sacrifices. Hymns and prayers are their principal forms of worship. And the
Supreme God, who fills the vast sphere of Heaven, is the object to whom they
are addressed.”
The service of Ahura-Mazda consisted, then, as we see, in the performance of
good works, in the cultivation of virtue, and in the due offering up of prayer and
praise. It was an intellectual worship that Zarathustra prescribed; a worship that
might assist in the development of a high morality, but could not inculcate a
deep and true religious feeling. Of contrition for sin, of humbling oneself before
God, of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, of love, and faith, and hope, the creed
of Zarathustra took no account. And here, as well as elsewhere, we observe its
vast inferiority to the religion of CHRIST. It made no provision for the awakening
and fostering of those tender emotions of profound humility, thankful adoration,
and unutterable gratitude which are awakened in the Christian’s heart by the
name of JESUS. It could never have called forth such an utterance of the son’s
glad submission to the will of the FATHER as we find, for example, in the
ejaculatory verse of Ben Jonson:
“Hear me, O GOD!
A broken heart
Is my best part:
Use still Thy rod,
That I may prove
Therein Thy love.“If Thou hadst not
Been stern to me,
But left me free,
I had forgot
Myself and Thee.“For sin’s so sweet,
As minds ill-bent
Rarely repent,
Until they meet
Their punishment.”Such lines as these indicate a relation between man and his GOD which could
never obtain between the Zarathustrian and his Ahura-Mazda. His was a cold,
unimpassioned, logical creed, warmed by no single heart-throb of Divine love