Topic: Life and teachings of Zoroaster, 1905, and where the Jews annexed it from

[Prometheus]

§ 2. Another legend even more marvelous is that while
the Prophet was making one of his many pilgrimages
through the country, teaching wherever he could get a
hearing, he met two unbelieving princes, whom he be-
sought to embrace the faith. They sneered at his en-
treaty, and scoffed at his religion. Thereupon he prayed
to Ormazd, and directly a great wind began to roar
 TWO SCOFFERS PUNISHED

145

around them, which snatched the scoffers up into the air
and held them there until the birds picked out their eyes
and tore the flesh from their bones. When the bones had
fallen to the earth the Seer admonished the wondering
and terrified people that such was the fate of all who
scoffed at the good religion of Mazda. Probably the
writer of Second Kings, chapter second, had heard of the
two scoffing princes and their fate when he wrote the
story about the forty-two children down there near Bethel
who scoffed at Elisha and said:   “Go up thou Bald-

Head.” Elisha “turned back and cursed them in the name
of the Lord”; and “there came forth two she bears, out
of the wood, and tore forty and two children of them.”
This difference must, however, be noticed: The children,
the text says, were “little”. Like all other “little” children,
they were no doubt thoughtless, and merely to say to him,
“Go up thou bald-head” was no sufficient provocation for
Elisha to curse them, and get the she bears to “tear
them.” This story, if true, makes Elisha a wretch, and
if Zoroaster prayed Ormazd for the whirlwind to suspend
the two princes in the air while the birds devoured them
he must be placed in the same category.1

1   I have tried to find some reason for the children’s con-
duct, and can only give this: Elijah had just “gone up”,
and probably the children had heard of “the chariot of
fire” and the “horses of fire”, and they wanted to see
another pyrotechnic display. They told Elisha to “go up.”
They simply wanted to see the strange performance, and
got killed for their curiosity. The story of the two scof-
fing princes is a legend. I do not set it down as a fact.
But this Elisha matter is in our Bible, and it is set down
as a solemn truth. But there are some improbable things
 146

HEALING THE BLIND

A story is told of the Iranian healing a blind man. But
he did not merely say, “Receive thy sight”. * 2 He told his
friends to squeeze the juice of a certain plant (which he
named) into the man’s eyes and his vision would come
back to him. This they did, and behold the man was soon
rejoicing in a restored sight.

Tacitus relates that the Emperor Vespasian, while in
Judah healed a blind man, but he first ordered his physi-
cians to examine whether the eye-balls were totally de-
stroyed. Finding them dreadfully diseased, but not en-
tirely ruined, he ordered remedies, which fortunately
proved successful.3

§ 3. If we follow the Dinkard 4 we make the Iranian
Seer not only the founder of a new religion, but in addi-
tion, we elevate him to the highest eminence in medical
attainments. The Dinkard writers are, however, much
like those of the Old and New Testament; they are given
to great exaggerations, and delight in the marvelous.

The Prophets in both books 5 were gifted with power to

about it. How did the writer know they were she bears ?
Who told him ? They were evidently wild bears, for they
came out of the wood. Let, now, the best man in the
world get forty-two little children torn by bears, or any
other animal, he would swing for it. Prophet, or no
prophet, Elisha ought to have been punished.

2   Jesus said to a blind man: “Receive thy sight, thy
faith hath saved thee.” Luke, ch. 18, v. 42.

3   Vespasian was born nine or ten years after Jesus, and
his cure was about thirty years after the occurrence men-
tioned in Luke, ch. 18. Royalty, and noted persons, at
that period were believed to possess preternatural gifts.

4   Dk. 7, Vol. 47, ch. 5, § 8, S. B. E.

5   The Bible and Dinkard.
 THE ORIGINAL DIVES AND LAZARUS STORY 147

vanquish demons, and sorcerers, and witches; to cure dis-
eases, and call down rain, or declare a drouth.6 Moses
could stretch forth his hand, and lo! the locusts would
swarm upon Egypt; and the Dinkard says Zoroaster pos-
sessed the same preternatural power. Moses could bring
upon Egypt murrain, and flies, and hail, and snakes ;7 and
Zoroaster could banish pestilence and drive away wolves,
and spiders, and noxious creatures. He could shake the
rain from reluctant clouds to moisten the earth. Similar
parallels between Zoroaster and many others of the Jew-
ish prophets might also be made. Isaiah had a vision in
which he saw his people, a sinful nation, bringing vain
oblations, Jerusalem ruined, and Judah fallen, hell en-
larged, and the multitude gone astray.

Jeremiah beheld in a vision his people swallowed up in
trouble, “and his lamentations” are full of tears. Ezekiel
also wailed for his people, and Solomon found the “grass-
hopper to be a burden.” 8 Zoroaster likewise had a vision
in which he saw the fearful ebb-tide of his religion. Not
only that, but (after the manner of Dives and Lazarus)
he caught a glimpse of the other world. There he saw
a celebrity, whose life had been infamous, his soul was
jaundiced and in hell; in Mazda’s blessed realm a beggar’s
soul was thriving in Paradise. He beheld evil overshad-
owing his land; myriads of demons, with disheveled hair,
rushing into his country to burn and destroy. Regard for

6   Elijah, the Tishbite, gave Ahab a terrible drouth. He
controlled the rain clouds for three years. 1st Kings, ch.
i, v. 17.

7   Exodus, ch. 9 and 10.

8   Eccle. 12, 7.
 148

ZOROASTER'S SEVEN-DAY VISION

the soul had died out; the sun was spotted, and the earth
barren. Vegetation, trees and shrubs were shriveled.
Well might he exclaim, “O, Iran! return unto Mazda, thy
God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity/’ 9 But “the
wolf period,” with covetousness, want, hatred, wrath, lust,
envy, and wickedness,10 11 passes away, and the glory of
the religion of Mazda comes again with the Millennium
of Hushedar. For seven days and nights this panoramic
view, in which Zoroaster saw all the regions of the earth,
floated past the astonished vision of the Seer. “I have
seen all this, in a pleasant dream,” he said, and “I am not
surfeited.” 11 We are told in Genesis, chapter 28, that
Jacob also had a dream, and he saw a ladder reaching
up to heaven, and the angels of God were climbing up
and down it, and the Lord himself was standing above it.
Genesis 28; 12.

§ 4. It should be mentioned, in addition to the above,
that in chapter seven, of the Gospel of the Infancy of
Jesus, it is there stated that Zoroaster had a vision of
the wise men, coming from the East to Jerusalem, with
offerings of gold, etc., to the Saviour, and that he prophe-
sied the coming of Jesus.12

Prophets, both in the Jewish and in the Iranian religion,
are said to have held frequent conferences with the Al-
mighty. In fact, those two religions are the only ones
where the Lord takes supreme command, and directs the

9   Hosea, ch. 14, v. 1.

10   Bahman Yast, ch. 3, § 40.

11   Bam Yt., § 9.

12   I ought, after all these sayings about visions and
prophets, to state that I have very serious doubts whether
any man, at any period of the world, could forecast the
 ZOROASTER AND MOSES

149

battle against Satan. In nearly every chapter of the
Pentateuch it is, “The Lord said unto Moses/’ or Abra-
ham, or somebody; and in the older Avesta, “The Boun-
tiful One (the Lord) told me (Zoroaster) the best word
for mortals,” etc.* 13 And in the later Avesta and the
Vendidad, Mazda (the Lord), on request, talks to Zoro-
aster and directs him from day to day. Still the Lord is
rather partial to Moses, for he directs him without any
request whatever.

Moses could stretch forth his arm toward heaven and
call down “thick darkness in all the land,” so dark that
people could not see one another for three days.14 The
Lord further honored Moses, for he not only attended his
obsequies, but absolutely acted as his undertaker.15 But
he did not put up a tombstone, for “no man knoweth
his sepulchre unto this day.” As an offset to this, the
Lord sent his angel, Vohu-Mano, and piloted Zoroaster
up to heaven, for a special conference, where the bril-
liancy was so great that he could not see his own
shadow.16

§ 5. As marvelous as these things appear, more won-

future for any great length of time, and then not in a
vision. A clear-headed man might, on a given state of
facts, say as to a battle, or a storm, or a drouth, judge
something of the immediate future; possibly, matters con-
cerning a nation, he might predict that in a few years,
matters would be so-and-so. Possibly he might guess
correctly on ten or twenty years.

13   Yas. 45, §§ 3 to 8, Vol. 31, S. B. E.

14   Exodus 10; 22 and 23.

15   Deuteronomy, ch. 34.

16   Zad Spar., ch. 21, § 14, Vol. 47, S. B. E.
 150

THE JOSHUA FABLE

drous things are told of Joshua.17 He was battling the
Amorites, down there at Gibeon, and had chased them up
beyond Beth-horon, with great slaughter, and the day
was waning. So he said: “Sun, stand thou still, and thou
moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” And the sun stood still,
and the moon stayed until the Jews had avenged them-
selves upon their enemies. So the sun stood still in the
midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole
day.” All this, so that Joshua, and those idol-worship-
ping Hebrews, could “avenge themselves upon their ene-
mies.”

Now, the sun has eight primary planets, which circle
round him. Some of them are one thousand times larger
than our little earth. There are eighty-five asteroids, be-
sides numerous comets and moons. We know that the
sun is rushing through space at the rate of about one mil-
lion miles per day, in the direction of the Northern con-
stellation, and was going in that direction when Joshua
was down there slaying the Amorites. And the sun was,
then, as now, carrying Mercury and Venus, Earth and
Mars, the asteroids and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Nep-
tune along with him. The sun is six hundred times
greater than all of his satellites combined, and he is mov-
ing around a center so vast that it takes him about eight-
een millions of years to complete his circuit. Yet Joshua,
so the record says, halted this whole vast, wonderful con-
stellation; so that he might murder some Amorites. He

17   Joshua, ch. io, v. 12 to 14. The writer of Joshua
believed the Earth to be stationary, and that the sun was
the Earth’s satellite. He would not have made that mis-
take in 1902. He would have been differently inspired.
 HUSH EDAR TO SURPASS JOSHUA

151

not only compelled our sun to stand still (if the record
be true), but the puny word of that robber chief, either
halted all the millions of worlds about us, at the same
time, or threw them out of balance and into confusion.
Which was it ? What a fortunate thing for the corn, the
barley, and the oats, that he compelled the sun to stand
still, only one day.

We have mentioned, elsewhere, about the three unborn
sons of Zoroaster1S who are to be born of virgins, at dif-
ferent periods of the world, and thus finally to bring
about its renovation and the millennium. The first of
these sons, Hushedar, when be becomes thirty years of
age, is to have a conference with the Lord, and when he
comes away from that meeting he will be endowed with
such infinite power that he will cry to the sun, “Stand
still!” and the sun will stand still ten days and nights.
This miracle is to prove his divine mission, so that the
people will fully believe in the good religion of Mazda.
Night settles down upon the earth, and Mithra, the Lord
of Wide Pastures, cries out: “O, Hushedar! restorer of
the Good Religion! cry to the sun thus:   ‘Move on/

for the world in all its zones, is dark.” 18 19 Hushedar orders
the sun to “move on”, and the sun obeys, and all man-
kind believe in the good religion.

Observe that the sun is not made to stand still, and
thus prolong the time for slaughtering mankind, as with
Joshua. The Persian fiction was written to give consola-
tion to those people in the dark days of their faith. But

18   See note at end of Third Chapter.

19   Bahman Yt., ch. 3, §§ 46 and 48.
 152

A PROPHESY NOT FULFILLED

the prophecy hath never yet been fulfilled; for Hushedar,
in his coming, is many centuries behind time. Possibly
the Virgin who is to give birth to him hath not yet her-
self been born. Evidently there is a miscarriage some-
where here, for I must assume that the Persian was fully
as much inspired as the writer of the Joshua fiction.
These things are mentioned here only to emphasize the
extent to which ignorant credulity will go. For the
Jews still believe in Joshua, and the remnant of Zoroas-
ter’s followers are still waiting for Hushedar to come.
 CHAPTER XVII.

SACRIFICES. THE HOLY FIRES. THE TEST AT THE BRIDGE.
HELL OF THE JEWS AND IRANIANS. THE MARVELOUS
IN ALL RELIGIONS.

§ i. Mankind, as far back as our records go (and we
now have printed books1 at least nine thousand years
old) has been a worshipper of God, and “of strange
Gods." He has worshipped the sun, the moon, the stars,
the clouds. These Gods he could see, and they were the
best Gods that he knew. Different nations have wor-
shipped different Gods. Egypt was given to animal wor-
ship, and particularly to Apis, the sacred bull. The wor-
ship of this animal was carried to such a pitch that when
the bull died he was laid away with great solemnity in a
costly sarcophagus, hewn into solid granite. The He-
brews worshipped a Golden Calf, and the struggle of
Moses and the prophets was to teach them to serve the
true God.

When destroying winds and furious storms burst upon
early man he supposed the Gods were angry, and he
poured libations and offered sacrifices to appease them.

1   Nippur, a city much older than Babylon, has discov-
ered to the world printed records three thousand years
beyond Genesis. And Babylon had stamped brick, and
a library nine or ten thousand years ago. Let us not
falter, even if we find that the worm and the lizard are
our distant relatives.

153
 154

VISTASPA SACRIFICES ANIMALS

Lambs and goats were slain and laid upon bloody altars
to appease them. But the Egyptians forbade the use of
swine as an offering. The Hebrews, during their long
bondage there, copied this and carried it with them,
hence their hatred of swine to this day.

Sometimes these bloody sacrifices reached so far that
children were burned to honor an offended Deity. The
Jews carried this matter to such an extent “that they Sac-
rificed unto devils.”2 God was supposed to be more
highly pleased with the “firstlings of the flock” than with
the fruits of the field.3 And the priests wrote it down
that none must appear before the Lord empty handed.4
This matter of blood sacrifice went to great extremes.
Solomon, at the dedication of his temple, as we have
mentioned, sacrificed vast numbers of sheep and oxen.5

The later Avesta tells us that Vistaspa offered up one
hundred horses, one thousand oxen, and ten thousand
lambs to propitiate the Goddess of Waters, and obtain
victories over the worshippers of Daevas. But nowhere
in the older Avesta is there any mention that Zoroaster
offered any sacrifice whatever. He tells his people that
his doctrines are new, and “till now unheard.”

They are doctrinal vows which will deliver the people
from the harmful Lie, and save them to righteousness.6

2   Deut. 32; 17.

3   Gen. 4; 4 and 5.

4   Exodus 23 ; 15.

[Prometheus]

5   Was second Chronicles written after Aban Yast? If
so, it explains why Solomon sacrificed so many more
animals than Vistaspa. 2d Chronicles, 7.

6   Yas. 31, 1.
 ZOROASTRIANS NOT FIRE-WORSHIPPERS 155

§ 2. There have been those who claim that one of the
deities which Zoroaster and his followers worshipped
was Fire. And the Persians have, in many books, been
called “Fire-Worshippers.” So great a Zoroastrian
scholar as Max Muller says:   “In many parts of the

Avesta fire is spoken of with great reverence, but those
who speak of the Zoroastrians as fire worshippers should
know that the true followers of Zoroaster abhor that
very name.”7

Zoroaster himself says: “Fire is an offering of praise.” 8
Again, he says: “Thy fire’s flame is strong to the Holy
Order”. The truth about this matter is that fire was^
used as a personified Symbol of Divine Power. Bread
and wine in the Eucharist, are symbols of the body and
blood of Jesus; but his followers do not worship the
symbols, neither did the Parsis worship the symbol. Did
Moses, when he stood before the flaming Altar, worship
the flame? Nay, verily. Nor did the Parsis worship the
fires as Holy Beings.

Now, the “Lord’s fire is in Zion,” 9 but the devout soul
will neither worship the fire nor Zion, but the Lord only.

