light in which there is no darkness, which the senses cannot conceive by reason
of its immense clearness, which the understanding cannot comprehend by reason
of its extreme delicacy, and which fancy and imagination cannot fathom.”
Free from all animal desires, these spirits are created wholly for love and
harmony, for friendship and unity. They are unaffected by local and temporal
changes, and control the planetary spheres, without finding the motion of the
heaviest too heavy, or of the lightest too light. Their never-ending existence is a
prolonged happiness, owing to their nearness to the Supreme GOD; whom they
praise day and night, like the Angels, with no sense of fatigue or satiety, and
whose will they ever obey with the keenest joy. Free agents, they are never
inclined towards the evil. They turn towards the good as readily as the flower
towards the light.
Passing on to the cosmogonical part of the Zabian system, we find that it is
based on the existence of five primæval principles,—the Creator, Reason, the
Soul, Space, and the Void. These are the constituents of all creation. But apart
from these, or comprehending these, the Zabians seem to have regarded two
principles, GOD and the Soul, as specially active and ever-living. Some writers
represent them as believing also in a passive principle, Matter; and in two
principles which are neither living nor passive, Time and Space. They appear to
have regarded Matter as primeval and everlasting, and to have ascribed to it the
origin and duration of Evil. GOD Himself created only the spheres, and the
heavenly bodies which they contain. These spheres (fathers) convey the types or
ideas to the elementary substances (mothers), and out of the combination,
conjunction, and motion of these spheres and elements are produced the various
earthly things (children). According to the Zabians, the world is renewed with
every “world-year,” or cycle, that is once every 36,425 ordinary years. And at
the close of each cycle, the life, vegetable, animal, and human that had
flourished within it cease to multiply, and new forms or types spring into
existence.
The vacillating and contending nature of man is due to the contradictory
elements of which he is composed. The desires and passions which sway him to
and fro, depress him to the low standard of the brute creation, and his fall would
be complete but for such religious rites as purifications, sacrifices, and other
means of grace. Through these he is able again to draw near to the great gods,
and to attain a resemblance unto them. The human soul is dual, that is, it consists
partly of the nature of the animal soul and partly of that of the angelic soul. It is
immortal, and subject to future recompense and punishment, but not for ever,