knowledge, the universe as matter regulated by fixed discoverable laws, and the ministry of material uses, such as social wants, bread, freedom from oppressive toil, as the final causes of science. But the idealist affirms that the spiritual and material import of a fact are the reverse and obverse sides of the same; that nature is symbolic as well as servile, and her facts are significant of beauty and goodness as well as of utility. He sees an intellect through the geometry of the heavens, in the harmony of chemical proportion; a supernatural ordainer in the order in the universe; a moral governor in the moral, social, and individual compensations; a divine goodness and beauty in the abundant blessings and profuse beauty of the world. Flowers reduced to their ultimate classification so as to exhibit their relation to soil and climate, and the connection between root, stem, and flower for an instructive lesson; but when, from the idealist point of view, the great teacher teaches the goodness of the Creator and the loveliness and certitude of human trust, who does not see that it is a lesson of nature transcending that of simple empiricism?

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass . . . shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?" etc. The words wherefore and therefore emphasize this didactic use of nature. The whole passage is one of the finest instances we know of, illustrating how the insight of the reason is a minister to the devotional, trustful feelings of the soul, and leads to a serene faith which men ever require unless they have done violence to some of the noblest aspirations of our common nature. He has firmest hold of the feelings and thoughts of the world who is a minister of the ideal and the real in common. The Mystics even are a useful class, serving higher uses than grinding corn or grading railroads, inasmuch as they give to facts and principles, which the empiricist has exhausted and left, the higher aesthetic charm, the poetic uses and moral significance, which alone will prevent this wonderful, complicated universe from appearing as a mere congeries of material forms, as a piece of godless mechanism.

Where physical nature ends Humboldt pauses. A laborious life of near a century and no rise to the higher planes of thought, no answer to the demands of a first philosophy, no heed to the immortal longings of the soul. We still wait for the Christian philosopher, the true expounder of a universe which discloses "premeditation prior to the act of creation," and which, as it contains the thoughts

of the Deity, must yield to man, created in his image, lessons of life suited to an heir of immortality.

We said that the contest between faith and science was waning. It is even so. But this has been brought about by reconciling the two, not by the triumph of one over the other. It must be the same henceforth. We have no fears of the results of any scientific investigations. All scientific truths may be wrought into the experience of a perfect life, of a life that is rounded out according to God's ultimate idea of manhood. The astronomer will resolve nebula, weigh worlds, and bring the starry hosts within the domain of mechanics, without regard to Scripture statements. So let him work. The geologist will examine the great stone book, and translate therefrom the records of extinct organisms, and bring to light relics and memorials and forms of bygone ages, without regard to the book of Genesis. So let him work. The chemist will analyze and recombine matter with no eye for proofs of anything outside of his sphere of labor. So let him work. The ethnologist will study the varieties of the race in the forms of the skull and facial angles, in their anatomy, color, and hair, without regard to the Scripture doctrine of the unity of the race. A Layard exhumes Nineveh without seeking to confirm Jewish history. So let them work. For in the end all the lines of separate inquiry will ray inward to the same center, will establish, explain, or illustrate Bible truths. We think the duty of the clergy as the spiritual guides of men is clear: it is to welcome the truths of science in the spirit of a genial recognition of the laborers in science, as co-workers with them to the same end, namely, the glory of the Creator and the wellbeing of the creature. For it is in nature that we trace the fresh footprints of the Deity; in nature, fluent or solid, hide his precious thoughts, and man is the interpreter of the same. The times have changed and we must change with them. About Arius and Athanasius, primitive Millenarianism and Monasticism, it is well to study in connection with Christian doctrines; but the preacher of to-day should no less con well the lessons of the telescope, the microscope, the blowpipe, and the crucible, for just here are now some of the most gifted intellects of our race working with an enthusiasm and a reward unknown before. Here too lies the conflict with the infidel tendencies of the age. The smoke of the old metaphysical battles has well-nigh rolled away. of the geologist's hammer that recently summoned to a contest on another field, that of the physical sciences. Yet even here the oneness of nature and revelation will be so shown as to increase man's confidence in the power, wisdom, and goodness of a God who is One. The physical sciences are radiant with promises of good cheer to man.

It was the ring

ART. VI.-THE PARSEES.

The Parsees, their History, Manners, Customs, and Religion. By DoSABHOY FRAMJEE. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1858.

Parsisme. By M. MICHEL NICOLAS. Revue Germanique.

Mazdeisme. By M. HAUG. Two articles in Revue Cotemporaine.

THOUGH few in number, the Parsees possess an interest for the Christian scholar surpassing that of any Oriental nation except the chosen people of God. Under the various names of Magians, Guebres, Gebirs, and Parsees, they have maintained a distinct national existence, a peculiar national creed, and a system of religious worship, varying in a marked degree from the nations by which they were surrounded, from a period prior to the birth of Abraham to the present day.

They are not, and never have been, as a people, idolaters. No idols have ever defiled their temples, no sacrifices have ever stained their altars. They have been stigmatized for ages as fire-worshipers, but they have always indignantly repudiated the charge, and we believe with truth, except, perhaps, in the case of the most ignorant among them. They preserve indeed what they call the sacred fire in their temples, but so did the Jews. They offer no sacrifices to it, but burn incense lighted from it in their temples. Their own account of this worship is, that they regard fire and the sun as special symbols, by which Ormuzd, the supreme being, manifests his good-will and beneficence toward men, and hence they are to be regarded as sacred, but not to be considered as objects of worship, or to be addressed as existences. As a people, the Parsees have been acknowledged, even by their enemies, in all ages, to be virtuous, chaste, brave, regardful of the rights of others, and eminently good citizens.