The strongest utterance on this matter is found in the
Avesta10 in the words of Zoroaster himself: “We pray
for Thy Fire, O, Ahura! strong through righteousness;
swift and powerful, in many wonderful ways, to the
house, with joy, receiving it”.

7   Max Muller, in his preface to the Upanishads, Vol. i,
Part i, P. XXII.

8   Yas. 43, § 9.

9   Isaiah 31; 9.

10   Avesta, ch. 34, § 4.
 156 THE COURT EMBRACES THE NEW FAITH

Now, while it is true that they had their sacred fires,
and an angel of fire (Burzim-Mitro), they neither wor-
shipped the fires nor the angel. Vistaspa, after his con-
version, established a sacred fire on Mount Revand;11
but there is no record anywhere that he worshipped it.
To charge the Parsis with worshipping fire is to charge
them with bowing to idols made by their own hands.

§ 3. The Zoroastrian creed was, meanwhile, gaining
ground. Just how fast it is impossible to tell. But after
Vistaspa’s conversion, he (Vistaspa) began to use force,
and it is said he killed some of his subjects because they
would not accept the creed. Gamaspa, the prime minis-
ter, and FrashoStra, his brother, and Zarir, the king’s
brother, and Hutaosa, the king’s wife, and, in fact, the
whole court, having accepted the new religion, the people
began to fall in line with considerable alacrity. It is
always so, the morals or religion of a court is like a dis-
ease, infectious. The people in those ignorant times
thought they could not be far wrong if they followed the
king and his court. Even some of the Turanians became
converted; and Yasna, forty-six, mentions Fryana, a pow-
erful border tribe, who accepted the new faith. These,
and all others who will cause the settlements to thrive in
goodness and piety, the Seer declares, shall, when they ap-
proach the Judge’s Bridge 11 12 not miss their path and fall,
but shall dwell with Ahura through joyful deliverance.

11   This mountain is supposed to be in Khorassan, about
Lat. 37, Lon. 57, and about 250 miles east of southern
extremity of the Caspian.

12   Kinvad Bridge. See ch. 10, § 1.
 IS HEAVEN AND HELL MENTAL STATES 157

And again is repeated the warning, that the conscience of
the wicked, smitten with remorse, shall then confront him
and cause him to fall into the abyss.

This frequently bringing to our notice the crucial test
at the Bridge is a matter for thoughtful consideration:
The righteous, meeting an approving conscience, which
gives him gracious welcome and an assurance of safe
passage to the land of the leal. The wicked, confronted
and convicted, by his burned and seared conscience, sees
the awful chasm yawning to swallow him up. Is not
this doctrine of meeting one’s conscience at the Bridge
simply the doctrine that the mind is not only its own
accuser, but that it administers its own chastisement?
How can there be any other than a mental heaven and a
mental hell? If there be, somewhere, in this mighty
Universe two such places as heaven and hell, is it not the
mind that rejoices in one and suffers in the other? The
body does not go to the Bridge, it rots in the grave. The
worms eat it, or the flames, or waves destroy it. And, if
it be true, as stated in second Peter, chapter 3, that the
elements will melt with fervent heat, and the earth and
the works therein, be burned up, then all bodies will be
so thoroughly incinerated that hell itself can burn them
no more.

But I am told the dead will be resurrected. Will they
be resurrected before the earth and its works therein are
burned? For if resurrected before the earth is burned,
then it will be rather a warm time for the righteous as
well as the wicked. If resurrected after the earth is
burned up, those poor resurrected bodies will be worse
off than Noah’s dove; for there will not only be no rest
for the soles of the feet, but no ark to go into. Poor
 158

NO BODILY RESURRECTION

things! Ah! says some one, “the Lord will take care of
the righteous.” Yes, but He burned up their earth, and
everything on it; and their resurrected bodies must be
fed. How about this? Well, he is going to make a new
heaven and a new earth. Ah! just so. But it took Him
millions of years to make the earth which He destroyed.
What did he burn it up for? You mistake. He made it
in six days. Did He? Only six days? Well, the poor
resurrected bodies will get pretty hungry even in six
days. And, besides, you have not answered why he
burned up the six-day world. You mistake again. They
are spiritual bodies. If that be so then He did not resur-
rect the body that went down into the grave—the flesh
and blood body. Oh! yes, He did. They were all resur-
rected, but were changed in a twinkling. Changed!
Then what became of the flesh, and blood, bodies? O!
after the resurrection the mortal bodies are not needed.
We have spiritual bodies. But, again, what becomes of
the flesh and blood bodies? Are they floating around in
space? Please answer. God, we are told, will see to
that. The resurrected will not need them. Then, why
were those bodies resurrected at all?

But St. Paul says: “If there be no resurrection of the
dead, then is Christ not risen.”13 The answer is:   If

Christ was merely a man, then his body did not rise; if
He was a God, it proves nothing. It is a flagrant non
sequiter.

§4. The New Testament tells us that “the wicked
shall be severed from the just.” Now, what is to happen

13   1st Corinthians, ch. 15, v. 13.
 THE CHRISTIAN HELL

159

to their bodies?14 Are they to be resurrected; and, if so,
for what purpose? The John Calvin stripe of Christians
will reply that they were resurrected to meet their fate—
their doom. What is their doom? Jesus says (?) that
at the end of the world, all those who offend, and them
which do iniquity, shall be cast into a furnace of fire, and
“there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” 15 Even
angels are cast down to hell and put in chains and dark-
ness.16 But the eyes of the wicked are not burned out;
for the rich man, in hell, lifted up his eyes and saw Laz-
arus, afar off, in Abraham’s bosom. It is possible that
the rich man may have just dropped in and the “flame
which tormented him” had not yet burned his eyes out.
Perhaps this whole thing is only a figure of speech.

There is, however, communication between heaven and
hell; for Abraham and the rich man held an extended
conversation, wherein Abraham informed the sinner that
there was “a great gulf fixed between the two places”
which nobody could cross.17 But “the fire is everlasting”;
and that there should be no misunderstanding about this
matter it is twice repeated in the same chapter.18

14   Matt., ch. 13; 49.

15   Matt. 13, v. 40 to 50.

16 There is a little discrepancy here between the hell
into which the angels were thrust (2d Peter, ch. 4), and
the rich man’s hell. He was in “the flame”, and flames
mean light, brightness. The angels were chained in dark-
ness. Darkness is the Persian hell.

17   Luke, ch. 16, v. 19 to 31. The reader will notice that
the Persian Bridge fable appears in this “Gulf” fable, also
of Abraham,

18   Matt., ch. 25, v. 41 to 46.
 160 IN THE PERSIAN HELL HAVE FOUL FOOD

Now, as we have elsewhere stated, Zoroaster’s hell did
not burn. He says: “for the wicked the worst life; for
the Holy, the best mental state.” 19 Again he speaks of
the long wounding of the wicked, and of the two bat-
tling sides;20 the truthful and the liar; and for the liar,
long life shall be his lot in darkness, foul shall be his
food. “Such a life, O! ye vile, your own evil deeds will
bring upon you.” 21 It must not be overlooked that in the
Persian hell they keep them on foul food, but the Chris-
tian hell is so severe that they will not give them even a
“drop of water.”

The fact is, the Christian hell is full of contradictions.
How long can a man live in the flames and without water ?
Not everlastingly. But, I am told that all these hell mat-
ters, in Matthew and Luke, etc., are merely parables or
figures of speech. It must be said in reply that they are
set forth by the same authority, and with the same
earnestness, that heaven is promised to the just. Possi-
bly, therefore, all that is said about heaven is simply a
figure of speech. Perhaps Zoroaster’s foul food for the
wicked, and weal and immortality for the righteous, are
parables, or figures of speech. The Persian says the
wicked are a seed from the evil mind; they are children
of perversion, astray from the living Lord, and His
righteousness, and that the evil spirit enters and governs
them.22 Paul copies him almost exactly when he calls

19   Yas. 30, § 4.

20   Yas. 31, § 3.

21   Yas. 31. §§ 20 and 21.

22   Yasna 32, §§ 3 to 5.
 ALL RELIGIONS DEAL IN THE MARVELOUS 161

Elymas, the sorcerer, “a child of the devil, full of all
subtlety and mischief, perverting the ways of the
Lord.”23 Jesus, himself, follows Zoroaster, when he
says, “The works of the world (the unrighteous) are
evil.” 24

§ 5. All religions, as we have said, deal in the mar-
velous, but the dogmas of the Jewish and Christian relig-
ions surpass all others in the extravagance of their claims
and in the arrogance with which they are put forth. I
shall only notice one or two of the ridiculous and absurd
claims of the old Jewish religion. Does any sane man
really believe that the Almighty spake unto Moses, “face
to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend ?” 25 26 Is it prob-
able that the Lord, on Mount Sinai, gave unto Moses
“two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the
Unger of God”2Q The Lord never does for man what man
can do for himself. Moses was skilled in all the learning
of Egypt, and he, himself, no doubt, wrote those com-
mandments. Is it true, as Moses states, that “the tables
were the work of God, and the writing was the writing
of God, graven upon the tables?”27 Moses, we know,
got mad and broke the tables which the Lord had written
with his finger; and then the Lord directed him to write
them after the tenor of the first ones; and it took him
forty days, and he did not have anything to eat or drink
in all that time.28

23   Acts 13, v. 6 to 10.

24   John 7; 7.

25   Exodus 33; 11.

26   Exodus 31; 18.

27   Exodus 33; 11.

28   Exodus 34; 28,
 162 RELIGION IS A MATTER OF EDUCATION

We are educated from childhood to believe these
things (at least, I was), and after mature years, it seems
almost desecration to push these idols from their pedes-
tals. There are just as improbable things in the Persian
Bible, told of Zoroaster, and yet we give them no credit
whatever, simply because we have not been taught to be-
lieve them. Now, while many men have been valiant
for falsehood, they merely mistook her form for that
glorious Goddess of Truth. They simply erred, not wil-
fully, but through false education, or false reasoning.
Shall we condemn them? Shall we roast them in a fur-
nace of fire? Or shall we have charity “which is not
puffed up, and which thinketh no evil?”
 CHAPTER XVIII.

EGYPT AND IRAN. CHRISTIAN RELIGION BASED ON
ZOROASTRIANISM.

§ I. Whence came the idea into the world of punish-
ment at Kinvad Bridge? Who brought it here? Was it
some poet, who lived before Zoroaster, or some early
Milton, whose fertile brain pictured Gods and Devils at
war? Of this we are certain: the Gathas precede any
other mention of it from any source, Egypt and India
possibly excepted. If Zoroaster originated it, he cer-
tainly drew an awful picture of the unpenitent falling into
that frightful abyss. Perhaps the picture itself is only the
climax of his theory of two contending spirits, and two
striving classes, which he saw about him; the honest till-
ers of the soil, and the robber bandits who slaughtered
the herds and laid waste the fields. Was his mind poeti-
cal as well as philosophical; and did he paint the Bridge,
and the terrifying chasm beneath it, to frighten the rob-
bers?

He clearly taught the immortality of the soul, which
Moses did not do. Did the Iranian learn this from the
Egyptians and did he transplant it into his own country ?
If the Chronology of our Bible be correct ( ?), Noah and
his Ark were afloat about four thousand two hundred
years ago. At that time the priests of Egypt were teach-
ing the immortality of the soul.1 They were not inter-

1   The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was in

163
 164

EGYPT GAVE THE SOUL A TRIAL

rupted by the flood, because it did not reach as far as
Egypt.

Osiris, the good God, had his angels or helpers; and
Set, the Evil Deity, was there with his devils. But the
flood was not. Had the religion of the Nile, before Zoro-
aster’s day, penetrated to the Oxus, and did he merely
change the name of Osiris to Ahura-Mazda, and Set to
Angra-Mainyu ? We have said, in a former chapter, that
the separation of the Aryan tribes took place fully forty
three hundred years ago. How far beyond that time, it
is impossible at present to state. But if Zoroaster was on
earth four thousand years ago, he may have heard of
Osiris and Set; of immortality; and of the Judge of the
Dead ; and of sacrifices ; * 2 and oblations. All those mat-
ters were familiar to the people of Egypt at least forty-
three centuries ago. But if Zoroaster borrowed from
them he reversed some things of vital importance.

The Egyptians were religious but not excessively
truthful. They did not confess and repent of their sins,
as in other religions, but met all charges with a flat
denial. The soul, after death, was supposed to present
itself before Osiris for trial. Set, the demon God, was
there to prefer charges, and seize the wicked. Here, in-
stead of admitting faults, and asking clemency, the soul
of the dead, however bad his life may have been, replied:
“I have not lied; I have not caused suffering; I have not

the world about 2,380 years B. C. That is about 4,282
years ago. It cannot at present be traced much beyond
that.

2   The Jews learned of sacrifices, and copied from the
Egyptians.
 THE ORIGIN OF EGYPTS RELIGION

[Prometheus]

165

murdered nor committed fraud; I have not cheated by
false weights, nor committed adultery, nor stolen; I have
loved God, clothed the naked, fed the poor, given water
to the thirsty,” Every one answered all questions favor-
ably, or he was snatched and carried off to the under-
world. Did Zoroaster change this trial of the soul before
Osiris to the trial at the Bridge? If he did he compelled
the guilty soul to speak its own condemnation. In nearly
every Gatha he assails the Lie-Demon: “Abjure the Evil
Mind, and that lying sin, which is, alas! a familiar fault
indulged in by the people. Banish falsehood from among
you. I abjure it and call earnestly on all to follow the
straight paths of truth, thereby gaining life in the Blessed
Realm.” 3

§ 2. Now, it is possible, but somewhat questionable,
that the Iranian Seer lived two thousand four hundred
years B. C. But on the other hand, ethnologists find, in
the language of Egypt, so very many Sanscrit words that
they look to India as the cradle of Egypt’s language.
Moreover, the skulls of the oldest mummies are exactly
like the skulls of the Caucasian race. The pendulum thus
swings back to the far East. The reasoning is nearly the
same, as if some great cataclysm should overtake the
earth and destroy the evidences of civilization so far as to
make it doubtful whether the English language was
formed in England or America; and the proof should be
found, that in the sixteenth century it was the language
of England. And the further proof found, that Ply-
mouth Rock and Jamestown were not settled until 1620

3   Yas. 33, §§ 4 to 8.
 166

ZOROASTER AND EGYPT

by people from England. The evidence, therefore, would
be irresistible that England was the birthplace of that
language.

The proof in favor of India being the cradle of the
Egyptian tongue may not be as certain as that England
is the original home of the English language, but it may
be added that no Egyptian words are found in the Hindu
tongue, but Hindu words are plentiful in Egypt. How
did they get there ? While language is perpetually chang-
ing, the roots of all languages remain permanent. San-
scrit, itself, is certainly the daughter of a language so
old that we know neither its age nor its origin. So that
while it is possible that Zoroaster may have copied from
Egypt, it is also possible that Egypt borrowed from him
forty-three centuries ago. But Egypt has a vast record,
and if her chronology be correct the probabilities are
against the Iranian. For her first Dynasty, that of
Menes, according to M. Mariette, began five thousand
and four years B. C., or nearly one thousand years before
the world was created, according to Genesis. Beyond
Menes, the centuries stretch out indefinitely, and some
venturesome chronologists have fixed her date more than
nine thousand years before Jesus came. It may be that
neither borrowed from the other; that each originated its
own.

