THEOLOGY-GENERAL VIEW.

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We may here observe how evil, which, for the individual conscience, is sin; for men in their social relations, crime; in regard to the body, disease; to the sentiment, vice and corruption; to the reason or intellect, error, mistake, deception, absurdity, insanity; in the eye of the mystic, diabolism; in general relations, disorder;―is, in the infantile periods of the human race, identified with its material causes, i. e. with the cold and dark season, which in blighting the abundance of the earth's spontaneous yield in the favored climes of Iran, Eren, or Eden, at once caused physical sufferings to the human race, and, through poverty, developed selfishness, the source of all social crimes and disorders as soon and as long as self-preservation and self-love are not fully conciliated, by a natural and social providence, with devotion and the love of the neighbor.

The early Magi saw all things concrete, at once material and spiritual; hence all their conceptions of nature and of life were personal and intense.

All was animate, acted by its specific force, and beings are specified by the character of their effects.

Light causes thee volution of bodies; fire their activity; water refreshes, by its nourishing moisture, those parts of matter which fire has dried.

The action of these three beings also extend to spiritual substances; there they produce effects which, in a discrete degree or higher sphere, are analogous to those already cited. The Zend books recognize in bodies no other defects than those which Ahriman has introduced. Material beings exempt from these defects are good in themselves, and their perfections, which come from a superior principle, must be found again in this principle; wherefore, Ormusd is called Body of Bodies.

The same is to be said of Boundless Time, which eminently possesses the qualities of Ormusd and those of his productions. The perfections of bodies belong also to this first agent, and they form, collectively, infinite space, the body of infinite time. The Zend books consider that souls and bodies are in perpetual commerce. All nature, spiritual and material, is connected with the Eternal, by this chain of beings, limited in different degrees, which have emanated from him.

ORMUSD.

RESULT OF THE MIXTURE OF FIRE AND WATER, IS AN ACTIVE, BENEFICENT, PRESERVING POWER.

ORMUSD is he who loves to be consulted, the father of the assemblage of beings, the all-powerful, the pure, the source of all good and prosperity, the sovereign intelligence and its communicator, the excellence and its giver, he who desires the good of men, the author of health, the destroyer of disease, the strong who never wearies, the heavenly guardian, the undeceivable. Ormusd is all, he is the now existing, the I am, he is the lustre, it is he who weighs actions, who sees and knows all. He is the king of abundance, full of prosperity, all facility, who communicates happiness profusely, the great king, the protector-finally, the being absorbed in excellence, just judge of the world which exists by his power.

He insists in this revelation to him, whom he charges to announce his law to the universe, especially on those properties which show his relation to all nature.

In short, Ormusd is the limited image of the Eternal, the centre and author of the perfections of created nature. Of Ahriman, Ormusd says to Zoroaster, that he is one, bad, impure, cursed, longkneed, as to his steps or extended power and productions; long-tongued, in regard to his insolence, and the evil counsel of his agents. He is nothing as to goodness; he lives through himself, or, as the words also admit of rendering, by permission or by the power of God; this Escheoneghehe, who is one bad, impure.

The modern Parsees consider Ahriman essentially bad, and incapable of changing.

All the works of Zoroaster are not now in the hands of his disciples; they have preserved only those of most popular character and which simply present the revolt of Ahriman against Ormusd. Higher spirits take delight in goodness for its own sake; but men, ruled by their senses, need another motive. The Parsee finds one in the thought that evil comes from Ahriman, the declared and perpetual

ORMUSD AND AHRIMAN.

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enemy of Ormusd, and they are to hate and shun it as the partisans of Ormusd. Such views may have influenced Zoroaster in regard to Ahriman, and Jesus in regard to Satan, in representing him only as the Father of Sin, and principle of all corruption, who mixes his productions with those of the good principle, as an enemy coming in the night and sowing tares amid the wheat. Some Parsees hold that Time is Ahriman, in regard to the wicked; and Ormusd, in regard to the good. Others, that he has created Ormusd and Ahriman, to vary the universe, by the mixture of good and evil. Others, that Ahriman was the first of the angels, and that he has been cursed for disobedience. Ormusd, in the Zend books, enters into conference with Ahriman, pursuading him to submit to his law, and to do good; but Ahriman resists his invitations. "This Dew who torments the world," says Ormusd, in the Vendidad, "when I took him and grappled with him, shook himself loose and became prouder; he will not do good, even should all his skin be pulled off, commencing at the girth. I have given him Hom well, prepared, miezd in abundance; despite which, he would not do good."

Ormusd must, then, have considered it possible to convert Ahriman, and to associate him in his ministry. Theopompus, in his expedition of the Magian System, says that Ahriman will in the latter days be forsaken. “ Τελος ϋ υπολείπεσθαι τον αδην.” Ahriman must then either be destroyed or converted. But the Magians sustain the indestructibility, as to substance, of all beings. The absolute triumph reserved for Ormusd would be inconsistent with the permanence of the author of evil, though conquered-composing a separate estate with those who belong or adhere to him, and disfiguring, by his corruption, the general regeneration by which the victory of Ormusd is to be followed. The Zend text is explicit on this subject. The Darand, immersed in crime, will not be annihilated. This conversion afterwards appears in these words: "If the Bull, first created, goes to heaven, nothing will be diminished from the earth; and when the end of the world shall come, the most wicked of the Darands will be pure, excellent, celestial. Yes, he shall be celestial; this liar, this villain, he will become celestial, holy, excellent-this cruel one. Respiring purity, he will publicly make a long sacrifice of praises to Ormusd."-Zend-avesta, vol. i. Part ii. p. 164 and 216.

