the king, must stand while he gave it on an ingot of gold -if his advice were found good, he was rewarded with the gold, if otherwise, he was publickly whipt. It seems strange, that if the laws of Persia were good, the government of Persia should be so bad-but this might arise from the absolute, uncontrouled power of their monarchs, who considered and treated even the noblest of their subjects as their most abject slaves. Whoever betrayed the least reluctance to execute the king's command, however difficult or improper, was sure to lose his head, or at least his right arm. Every one must prostrate himself at sight of him, at however great a distance he appeared, and none might come into his presence without a present, which is to this time a prevailing custom in the East. The king was himself supreme judge, and sat to hear causes and administer justice: when a man was tried for crime, his former deserts were considered, and he was not condemned, unless his misdeeds were found to exceed his good deeds on the whole. There were, besides the king, other judges, men skilled in the laws, and of unblemished character, who presided in the provinces, or attended on the king.

The religion of the Persians has been a subject of great interest-both from the difficulty of ascertaining exactly what it was, and from its being supposed to have continued unchanged through many thousand years, preserving the worship of one only God, while polytheism prevailed so extensively around them. The Persians boast of having received their faith from Abraham: if so, it became strangely corrupted. They continued, however, zealous worshippers of one all-wise and all-powerful God, whom they considered as infinite and omnipresent, and therefore would not suffer him to. be represented by graven images, or circumscribed within the narrow bounds of temples made with hands: this, and not a sacrilegious contempt for the gods of other countries, was the cause of the Persian armies destroying all the statues and places of worship among

the Greeks, as unworthy of the Deity. In the decline of the empire, the worship of Venus was introduced by one of their princes-but it was resisted by the Magi, who remained firm to the great article of faith, One God. The only appearance of idolatry among the Persians was the worship of the sun and of fire. It seems, however, very uncertain whether they ever did worship either, though they respected them as the symbols of the divinity. The sun they considered to be the throne of God, and turned towards it in their prayers—but it` does not seem certain that they ever prayed to it. Fire, before which they worshipped, they did not consider as a divinity, but as a symbol of divine purity-they prostrated themselves before it, and then, standing up, addressed their prayers to God. As the fire in the temple was held sacred among the Jews, the Persians might take from them this custom of praying before fire; which is the more likely, as the Jews used first to prostrate themselves before the altar, and then offer their petitions. The kings of Persia and other great persons were used sometimes to feed the sacred fires with precious oils and costly aromatics, called Fire dainties; but still it is asserted that all was done to the honour of their One God. However much it may be feared that, in the vulgar at least, these symbols would in time be mistaken for the actual object of their worship, it is certain that the religion of Persia was far different, and much nearer to the truth, than that of the nations around them.

The difficulty of tracing the religion of these people, arises from their having been always forbidden to teach their ancient language to strangers, or instruct them in their religion. They have sacred books which they attribute to Abraham-more likely composed by Zoroaster. Besides the one eternal Being, the Creator and Preserver of all things, the ancient Persians believed the existence of an evil spirit, whom they called Ahriman, the perpetual and implacable enemy of mankind. The souls of men, according to them, were at first unbodied spirits,

but the Almighty, resolving to make use of them in warring with Ahriman, clothed them with flesh, promising that the light should never forsake them till Ahriman and his servants were subdued; after which the resurrection of the dead is to follow, with the separation of light from darkness, and the coming of the kingdom of peace. Before this power was given to Ahriman, man, they say, lived in a state of innocence; but since his fall, war and other evils have been introduced; these shall in time pass away, and man live again in peace and glory. They place the day of judgment at the end of 20,000 years, when men are to be punished according to their crimes, two angels being appointed to direct their sufferings; but even these are to be pardoned, though never admitted to the joys of the blessed, remaining somewhere by themselves, and wearing a black mark on their foreheads, as a badge of the state from which divine mercy frees them. Before the time of Zoroaster, the Persians had no temples, but raised an altar in the open air: he persuaded them to build their fire-temples, where burned the sacred fire kept constantly alive by the priests, of whom they had always a regular succession. When the people assembled for devotion, the priest put on a white habit and a mitre, with a cloth passing before his mouth, that he might not breathe on the sacred element. Thus he read certain prayers from the book he held in one hand, speaking in a whisper, while in the other hand he held small twigs of a sacred tree, which, when the service was ended, he threw into the fire. All who were present, put up their prayers to God for such things as they stood in need of, and when prayers were finished, priest and people withdrew in silence, and profound respect.