The wild Indians of the West, and the wilder men in.
the Islands of the Ocean, who never heard of Egypt or
Iran, have their deities and their religions. Did they
borrow; and, if so, from whom did they borrow? The
untutored Indian of to-day “sees God in the clouds, and
hears him in the wind/’ as did the Aryans and Egyptians
 RELIGION SLOWLY CHANGING

167

eight or ten thousand years ago. Only a century or so
back, if a man had made the assertion that much of the
Christian religion was borrowed from the Persians he
would have been most fortunate to have escaped personal
injury, and he might have lost his head. Religious intol-
erance, in past centuries, has hunted to death victims by
the scores, by the hundreds, by the thousands, and by the
tens of thousands. Within a century mobs have howled
after what they termed heretics and fanatics, like wolves
on the scent of blood.4

Religions, as we have said, are not born; they grow;
they change with the changing centuries. What a revo-
lution did Jesus make in the old Mosaic religion. But
does any one believe that if Jesus had not been born that
we would still be slaughtering goats and rams to appease
an angry God? The religion of to-day is less blood-
thirsty than the Calvinism of four hundred years ago.
And as bad as Calvin was, he was surely an improvement
on many of the Popes who lived before him.

Our religion is slowly changing, and in the centuries
to come we shall have, if we keep on, a religion without
furnaces of fire, and lakes of fire and brimstone, and Kin-
vad Bridges for the wicked.

§ 3. But man, with all his infirmities of mind and
heart, has climbed out of the depths so far that nearly all

4   It is probable that if Paul had not written the eighth
chapter of Romans, all that Isaiah and Matthew had said
about “election” would have dropped to the ground. How
did Paul know that God “elected” certain ones and passed
others by?
 168 MAN'S GOD OF 1900 YEARS AGO IS ON TRIAL

transgressions are punished only with a view to reforma-
tion. Zoroaster lived in too early a day to see this. Shall
man be more gentle, loving and forgiving than his Crea-
tor? But even when man inflicts the death penalty it is
roses and sunshine by the side of roasting everlastingly
in a furnace of fire. The truth about this matter is, that
man of the twentieth century is going to put the God of
the first century and the God of the nineteen hundred
years ago on trial. Every new religion, and every refor-
mation of an old religion, puts the God of the old re-
ligion on trial, and from century to century this trial will
go on. It will go on as long as the question is asked:
Is there, after the death of the body of the wicked, a
burning in a furnace of fire? That question is, and
must ever be, of such surpassing importance to mankind
that he will not rest with the supposed prophecies, and
promises, and threatenings of ancient days.

The Iranian may ask: How did Zoroaster find out
about the abyss, and the Bridge, and the demons under
it? Every thinking man will inquire:   How did Jesus

know about the furnace of fire, and about Lazarus in
Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man in hell? Who told
him about those things? Is it any wonder that some of
us doubt, when his personal friends,5 6 his very disciples,
doubted ?

When we are told “that his body was carried up into

5   Matt. 28; 17.

6   Jesus says, after his crucifixion, when he ate the fish
and the honey-comb, that he is not a spirit; Luke 24; 39
to 51, and “he was carried up into heaven”.
 CREATION’S FINAL CHANGE

169

heaven,” why should we not doubt? How did Zoroas-
ter know that “Mazda established evil for evil, and happy
blessings for the good?” And that in Creation’s final
change, Mazda, “with bounteous spirit, and Sovereign
power, will adjudge evil to the evil, and blessings to the
righteous” ? 7 Here is the earliest mention of the Lord’s
coming, at creation’s final dissolution, to be found in any
writing. Even those who claim that the Iranian Seer
lived only about six hundred years before the Christian
era must admit that Zoroaster makes the first and earliest
direct and unqualified prediction or guess that the earth
shall pass away. Jesus copies the Seer, when he says
that the tares are children of the wicked one, and that at
the end of the world the angels will gather the good into
the kingdom, where they will shine forth as the sun, but
the wicked shall be cast into a furnace of fire. Zoroaster
does not particularize so much as Jesus, but the thoughts
are the same; and those thoughts and words had been in
the world, and had been considered and believed by many
millions of people for centuries before the man of Galilee
came.

The Zoroastrian faith was the religion of Cyrus, the
Persian King, who released the Jews from their Baby-
lonian captivity. Among the captives were the prophets

7   This is a remarkable passage (Gathas Yas. 43, §§ 5
and 6) in that here is the first direct mention that there
shall be a final change in the creation. Christ and the
apostles, from this hint, preached that the world should
be destroyed. Jesus, in Matthew 13, 37 to 55, uses Zoro-
aster’s idea.
 170

EZRA AND EZEKIEL IN BABYLON

and scribes, Ezra and Ezekiel, and many of the learned
of Jerusalem were there. Their captivity lasted for a
long generation. Those captives, we know, on their re-
turn, were filled with Persian ideas about religion, and
those ideas afterwards cropped out plainly in many ways.
The Persian Bible, the Avesta, was in Babylon and in
Persepolis written in gold letters on twelve thousand ox-
hides. Persian idjeas of God’s dealings with the just and
the unjust had floated along down the stream; were con-
sidered and believed; and, finally, were written down by
Matthew in chapter thirteen.

§ 4. Persia, from Cyrus onward to the battle of Mara-
thon, was the greatest and most civilized and powerful
nation on earth. Rome was yet in her infancy. Modern
Europe was not yet born. Greece was not a unit, her
people were divided, and only the terror of Persian arms,
for a brief period, held them together. Persia gave law
and religion at that time to the world, and that religion
was the gospel of Zoroaster. Jesus afterwards, whether
God or man, followed it; preached it; emphasized it in
every possible way; and was finally nailed to the cross
for it.

With all due honor to him who could die for opinion’s
sake, how was it, or how could it be possible for Jesus
to announce a better or purer doctrine than that so often
repeated by Zoroaster, his predecessor? viz.:   "Good

thoughts, good words and good deeds”. Do not those
three things embrace all there is, or can be, in any re-
ligion ? Can the most devout saint add anything to them ?
"Yes, he can,” says some one; "he can love Jesus.” But
if he has good thoughts he will love not only Jesus, but
 JESUS' HELL IS BARBAROUS

171

all the world besides, and God supremely. If he has good
thoughts he is pure in heart. Now, good thoughts are the
very foundations upon which are builded good words and
deeds, always and everywhere.

Love God and thy neighbor, are the two great
commandments.8 But how can a man do either unless he
be first filled with good thoughts? Paul preached the
same doctrine; and all true religions in the world are
builded upon Zoroaster’s three all-embracing words.

The trouble with Jesus’ religion (and there is a trouble
with it) is that it makes God out a very demon in punish-
ment. The infliction, by roasting a poor wretch for a
hundred millions of years, and when that time shall have
elapsed, that he will then only be, as it were, at the door-
steps of his fate, is too awful to believe. Could the very
old Devil do worse; could any monster be more cruel?
Could a mother be happy in glory, knowing that her son
or daughter was screaming in the flames? Zoroaster’s
hell, as we have said, is terrible; but it is far less barbarous
than Jesus’ hell.

Let us close this chapter by adding, that it must be that
God is a God of mercy, and that remembering our infirmi-
ties, He will deal with us as a father dealeth with an err-
ing son. Here we see “through a glass darkly”. There,
if there be a there, we will prune our faults, and try to
fill our minds with good thoughts which will bring a
plentiful harvest of good words and deeds.

8   Matt. 22; 36 to 40.
 CHAPTER XIX.

DEATH OF ZOROASTER. EXITS OF PROPHETS. ZOROASTER'S
AGE. DOWNFALL OF ZOROASTRIAN FAITH.

The final victory for Vistaspa’s forces mentioned in
chapter fourteen gave peace to Iran for fifteen or twenty
years, possibly longer. But another bloody contest is at
hand. Arjasp, during this period of peace, has been busy
gathering a great army for a second invasion. He knows
that the brave Isfander, by reason of calumnies, false and
malicious, is languishing in a dungeon. Vistaspa is en-
joying an indolent peace in Seistan. Balkh has but a
small garrison, and the opportunity is inviting. Forth-
with Arjasp launches his thunderbolts of war. Balkh
is stormed and taken, and Lorhasp, the father of Vis-
taspa, is slain. Eighty priests, at the altar are cut down,
and with them perishes Zoroaster, the father and immor-
tal founder of the Iranian religion, his blood extinguish-
ing the sacred flame, and his dying lips, we may well be-
lieve, invoking Ahura-Mazda to shelter the new-born
faith.

In this emergency, Isfander is called from his prison
and placed in command of Iran’s forces. He is a born
warrior, and his inspiring presence so nerves the defeated
troops that they turn upon Arjasp and overwhelm him
with disastrous defeat. But Isfander falls at the moment
of victory. Arjasp is, however, so signally beaten that

172
 ZOROASTER SLAIN

173

with the remnant of his army he flees back to Turan,
never again to make war on the Iranians or their faith.

If we credit the Dabistan1 a Turk, named Turbaratur,
rushed upon the Prophet, sword in hand, but the Seer
could fight as well as pray. For a time he defended him-
self with his rosary, but at last fell pierced to the heart
by his adversary's sword.1 2

The Avesta was not as kind to Zoroaster as Deuteron-
omy was to Moses; for although he fought the Lord's
battles manfully to the end, and accomplished a great
work for the Iranians, still the Lord did not, as with
Moses, even go to his funeral.3

After Zoroaster's death many marvelous versions of
his exit crept into history. This at once stamps him as a
most extraordinary character. For when he went down
it was not merely a ripple on the surface of the stream;
and then eternal silence, but there was tumult, noise, and
confusion. Distant nations heard the sound of his name,
and its echoes and reverberations are yet sounding along
the shores of time. One writer makes the Seer so extrav-
agantly great that in his life time he, with magic art,
ruled the stars, conjured with them until they became so
restive under his power that one of them, in a fit of jeal-

1   The Dabistan is a Persian work published about three
hundred years ago.

2   Dadistin, ch. 72, § 8, has it that Tur I Bradrash, the
enemy of Zoroaster’s childhood, finally killed him. But
I doubt it. It would make Tur very old to be in an army.

3   Deut., ch. 34. I never could understand, if the Lord
acted as undertaker, why he did not put up a tombstone
for Moses.
 174

MANY MIRACULOUS EXITS

ousy, shot forth a stream of fire which consumed his
body, but charioted away his soul to heaven.4

§ 2. There have been many miraculous exits since
Zoroaster’s distant day. Elijah, the Tishbite, about nine
hundred years B. C., mounted in a chariot of fire.5 But
he had fiery steeds, and they, no doubt, hauled him up in
safety. He probably was not afraid to trust himself to a
chariot of fire, for he had likely heard of the angel who
came to see Mrs. Manoah about Samson, who, when the
interview was over, ascended in a flame. But Mr. Man-
oah, thinking the angel would get burned to death in the
flame, was terribly frightened and fell down on his face,
and said to his wife: “we shall surely die.” 6 But they
did not die, for the scriptures tell us that “the woman
later on bore a son, and called his name Samson.”

Tacitus mentions an affair equally strange. A preter-
natural being, above the size of man, he says, appeared
unto Ptolemy in a vision, commanding him to bring the
Statue of the God, Serapis, then in Pontus, into Egypt.
That by this compliance prosperity would come to the
Kingdom, and greatness to the nation. The vision was
then seen instantly mounting to heaven in a column of
fire.7

[Prometheus]

Empedocles, a Greek philosopher, who lived in the
fifth century B. C., was also called away in a blaze of

4   Clementine Recog., written about the time of our
canonical Gospels. It was not unusual, in those days,
for Seers to go up in chariots of fire.

5   2d Kings, ch. 2, v. II.

6   Judges, ch. 13; 26.

7   Tacitus history, Book 4, § 83.
 ZOROASTER 77 WHEN HE DIED

175

glory. But those who doubted had their doubts con-
firmed by finding a peculiar pair of sandals, such as he
wore, thrown up by an eruption of Etna. Thence, they
said, “he has thrown himself into the crater of the vol-
cano, hoping that people will believe him translated.” 8

Tacitus was born about twenty years after Jesus was
crucified, and wrote contemporary history, yet the ordi-
nary Bible reader will stoutly discredit his story of the
supernatural, and at the same time will eagerly gulp
down the fables of Elijah and Manoah. If asked the
reason for this, the only answer we can give is that it is
all a matter of education.

§ 3. Zoroaster died at about the age of seventy-seven
years; that is, fifty-seven years after his acceptance of the
religion.9 Having labored during that long period in
instructing his people to cultivate good thoughts to all
mankind. This would, in his philosophy, check wars and
tumults and finally banish sin and suffering from the
earth.

The great victory, mentioned above, whereby Arjasp
and his army were defeated and driven back to Turan in
utter ruin, compensated somewhat for the death of the
Prophet. For, we may well believe, that if the Iranian
army had been overthrown, dispersed and destroyed, and

8   Empedocles lived about two thousand four hundred
years ago, yet his law of identity is only lately becoming
emphasized. He insisted that all life, including plants
and animals, are but links in an extended chain. That
man himself is but a link in that chain, which connects
him with higher orders of life, angels, etc.

9   Dinkard, ch. 7, § 12.
 176

IF PERSIA HAD BEEN DEFEATED

the Prophet slain, there would have been a sudden ter-
mination of the Zoroastrian faith and creed. The world’s
welfare was, no doubt, promoted by the success of the
Iranians. Waterloo gave peace to Europe, but the vic-
tory over the Turans was worth to the world innumer-
able Waterloos.

With the Iranians defeated neither the Persian re-
ligion nor the Avesta would scarcely have been heard of.
The map of the world, and the religion of the world,
would have been changed. Bandits and plundering would
have been the order of the day for centuries. There
would have been no Cyrus to send the Jews home from
exile. In fact, there would have been no Persian nation
to subdue them and carry them off into exile. Ezra and
Esdras, Nehemiah and Tobit, would have sung in differ-
ent strains. Ezekiel would not have had his vision of the
valley of dry-bones, and the resurrection of the body.10
And, not carrying these matters too far, would Jesus have
known anything about the resurrection if the Avesta had
never been written ?

Had not Iran won on that bloody field, the Christian
religion would to-day, probably, be following, with some
modifications, the old Mosaic creed; for Zoroaster’s doc-
trines, intensified as to punishment, and heaven shown in
somewhat plainer colors, would not have come down to
us. But with Arjasp defeated the banner of Zoroastrian-
ism was lifted on high. It is certain that his religion was
a better one than that which it displaced. Great multi-
tudes came to believe in it, and for more than twelve

10   Ezekiel, ch. 37.
 THE ARABS

177

hundred years it continued to be the faith, hope and solace
of millions of mankind.

§ 4. But evil times at length befell the worshippers of
Mazda. The Arabs, in the great battle of Nehavend,
which took place about twelve hundred and sixty years
ago, near the road from Babylon to Ecbatana, defeated
the Persians so utterly that, thereafter, province after
province yielded to the conqueror, until finally the Per-
sian nation and Zoroaster’s religion went into a decline.11

Within one hundred years after this defeat the Arabs,
by fire and by sword, by bribery of the nobles, by perse-
cutions and slaughter of the people, succeeded in fasten-
ing their religion upon most of Mazda’s worshippers.
Thenceforward their numbers gradually declined until
now there is but a mere remnant of less than twenty
thousand, of whom most of them reside in or near Bom-
bay. This much may be said of them: They are a sober,
industrious, moral people. They are generous and truth-
ful to the utmost. They are good citizens, leading quiet,
blameless lives. With them good thoughts, words and
deeds are the keys which will unlock the doors of the
Kingdom. In truth, they are the lessening remnants of
a once great and attractive faith, which, at one period,
came near overmastering the world.

Had the Persians defeated Miltiades at Marathon, who
can deny but that Zoroaster’s religion would have
marched triumphantly across Europe? Had James II
defeated William, Prince of Orange, in July, 1690, at the
battle of the Boyne, the Catholic religion, instead of the

11   The battle of Nehavend was fought A. D. 642.
 178

THE ARABS

Protestant, might have become the ruling faith of Eng-
land.

Thus, it is seen, that the destinies of religions, as well
as of empires, are sometimes suspended in the balance,
to be decided by the strongest battalions. A few shovels
full of earth, at the Great South Pass, in the Rocky
Mountains, turns one stream towards the Pacific and
another towards the Gulf. The destiny of men and na-
tions, and their religions, at times, is changed just as
easily.

