with companion issues. \ See the first and second Lectures. § Some idea of ' mere indignity ' had effect among other considera- tions ; — other evil elements aside from right and wrong, doubtless had something to do with it ; — at times much. 02C7'- Oivn Religion in Ancient Persia. %!> the highest conceivable sense also ' limit ' Him, were no mere winged creatures of the poetic imagination, but, most sublimely, His own attributes, those few mighty, if simple, essential principles which alone save life from being chaos, and the Universe from being ' Hell '; — they govern the Supreme God Himself; — He could not violate them if He would. Could anything be more impressive ? He is — as said — otherwise One only and supreme ; — for the few sub- ordinate things, called ' deities,' were His creation ; — recall our own Archangels ; — and this in no way impairs His sove- reignty ; — compare likewise our Tri-unity ; — there can be but one 'supreme' good object, but one ' Greatest Creator.'* This, as said and as understood above — this idea of a Supreme God still fettered by His character — led the ancient world at its date as a scheme of conservative theism, with all its vast economic consequences ; — and this initiative is what gives it its ' scientific ' importance. [( — Can anything modern of the kind be compared with it } Instead of presenting such a contradiction as a good God, who could create immortal beings predestined by Himself to everlasting fiames, He was actually in essence rather more limited by His own attributes than even by His supposed terrific personal Opponent.f He could not possibly have been personally concerned in such an origination.)] Here we have first of all in obvious light, the chief elements in all theological representation per- sonified, saving the nature of the Most High God from the crime of permitting the origin, and continuing the existence of the greatest, saddest, and most familiar of all the sorrows which force themselves upon us. The horrors of evil existence — so it is unavoidably implied — were, as said, inevitably fixed as constitutive links in the chain of causality, and this in the very vital elements of that existence itself, with its supposed ' will-freedom '; recall Heraclitus ; — the Good God was therefore morally, * In the Veda Mitra was the full mate of Varuna, but in the Avesta this independence was absorbed in the supreme 'creationism' of Ahura. t So, in the interior elements of the subject. Our Oivn Religioii in Ancient Persia. 53 but, praise to His Holy Name, only 'morally' supreme, never mechanically omnipotent ;— He could not disintegrate the very laws of His own being ••^■- ;— ' it must needs be that the offence come.' This alone was an immense idea, if, indeed, but one in ten thousand ever understood it ; — there have been many thousands since. The contrary to it would be mental mania, which only fails to make men ' demons ' because we dare not think ;— recall the third creed, 'incomprehensible,' 'incomprehensible,' 'incompre- hensible.' A wonderful thought, indeed, it was for the time, 700 to 900 B.C., and for the place, North-east or North-west Iran ;— f and a wonderful thought it is for all time, if we could but afford to permit ourselves to see it. No— the Good God, according to this implied principle, never made a ' Hell ' beneath or here ;— that ' Hell ' has been as eternal in the past as it shall be in the future. (c) The Constituent Elements of the Gdthic Character. And where at such a date was there also such a dis- crimination of men ' as to thought, word, and deed.' A few little words| these are doubtless, and common enouo-h at present, as we may say, but if acted on, still how deep ; as all well know, they, little and few though they be, would, if followed, then raise the world from the ' death of sin to the life of righteousness ';— and they find their first original here ;— for where was there at such a date, and in such a place, their duplicate .^ They were, therefore, epoch- making in the redemption of man from brutality. See also 'that bodily life and the mental '—again but a few little words, and often falsified by hypocrites ;— but, while they express a refined view which soon became familiar, - There was one thing which, thanks to His supreme hmitation. He could not be, —a felon. t This is the place most clearly indicated to us ;— but it pervaded Iran ; — see the first Lectures. X ' A few little words ' indeed now left to us, but those few imply hundreds whose memory has perished. 54 Our Own Religion i?i Ancient Persia. they were once more again epoch-making in the unfolding" of our civiHsation. It was a 'few Httle words' which revealed the Copernican theory ; — Isaac Newton's law expressed itself in nine words ; — see the memorable frag- ments of Heraclitus, how short they are I — It is ' a few little words ' always which awake the world. (d^ Subjective Recompense. And where elsewhere, at such a date, does the wicked's 'own soul' shriek at him on a Judgment Bridge; — and where does ' his own beatified conscience ' meet and reward the blest man on the path to a Heaven again of ' good thoughts, and words and deeds ' ? ' Virtue ' is here first in history 'its own reward,' so definitely, and 'vice is its own punishment.'