preserved by Eckermann. "At a time," in A month or two after this meeting, and exactly about the time that Dr. Chalmers paid his final visit to England, our Northern chanced to go to London. The last time he had seen Dr. Chalmers was on a Sunday afternoon, walking homeward from church along a footpath by the wall at Morningside; and now from various friends in London he was receiving particulars of the old man's recent visit-how delighted they all were to see him so hale and well. He had either set out, they said, or was about to set out for Scotland, in order to be present at the General Assembly of the Free Church. All spoke of him with love and enthusiasm. A few days more passed. One morning our Northern, in a lodging that has hardly yet become familiar to him, finds a letter on his breakfast table, the post mark Edinburgh, and the handwriting that of a friend. He takes it up. It contains news!-The great old man was dead! From the British Quarterly Review. ZOROASTER AND THE PERSIAN FIRE WORSHIPPERS. The Parsi Religion as contained in the Zand-avasta, and propounded and defended by the Zoroastrians of India and Persia unfolded, refuted, and contrasted with Christianity. By JOHN WILSON, D.D., M.R. A.S., &c. Bombay. American Printing Press. 1843. THE design of this volume is to excite the that there is some mental activity among Parsis on the western shores of India to a these children of the sun. It is a sign, we candid inquiry into the claims of their re- hope, that our religion is about to spread ligious system, and to offer to their consid- among them. The English reader would eration the infinitely higher claims of Chris- certainly derive more satisfaction and benetianity. The form in which the work ap-fit from Dr. Wilson's book if, instead of the pears, is owing to some publications of the Zoroastrians in India, in which they have explained and defended their tenets in opposition to the doctrines of the British missionaries. We hail such a controversy in that land. It is full of interest. It proves controversial form in which it appears, it contained a treatise on the doctrines and observances of the Parsis; embodying the substance of what previous European writers had said, with such additional illustrations as the author has gathered from his own studies and observations in the East. However, we are in no mood for criticizing the production of such an accomplished missionary. We are glad to see in his pages what the modern disciples of a hoary religion have to say for themselves; and in what way they are met by the Christian advocate. a with the prejudices of a totally different system. It is hallowed by reverence for the true, the pure, the good, the eternal. It is itself a glowing proof of the majesty and the benevolence of our sublime and wonderful religion. It contains an admirable synopsis of the Christian evidences. It is a summary of revealed doctrines. We welThe volume is divided into eight chap- come it as a noble specimen of one departters. The first contains a review of the au- ment of the great work of Christian misthor's former discussions with the Parsis of sions. It closes with an earnest and intel India, and a notice of the late publications ligent appeal to the interesting people for in defence of the Zoroastrian faith. The whose special good it has been written. second chapter deals with the Parsi notions "Consider, I entreat you, this testimony of of the Godhead. The third is on the doc-which we are the bearers. Christianity comes betrine of the Two Principles. The fourth is fore you recommended by the judgment, as well on the Worship of the Elements, and Hea- as offered by the benevolence, of Britain, of Euvenly Bodies. The fifth is on the general rope, and of America. Imagine not that its high Polytheism of the Parsis. The sixth is and exclusive claims, and self-denying demands, review of the Historical, Doctrinal, and Ce- have been accepted without inquiry, without the most careful and profound investigation. Those remonial Discoveries and Institutes of the mighty minds, which have penetrated the innerVandidad, embracing an analysis of that most recesses of their own being; which have anawork. The seventh discusses the Parsi no-lyzed the most secret springs of human thought, tions of the Responsibility, Depravity, and and feeling, and action; which have so sagaciousGuilt of Man, and the means of his Salva- ly philosophized on the changes of society, and tion. The eighth disproves the alleged prophetical Mission of Zoroaster; and impugns the external authority of the books which the Parsis reckon the standard of their faith and practice. It were but little to say of such a work, that it displays a large acquaintance with those departments of Oriental philology and literature in which Dr. Wilson's position affords him such opportunity and inducement to excel; that he has spared no pains in collecting the testimonies and judgments of both ancient and modern writers, as well in European as in Asiatic languages; that he has brought the calm logic of a disciplined intellect to expose the ignorance and the contradictions of his opponents, and to hunt them out of every lurking place of sophistry and fallacy; that he makes a respectable show of metaphysical acumen and experience in dissecting the abstruse subtleties of the oriental philosophy; that he handles the entire controversy with exemplary candor and раtience, and with the manifest consciousness of the power of truth and argument:-it is little, we