Is it fate that bears nations, as well as individuals, ir-
resistibly on, and determines their lot? Or does blind
chance mix in our affairs, and control us in spite of our
buffetings? This much we may conclude, that had the
Persians won in the battle with the Arabs, the world
would have been better for the victory.
 CHAPTER XX.

THE RELIGION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA, AND THE OLD AND
NEW TESTAMENTS BRIEFLY COMPARED.

§ I. Have our ideas, hopes and beliefs about that
mysterious “undiscovered country,” beyond the final val-
ley and shadow, taken shape and form, and become a
fixed part of our civilization, because that great and al-
most mythical Iranian imagined or pictured the beauties
of the eternal shore ? Did he teach the world a fairy tale,
to soothe the sorrows, and add to the joys, of those whom
he saw about him? Was it the imagination of the poet,
“which, from airy nothingness gave to Heaven a local
habitation and a name?”

Of two things we are certain: The Zamyad-Yast and
the Bundahis teach plainly the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion.1 The Gathas again and again teach that the right-
eous shall live in the happy abode of Ahura, and that
destruction shall fall upon the wicked.1 2 But the Gathas,
while not directly specifying that the body shall be raised,
leave it somewhat in doubt whether the body, or only
the soul, shall enjoy immortal life with Ahura. The
later Avesta, and the Bundahis, mention the body as be-

1   Bundahis, ch. 30, and Vol. 23, S. B. E., pp. 291 and
292.

2Yas. 30, Yas. 28, Yas. 31, Yas. 32, Yas. 33. It is
not necessary to recite page after page. They all teach it.

179
 180

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

ing resurrected. They saw that the mind acted, or acts,
only through the body. If there be no body, they thought
there could be no mind. Later writers would say there
are spiritual bodies. But even if there be such things as
spiritual bodies, they can manifest themselves only
through the mediumship in this life of flesh and blood
bodies. Luke tells us that “a spirit hath not flesh and
bones.” 3 We may reply that if the living bodies of men
contain spirits, then we see every day spirits inhabiting
bodies of flesh and blood.

Did Zoroaster teach, or mean to teach, that we can get
along in Ahura’s realm without flesh and bones? He is
not specific. But he is specific in teaching immortality.
He did not get that idea from Moses, for there is not a
single trace of the doctrine of a future life in the Penta-
teuch. Not only that, but the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul was taught in Egypt two thousand three hun-
dred and eighty years before Jesus came. It must, there-
fore, have been taught in Egypt nearly one thousand
years before Moses was born. He was educated there, in
the King’s Palace, and must have heard of the Ritual
of the Dead. He must have known of the Hall of Two
Truths, and Osiris sitting in judgment. He was learned
in all the lore of Egypt, and therefore knew that the
Egyptians held to the doctrine that the soul completed a
circuit once in three thousand years. That during that
circuit, it must pass through all animals, insects, fishes,
birds, etc.,4 before it again enters the body of man. But

3   Luke 24; 39.

4   Herodotus 2; 123.
 RETRIBUTION

181

as long as the body was preserved the soul did not have
to commence its circuit. Embalming, therefore, saved it
many years of degradation in those lower forms of life.

Moses knew that the Egyptians did not believe or teach
the doctrine of retribution for the sins of the body. As
Moses did not teach the immortality of the soul, it was
probably because he disbelieved in it. But we are certain
that he did not believe in animal worship, for he ordered
three thousand Israelites slain for worshipping Aaron’s
golden calf. (Exodus 32.)

There is one thing, however, which he copied from
f7 the Egyptians. The name of God, in their tongue, is
Nuk-pu-Nuk. In Exodus, chapter three, it is ‘7 am that
y I am”, which in Egyptian is Nuk-pu-Nuk.

§ 2. Moses had neither devil nor hell in his religiQn.
There was no need or use for them, as a sinner could ex-
piate, or atone, for all his sins by sacrificing a goat, or
bull, or a ram. “Moses said unto Aaron, go unto the
altar and offer thy sin-offering, and thy burnt offering,
and make atonement for thyself, and for thy people, as
the Lord commanded.” 5

Zoroaster’s religion was more difficult He had devils,
big and little, without number; and, as we have seen,
Kinvad Bridge, and Hell beneath it. With Moses, the
only punishment the wicked received was in this life, in
controversies with the righteous. The judges, in such
cases, were ordered to justify the righteous, and condemn
the wicked, and they might order him beaten with forty
stripes.6 Neither did Moses have any sympathy with the

5   Leviticus, 9 :j.

6   Deut. XX, -5 :i.
 182

WHAT PAUL AND ZOROASTER TAUGHT

poor, for he ordered that the poor man should not be
countenanced in his cause.7 8 Zoroaster’s battle was against
the wicked, and he longed to be to them a “strong tor-
mentor and avenger.” s Paul copied him, for he says that
Jesus will come “in flaming fire, and take vengeance on
them that know not the Lord.” 9 When the first book of
Samuel was written, the author thereof copied the Iranian
idea of Hell, for he says “the wicked shall be silent in
darkness.” But as we approach New Testament times10 11
Zoroaster’s ideas became more and more plainly incorpo-
rated into Jewish thought. In second Esdras, the right-
eous are promised an inheritance of good things, but the
ungodly shall perish.11 Zoroaster, centuries before, said
“the blow of destruction shall fall upon the wicked, but
the righteous will gather in the happy abode of Ahura.”12

When Jesus came he was more particular about describ-
ing Hell than Heaven. He tells the wicked they shall
roast in fire;13 and as to Heaven, he says:   “In my

Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so I
would have told you.”14 How He found out about
these things, and how Zoroaster learned about the future
of the wicked, and the righteous, we are at a loss to state.

§ 3. One thing is noticeable about Jesus’ Hell. All

7   Exodus 23 13.

8   Yas. 43:8.

9   2d Thess. 1:8.

10   1st Samuel, ch. 2, v. 9.

11   2d Esdras, ch. 7, v. 17.

12   Yas. 30, § 10.
 IN JESUS' HELL THE WICKED BURN

183

the wicked, of whatever degree; are cast into a furnace of
fire. He does not state that for the small sinner the flame
shall be any less fierce. All are punished, as we may
well conclude, in the same furnace. The murderer of a
thousand roasts in the same furnace with him who steals
a loaf of bread. Human judgment has improved since
that day. Sins are graded, and those of deeper guilt suf-
fer the greater penalty. The Persians were more logical
and sensible; they had degrees in Hell. And, as we have
seen, they had a place called Hamistaken, a sort of middle
ground, where a man’s good deeds just fairly balanced
his bad ones; he neither got into Heaven nor did he roast
in Hell. He was not worthy of the mansion, and he was
not bad enough for the furnace. He just browsed around
outside, as it were.

The Catholics seized upon Hamistaken and therefrom
constructed their Purgatory. Had Dante lived and writ-
ten his “Divine Comedy” before either Zoroaster or Jesus
came, they possibly might have drawn upon him and en-
larged somewhat Hell’s borders. With nice precision
Dante maps out his Inferno into numerous circles or
spheres, and divides his culprits according to their of-
fenses. He descends into particulars, and even the un-
baptized, though otherwise blameless, he shuts out of
Heaven.

Next come the carnal sinners, and these he dashes
about with relentless fury in blinding storms. Jesus
burns this class in roaring furnaces. But even Dante
borrows from the Persian, and though he transforms the
dogs, that tear the sinners at the Bridge, into the demon
Cerberus, yet that monster is only a ferocious dog in na-
 184 MATTHEW COPIES FROM ZOROASTER

ture, which claws and tears the gluttonous in one of
Hell’s circles.

The poet is more imaginative than the man of Galilee.
He is likewise more just, for it cannot be that he who
steals a dollar shall suffer as Nero, who murdered by
scores. If there be punishment for an offense, it should
be meted out to the offender according to the magnitude
of the crime.

It is noteworthy that while Matthew copies a part of
the Lord’s prayer from Zoroaster,15 in which he says,
“Our Father, thine is the kingdom, thine is the power,
and thine is the glory,” etc., he yet prays the Lord to
“lead us not into temptation.” As if the Lord would
do such a thing. But what is still more noticeable is that
neither Zoroaster, nor Jesus, nor Paul, seem to have a
clear conception of Heaven. The Persian wants to dwell
in the happy abode of Ahura; the Galileean says, his
“Father’s house has many mansions;”16 Paul says, “he
has a building of God, a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.” (2d Corinthians, 5) And Paul
adds that the “faithful will be caught up in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air.”17

§ 4. If there be such a place as Heaven, it is of such
infinite importance to mankind that it would seem as

15   Yasna 53.

16   The proper translation of that sentence is: “TKere
are many rooms in my Father’s house.” Does any sane
man believe that God lives in a house ? Is it a brick, stone
or marble house that He lives in? As if God lives in a
house!

17   Thess., ch. 4, v. 17.
 HEAVEN HAS DOORS AND ROOMS

185

[Prometheus]

though we ought to have been given more particulars
about it. But we are told we shall be with God, there-
fore blessed and happy. Are we not with Him now on
this old earth? We see Him here in all of His wonderful
works. Does any sane man expect to see Him face to
face? The face of the Infinite! That face! Is it a
thousand miles long, and ten thousand times that vast
reach? God is visible in the stars above, and in the
plants at our feet. Besides, is not this world good enough
for that wretched fault-finding animal, called man?

We have the most complete picture of Heaven found
in any inspired record, in Revelation, wherein John saw
a door opened in Heaven18 and beheld a throne, and God
sitting on the throne, and four and twenty elders, clothed
in white, and four beasts, with eyes in front and behind,
and those beasts, without rest, saying, “Holy, Holy, Lord
Godand when the beasts said this, the four and twenty
elders fall down before the throne and worship Him who
sits thereon. But this is not quite all they do. Those
elders “cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
‘Thou art worthy, O Lord! to receive glory, honor, and
power; for Thou hast created all things/ ”19 This is
simply a cheap copy of an earthly monarch, and his court,
exaggerated considerably by the poet’s heated imagina-
tion.

The Jew who wrote Revelation had probably read of
Zoroaster’s audience or conference with Ormazd, and

18   They have doors in Heaven, Rev., ch. 4, and win-
dows, Gen., ch. 8, v. 6.

19   Rev., ch. 4.
 186   ST. JOHN’S HEAVEN

simply surpassed the Dinkard in the extravagance of his
statements.

Is it possible to believe that the Great I Am, who has
millions of worlds to look after, can employ himself, or
be entertained by having four beasts, day and night (even
if they have power of speech), cry “Holy, Holy, Lord,
God”? Truly, such a God is not worthy of worship. Its
monotony would soon cause the whole performance to
grow tedious. A fifth-rate European King cuts a better
figure. Why belittle the Almighty with such stuff and
nonsense? If Revelation be an allegory, intending to
teach virtue and show the doom of vice, the answer is
that the ridicule of the Almighty, and His throne, is so
great that it defeats its object.

The writer of Revelation says he saw ten thousand
times ten thousand (which would be about one hundred
million), and all these were saying, with a loud voice:
“Worthy the Lamb, riches 20 and wisdom, and honor and
glory”; and “every creature in Heaven and on earth, and
under the earth”, said the same. The four beasts there-
upon said: “Amen.” 21 But this tediousness was broken
after awhile; for war always makes exciting times; and
they had war in Heaven. That Irish Archangel, Michael,
and his angels fought the dragon, and his angels; and
“that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which de-
ceiveth the whole world, was cast out into the earth, and
his angels with him.” 22 Here, again, we have Zoroas-

20   Of course a Jew mentions “riches” first. But what
does Jesus want riches in Heaven for?

21   Rev., ch. 4.

22   Rev., ch. 12, v. 7 to 9.
 DUALISM

187

ter’s dualism; and if Revelation be true, that dualism
reaches from earth to heaven. It not only invades every
part of our world, but it dashes up against the very
throne itself. It looks as if sin is in the universe to stay,
for the devil himself was only bound for one thousand
years, and then turned loose for a season.23

If this be all they do in Heaven, will it not be somewhat
tedious to the great thinkers of our race? Imagine Soc-
rates, and Aristotle, Newton and Kepler, Darwin and
Huxley, Franklin and Emerson, and multitudes of others
standing idly by and watching the daily and hourly per-
formance of the four and twenty elders, and the beasts,
before the throne. True, an eternity like that would be
much less painful than roasting in a furnace, but to quick
minds, only less in degree. Of course John really knew
nothing more about Heaven than any other wild dreamer.
How could we know about it ?

We do not believe that Zoroaster held a conference
with the Almighty, nor do we believe that John saw the
throne. Neither Jesus nor Paul gave us a glimpse of
Heaven. How could they? For they had never been
there. If, then, there be such a place as Heaven, what
then?

Reader, we make to you the following suggestion: Fol-
low the Golden Rule of Zoroaster, and Jesus, and pa-
tiently await thy summons across the river.

23   Rev., ch. 20.
 CHAPTER XXI.

CONCLUSION.

The story of Zoroaster and his religion is ended. He
brought a new doctrine into the world, or at least so in-
tensified an old one as to link his name inseparably to it
forever.

No history of religions can ever be written without
giving him many pages. That he labored sedulously for
the material and spiritual welfare of his people no one
who will read his words can gainsay. There was, it
would seem, a sharp necessity for his appearing as a
teacher and guide to the Iranians, and he came in the
fullness of time.

The morals of his people were made the better for his
coming. He did not make war on the old Aryan Gods,1
but simply passed them by. He taught that there was one
God, Ahura-Mazda, the maker of Heaven and Earth,
who would reward man for good deeds, and punish him
for bad ones. Where he got this idea, I cannot tell. It
may have been announced before him, but if so, that
feebler voice is drowned in the great ocean of Zoroaster’s
fame and name.

1   The old Aryan Gods were the sun, moon, earth, the
winds and the waters. The Jews burned incense to the
sun, the moon, and the planets. 2d Kings, ch. 23, v. 5.

188
 300 YEARS AGO

180

Truth was to him a jewel beyond price or measure.
And he so insisted and urged upon his people that they
should always, and everywhere, refrain from falsehood
and cling to the truth; that for more than two thousand
years after his death it was considered an infinite disgrace
for a Persian to tell a lie. Four hundred and fifty years
before Jesus' day the historian, Herodotus, mentions this
as a pleasing trait of the Persian character.

One hundred years ago, there were a few scholars,
who claimed that Zoroaster was only a myth; that no
such person ever lived; but that class has been over-
whelmed by proofs to the contrary. In truth, there is as
much certainty of his identity as that Moses, or Joshua,
or Plato lived. But this knowledge came to us at a late
day. Three hundred years ago Europe slumbered in
profound ignorance of a great mine of knowledge await-
ing the antiquary.

True, Aristotle,-and after him Plutarch, and others,
had written of Persia, and her religion, but during the
middle ages all interest therein died out.

We now know that the founders of the Christian re-
ligion studied Zoroaster, and drew silently, but largely,
from him, in forming their own.2 I have shown this in
the preceding pages, and if I live to write the life of
Buddha and Jesus, will exemplify that matter still further.

Belief does not change facts, as the following will
illustrate:   Captain Cook, when circumnavigating the

globe, gave some iron nails to the natives of Tahiti. The
large nails they believed to be the mothers of the little

2   Intro-Vendidad, p. 15
 190

JESUS AND ZOROASTER—MEN

ones, and they placed the little ones in the ground, believ-
ing that they would grow. By the side of them they
planted some of the mothers, in the belief that a new
generation of small nails would be bom. But their belief
did not change the facts. The nails, big and little, to their
infinite disgust and chagrin, all rusted.

I   close by saying that this book is not intended as an
attack upon any form of faith. Every man has his own
views and ideas about matters beyond the grave. I have
mine; and while I treat Jesus and Zoroaster as men, yet
I hold that the creed of Zoroaster is, in all essentials, the
Golden Rule. For if good thoughts, good words, and
good deeds will not unlock the shining Gates, then noth-
ing else will, or can.