^' — If this had not been said then, much immediate amelioration might have been postponed ; — recall our Lord's own later searching words as to ' the thought the essence of the crime.' Were these things mere historic relics of the past — gems, so to speak, and nothing else ? I have elsewhere, just above, implied the vast results of every kind which flowed from these psychic forces ; but it will be well to return to them for a moment and to expend a few further comments upon them ; — and first, their acute spiritual result. Zarathushtra was no hypocrite ; — hypocrisy was not then the fashion ; — nor had people learned that it might pay, — and if but one man even in a hundred thousand throughout those coming ages really sought God in the manner said (with thought, word, and deed), with the ' care of the poor ' as his charge, and a ' Heaven of good principles ' in his eye, what more than this could we desire or expect .'^ This was what we used to call 'conversion.' What Christian or pre-Christian could think of purer character? Even such an average as that just named — one in a hundred thousand — would soon mount up, a * So, epoch-making as a distinctive delineation; — see the first Lecture. Our Oivn Religion in Ancient Pei^sia. 55 ' gem ' which Hved on with vital effect is a ' gem ' which we should study and revere. Tens of thousands up to millions must have been made penitent throughout those pre-Christian centuries by Faiths like this, — so from statistics. Was this 'nothing,' — a ' trivial result '? If we have souls ourselves we must value good in souls from that one fact only. It is our duty to God, to ourselves, and to our fellow- men, to study this and to pray over it. (e) Then the Quasi- external Realistic Reivard in Heaven. The present Spiritual World likewise must be taken into consideration. We — the most of us — believe that souls live on, that they are, as it is said, ' immortal' If so, the soul of Zarathushtra, at the head of his innumerable spiritual descendants, Iranian or others, multitudes as they were and are, exists to-day as saved on high ; — is that nothing .'^ I do not at all apologise for having mentioned it. No true prophet, of course, whether Jewish or, indeed. Christian, could despise saved men of their own Cyrus's race, the race of their Deliverer, their God's ' anointed,' who likewise served the ' God of Heaven ' presumably 'in thought, in word, and deed.' What Christian, or pre- Christian pious Jew, could have asked more than that souls should strive for a Heaven of holiness in such a spirit, and with a record of corresponding deeds ? Souls uncounted are in Heaven now this moment, if there be indeed any Heaven anywhere at all, solely in consequence of things like this, this strongly formulated, established, but simplest,* Law. Is this then, again, ' nothing'? One might challenge opposition. No sane human being who has a heart can doubt that this is something. (/j And there are external rewards upon earth ; — these * The entire mass of evangelical Christendom, with its enormous effects, claims only the very sUghtest number of points ; — they rejoice in reducing all to ' conversion.' 56 Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. forces live on here. All human life is physically one, — so science shows us, the father surviving within the son, so, actually, as also the mother ; — and a soul's sentiments pass on through example, teaching, warning, discipline, and promising — that is, by entailed mental tradition as even by intellectual inheritance. If there be any good in us to-day, we are now what we are of that good, because Zarathushtra and his like were what they were three thousand years ago ; — they sowed the seed ; they focussed the scattered holier forces. This is ev^en medical ; see above. Ideas themselves are hereditary, not only traditional, — so that we need not ask 'what good is it at all '? Our own living status at this hour is here involved ; — if we can earn our livings now, and keep our property, we owe it to the Saints of Iran and their like in India, Egypt, Babylon, and Israel ; — they first planted these principles here and when they did. Who does not see it ? — and this — let me repeat it, — if but one among a hundred thousand of our forebears were ' heart-devoted ' to a God of honour. All the good on earth to-day is a continuation in an unbroken line, largely psychical if not physical ; — Asha is 'incarnate' now, as when Yasna XLIII was written; —this guides our ' living' present, which is ever becoming future. History is here no mere amusement, and the Gathas, with their large lost portions, are the foundations of this history, (g) By studying the past we can, first of all, now and here, awake our thankfulness to God for what is good in it ; — and this helps us now and here ; and the evil in it warns us ; — is this again nothing } If we have any feeling, it is beyond all question, ' something.' So only can we understand the present, take courage for the future, with foresight. By recalling the virtues of the past — if there were any virtues in that past, and some there were beyond all question — we respect our race ; — and this gives us still further hope and energy, — for so we respect ourselves. And (li), as to antiquity, again, the further back we can trace such Hymns as Zarathushtra's — and Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. S7 scores of the like once lived and told their tale— the wider the circles of their influence, for the further back they began their work, the longer has been the time for them to produce effect ; — we fatuate ourselves when we ask, ' What good is there in what is old,' even 'old goodness'? The further back the holy effort, the more were the people who have felt it, some ameliorated beyond all question — so ' saved.' Hearts by the myriad would have broken but for this lore, homes by the thousand would have been destroyed ; — I challenge the direst infidel to doubt it. Virtuous energy has been, and is, incited by such laws, and virtuous energy fills our barns with plenty and our chests with gold. This is physiology, as I intend it, the hardest of all hard-headed fact; — these doctrines of 3,000 years ago are among the things which save us now ; — it is ingratitude to slur them or to conceal them. II. We can now return, with all just said, to emphasise once more the ' most stupendous ' event* which ever hap- pened in that secular history of Israel ;— for it has been neglected,— one of the most ' stupendous ' also in all history in view of what we deem its consequences. I have endeavoured above with litde expansion to point out blundy the immense effects of Christianity upon every conceivable interest ;— it is not further necessary to dwell upon that matter.