sacrifice of an humble and a contrite heart.
“Heaven is the magazine wherein GOD puts
Both good and evil; prayer’s the key that shuts
And opens this great treasure; ’tis a key
Whose wards are Faith, and Hope, and Charity.
Wouldst thou prevent a judgment due to sin?
Turn but the key and thou mayst lock it in.
Or wouldst thou have a blessing fall upon thee!
Open the door and it will shower on thee.”[21]But no such conception as this is discernible throughout the length and breadth
of the Parsee Scriptures, which here, as elsewhere, and in relation to other
matters, attain a lofty, but not the loftiest, level; rise above earth, but do not soar
to Heaven. They seem instinct with echoes of the original revelation vouchsafed
to man, but those echoes are faint and imperfect; whereas, in the Hebrew creed,
the voices of GOD are repeated with a fulness and a power which leaves the heart
nothing to desire. In this vast superiority we cannot fail to see a strong and
striking proof of its authenticity. If it be found difficult to account for the moral
excellence and æsthetic beauty of Zarathustrianism without tracing it back in
some indirect way to a Divine origin; how shall we explain the sublimity and
grandeur of the Hebrew Theism, unless we admit that it is all it professes to be,
—is, in very truth, the expression of the will of the everliving GOD?
We have spoken of Zarathustra’s religion as originally monotheistic; its purity,
however, was not long preserved, and the cause of its corruption lay in itself.
Zarathustra could not deny the existence of Evil, and to explain it was driven to
concoct an extraordinary hypothesis. As in every electrified object there are two
poles, a positive and a negative, so, according to the Prophet, in Ahura-Mazda,
and in all rational beings, man included, are present a good and holy Will, and its
shadow or negative,—a higher and a lower nature,—the Positive and the
Negative Mind. How Zarathustra reconciled this idea with his conception of
Ahura-Mazda, as Perfect Goodness, we are unable to comprehend. At all events,
it contained the germs of the future Dualism of the Persian religion. The
Negative Mind soon came to be separated from the good and holy Will, and was
quickly personified as an independent evil being, a Power of Night and
Darkness, Ahriman (Angro-Manyus,) equal in might to Ahura-Mazda, and
disputing with him the possession of the world. Thus arose the myth of the
constant struggle between the two powers, as between Day and Night; the
servants of Ahura-Mazda being sent forth to encounter, resist, and overcome the