repeat, to say all this of such a work; it has higher qualities than even these. It breathes the spirit of the Christian gentleman and scholar. It is eminently devout. It indicates a peculiar mode of grasping the Christian faith, unknown to those who have never seen the way in which it is regarded by intelligent and polished men, whose education has filled their minds the advancement and decline of the nations of the earth; which have surveyed the whole face of the world on which we dwell, and the countless diversities of beings which inhabit its wide domains; which have dived into the recesses of the deep, and explored the caverns of the earth; and which have measured and weighed the masses of the worlds which roll in the heaven above, and observed and developed the laws which regulate which have engaged in all this research, and their mighty movements-these great minds, I say, achieved all these wonders, have not vainly and inconsiderately surrendered their faith to the religion of the Bible. No; they have considered and weighed its claims, before they had pronounced their judgment. Its authority has been established in their view, by irrefragable evidence. They acknowledge it to be the source of all cherish, and of all that national greatness and majesthe hopes of salvation which they are permitted to ty which you yourselves cannot but admire. The Bible, in the providence of God, comes before you with their united, their strong recommendation; and it becomes you seriously to entertain the question of its divine origin, to see whether or not it is fitted to allay the fears of your conscience, to satisfy your desires for happiness, and to confer upon you all the spiritual blessings of which you stand in need. There is such a thing as heavenly truth, and there is such an agent as the Spirit of Truth; and it becomes you to consider what homage and obedience you are prepared to render to them, while they address your fears and hopes, and offer to direct you to an abundant supply of all your such a transaction as judgment; and it becomes you to think of your preparation to encounter their solemnities, and to meet your doom. I could not resist the opportunity of giving you one word of necessities. There is such an hour as death, and We e ought to say, that the Appendix to this volume is exceedingly valuable. It contains a translation of the Zartusht-Námah-of which we shall have occasion to say something-by Lieut. E. B. Eastwick; a translation of an ancient Armenian work on the Two Principles, by Mr. Aviet Aganur, of the Armenian community in Bombay; a Comparison of the Zand with the Roman, Pahliví, Devanagari, and Gujarátí Alphabets; besides other miscellaneous affectionate warning, of inviting you to look to | Shem, the living rudiments and simple rites Him who now says to you-"Turn ye at my re- of the pure religion. Many ages after, proof; behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you, they still regarded with horror the use of I will make known my words unto you :" but who may afterwards address to you the sentence images or temples, as not worthy of the of condemnation, for mercies despised, and privi- Creator and Lord of all things. From leges abused, and deliverance rejected, and declare their records and traditions, we think it to you the loss, the eternal loss, of your own likely that, at a very early time, they looksouls."-pp. 473, 474. ed on the sun as the Shechinah of the Divine Presence, and on fire as an emanation from the sun, the most glorious and fitting emblem of the Invisible. With somewhat of the same reverence, they were fearful of defiling the air, the earth, or water, which, together with fire, they revered as the elements of all things, symbols of the Uncreated Purity, shadows, so to speak, of the Eternal. They reared their massive altars on the tops of mountains, and in rocky solitudes: there they kept alive the sacred fire. All light and good they ascribed to God; all darkness and evil to the Wicked One, who was created by God for the showing forth of his own power and glory. Their traditions of the creation of the world, the first state of man, the fall, the deluge, the expectation of a deliverer, and the last judgment, agreed in substance and outline with those which have been preserved by inspiration in the Hebrew Scriptures: filled up, indeed, and well-nigh superseded, by the bold and deeply symbolical creations of Asiatic genius, in widely extended provinces, and through a long tract of ages. matters. The reading of this book has thrown us back upon some old familiar haunts. We have been enticed to tread anew a path on which the footsteps are not many, nor the light indeed, very clear, yet one which has allurements for us, interested as we are in the early condition of the human family, especially the condition of its religion amid those regions where its founders wandered, through those dark times of which history has told so little, but which-like the aneient strata of the earth-have left their abiding chronicles to be studied by the plodding thought, and expounded by the slow deductions, that are to enlarge the science of the ages yet to come. The country which we call Persia, the land of the rose and of the nightingale, is, by the people that inhabit it, called Irán. Our word, Persia, is derived, through the Greeks, from Phars, the south-western province of that kingdom. Of this province, the capital, Istakhar, named by the Greeks Persepolis, was, in the old time, the metropolis of the