As age creeps on, let us not doubt that beyond the
myths and delusions of man, and all his follies, there is a
power and an Intelligence somewhere, and that if it be
for man’s weal, that he shall be crowned with immortal
life, where happiness shall ever bloom, then blessed be
that power, and that Intelligence. But if that Great In-
telligence, which we call God, for reasons and purposes
known only to Himself, shall deem it best that this life
shall “be the Be all and the end all,” then without ques-
tioning, let us say: “Thy ways, O Lord! are higher and
better than man’s ways; and thy judgments are alto-
gether just and right.”

THE END.
 PART SECOND

How the Hebrews Copied from the
Hindu Bible
 
 HOW THE HEBREWS COPIED

FROM

THE HINDU BIBLE

CHAPTER I.

FOUR GREAT RELIGIONS I BRAHMANISM, BUDDHISM, CHRIS-
TIANITY, MOHAMMEDISM. WHEN INVENTED—

TWO NEW DEITIES.

§ i. The highways of human progress are lined with
the skulls of the slain, for opinion’s sake. But in Amer-
ica, and some other favored spots, the worst that can
befall a plain talker, is to impale him on a few caustic
sentences. But the days of stakes, faggots, and
thumb-screws, for him who is not with the majority,
are, it is hoped, happily past forever. Nevertheless, that
despicable thing called intolerance, still lifts its slimy
head, active in all religions. Narrow-minded bigots
are found everywhere; and the best way to treat them
is to hit them hard, as you would any other reptile, then
watch them squirm.

At present, four great religions are seeking to domi-
nate the world. In truth, they almost hold our globe
in their grasp. Strange as it may appear, not one of
these religions, except Brahmanism, was in existence
twenty-five-hundred years ago. Brahmanism is, however,

191
 192 BRAHMANISM OLDER THAN THE FLOOD

old. It is older than the Flood. Poets were composing
it, centuries before Moses was found, by his mother, in
the bulrushes.1

The next in point of age, of these four religions, and
the greatest in numbers, is Buddhism. Its founder,
Buddha, was a Hindu prince, born about 500 years be-
fore Jesus.1 2 More than thrice the number of all the
people now living on our earth, have held to the doc-
trines, and died in the faith of Buddha. And more
than three hundred millions of people, now living in
Thibet, Nepaul, China, Japan, Assam and Ceylon, yet
cling to the Buddhistic faith. But the land of its birth,
after nearly fourteen hundred years of struggle, thrust it
forth, and installed Brahmanism in its place.

The next religion is that of Christianity. Jesus, its
founder, was born about 1900 years ago. But his re-
ligion, like that of Buddha, has been driven from the
land of its birth, and the flag of the conqueror waves
victoriously over Jerusalem and Galilee. His followers
are divided into two great unfriendly, and almost warring
camps, protestants and papists; the former numbering
about seventy or seventy-five millions, the latter about
eighty-five millions. The protestants, in matters of doc-
trine or creeds, are again subdivided into numerous
jarring sects; each one insisting that the other is wrong
in its interpretation of what is called “Holy Writ.” In

1   Some writers think that Moses was the bastard child
of Pharaoh’s daughter.

2   Some people maintain that Buddha was born about
543 years B. C. His followers now number three hun-
dred to three hundred and fifty millions.
 CREED MAKERS

193

fact, creed-makers have been busy with the New Testa-
ment for the last 1800 years, and are not done yet.

Both wings of this procession, papists and protestants,
number, therefore, about one-tenth of the population of
the globe. They both believe the old traditions of Moses,
and the Hebrews, and later the Jews; and those tradi-
tions form a very large part of the Christian Bible.

TWO NEW DIETIES.

Moreover, what challenges our attention is that the
Christians brought forth, for the world to consider, two
new deities, until then unknown. Jesus, and the Holy
Ghost, had never been seen, known, or heard of until
some 1900 years ago. In fact, no one to this day has
given, nor can give a reasonable definition of what the
Holy Ghost is. If we say it is the Holy Spirit, or the
Sanctifier of Souls, is not that definition applicable to
God? Is not God a Spirit? If so, then is not the Holy
Ghost and God one and the same? If not, what then
is the Holy Ghost? Where did it live, before the book
of Matthew was written? Where was the Holy Ghost
when Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the
seventy elders, saw the God of Israel up there on the
mountain?3 There are some other questions to ask: If
the Holy Ghost is an actual existence, and was here “in
the beginning,” why did it not save Eve from the serpent
there in the Garden?4 It is said Jesus was in heaven
when the foundations of the earth were laid. If so, why

3   Exodus XXIV, 9th and 10th.

4   There are those who maintain that the Holy Ghost is
of the female gender.
 194

JEWS HAD BUT ONE GOD

did He not interpose in that Eden difficulty, and thus
save us a world of trouble? What is the use of these
new Deities ? Can not man approach his maker directly ?
Must we do business in the ante-room with the office
boy? Did the Almighty, after running the world about
four thousand years, according to the record, find him-
self incompetent; and was it necessary to call in these
new Gods, as helpers?

§ 2. At Jesus’ appearance on earth, we know thai the
Jews had but one God, and they have only one God yet.
Since Jesus’ advent we have a Trinity. But the Brahmans
had a Trinity more than a thousand years before ours.
Did we copy from them? In fact, the Brahmans, in
ignorant times, had numerous Gods. As far back as
four thousand or forty-five hundred years B. C. they
had thirty-three Gods; and divided the universe into
three regions, and assigned eleven Gods to each division.
They then added Prajapati, the thirty-fourth God, as the
Lord of all creatures. They then fell back upon a Trin-
ity; and at last dispensed with all except Brahma as the
Creator; but gave him a generous staff of dignitaries.

MOHAM MEDANISM.

The latest religion invented is that of Mohammedanism,
which is now about thirteen hundred years old. Before
Mohammed’s day, the Gods in Arabia were numerous,
but Allah was the chief.

Mohammed tells us that the Angel Gabriel came to
him one night, and, holding a silken scroll before him,
bade him read what thereon was written. On the scroll
he read, “Man walketh in delusion here, but that the
Lord, the Most High, will call him hence some day to
 MOHAMMED'S FOLLOWERS

195

give an account of himself.” Frightened at this, and
thinking the incantation, a portent of evil, he related the
mysterious occurrence to his wife, who consoled him
with the hope that the messenger was of Heaven, and
that God had a mission for him. Such was the feeble
beginning of a religion that to-day numbers from no
to 140 millions of followers; and they hold Jerusalem
and Galilee firmly against all comers. Mohammedanism
has just one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.

§ 3. Moses spent all his mature years in battling
against a plurality of Gods. Is it not, therefore, startling,
that Christians, who claim to be the legatees, and benefi-
ciaries of his statutes and commandments, and wiser than
all others, should invent two new Deities? And this in
opposition to the very first commandment, leveled against
polytheism, “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have
no other Gods before me”? (Ex. 20.) Yet Jesus, we
are told, is one with God, and that man can only approach
the Almighty through him as our intercessor.

THE TRINITY.

All Christians are baptized in the name of three Gods:
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We are told that these
three form the Trinity, the Triune God, the Godhead.
The Hindus, as we have seen, invented the first Trinity;
and the Hindoos preached it, believed in it; and if the
frosts of age have any claim to our reverence, let us first
bow to the three-faced God of the Ganges. The Hindoo
trinity long preceded this invention of 1900 years ago;
and it is a real pity that they could not have obtained a
patent on their trimurti, for it would have saved our
divines from many a grotesque position, many a foolish
 196

[Prometheus]

CHRISNA, THE HINDU SAVIOR

speech. But even the Hindoos might have had trouble
at the Patent Office, for the Egyptians seem to have,
previously, invented a trimurti—Osiris, Typhon and
Horus. We, however, copy more from India than from
Egypt. Brahma is the Hindu Creator; Vishnu or
Chrisna is their Christ, their Preserver, or Saviour. Siva
is their God of destruction.5

The Hindoo Chrisna suffered many Avatars (incarna-
tions) for the benefit of the Hindoos; Jesus only suf-
fered once for all the world. There are yet, in India,
many pictures of their trinity or trimurti, showing a
three-faced God; one looking east, one west, and one
south.

The Christians have never yet gone to the extent of
fixing up a three-faced God; but they might as well, for
they preach and teach three Gods, and circulate innumer-
able pictures of one of them. Yet if the Holy Record
be true, two of our Deities have been seen; for Moses
affirms, in chapter 33, Exodus, that he talked with the
Almighty “face to face, as a man speaketh to a friend.” 6
If the above were found in the Hindoo Bible, people
would sneer at it. Is it not preposterous that about 3400
years ago, the Creator and Ruler of millions of worlds,

5   Sir Wm. Jones, the greatest oriental scholar that
England ever produced, was a judge ten years at Cal-
cutta ; and in one of his lectures he says, that on page
375 of a great Sanskrit dictionary, compiled twenty-one
hundred years ago, “Chrisna” is called the “Divine Spirit
in human form ”

6   I cannot help thinking that if it had not been for
Exodus XX, Moses might have taken a “snap-shot” at
his “friend,” and thus saved us a world of imaginings.
 NOT AN ATHEIST

197

was found or seen, out there in the bushes, talking “face
to face” with that old blood-stained Hebrew? We shall
see, further along, that Buddha did not believe this. He
ridiculed such a preposterous thing.

Now, lest I be branded as an Atheist, I will at once,
and without reservation, write down my creed: I firmly
believe in one omnipotent, omniscient Maker and Ruler
of the universe. I believe that Jesus was a man; begot-
ten and born after the manner of other men. I have no
doubt but that he was nailed to the cross, for the Jews
in his time murdered people in that way. I do not be-
lieve in three Gods, or two Gods. The Trinity, there-
fore, is eliminated. Let us pass on.

THE UPANISHADS.

§ 4. It is just one hundred years since a Latin trans-
lation of the Upanishads7 was published by Anquetil
Duperron,8 a Frenchman, who had previously trans-
lated into French the Zend Avesta—the Persian Bible.
Duperron’s translation would, probably, have fallen
quite still-born had it not been for that wonderful lin-

7   It is difficult to render an exact and unquestioned
definition of the word Upanishad. Some Orientalists
maintain that Upa-ni-shad comes from the root “Sad,”
preceded by the preposition -ni (down) and upa- (near),
expressing the idea of a school where the pupils sit down
near the teacher for instruction. Others claim that
Upanishad means theological, or philosophical doctrine.
Again it is claimed that it means destruction of passion,
and ignorance. The Upanishads undertook to set forth
the theory or, in other words, to account for the creation
of the world.

8   Duperron made his translation about the year 1775,
 198

RECORDS 4,000 YEARS B. C.

guist and classical scholar, Sir William Jones. That
great Englishman was master of some thirty languages,
including, among others, Greek, Arabic, Persian, San-
skrit, Runic, Hindoo, Pali, Chinese, Syric and Tibetan,
and he could write French with all the vigor and fluency
of Duperron himself.

In 1783, Sir William was appointed judge of the Su-
preme Court of Bengal; and directly after arriving in
Calcutta, founded the Asiatic Society, thereby enlisting
many oriental scholars in Europe to engage in a critical
study of the laws, the customs, the language and the re-
ligion of India. To their amazement, they found a sacred
literature, vast and exhaustless, from every point of
view. Thenceforward the study and search of Hindu
literature began; and the end is not yet.

To their further amazement, they found from these
old records, running back 3000 to 4000 years B. C., that
India was peopled by a race with strong religious in-
stincts, and with mental endowments as keen as their
numerous progeny, who left their early homes in India
and settled in Europe.

THE ARYANS.

Diligent research, within the last one hundred years,
has reasonably well established the fact, that, more than
5000 years ago, the Aryans, then undivided, were occupy-

but translations had previously been made by Dara Shuka
and others as early as 1657. Europe, however, turned a
deaf ear upon all of these, and it was not until Sir Wil-
liam Jones was sent as a judge to Bengal, that a warm
interest was awakened in the religion and history of the
East.
 HINDUS OUR ANCESTORS

199

ing that large territory stretching east from Bactra, and
reaching beyond the Indus.

When that populous hive swarmed, there went forth
the Persians, the Kelts, the Greeks, the Teutons, the
Latins and the Slavi. Those people, whom we now call
Hindoos, our ancestors, many generations back, remained
at the old homestead. They were then blue of eye, with
straight hair and fair of skin; but many generations
passed under the hot sun of the Ganges, has left them
almost as brown and dark as our American Indians.9

But those Hindoos of whom we have been speaking
were not the first or original inhabitants of India. When
the Aryans entered Punjab, they found a dark-skinned
race already in possession of the soil. And they made
war upon those men of color, and pressed them back.
The American people, for now nearly three hundred
years, have done the same with the aboriginal tribes
found on this continent. The Jews some 3400 years ago,
slaughtered right and left, without mercy, to obtain
possession of the Holy Land. As if a land can or could
be holy, where people are murdered for its possession.

In India the victorious Aryans reduced those dark-
visaged people (Varna or colored) to serfdom. They
called them Dasas or Dasyus; and, later on, when the
Brahmans divided society into four great casts, or divi-
sions, these Varna (colored) men, were called Sudras,
and were placed at the very lowest round of the ladder.

9   When Columbus first saw the natives of Cat Island,
he supposed he had touched the shores of India, and
hence called the natives Indians.
 200

THE SUDRAS

THE SUDRAS.

§ 4. But the Sudras themselves had been trespassers
and pillagers. For back of them, and beneath them in
vigor and intelligence, there once lived in India, in the
long ago, a race whom those Sudras, or at least their
ancestors, had dispossessed. Just when the predecessors
of the Sudras were conquered and driven to the hills, or
slaughtered, it is now impossible to tell. It may have
been ten thousand years ago; and possibly even beyond
that period; and again it may have been much less. One
thing is certain, it was centuries before the Hebrews
leveled the walls of Jericho by the tooting of rams’
horns. That Jericho affair, if the chronology of the
Hebrew Bible be correct, was only about 1450 years B. C.
And at that time India and Egypt were the two focuses
of intelligence and civilization. The hymns of the Rig-
veda had been sung for centuries in India, and Osiris,
the God of the Egyptians, was holding his court for the
trial of souls, as far back, at least, as 2300 years B. C.
Whence came those Sudras, whom the Hindoos con-
quered? But a more difficult and puzzling question lies
back beyond that; Whence came those Aborigines,
whom those Sudras dispossessed? The traces of those
primitive people, who left their stone axes and their flint
arrow-heads, are unmistakable evidences that a primitive
race of men were once in possession of India, as the
flint arrow-heads and stone axes are proof (even had we
no better evidence) that a savage race once held sway in
Britain.

A WORLD STRIFE.

The Hindoos held India fast in their grip for more
 PHYSICAL FORCE RULES

201

than four thousand years; but England now has her grip
on them, and it will be only because of the vast multi-
tudes of Hindu people that they will be saved from the
fate of the Sudras. But even their vast numbers may not
save them. Physical force has ever ruled the world,
from the lowest to the highest forms of life. It is always
the survival of the strongest. For the disappearance of
the weaker race is still going on, in every part of the
earth.

“The lizard feeds on the ant, and the snake feeds on
the lizard; the rapacious kite on both. The fish-hawk
robs the fish-tiger of that which it had seized. The
shrike chases the bubul, which did chase the jeweled
butterflies; till everywhere each slays, a slayer, and, in
turn, is slain. Life living upon death. Thus this fair
show veils one vast, savage, grim conspiracy, of sicken-
ing murder, from the worm to man, who himself kills
his brother.”10

But notwithstanding the ferocity in man’s nature, and
his disposition to be a marauder and a plunderer, he
has always, as far back as we can trace him, been a wor-
shipper of gods and goddesses, big and little, high and
lofty, as well as low and groveling.