A people who have thus maintained their integrity for four thousand years have a claim to be better known and understood by Christian nations; and it is with a satisfaction in which we are certain our readers will participate, that we present a brief sketch of their history, their religious views, and their present condition, drawn from recent works published by themselves, and from the testimony of those who have long resided among them, and whose eminent scholarship, not less than their thorough familiarity with the Parsee customs and worship, qualifies them to be competent witnesses on the subject.

The descendants of Shem who settled in Persia and Media seem

to have retained, with less admixture of error than other nations, the traditions which, through the patriarch Noah, had been preserved of the Supreme Being who had placed our first parents in Eden, and of the tempter whose machinations drove them thence. These traditions were carefully preserved by a class called MAGI, or wise men, who, though not officiating in all cases as priests, yet possessed, by common consent, an authority analogous to that of the priests of other nations. For some centuries these wise men maintained the primal traditions nearly or quite in their original purity, and through their high reputation as the guardians of the antediluvian traditions exerted a powerful influence on the adjacent nations. Long ages after the sensual inhabitants of the plain of Shinar had reared altars and offered human sacrifices to deities which personated their greed, their violence, and their lust, the grave sages of Iran adored only the holy and all-powerful Ormuzd, who made his sun to rise alike upon the evil and the good. But human nature is corrupt and prone to fall, and the time came when the Persian sages lapsed from the purity of their worship, and though perhaps never falling into absolute idolatry, yet dealt in incantations and talismans against the powers of evil, and probably even sought by some homage to avert the wrath of Ahriman, whom by this time they had exalted into a being of malignant nature, and of almost equal power with Ormuzd. Ages passed on, and the pure faith of the early Magi seemed destined to fade from the memory of the inhabitants of Iran; but at length a reformer arose, Zurtosht or Zartusht by name, (the Zoroaster of the Greeks,) and sought to restore the purity of the early Persian worship. The period of Zurtosht's career is not satisfactorily settled. Some have supposed that there were several of the name, and that the acts of these had all been attributed to one. This theory took its rise from the supposed fact that the last of the name, the Zoroaster of the Greeks, was cotemporary with Darius Hystaspes, who ascended the throne B. C. 521. This idea gained plausibility from the apparent coincidence of the name of Gushtasp (the monarch often spoken of in the fragments of Zurtosht's books still extant) with Darius's surname of Hystaspes. So strong a proof of their identity did this seem that many of the Parsees of India, whose traditions were broken by their exile, and who possess but fragments of the sacred books, had adopted it. Recent explorations in Media, however, have brought to light inscriptions and tablets which materially conflict with this view, and indicate that the Gushtasp of the Zend- Avasta was, as the internal evidence of the work itself would seem to demonstrate, a monarch of much earlier date. The portions of the Zend- Avasta

now extant are addressed to a pastoral and agricultural people, not highly civilized, and not congregated in large towns; yet, for some centuries prior to the time of Darius Hystaspes, a large portion of the Persian population had been dwellers in cities, and they were among the foremost nations of the East in civilization and refinement. For these and other reasons M. Nicolas, whose article on this subject in the Revue Germanique gives evidence of profound. research, is inclined to place the advent of Zurtosht 1100 years earlier, or about 1600 B. C., thus making him a cotemporary of Moses.

Zurtosht was born, according to the Persian traditions, at Rai or Raghai, in Media. His father's name was Poroshusp, and his mother's Doghdo or Daghda. An angel, it is stated by his biographers, with the true Oriental love for the supernatural, presented to Poroshusp a glass of wine, and the conception of Zurtosht followed. At his birth the counselors of the governor of the province, jealous of the honor conferred on Poroshusp by the angel, prompted their master to destroy the child, but the efforts made for this purpose failed. During the childhood of the future reformer these same malignant counselors sought his destruction many times. Once he was cast into a blazing fire, but escaped unscathed; once he was exposed in a narrow passage to be trampled to death by a herd of half-wild oxen, but they carefully turned aside; repeatedly was he thrown in the way of wolves and other wild beasts of the forest, but always was preserved from their fury.

On attaining his thirtieth year he left his native town and came with his family to the Persian capital. Here for ten years he remained in seclusion and devoted himself to the study of the earliest traditions of the Magi, and to the effort to comprehend as fully as mortal might the character and will of Ormuzd. At the expiration of this period he presented himself at the court of Gushtasp, bearing in one hand the sacred fire, and in the other a cypress twig, and demanded audience of the monarch. When the king inquired who he was and why he came thus before him, Zurtosht announced himself as the prophet of Ormuzd, who had been sent to teach him and his people the path of truth, virtue, and piety. Gushtasp and his courtiers at first ridiculed and persecuted the prophet, but the miracles he wrought convinced them, and ere long the monarch gave the weight of his influence in favor of the reformed religion, and two of his highest officers, Furshorter, his prime minister, and Jamosp, the wisest of his counselors, became its most active propagandists.

His doctrines thus received, Zurtosht desired to perpetuate them.