Behold Ahriman converted-submitted to Ormusd-become his priest! He now goes to announce in the hells the law of the good principle.

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CONVERSION OF THE DEVIL.

This unjust, this impure, who is only the Dew in his thoughts, this benighted king of the Darvands who understands only evil; at the resurrection he will say the Avesta, executing the law of Ormusd! he will even establish it in the abodes of the Darvands.—Z. A., v. i. Part 2, p. 169.*

*These early intuitions of the human mind are found in full accordance with the deductions of our positive sciences, whilst they contrast very favorably with the confused statements of some great moderns who have entered the same sphere of intuitive theology.

In a late work of high value, published in New York, "On the true organization of the New Church," we regretted to see the following passages from Swedenborg quoted without animadversion-pages 66 and 67-on the relation between good and evil. "It is according to order, that in all cases, both general and particular, the beginning should proceed to its ultimate, which agreeableness to order is founded in this circumstance, that such a process gives birth and existence to all sorts of varieties, and by varieties to all sorts of qualities, for the qualities of things are produced and perfected by their differences in relation to what is more or less opposite. Who cannot see, for instance, that truth receives its quality from the existence of what is false, in like manner as goodness does from the existence of what is evil, or as light from the existence of darkness, or as heat from the existence of cold? What would become of color, supposing white only to exist without black? Must not the quality of intermediate colors on such a supposition necessarily be rendered very imperfect? So again, what is the perfection of sense without some kind of relation? and what is relation but as respecting opposites? Is not ocular vision beclouded and darkened by looking on white alone, and rendered clear and lively by looking on a color that inwardly takes some tint of blackness, as is the case of green? Is not the ear grated and deafened by the continual action of one tone upon its organs, and restored by modulation, diversified according to the different relations of harmonious and discordant notes? What is beauty without relation to ugliness? Wherefore it is common with painters, when they would exhibit a beautiful figure to the greatest advantage, to place a deformed one beside it.

"What are pleasure and delight without relation to what is unpleasant and undelightful? How hurtful is it to the mind to be constantly brooding over one idea without admitting a variety of such as have some opposite quality? The case is the same with respect to the spiritual things of the church, whose opposites have relation to what is evil and false, not that evil and false are from the Lord, but from man, who, being endowed with free will, may (is permitted to)? direct it either to good or evil purposes, and this may be illustrated by the case of darkness and cold, which come not from the Sun but are a consequence of the Earth's circumvolutions, whereby it successively turns its face from and toward the Sun; and yet without such successive turnings of the Earth there would neither be day nor year, and consequently neither animate nor inanimate creatures could exist on the Earth. I have been informed that churches

These texts, which are formal, have more weight than the Sadder Boun Dehesch, a Magian book, which says that Ahriman will cease to exist, and they are supported by the Boun Dehesch Pehlvi, which says that Ahriman, that lying adder, appears at the end of the ages purified by fire, that the darkness is no longer, that all becomes light

which are under the influence of different kinds of goodness and truth, supposing only that such kinds of goodness have respect to love towards the Lord, and that such kinds of truth have respect to faith towards him, are like so many precious stones in a king's crown."-(No. 763, True Christian Religion).—And this

"The conjunction of good and truth is provided for of the Lord by relation, for Good is not known as to its quality, but by relation to what is less good and by opposition to evil; all the perceptive and sensitive principle is thus derived, because their quality is thence, for thus all delight is perceived and felt from what is less delightful and by what is disagreeable, all beauty from what is less beautiful and by what is ugly; in like manner, all good which is of love from what is less good and by evil; and all truth which is of wisdom from what is less true and by what is false. There must be variety in everything from its greatest to its least; and when there is variety also in its opposite from its least to its greatest and equilibrium intercedes, then according to the degrees on both sides relation is established, and the perception and sensation of the thing either increases or is diminished. But it is also to be noted that what is opposite takes away and also exalts perceptions and sensations; it takes them away when it mixes itself, for which reason the Lord exquisitely separates Good from Evil, lest they should be mixed in man, as he separates Heaven and Hell."

According to this careless way of speaking (for I will not suppose that Swedenborg could be guilty of such blunders, except through carelessness of expression), the Devil should be the principal being in nature, and all things and qualities be measured by their relative distances from him.

The nature of difference and contrast, resulting from the difference in positive qualities, is confounded with oppositions, and with the effects of the absence of positive properties. The metaphysical error then pretends to support itself by a false physical analogy: darkness is the absence of light, and cold is the absence of heat, but it is absurd to say that light and heat receive their qualities from the existence of cold and darkness. They receive their qualities from the Sun, and from the specific relation existing between the Sun and the planetary surface which absorbs, reflects, and modifies them in the constitution of all natural creatures.

It is well known that the various colors result from the separation of the white or light ray into its component elements, some one or more of which each color exhibits, and black is merely the impression made on the eye, by surfaces which absorb instead of reflecting all other colors. The perception of our senses undoubtedly "depends on some kind of relation," but that relation is the specific adaptation between the surface of the object and the retina of the eye, not the relation between opposites, though the force of our percep