Nations are only aggregations of individuals, and they
plunder and rob, on gigantic scales. Look at Russia
plundering China; see the butcheries of England in South
Africa. Why is America slaughtering the people in the
Philippine Islands ? Why did France murder the Sulus;
and why is Germany, with shotted cannon, seeking pos-

10   Arnold’s Light of Asia—book first.
 202

INDIA HAD NO GREAT WARS

sessions in every place where she finds a people too weak
to withstand her ? These lists might be greatly extended.
When nations murder, it is called war. Diplomacy is
only another name for swindling on a huge scale. All
these nations just mentioned are called Christian nations,
and claim to follow the precepts of the Man of Galilee.

INDIAN HISTORY IS MEAGER.

§ 5. India, which is as large as all of Europe, Russia
alone excluded, never heard of Jesus, or, at least, never
claimed to follow his religion; yet India, for the last
four-thousand years, has made no wars of conquest; and
Brahmanism and Buddhism have been her religions dur-
ing all those centuries. It is true that Alexander the
Great, about three hundred and twenty-five years B. C.,
invaded India, and those people defended themselves the
best they could; but that was not a war of their own
seeking.

India has no history of great wars and great conquests.
Her chronology is provokingly, and lamentably deficient.
But we catch glimpses of her people, here and there, from
the Brahmanas, the Mantras, and the Upanishads. For
forty centuries past, they have been an intensely religious
race; worshiping those great visible objects of nature,
that call forth the glowing admiration of every devout
soul. Like all other peoples, their primitive worship was
rude and uncouth, and consisted largely in offering sac-
rifices to the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, the
waters and the winds. But they did not sacrifice unto
devils, as did the Jews, mentioned in chapter 32 of Deu-
teronomy.

There are to-day more than two hundred and forty
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

millions of people in India, and for more than three thou-
sand five hundred years that country has been a populous
hive. Why is it that, in all this lapse of centuries, it
has cut so small a figure in the world’s changing history ?
Her people were and are intellectual; they are moral,11
they are industrious.

What then is the reason that they have never taken a
position in the world commensurate to their abilities and
their population? The answer is not far to be sought,
and is easily given:   Religion and philosophy have fully

occupied the Indian mind. Moreover, they lack, and
have ever lacked, that organ called combativeness: They
are not, and never have been, a quarrelsome and fighting
race. True, there are traces, in the Veda, of internal dis-
sensions ; but they were never covetous of the lands and
wealth of neighboring nations. The great mystery of
creation and man’s existence on earth was of more im-
portance to them than armies and empires. Their relig-
ion, for generations, has taught them that it is sinful
to take life; even the life of a worm. The Brahmans
taught this long before Buddha was born; and Buddha’s
religion was even more tolerant and peaceful.

11   I know it is claimed that they worship Juggernaut,
and do many other lawful things—but let the reader wait
a bit and see further along about that.
 CHAPTER II.

BRAHMANISM AND THE MOSAIC RELIGION FURTHER COM-
PARED.

§ i. Brahmanism precedes Buddhism by so many cen-
turies that it is well to glance back at it, for it is vener-
able with age. Its dogmas are numerous and are writ-
ten in many books. In fact, the sacred literature of India
is eight times greater in extent that the Hebrew Bible.

Who founded this vast religious system, no one can tell.
It is evident that it grew by accretions, from age to age,
for no one person in a long life could build an edifice
so imposing. But that its foundations were laid in the
dim and misty past is beyond all controversy. If we
wish to fix a date for it, we are surely safe in saying that
when Abraham was sitting in his tent door, on the plains
of Mamre, about thirty-eight hundred years ago,1 the
hymns of the Rig-Veda had been sung for centuries on
the banks of the Indus, and probably in the groves along
the Ganges. How long the Hindu Bible had then been
in process of composition will probably never be known.
It is a book of books; and like our own Bible, was com-
posed by different persons living centuries apart. Like
the Hebrew inspired ( ?) seers, the Hindu inspired ( ?)

I Genesis, Chapter 18.

204
 CONFLICTING CREEDS

205

seers sometimes involved themselves in contradictions.
Yet the Jews in composing their Bible had somewhat
the advantage, for they were fewer in numbers, and
occupied only a small skirt of territory along the eastern
end of the Mediterranean. But India is vast, and her
people for forty or fifty centuries have been numerous.
We may, therefore, conclude that more hands held the
tiller of the Hindu craft than the Jewish bark; hence
more liability to confusions and discrepancies and con-
tradictions. Moreover, we must not be too critical in this
matter. Are we sure that our own house is not made
of glass? For in my own America those who follow
the Man of Galilee as the founder of their faith must
not forget that there are here conflicting creeds and be-
liefs in very sharp antagonism.

OUR CHURCHES QUARREL.

[Prometheus]

To illustrate: The Presbyterians have quarreled among
themselves, and with every other sect for four hundred
years over the question of infant damnation, and still do
not agree. As if the Almighty had nothing else to do but
roast babies in furnaces of fire because He had not elected
them to go to Glory. If this infernal doctrine were
found in the Hindu Bible, we would lift up our hands
in holy horror. But as it is a supposed Christian doc-
trine, we endure it; and some mental deformities profess,
in their sterner moods, to even believe it.

The Roman Catholic church is as inimical to the so-
called orthodox churches to-day as Brahmanism was to
Buddhism, when the latter was driven forth after cen-
turies of struggle. And the orthodox churches2 would,

2   The so-called orthodox churches are the Methodists,
 206

HARSH THINGS SAID OF INDIA

if they could, at once and forever wipe out and abolish
Catholicism.

Many harsh things have been most unjustly charged
against the people of India. It has been said that “no-
where in the world are luxury and licentiousness carried
so far.” 3 That is too sweeping. It is no more true than
it would be to make the same charge against the people
of France, or England, or against the people of my own
country. In India there are, especially in great cities,
black spots where lust, lewdness and debauchery prevail.
The same may be said of London, Paris, New York and
Chicago. As to luxury, the rich, and especially the ex-
travagantly rich, everywhere loll supinely and roll along
voluptuously. It is the same old story here and in India
as well. The rich man “is clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fares sumptuously every day.” 4

§ 2. While it is true that there is a class of ultra
ascetics in India who hold that the body is the great
enemy to spiritual progress, and therefore macerate
and mutilate it and cause it to sutler in many ways; yet
the masses of the people there are struggling to extract
enough from the soil to feed and nourish the bodies of all.

INDIAN ASCETICISM.

There are more than two hundred and fifty millions of

Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc. But I
do not allege that the Roman Catholics are not good
people.

3   I allude to J. F. Clark’s Ten Great Religions: title,
Brahmanism. § 2.

4   Luke, 16th chapter, verse 19.
 ASCETICISM IN INDIA

207

people in India,5 and of this vast number forty millions
or more are engaged in agriculture alone. In all great
populations there will be found some who are mentally
deformed. They are possessed with hallucinations and
delusions. The fakirs of India were of this class; their
asceticism being so extreme and nonsensical that some
of them ate their food naked; some wore their hair mat-
ted; some shaved their heads and faces; others slashed
their bodies with knives; while some bored holes in their
tongues, or plucked out an eye. Possibly his eye had
offended him, and if so, Jesus copied him; for he said,
“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from
thee.” 6 Some wandered through mountains and slept,
like beasts, in gloomy caverns. Others scattered ashes on
their heads, or fasted until their bodies became withered
and wasted.

Moses, it is said, fasted forty days without even water
to drink. (Exodus 34.) Jesus also fasted forty days
(Matt. 4 and Luke 4), and John the Baptist was some-
thing of an asectic himself, for he lived “in the wilder-
ness upon locusts and wild honey.” 7

Those Brahman ascetics lived in the woods and caves
that they might escape the miseries of metempsychosis
(transmigration) and finally reach the joys of Nirvana
(heaven.) Moses, John the Baptist and Jesus were
simply copying them. Why did John the Baptist preach
and teach in the wilderness, subsisting meanwhile on

5   Of the two hundred and fifty millions, there are forty
millions of Mohammedans.

6   Matt. V, 29.

7   The best attested case of fasting is that of Dr. Tan-
 208

THE HINDU BIBLE

locusts and wild honey, unless to make sure that he might
reach the eternal camping-ground in safety?

THE RIG-VEDA.

§ 3. The Rig-Veda, the divine revelation to the Hin-
dus stands to Brahmanism about the same as the Pen-
tateuch does to the subsequent parts of our Hebrew Bible.
One difference being that the Pentateuch says that God
talked to Moses,8 while the divine revelation to the Hin-
dus is expressed by the word Sruti, “heard” or hearing.
Another difference between these two old Bibles is as to
their respective ages. The transactions in Exodus, if its
chronology be correct, took place about 1491 years B. C.
The oldest hymns of the Rig-Veda date back 2400 years
B. C.9 And prose always precedes poetry in the history
of our race.

We know that the separation of the Aryan Persians
from the Hindu Aryans took place more than 4300 years
ago. They were down there in the Punjab, or on the

ner of Chicago. He insisted that it was possible that
Jesus fasted forty days. Tanner tried it. He had
watchers and guards, and the doctors took his weight,
temperature and pulse every day. At the end of
forty days he was very weak and ready to collapse. The
angels did not come and minister to him as they did to
Jesus (Mat. 4, 11.) But a man gave Tanner a piece of
watermelon the moment the forty days had expired,
which revived him at once.

8   Exodus, chapter 33, where this amazing statement is
made,—but the Lord would only let Moses see His “back
parts.” Read the whole chapter to the last verse.

9   In this matter I follow Dr. Martin Haug. He thinks
the oldest of the Vedic hymns were composed 2400
 RIG-VEDA 4,300 YEARS OLD

209

Jumna, at about the time Noah was in his ark, some
forty-three hundred years ago. They were then compos-
ing their Bible—the Rig-Veda. The flood did not reach
them.

While there is much wonderfully beautiful prose in
Genesis, there is not a single line of poetry. And it was
not until that marvelous ( ?) passage of the Red Sea that
Miriam and the women went out with timbrels and songs
to celebrate that extraordinary event (Exodus, 15) that
we discover any poetry.

Vedic poetry was surely sung as far east as the Ganges
at least five hundred years before MirianTs day, and in
the Punjab much earlier. The Hindu Bible and the He-
brew Bible both claim to have come to man by inspiration
from God; and both Bibles teach that the favor of heaven
may be obtained by giving the Gods a meal of victuals.
But Leviticus tells us that no man who had a flat nose,
or was hunch-backed, or a dwarf, could offer God his
dinner.10.

Both Bibles speak of “the God of Gods, and the Lord
of Lords.” (Psalms, 136.)

years B. C. If this be true, it may help to answer some
puzzling questions as to the when-and-where of the hu-
man race. Respecting these dates, I am fully aware that
Max Muller fixed the chanda period at about twelve hun-
dred years B. C. But he was careful to say that most
Sanskrit scholars would think his limit too short. Fur-
ther careful investigation has found his limit is in fact
too narrow. He limited the Sutra period to six hundred
years B. C.; and the proof now is far back beyond that.
(See Goldstiicker’s Manava-Kalfra Sutra, p. 78.)

10   Leviticus, chapter 21, v. 8, 17 and 21, speaks of offer-’
ing bread to God. Laws of Manu., 3, §§ 70 to 90.
 210

SACRIFICES TO THE GODS

SACRIFICES TO THE GODS.

The Hindus offered to their deities milk, butter, boiled
rice, barley, rice cakes, etc., but they did not partake of
the “food before the Gods had eaten.”11 The Hebrews
did not treat their God with the same consideration; for
as late as three hundred years after the exodus, when
offering a sacrifice, the priest’s servant, “with a three-
pronged flesh-hook came, while the flesh was seething,
and thrust the hook into the pot, and all he could fish
up, the priest took for himself.”11 12 The priests had be-
come even more ravenous than in the time of Moses,
for Aaron and his sons only got “the remnant of the
meat-offering.”13

There is another parallel between the Hindoos and
the Hebrews; for the Hebrew Bible mentions ten patri-
archs, who each lived to a very great age before the
flood; and the Hindoos have ten great sages who lived
in the early dawn of history.14

FOUR GREAT CLASSES OR CASTS.

§ 4. With both the Hindoos and Hebrews, the priest-
hood greatly enlarged their borders. In this matter the
Hindu priests went to the most extravagant lengths.
They divided the people into four great casts or classes:

11   Satapatha-Brahmana, I Kanda, Vol. 12, S. B. E., p.

2.   But see section 5, of this chapter, where bloody sacri-
fices were abolished.

12   I Samuel, chapter 2. The word “Sacrifice” means,
in such connection, a meal offered to the Deity.

13   Leviticus, chapter 2, v. 3.

14   Laws of Manu, chapter 1, Creation. I might men-
tion that the Chinese also have a similar legend.
 THE LORDLY BRAHMAN

211

the Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas, the Vaisyas, and the
dark-skinned Sudras. At the head of these four casts
stood the privileged, lordly Brahman. For generations
and for centuries he struggled to reach this alluring, daz-
zling summit. His leadership was gained, no doubt, in
the first instance, by his intellectual superiority. He was
keen, he was alert, he was devout; he placed himself in
the van of the moving column, and the masses blindly
followed him.

The Purohitas (family priests) devoted themselves
with such assiduity that they were soon bold enough to
say to the King: “Verily, the Gods do not eat the foods
offered by the King, who is without a Purohita; where-
fore let the King, who wishes to sacrifice, place a Brah-
mana at the head. The kingdom of such a ruler is un-
disturbed. He attains to the full measure of life. A
wise Purohita is the guardian of his realm.” (Aitareya-
Brahman, 8.) In short, the Brahman priests, from the
very first glimpses we get of them, were extremely perti-
nacious in their own behalf. They said: “The very birth
of a Brahmana is an eternal incarnation of the sacred
law, for he is born to fulfill that law and become one with
Brahman.

“A Brahmana,” they said, “is born the highest on earth;
the lord of all created beings for the protection of the
treasury of the law. Whatever exists in the world is
the property of the Brahmana. On account of the ex-
cellence of his origin, the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to
it all. The Brahmana eats but his own food; wears but
his own apparel; bestows but his own in alms ; other mor-
tals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahmana.”
It was incumbent on a Brahmana to study the sacred
 212

NEVER PROVOKE A BRAHMAN

laws and duly instruct his pupils in them.15 “He who did
this was never tainted by sins arising from thoughts,
words or deeds.” 16 Even the King was warned not to
provoke a Brahmana to anger; for when angered they
told him they could instantly destroy him and his whole
army.

The next caste, in rank and importance to the Brah-
manas, was the military order, the Kshatriya. There are
indications that there was resistance by the Kshatriyas to
the lofty and self-asserted supremacy of the Brahmans.
But how long it continued, and when and whence it com-
menced, the records, so far as known, are silent. But
that there was a clashing, at least in sentiment, it is not
hard to believe. For how could a self-respecting man
admit without a controversy, that “a Brahman boy of ten
years and a Kshatriya of one hundred years stand to each
other in the relation of father and son”; that between the
two, the Brahman was the father.17

The laws of Manu declare it to be the duty of the
Kshatriya to protect the people, offer sacrifies, study the
Veda, and to abstain from sensual pleasures. But a
Kshatriya, who came to the house of a Brahmana, was
neither called a guest nor personal friend; yet the Brah-
mana might feed him after the Brahmana himself had

15   We shall see presently that none but a “twice-born
man” was allowed to study the sacred law. The Sudras
were forever excluded.

16   Laws of Manu, chapter i. The last three words in
the above sentence sound supiciously, as if borrowed from
Zoroaster.

17   Chapter 2, Sloka, 135, Manu.
 AN IMPASSABLE GULF

213

eaten. In fact there was a deep, wide, impassable gulf
between the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas—as impassa-
ble as that in slavery times between the master and the
slave in my own country.