Of Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the great Persian reformer, the author of their Liturgy and the compiler of their Bible, made up in great part from the Jewish Scriptures, it is impossible to discover the real history, though many fables might be related of him. The common

opinion of Persian writers is, that he was a Jew, or went early into Judea, where he received his education, and lived as servant to one of the prophets, whether Elias, Ezra, or Jeremiah, is disputed; neither is it better decided whether he was afterwards a prophet, a madman, or an impostor. He assumed the former character, feigning or believing himself inspired of God, and sent to teach true religion in the world. Certain it

is, that he retired for some time to a cave, and wrote a great many books, and afterwards appeared as a preacher and reformer of religion in Persia. As we have declined all fabulous or doubtful stories throughout our Sketch of History, we shall not attempt to give the life of Zoroaster. The books he presented, he declared to have received from Abraham. He carefully instructed those who heard him; teaching them that the Supreme Being was independent and self-existent from all eternity—that light and darkness, good and evil, were continually, mixed, and in continual struggle-not through any weakness in the Creator, but because such was his will, and because this discordance was for his glory-that in the end there would be a general resurrection and day of retribution, wherein such as had done well, and lived in obedience to God's law, should go with the angel of light into a realm of light, where they should enjoy peace and pleasure for evermore; and those who had done evil should suffer with the angel of darkness everlasting punishment in a land of obscurity, where no ray of light or mercy should ever visit them-that thenceforward light and darkness should be incapable of mixture to all eternity. He carefully instructed those who heard him, and directed them to instruct all who would believe in his religion, that no man ought to despair of the mercy of God, or suppose that it was too late for him to amend. He declared that though we have a faculty of distinguishing between good and evil, yet man has no conception of the value which God sets upon our actions, nor how far the intention may sanctify even a trivial act; wherefore even the

worst of men may hope the divine favour from repentance and good works; this doctrine is exemplified in the Sadder, or holy books, by the following parable: "It is reported of Zerdusht, the author of our religion, that one day, retiring from the presence of God, he beheld the body of a man plunged in Gehenna, his right foot only being free, and sticking without. Zerdusht thereupon cried out to this man in this condition? He was answered, "This man, whom you see in this condition, was formerly the prince of thirty-three cities, over which he reigned many years, without doing any one good action; for besides oppression, injustice, pride, and violence, nothing ever entered his mind; and though he was the scourge of multitudes, yet without regarding their misery, he lived at ease in his palace. One day, however, as he was hunting, he beheld a sheep caught by the foot in a thicket, and thereby held at such a distance from food, that it must have perished; thus the king, moved at the sight, alighting from his horse, released the sheep from the thicket, and led it to the pasture: now for this act of tenderness and compassion, his foot remains out of Gehenna, though his whole body be plunged therein for the multitude of his sins. Endeavour therefore to do all the good thou canst without fear or apprehension; for God is benign and merciful, and will reward even the smallest good thou doest. Such were the doctrines of Zoroaster. As to exterior rites, he altered the old method of burning fire on the tops of mountains, and other places in the open air, engaging his followers to erect Pyræa, or fire-temples, through all the dominions of Persia, that this symbol of the divinity might not be so liable to be extinguished. He gave them also a liturgy, which they hold to have been brought to him from heaven, and therefore refuse to make any alterations in it, though the language in which it is written is long ago obsolete, and is very little understood by the priests themselves. The priests, or, as we stile them, the Magi, were of three ranks.