such doctrine was taught by Zarathustra himself. His creed, like all the earliest
creeds, was purely Monotheistic. He set before men, as the sole object of their
love and adoration, one Supreme Being, Ahura-Mazda, the great “Life-Giver” or
the “Living Wisdom,” as the name is variously explained. Nor was his
conception of this one God altogether unworthy of the Founder of a Religion. He
does not represent Him, indeed, as the “Father,” loving, sympathetic,
compassionate, and so full of condescension, that He is willing to give His Son
to die for the salvation of erring Humanity; for he did not enjoy that fuller
revelation of the Divine Nature which was vouchsafed to the Hebrew race. But
he shows Him as the “Lord over all lords, the Forgiving, the Omniscient.” He is
ineffably pure, the source of all Truth, the Holy God. In the Khordah Avesta,
Zarathustra is introduced as inquiring: “Tell me the name, O pure Ahura-Mazda,
which is Thy greatest, best, and fairest name?” Ahura-Mazda replies: “My name
is He who may be questioned: the Gatherer of the people: the Most Pure: He
who takes account of the actions of men. My name is God (Ahura); My name is
the Great Wise One (Mazdas.) I am the All-Seeing, the Desirer of Good for My
creatures, He who cannot be deceived: the Protector: the Tormentor of
tormentors: He who smiteth once and only once: the Creator of All.”
His happiness, like His holiness, is without spot or blemish; every blessing is His
that man can imagine—health and wealth, virtue, wisdom, prosperity,
immortality; and these blessings He is willing to bestow on His creatures if in
thought and word and deed they eschew impurity. But we nowhere read that He
will assist them in the struggle against sin by creating in them a new heart, or by
vouchsafing the grace of His Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Atonement was
beyond the reach of the soul and intellect even of Zarathustra; and the highest
conception of God to which he could attain was that of a Being of perfect
Goodness, sitting enthroned in a strange awful loneliness, with no other feeling
than that of approval of Good and disapproval of Evil. He is, of course, the
supreme type of Power: all that is flows from Him, as light from the Sun: He
creates both the shadow and the brightness of the human existence, good and ill,
fortune and misfortune. So far above all human intelligence is He placed, that
images of Him are forbidden, though He is understood to be symbolised by the
sun and by fire. He can be served only by prayers and offerings, by a life of
purity and truth, by abstinence from sinful passions, by the banishment of sinful
thoughts. Thus Herodotus says of the Zarathustrians, that they reject the use of
temples, of altars, and of statues. “They smile,” he says, “at the folly of those
nations who imagine that the Gods are descended from, or have any affinity
with, human nature. The loftiest mountain-tops are the places chosen for their