The next step in the descending scale was the Vaisya,
whose duty it was to tend the cattle, trade, loan money
and cultivate the land. He could also offer sacrifices and
study the Veda. But the stricken Sudra found all doors
shut and barred against him. He had, as we have
already seen, driven a weaker race from the soil; and
his own punishment was now at hand. The all-conquer-
ing Aryan had overcome him and reduced him to abject
slavery. “Such measure as ye shall meet, it shall be
measured to you again.”

SLAVES IN INDIA.

The Brahmans, having mastered the Kshatriyas and
the Vaisyas, found it easy to put into their laws that
Svayambhu (The Self-Existent) had created the Sudra
to be a slave. That even if his humane master released
the Sudra from servitude, he was still a slave to a Brah-
mana, for that was innate in him.18 And it was made
the King’s duty to compel the Vaisyas and the Sudras to
perform the work prescribed for them, lest the whole
world should fall into confusion. It is said that Svayam-
bhu (The Divine Self-Existent), for the sake of the
prosperity of the worlds, caused Brahmana to proceed
from his mouth, the Kshatriya from his arms, the Vai-
sya from his thighs, the Sudra from his feet.19

18   Laws of Manu, chapter 8, §§ 413, 414 and 415, a
slave could own no property.

19   Manu, §§ 6 and 31. Those parts of the body above
 214

ITHE SECOND OR SPIRITUAL BIRTH

THE SECOND OR SPIRITUAL BIRTH.

§ 5. Every Brahman must, between his eighth and
sixteenth years, perform the sacrament of * 20 Savitri (Ini-
tiation). Failing in this, he became an outcast, and was
so despised by the Brahmanas that they would not coun-
tenance him, even in distress. The ceremony of initiation
was a solemn, important religious event in the life of
every Aryan. It so sanctified him that thereafter he
was called a “twice-born man.” He was admonished
that the Veda was the source of the sacred, revealed law.
That Sruti (revelation) and Smriti (tradition) must
not be called in question in any matter; since on those
two the sacred law was founded. That every twice-born
man, who treats with contempt those two sources of the
law, must be cast out as an atheist and a scorner of the
Veda. But they never burned atheists, as did the Chris-
tians formerly.

The novice was instructed that in seeking knowledge
of the divine law, the supreme authority was in revela-
tion (Sruti.) After tonsure, he was invested with the
sacred cord, which was generally worn over the left
shoulder and under the right arm. He was then given
a soft, smooth girdle of munga grass, and a staff, smooth
and handsome; and further instructed that by the study

the navel the Hindus said were pure; those below, impure.
Manu, chapter 5, § 132.

20   This period was extended for the Kshatriya to 22
years; to the Vaisya, to 24 years. Beyond that period
any young man of the first three casts, who failed to per-
form the Savitri, became Vratya,—an outcast.
 BURNT OBLATIONS

215

[Prometheus]

of the Veda, by vows, by purity, by burnt21 oblations, by
recitations of the sacred texts, by offerings to the Gods,
to the Rishis and to the Manes, his body would become
fit for Brahman.22

Jesus prescribed a different formula for sanctification.
For he said to Nicodemus, “except a man be born of
water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of
God.” (John 3, 5th.)

One of the things imposed upon the pious Brahman
was to offer oblations, morning and evening; and the
Jews, so Ezra tells us in chapter 3, “offered burnt offer-
ings to the Lord morning and evening.” The Jews were
simply copying the sacrifices of the Hindoos. The priests

21   This matter of oblations at the period of the Veda,
to win the favor of Heaven, was in vogue nearly all over
the earth. It had traveled from the East. The Egyp-
tians brought it with them when they migrated, and
Moses learned it from them. Is it possible that the offer-
ing of sacrifices by Moses, in the wilderness, did, in fact,
drive the swarms of flies from Egypt? (Exodus, chapter
8, 25 to 32.)

22   This is a singular passage: If we say the body, by
these austerities, becomes fit for union with Brahman,
does it not look as if Jesus, who taught the resurrec-
tion of the body, found some support here for his doc-
trine ? More than this: take section 27, chapter 2, Manu,
where it says, “By honest oblations, and the tying on of
the sacred girdle, the taint derived from both parents
is removed from twice-born men.” Is the taint there
mentioned the same as

“In Adam’s fall,

We sinned all.”

If not, what is it?
 216

NEW MOON SACRIFICES

of India offered burnt sacrifices to the New Moon, and
the Jews copied them in this also.23

But no Sudra was allowed to offer a sacrifice. Nor
was he even permitted to hear the sacred texts repeated.
The Brahmana, on account of the superiority of his ori-
gin and his sanctification, legislated for all the people.
The Jewish priests, likewise, gave law to all their people.

HUMAN SACRIFICES.

Far back in the misty past, the Hindus offered human
sacrifices. Then they fell back from that and took a
horse; then dropped lower and took an ox; and then
a sheep; then a goat; and when the goat was offered up,
the sacrificial essence went out of it and entered the earth.
They dug for it and found rice and barley; and from
these “they gained as much efficacy as in all the five-fold
animal sacrifices.” 24

The Jews, a thousand years later, were still shedding
blood to appease an angry God; and we are told that
Solomon, at the dedication of the Temple, offered twenty-
two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thou-
sand sheep, as a sacrifice unto the Lord.25

I shall close this chapter by simply adding that the
twice-born Hindoo was directed to always bless his food,
and to rejoice with a pleasant face when he saw it, and
to pray that he might ever obtain it.26 Now if he was
copied and followed, when Jesus broke bread and blessed

23   Bible, Book of Ezra, chapter 3, v. 5.

24   Satapatha-Brahmana, p. 50, Vol. 12, S. B. E.

25   I Kings, chapter 8, v 63.

°6 Manu, chapter 2, section 54. Mark 12, v. 34.
 TABLE BLESSINGS

217

it, and is still copied by him who sits at his table and
asks God to bless the food he is about to take, then let
no man carp or sneer at either Jesus or the Hindoo.
For the man who can devoutly thank Heaven for his
daily bread must be of that class who are “the salt of
the earth.”
 CHAPTER III.

SOME FURTHER PARALLELS:   HINDOO AND HEBREW SCRIP-

TURES.

§ I. There is, perhaps, no Bible of any faith, which
is to-day the same as when it was first put forth. The
Bible of the Hindoos is surely not the same that it was
originally, for it has suffered recensions, eliminations
and additions. The same may be said of the Jewish
Bible; for it, likewise, has encountered recensions, elimi-
nations and supplements. Bibles are not written in a
day. It takes generations and centuries to construct
one. It took nearly seventeen hundred years to com-
plete the Jewish canon. The most ancient hymns of the
Veda are probably forty-three hundred and possibly five
thousand years old. The Hindu canon closed six or
seven hundred years B. C.1 It was, therefore, a long
period in building.

In nearly the last words of Manu, he challenges and
condemns all subsequent theologies, as follows:   “All

those doctrines differing from the Veda, which spring
up, are worthless and false, because they are of modern
date.” (V Manu, 12, § 96.) John closed the Jewish

1 It is possible that the Hindu canon closed eight or
nine hundred years B. C. See Manu 12, § 96.

218
 THEOLOGIES ARE INVENTIONS

219

Bible in the year A. D. 96 (to 125) with these menacing
words: “If any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this
Book; and if any man shall take away from the words
of this Book, God shall take away his part out of the
Book of Life/’2

Theologies are the inventions of man; and the inven-
tors of theologies are always dogmatic. It was so with
Moses and Manu. Moses was a man of blood and merci-
lessly slaughtered unbelievers. In one day he put three
thousand Hebrews to the sword for worshipping Aaron’s
golden calf.3 Manu was much less bloodthirsty. If a
twice-born Hindu forsook the law, he became a despised
outcast, and all intercourse with him was strictly for-
bidden. But he was not slain. By repentance and con-
fession, by bathing and fasting, by austerities, and by
penances, he became freed from his guilt.

Time has dealt severely with both of these old faiths.
In Jerusalem to-day (1905) there are only about twenty
thousand Jews; and these, mostly, pass the Mosaic rec-
ords by to study the Talmud. The Jews seem to have
deserved their hard fate. They are the scattered, unhon-
ored4 remnants of an unlovely but famous people. Yet

2   I think the record is wrong here. There was no
New Testament canon until about A. D. 125 or later, and
it is hard to tell just when the poor, ignorant Ebionites
first approved it. It is possible that it was written as
early as A. D. 100. St. John must have heard of Manu.

3   Of course there are some few exceptions; but as a
class, they are a despised race.

4   Exodus, 32: v. 27 and 28.
 220

JEWISH INFLUENCE SMALL

their old records, curiously enough, are studied and held
sacred by millions in Europe and America.

THE OLD MOSAIC RELIGION IS FADING.

But the old Mosaic religion is fading away. Of the
fifteen or sixteen hundred millions of people on the globe,
barely six million hold to that ancient Jewish supersti-
tion, and even these are so broken up in little isolated
groups and patches, that their influence, on passing
events, is scarcely a cipher. One foolish, senseless old
custom, that of circumcision, which they probably learned
from the Egyptians, they still follow with all the scru-
pulous care of Neophytes. Jeremiah told them6 they
were uncircumcised in heart, and the day should come
when they would be punished by nations uncircumcised.
It would seem as if Jeremiah’s prophecy had been and is
still being fulfilled. Very few Jews live in the country.
They mostly cluster in Ghettos, in the filthiest parts of
cities; and their children, with unkempt heads and dirty
faces, throng the streets. Such are the descendants of
“God’s chosen people.”

§ 2. Neither the Hindu Scriptures nor the faith of
India have fared so badly as the Hebrews. But the
Rig-Veda has not escaped the gnawing tooth of time.7

6   Jeremiah, chapter 9, v. 25 and 26.

7   The word “Veda” means knowledge; “Sruti,” reve-
lation. Originally the Hindu Scriptures were divided
into three Samhitas or collections, viz.: Rig-Veda, Yagur-
Veda and Sama-Veda. Later the priests added another—
the Atharvan or Ather-Veda. These were the compo-
sitions of Seers, Rishis or poets, and were committed to
memory and recited to the people.
 MILTON'S PARADISE LOST

221

It is not in vogue as much as formerly, but has been
largely supplanted by two great epics, the Ramayana and
Mahbharata.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, if it had been written
thirty-five hundred or four thousand years ago, is such
a story of Gods that it might have gone into the Hindu
Bible as a Sruti (revelation) from heaven; or into the
Hebrew Bible as a “Thus saith the Lord.” The Jews
would have welcomed it gladly, because their valley of
Hinnon is surpassed by it in heat and suffering. The
Hindus, because it pictures heaven in vivid colors and
gives it a better defined locality than the Rig-Veda. Be-
sides it would have supplanted metempsychosis effec-
tively.8

ALL EARLY RELIGIONS WERE BLOODY.

We have seen that the principal mode of worship by
the Hindus and Hebrews was by bloody oblations offered
to their Gods to appease their anger and to obtain their
favor. Those people lived about three thousand miles
distant from each other. And if it be true that the exo-
dus took place only 1491 years B. C., it follows that the
Hindus were sacrificing to their deities a thousand years
and more before the time of Moses. When and where did
they learn those heathenish rites ? Did the priestly class,
through long periods, invent and add to them, until now

8   It is not too much to affirm that Milton’s great poem
has sounded the key note to many a modern sermon, yet
in the last fifty years hell has abated its rigors some-
what ; and if Revelation had not been reinforced by Para-
dise Lost, religion would, no doubt, ere this have ceased
wearing sables.
 222

NO SWINE FLESH FOR EGYPTIANS

we find them elaborate enough to fill large volumes?
Did the Egyptians, before they migrated from the far
east, learn them there and carry them to the banks of the
Nile, where Moses copied them?

The Egyptians were particular in forbidding the use
of swine-flesh for food; and Moses copied them in this,
exactly.9 They also used fish which had fins and scales,
and Moses told the Hebrews they might do the same.
But he did not teach the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul. Yet the Egyptians taught it, and had taught
it nearly nine hundred years before the exodus. Nor did
Moses teach the transmigration of the soul, which the
Egyptians and the Hindoos both taught.10 *

§ 3. Moreover, where two nations or peoples teach
identical doctrines of religion, in part or in full, it is
not unreasonable to suppose that the younger nation
borrowed from or imitated the elder one. But such a
copy is never exactly true in all its details. It was so in
this case. India, as we shall see, taught retribution in her
transmigration.

Egypt taught that the transmigrating soul traveled a
circuit, which it made every 2842 11 years; but that as
long as the body was preserved from decay, the circuit

9   Leviticus XI. as to swine and fish.

10   After much study of this matter, I am satisfied that
the Egyptians were of Asiatic origin, and probably
learned, either directly or otherwise, the doctrine of
metempsychosis from the Hindoos. Many Egyptian
words are Sanskrit words, the ancient tongue of India.

But even Sanskrit had a predecessor.
 MOSES’ DOCTRINE NO FUTURE LIFE 223

did not begin. Thus many of the lower forms of life
were escaped. Hence embalming and the mummies.

Moses, “if learned in all the wisdom of Egypt,” knew
of these things, and he must have known that Egypt
emphasized the doctrine of a future life; yet he main-
tains a studied silence about it. But there was, and is,
one thing, be it said, to his immortal honor. He taught,
if the record be true, that there is only one Almighty
Being for man to worship. True, he offered sacrifices
with much mummery and foolishness, but he sacrificed
to only one God, the Father of us all. Whether this
belief in one God was the heir-loom of his race, or
whether he had thought out the problem by himself, or
whether Ezra11 12 and Nehemiah doctored up those old
Jewish legends and records, after the exile, and thus
made him a monumental hero; or whether an echo of
the Rig-Veda, or Hindoo philosophy, had reached his
ear, cannot, absolutely, be answered by any one. But we
shall not go far astray if we write down Ezra as an ex-
tremist; and Moses being already a prominent figure
in Jewish legends, was magnified by the facile pen of
the scribe into the colossal figure which we find in the
Pentateuch.

11   A Sothaic period was 1421 years, and in two such
periods the soul was supposed to make its circuit.

12   Ezra, one of the exiles to Babylon, was a fierce, un-
compromising Jew who, on his return, compelled all
those who had married Canaanite and Hittite wives to
give them up, and sent the wives away with their chil-
dren. Such a man is hardly trustworthy to transcribe
a great and important record. He called himself a ready
scribe. (Ezra, chapter 7, v. 6.)
 224

AGE OF RIG-VEDA

AGE OF RIG-VEDA.

If the Rig-Veda was in process of composition twenty-
four hundred years B. C., then it reaches back to within
a few years of the flood. If so, the idea of one God, the
Creator of the heavens and the earth, was in the world,
and had been here nearly nine hundred years before
Moses appeared. But if twenty-four hundred be too
ancient a date for the commencement of the Hindoo
scriptures, and we lop off five hundred years, even then
the idea of one God was in India five hundred years be-
fore the exodus.

The following Vedic hymn,13 which I am about to
quote, was composed and chanted in India probably one
thousand years before the Jewish exile.

1.   “In the beginning, the only born Lord of all that
is, established the earth and the sky. Who is this God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

2.   He who gives life and strength, whose shadow is
immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is this God
to whom we shall offer sacrifice?

3.   He is the only King of the breathing world. He
governs all, man and beast. He is the God to whom we
offer sacrifice.

4.   He whose power these snowy mountains, the seas
and the distant rivers proclaim. He is the God to whom
we offer sacrifice.

5.   He through whom the heavens were established,
nay, the highest heaven. He measures out the light. He
is the God to whom we offer sacrifice.

13   Rig-Veda X: 121
 HINDU HYMN

225

6.   He to whom the heavens and the earth, standing
firm, by his will, tremblingly look up. He is the God to
whom we offer sacrifice.

>0

V

7.   He who looked over the water-clouds which gave
strength; He who is above all Gods; may He not destroy
us, the Creator of the earth, the Righteous, who created
heaven and the mighty waters ? He is the God to whom
we offer sacrifices.”