— [(Any person capable of an economic estimate will see at once that our Religion underlies our material civilisation, having become to a large extent the land's common law, its great vitalities of truth carrying away all the defects of mere historical or dogmatic error.)] The influence of Judaistic Christianity, with its ten Com- mandments and its crucified Redeemer, has made the world a hundredfold more possible :— the Coliseum would not be conceivable to-day, nor would be — parts of— Pompeii. But Zoroastrianism was a twin-sister to that faith which made this change, though an independent one, pre-dating Exilic * See p. 42, second Lecture. 58 Our Oivn Religion in Ancient Persia. Judaism ; — and but for that political power which represented Zarathushtra the voice of Ezra would never have been heard ; the Divine Being might have selected some other means to accomplish similar universal results, but they would not have been these means, — nor these results. As scientific historians we are forced to say that an intensely effective element in the combined forces would have been totally wanting, whether replaced by some other influences or not, we need not ask. Judaism with Christianity then was, and is, an incalculable power in the world predominating for good, Muhammadism being their offspring, and no one of the three would have been what it was save for Persia — secularly, certainly not ; — nor would Buddha have come to lio-ht but for Persia's twin-sister Lore, the Veda. Had Cyrus not arrived when he did with his permanent conquest, then, for all that we can see, the re-settlement of Judah at Jerusalem by Persia would have been indefinitely post- poned* ; possibly it would never have taken place, — and Judah would have been left to sing other sad psalms in her vast captive home. The nascent hopes of a definitive spiritual world on high, with its grand items of the creed, might have been a mere flash, smothered by the rich forms of Babylonian super- stition ; — the animated history of the re-founded Jewish polity would never have transpired ; nor would the prophets of the Return, with the second Isaiah at their head, have ever penned their fervid chapters; — nor would the Asmonean Princes have made Judah's name for the first time glorious in war ; — nor would, indeed, the Son of Mary have been born where He was, to rule futurity.f But Cyrus did arrive at last, and the vast chain of causalities began to move. What other event of a similar kind can be compared ^ith it! — this, almost aside from the Persian religious element. That course was taken which alone made our * Repointing and expansions of things said above; see the preceding Lectures. t Not in a nation rebuilt by Cyrus. Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. 59 Judaistic-Christianity and Muhammadism possible, — while the philosophy of the ' great renunciation ' was likewise spreading. {a) Then this action was neither insignificant nor acci- dental. Sometimes very insignificant events have produced immeasurable effects — the Crucifixion (!) of itself would have been deemed ' trivial ' by many ; — see Tacitus. But here was a move only to be looked upon as petty on account of the pettiness of a ' nation,' saved by it in a small side-place within the largest and most energetic Empire of its day or of its past* — ruling from Egypt to India and from the Ocean to the Caspian, It was altogether a big move on the part of a big power. The conquest of Judsea was but a mite in the main conquest of Babylonia, though her estimate would not be ours ; — and the re-creation of Judsea was but a fraction of one of the world's greatest con- summations, — if to us a colossal fraction. To neglect this in our political studies would be as fatal as it would be in our religious searches; — regarded as a grasp upon genius alone, it preserved to us the world's greatest book ;t — the Iliad was different ; — and then, last of all, because not externally so obvious to us, it brought into Babylon a great conserva- tive Religion which soon showed identities with Zion. III. Here I must make one confirmatory point not yet elsewhere sufficiently pushed home, but, in fact, it is the chief 'motive' to this present Lecture of 'application.' None deny the copious abundance of Persian allusions in the Scriptures, centring in the somewhat touching crisis of the Return ; — here the great restorative decrees occur with requests by the Restorers for divine assistance ; — Judah becomes again a nationj: — a mere item among the more than score incorporated in the mighty Empire, but still a nation, if we could call her that. In her scriptures capable philologists discover over a hundred Persian words, and the * Persia ruled mid-Asia where she liked, and ruled it rigorously. t The Bible. I See Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. 6o Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. '