empire. Its ruins may still be seen,-its terraces, columns, strange sculptures, mystic symbols, singular inscriptions, the monuments of men, and deeds, and systems, belonging to the morning time of what seems to us to be the ancient race of man. The modern capital of the same province is Shiraz, famed through the east for its wines, and dear to the Persian people as the burial-place of Hafiz, the sweetest of their poets. The ancient inhabitants of Persia, dwelling near the abodes of the primeval patriarchs, received from Elam, the son of The earliest corruption of the patriarchal church among the Pársís appears to have been that Tzabaism which, at a period too darkly remote to be well defined, we can trace, under one form, across the plains of Chaldæa, and over all the western boundaries of Asia; and, under another form, among the nations of the farthest east. So far as we can now understand this ancient system, it grafted on the patriarchal theism, and on the Oriental symbolism, the doctrine of created intelligences in different ranks and orders-including the deified heroes of our race-by whom the world was said to be governed. Some of these subordinate rulers were imagined to have their dwelling-places in the stars; and hence the astral influences, for good or for evil, which afterwards were reduced to calculation, and raised to the dignity of science and the sacredness of religion. Of these mysterious and distant intelligences, symbolic images were introduced. Now, whatever might be the secrets of philosophers and priests, the people of Chal dæa, of Arabia, of Persia, and of India, authority, man became the god of his browere assuredly, in the strictest sense, poly- ther-man. theists, for they worshipped many gods; We cannot proceed farther in this review and idolaters, for they bowed down to ima- without a glance at early Persian history. ges. To these Tzabeans there are frequent The oldest Persian legends tell us that the references in the book of Job; in the ad- Mahabad dynasty was the first monarchy monitions of the Hebrew legislator; and in in the world, centering in Assyria, and the sublime denunciations of later pro- reigning over Media and Persia. Between phets. Traces of the same perversion of an eight and nine hundred years before Christ, old and pure faith are found in the early the Medians revolted, and soon after, remains of all the nations on our globe. Khayomers, a Mede, laid the foundations There arose, in the growth of ages, with of the Persian independent empire in the a majesty and power peculiar to Persia, the province of Arzabaiján. The mountaineers institutions of the MAGI. Their origin and foresters of that country,-not unlike is greatly darkened by the distance of anti-the wild Arabs and Tahtars,-made hard quity. They were, as we believe, the fight against the march of civilization. thinkers, the reasoners; they were the men These were the Deevs, or dæmons of the who gained influence, not by the muscle, desert, which play so conspicuous a part in but by the intellect. They were men of the ballad poetry, and in the romantic stopower, because they were men of know-ries, in which the imaginative people of ledge, and because they had strength of those sunny climes have so much delight. purpose to use that knowledge. They were Hoshang, the grandson of Khayomers, a class, an organization, a hierarchy; they founded the Pishdadian race of Persian were philosophers; their philosophy was monarchs. The surname Pishdad, or lawtheir religion; they made their religion the giver, expressed the admiration which Horeligion of their fellow-men. They ex- shang gained by his improvements in husplored the secrets of nature; they became bandry, and by extending the empire souththe masters-the inventors, for the most wards to the border of the Indian Sea. part of occult sciences and curious arts. Hoshang's successor, Tahmurs, held soverThey abolished the worship of images; they eignty over the provinces of Irak (the kingretained the use of fire, as the only symbol doms of Babylon and Assyria). He introof Deity. They induced men to believe duced into Persia the sowing of rice, and that they had power over the unseen spirits the breeding of silk-worms. By subduing who were dreaded as the rulers of men's the barbarous nations around,-the giants destinies. They dazzled the uninitiated by or deers of the popular tales,-he obtained amazing proofs of knowledge, and by not the title of Deevband, or Tamer of the Daless amazing proofs of power. By such mons. Tahmur's nephew, Jemschid, sucmeans they made themselves essential to ceeded him. He completed the magnifithe kings, in the art of governing the igno- cent city of Istakhar, which his uncle had rant by superstition and fear. Under dif- begun. It was Jemschid that introduced ferent names, they covered, not Persia only, among the Persians the solar year. Probut Egypt, Arabia, and India. They bably at the same time, and in commemoragathered into their own hands all the sour- tion of such an epoch, he founded the ances of national influence,-medicine, poli- nual festival of Naurooz, still celebrated in tics, and religion: they gained the entire Persia, with great pomp and solemnity, at ascendant. They formed a strong, heredi- the beginning of every year. tary caste,—the healers of disease, the ex- This illustrious king was driven from his pounders of mystery, the counsellors of throne by Zoak, an Arabian usurper. The princes, the mediators between earth and usurper was defeated by Gao, a smith of heaven. undying memory in Persia. Feridoun, the There must have been some religious son of Jemschid, rewarded GAO with the truth in the system of the Magi, as con-government of the province of Irak, for life. trasted with that of the Tzabeans. But The leathern apron of the patriotic smith that truth was corrupted in their hands; was the banner around which he rallied his religion was turned into superstition; phi- victorious Persians. Feridoun adorned it losophy was lost in dogmatism; established with precious jewels; and it continued to belief set evidence at nought. For all the be guarded, with jealous reverence, for purposes of instruction, and all the uses of fourteen hundred years. After a long and happy reign, Feridoun retired from the the future greatness of her son. The inthrone, dividing his empire among his three fant, we are told, laughed in the first mosons. In the reign of Feridoun's grandson, ment after his birth, filling the attendant Ferdausi, the Persian Homer, places Rus- women with envy, striking the unclean with tan, the hero of innumerable Persian stories, fear, and exciting the Magi to plots for his whose name is perpetuated in mountain se- destruction. Duransárán, the chief among pulchres, as well as in histories and poems. the Magi, turned pale when he heard of the Feridoun's great-grandson, Noodhar, was birth of this wondrous child. He beheld slain by one of his father's brothers-Aphra- his face, like the early spring, beaming sian, king of Tourán, or eastern Scythia. with the glory of God. He drew forth his By Aphrasian, and his successors, the Per- dagger to stab the babe; but his hand was sians were long held in subjection, though dried up; and his heart was smitten with their own hereditary princes were allowed an agony like death. to bear the title without the power of kings. The last prince of this titled race was Garshasp. They were followed by the Kai-anian family. Of these, Khai-kaus (Darius the Mede) was the first; Khai-khosro (the Cyrus of Herodotus, and of the Scriptures), the second; Lohorasp, the third; and Gushtasp (supposed by the Greeks to be Darius, son of Hystaspes), the fourth. This monarch transferred the seat of empire from Balkh, in Khorasan, further west, to Istakhar (Persepolis), and thus became better known than his predecessor to the Greeks. Now it was in the reign of Gushtasp that ZARTUSHT, the great Persian reformer of the Magian religion, appeared. The accounts given by Europeans of this reformer are so various and even contradictory, that it is no easy matter to gather from them who he was, where he lived, and what he did and taught. Let us leave our European guides, then, and gather what tidings of him we may from the East. The account of him on which most reliance is placed by his followers, now in Asia, is a Persian work, entitled Zartusht-Námáh; by Zartusht Behrám, written A.D. 1277.* It will be readily seen that the long interval of nearly 1700 years between the alleged date of Zartusht's appearance, and the composition of this work, necessarily deprives it of all pretensions to authenticity in any historical controversy; but as a recognised document in the East, it must serve our present turn. According to this amusing, yet highly fabulous, Persian authority, Zartusht was a descendant of Feridoún, the great king of Persia. Before his birth, his mother was troubled by terrible dreams, which a Magian astrologer interpreted as foretelling * We are obliged, however, to say that this gentleman, according to his own acknowledgment, had prepared himself, by copious draughts of wine, for drawing up his account of the prophet. The troubled Magi then stole away the infant. They cast him into a blazing fire in the desert; next, they exposed him to the trampling of bulls, then of wild horses, and afterwards of hungry wolves in the narrow passes of the rocks; but from all these dangers he miraculously escaped. They tried to poison him, when he was sick, with enchanted drugs; but he poured the contents of the cup on the ground, rebuking and defying the sorcerer. He passed many years in retirement, performing numerous acts of bodily mortification, devotion, and charity. When he reached his thirtieth year, he crossed the sea with his companions-a feat which occupied a whole month. On the opposite side of the sea, he found countless numbers of the mighty men of Irán met for joy and mirth. When night had extinguished the lights of the world, Zartusht learned, in a dream, that he should go before God, who was about to reveal all secrets to him, and that, on his return to this dark world, he was to make manifest the True Faith, and clear the rose-tree of Truth from thorns; that the Deevs and the Magi would gird up their loins to fight like lions against him; but that the king would be converted, and that all the fiends and the Magi would flee before the reading of the Zand-ávástá, or revelation from heaven. When Zartusht returned from the feast of the mighty men, he drew near to the waters of Daéti. He passed downwards through four streams, one below the other, without fear. He was then conducted by the angel Báhmán, as with the speed of a bird, up a flight of four and twenty steps, through assemblies of heavenly spirits so bright that he saw his own shadow in their light, to the presence of God. In that Presence he stood, with a glad heart, but with a trembling body. God answered his questions, making known to him the revolutions of the heavens-the starry influences - the |