§ 4. But neither the Hindoos nor the Hebrews were
satisfied with one God; and they were continually wan-
dering off after strange ones.14 The Hindoos invented
Indra and(Agni, and Varuna and others, to whom they
addressed their supplications. Varuna, being the Lord
of Punishment, bound the sinner with ropes.15 They
begged mercy of him, as follows:

'‘Let me not yet, O! Vatuna, enter into the house of clay.
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!

I   go along trembling like a cloud driven by the wind.
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!

Through want of strength, Thou strong, bright God,
have I gone to the wrong shore.

Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!

[Prometheus]

Thirst came upon me when I stood in the midst of the
waters.

Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!

Whenever we, O Lord, commit an offence before Thy
heavenly throne;

~14 Zachariah, 587 B. C., strove to cut even the names
J^X^of the idols out of the land (Zach. XIII, 2), and Malachi
threatened the wicked with fire. (Mai. IV, 2.) And Mi-
cah said, “The Jews lie in wrait for blood; even the
judges want rewards.” (Micah 7.)

15 Manu IX, 308.
 226

MOSES A UNITARIAN

Whenever we violate Thy holy law, carelessly.

Have mercy, Lord, have mercy!

Such was the prayer of a Hindoo three thousand
years ago. It sounds like a Psalm of David.

“O, Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger; neither chas-
ten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O
Lord, for I am weak. O Lord, heal me, for my bones
are vexed.”16

Now, notwithstanding the fact that Moses labored so
long and diligently to establish the faith of his people
in one God only, yet the Christians, fifteen hundred years
later, as we have seen, brought forth two new Gods, one
of whom was, and is, a myth; the other a gentle, kindly-
natured man. The Jews therefore when they nailed
him on the cross were simply following the teachings of
Moses, because they disbelieved in more than one God.

Moses said, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is
one Lord”;17 and Mark tells us that when a Scribe asked
Jesus which was the first commandment of all, he re-
plied, “The first of all commandments is, ‘Hear, O
Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord/ ”18

It would seem, therefore, that Moses and Jesus were
Unitarians; and with such sponsors for a creed, it ought
to win the world to its side.

16   Psalm 6.

17   Deut., VI, 4.

18   Mark XII, 29.
 CHAPTER IV.



THE GENESIS OF THE HINDU AND HEBREW BIBLES.

§ i. Old, mystical legends, about the origin of the
world, which in process of time have become embodied
in old records, have always held man, in every part of
our globe, as if in a vice, and demanded that he shall,
without question, believe whatever is written.

The Hindus were as peremptory, dogmatic and super-
cilious as the Hebrews. But they ventured beyond the
Jews, for, being more given to theorizing and philoso-
phizing, they invented a scheme, or system of creation,
as foolish, mystifying and improbable as the dogmatism
of Genesis. ^

The laws of Manu set forth that the universe existed
in the shape of darkness; that the Divine Self-Existent
appeared, dispelling the gloom; and with a thought, cre-
ated the waters and placed his seed therein. That the
seed became a golden egg, equal in brilliancy to the sun;1
and in that egg Brahma himself was born; the progenitor
of the world. He resided in that egg one whole year;
and then, by thought, divided it into two halves;1 2 from

1   That is, equal in purity to the sun.

2   What an inconsistency is here! It is so utterly non-
sensical and foolish, that it is on a parallel with a fairy

227
 228

WILL MANAS SURVIVE?

which he formed the heavens and the earth. He then
“drew forth from himself” manas (the mind), which, it
is said, is both real and unreal. From the mind he “drew
forth egoism,” which is self-consciousness; then the
Great One (the soul), and the five organs of sensation.
Manu tells us that Brahma can only be perceived by the
“internal organ.” This “internal organ must be the
mind or soul; for with no one, nor all, of the five senses
combined, can man perceive Brahma (God). A horse
has the same number of organs of sensation as man;
but has it that “internal organ?” On the other hand,
can it be proven that it has not manas also?

THE FIVE SENSES—WILL THEY SURVIVE?

I look out of my window and see the roses. I smell
their sweet fragrance. I hear the mocking-birds sing-
ing in the trees. I feel the balmy air. I take up a rose
and chew its leaves; and yet all of these five senses will
be nailed in my coffin. Will manas, or egoism, survive?
Hindoo philosophy answers that it will. J

Moses, on this all-important question, uttered no word.
Genesis also is silent. The “it” in Manu is the “internal

tale. If Atman or Brahma was already an existent be-
ing, why did he crawl into an egg to be born ? Think of
the Creator of this world hived in an egg! The only
reason I can give is that Hindoo philosophers, after-
wards, when trying to explain the origin of things,
reached the conclusion that of all living things, there are
three origins only:   That which springs from an egg;

that which comes from a living being, and that from a
germ. Manu, chapter i; also Upanishads, Vol. i, part
i, S. B. E., p. 94.
 WHAT IS EGOISMt

229

organ.” Is “it” Egoism? And, if so, is Egoism some-
thing surpassing even the mind in excellency? Manu
says that Egoism is something Lordly;3 and if it be
drawn from the mind, what else can it be than the sub-
limated essence thereof? I shall not follow the subtili-
ties of Hindoo philosophy further, but merely add that
if the mind is in fact drawn forth from Brahma (God),
we may here find the reason that, being finally released
from metempsychosis, it becomes merged in, or goes
back to Brahma.

If this be wrong, and Egoism be greater than manas,
it may be that it is Egoism that is merged. Is not this
Hindoo doctrine the same as that taught in chapter
twelve, Ecclesiastes, where we are told that the Spirit
returns to God, who gave it? If Egoism or Manas be
the same as Spirit, then Solomon and Manu here travel
the same road.

By joining minute particles of himself with the five
organs of sensation, and the mind, Brahma, we are told,
created all beings; and “in the beginning” assigned their
several names and conditions. Whatever quality, or
course of action, the Lord first gave to man, plant, or
brute; whether virtue or vice, truth or deceit, ferocity
or falsehood, each clung to its kind, plant or animal,
just as each season, of its own accord, assumes its dis-
tinctive marks.4

3   Manu i, 14. Some Hindoo philosophers maintain
that the soul was drawn forth from Brahma before the
mind, and that Egoism is simply the Ego or I.

4   If Ezra edited the Pentateuch, then Manu precedes
 230

THE CREATION—TIME?

THE CREATION—TIME?

§ 2. The Hebrew Bible says, “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth.”

In the beginning of what? If it means in the begin-
ning of the world He created it, then it is tantamount to
saying that He created it—when He created it. Of
course this would spoil the beautiful rhythm of the sen-
tence. But if it means that he created the world only
six thousand years ago, it is very evident that the writer
had never studied geology or astronomy. For the “tes-
timony of the rocks” makes the earth millions upon mil-
lions of years old. Its age is, in fact, so great that a
puny six thousand years is as a mole-hill to a mountain.
. If the Almighty Father is from everlasting to ever-
lasting, then a thousand millions of years, and ten thou-
sand times that, is only as a single grain of sand upon
the shores of myriads and myriads of oceans. Time
never had a beginning, and God did not create time.
It was, and is, coeval with Him. It was, and is, without
a beginning. Time was in this mighty universe of num-
berless worlds and suns when God was. It had no be-
ginning; it will have no ending. The angel may stand
with one foot upon the earth and the other upon the
sea, and “cry with a loud voice, that time shall be no
more,” but time will not heed the angel. (Rev. X). In-
numerable suns will continue to shine, and worlds with-
out number will continue to revolve in spite of the angel.

Ezra; but Manu, as we now have it, is a reduction of
an older work. Its present form is from 900 to 1300
years B. C. See Manu, chapter 1, sections 1 to 30.
 ASTRONOMY IS AGAINST GENESIS

231

Astronomy is also against Genesis, with its six thou-
sand years for the earth’s creation. The eccentricity of
the earth’s orbit has been calculated back to one million
years before Jesus’ day, and while it is true that the shape
of its orbit has varied somewhat, yet its mean distance
from the sun is so unvarying and constant, that it has
not changed eight seconds in six thousand years.5

Is it not about as absurd to insist that our earth is a
youngster, because Moses or Ezra, or some old Jewish
writer, of whom we know nothing, so wrote it down in
ignorance of the facts, as for some India writer to say
that Brahma housed himself a whole year in an egg?

Both of these old Bibles are full of absurdities, inac-
curacies and savagery. Both of them upheld slavery.
Moses told the Hebrews to buy their bond-men of the
heathen round about them, and the Indians, as we have
observed, reduced the Sudras to slavery. In fact, India
had several classes of slaves.6 Those Bibles were both
written in an age of idolatry and ignorance, when people
believed the earth to be flat. They were written when
polygamy was dominant, and both Bibles upheld it. In
this matter Solomon stands pre-eminent with his seven
hundred wives and three hundred concubines.7

Moses said, “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,

5   Dr. James Croll’s great work on climate and time.
R. A. Proctor’s article, Astronomy—Br. Ency., Vol. 2,
P- 795-. .

6   Leviticus XXV: 44. Manu 8: 413 to 417. The
bond-man bought of the heathen could never regain his
freedom. Neither could the Sudra.

7   I Kings, XI, 3. I do not wonder that so many wives
“turned away his heart.”
 232

A SUDRA’S PUNISHMENT

hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, stripe
for stripe.” 8

Manu said, "Whatever limb of a Sudra does hurt to a
man of three higher casts, even that limb shall be cut
off.”9 And if a Sudra struck a Brahma, he was to re-
main in hell one thousand years, but a twice-born man
might expiate his offense by supplications, fasting and
penances.

KNOWLEDGE AND THE SERPENT.

In chapter 2, Genesis, man is forbidden, under an
awful penalty, to eat of the tree of knowledge. But
without knowledge he would be as the beast of the field.
Without knowledge he would probably build a house
no better than the beaver. Now if the eating of the
forbidden fruit of that tree in Eden has given us the
mastery of nature, as we have it to-day, through the
gate of knowledge, thereby opened to us, then, instead
of vituperation and abuse, let the serpent which beguiled
Eve have a monument, and a lofty one.

As to this serpent dialogue with Eve (chapter 3), it
has heretofore been painted in colors immensely to the
disadvantage of the beguiler. Yet that serpent told the
truth, which God Himself immediately confirmed. For
the serpent said, "God doth know that in the day ye
shall eat of the forbidden fruit, your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil” (V. 5,
chapter 3). Soon thereafter, the Lord was walking10

8   Exodus XXI: 22 to 27.

9   Manu 8: 279 and 280, and Manu XI: 207.

10   He must therefore have legs, or He could not walk.
 THE LORD AND THE SERPENT

233

in the Garden, “in the cool of the day.” (The sun hav-
ing just been created, it blazed up probably too hot in
the middle of the day) and He questioned Adam about
this matter. Adam told the truth, like a man, and said,
“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave
me of the tree, and I did eat.” The Lord thereupon
faced the woman: “What hast thou done ?” The woman
(bless her) did not flinch. “The serpent beguiled me,”
she said, “and I did eat.” (Chapter 3, v. 13). There-
upon the Lord turned upon the serpent with these bitter
words: “Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon
thy belly thou shalt go; dust shalt thou eat all the days
of thy life.” The serpent kept his temper and made no
reply; and if that serpent was in fact a snake, he still
crawls on his belly. But was he not on his belly before
he met Eve? Did he have legs before God cursed him?
How is this? Who created that serpent? If this whole
thing be not a finely drawn allegory, we may well ask,
as God created every creeping thing, did He not also
create that serpent? If God did not create it, who did?
The serpent surely did not create itself.

Zoroaster, the great Iranian, taught that there were
two great creative beings: Ormazd and Aharman (God
and the Devil), who created and counter-created good
spirits and bad. And that this world is one great battle-
field, where the conflict will rage until Aharman, the
God of sin, is overthrown and destroyed forever.

1

THAT SERPENT COULD TALK.

Here in this Eden story the Lord uses language that
is entirely personal. The serpent could talk also, for he
 234

DIALOGUE WITH THE SERPENT

held a conversation with Eve. Was this serpent Zoro-
aster’s Aharman; or are these chapters the inventions of
a romancer? However that may be, the Lord and the
serpent agree as to the effect of eating the forbidden
fruit. The serpent said their eyes would be opened, and
they would be as Gods, knowing good and evil; and
after they ate the fruit the Lord said, “Behold the man is
become as one of us, to know good and evil.” “Now,
lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life
and eat, and live forever, I will send him forth from Eden
to till the ground from whence he was taken.”11

The imagination of the poet is not always logical.
Adam is trusted with the tree of Life, and that tree is
in Eden (ch. 2, v. 9), and it was not forbidden to Adam,
for the Lord expressly said: “Of every tree of the Gar-
den thou mayest freely eat” (ch. 3, v. 16), except the
tree of knowledge. Suppose Adam had eaten first of the
tree of Life, would man’s body have lived forever? Or
would it have worn out and withered and died as it does
now? It would look as if the solid facts are against the
romancer.

§ 5. Another little lapse of the poet in chapter 4 is
deserving of notice. When Cain for his crime was driven
forth to wander as a fugitive and a vagabond over the
earth, the Lord set a mark upon him lest any one finding
him might slay him. “And Cain went out from the
presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, on
the east of Eden.11 12

11   Gen., chapter 3, verses 22 and 23.

12   Chapter 4, v. 16.
 THE NODITES

235

THE NODITES.

Now, at that time there were of the human family,
according to the record, only Adam, Eve and Cain in
existence. Yet Cain settles in the land of Nod; finds
that land peopled; falls in love with one of the young
women, marries her, raises a family of children, and
builds a city, which he names after his son Enoch. How
did those Nodites get on this earth? There was no Gar-
den of Eden for them; no tree of life or tree of knowl-
edge for them. How did they get here? No dominion
over all the earth is vouchsafed to the Nodites. Yet they
did a good thing for the world, for they were not under
the general curse meted out to Adam.

There is no record against the Nodites for disloyalty
or disobedience; and it is probable that Seth, Adam’s
other son, married a Nodite girl. He certainly would
do that in preference to marrying his sister. Besides, as
Cain had so prospered with the Nodites as to get a wife
and build a city, would it not be an inducement to Seth
to try his fortune there also?
 CHAPTER V.

TWO FLOODS AND THE TRUE ARK STORY.

[Prometheus]

§ I. No one can write a book and hope to escape
criticism. The book of Genesis, and in fact the whole
Pentateuch, has been assailed by many persons and for
different reasons. But Pentateuch will stand, and it
ought to stand, not because it is historically correct in
all its details, but because it gives us the best conception
the Hebrew mind had of our Creator and of the creation
of the world.1 If that work were to be written to-day,
he would be a rash and careless historian who would
assert that the heavens and the earth and all animate
and inanimate things were created in six days. He would
study evolution 1 2 somewhat, and see what that tells him.
He would investigate the solar system, including the
nebular hypothesis, and instead of making this little
earth of ours the great central wonder of the skies, with

1   The Book as we now have it, is only about 2,485
years old. Some of the material which Ezra wrought
into his redaction, reaches centuries beyond that period;
how many redactions it had suffered before it reached
him it is impossible to tell.

2   While I cannot believe that God hustled to get
through creating “in just six days,” I maintain that he
is as much the creator when he sets the revolution ma-

236
 BRAHMA'S DAY 12 MILLIONS OF YEARS 237

the sun a small affair whose sole purpose it is to give
us light, his mental vision would become enlarged
enough to detail the facts as we now know them to be.
He would tell us that the earth gets only a two-millionth
part of the light given off by the sun. And it is not
probable that Manu would write into the Hindu Bible
that Brahma, their God, whose day is twelve millions of
years and his nights of the same length, slumbers a day
and a night, and at the end of that period awakes and
begins the work of creating.* 3

These Bibles agree that darkness was here before light.
Genesis says: “The earth was without form and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Manu tells
us that it “existed in the shape of darkness, unknowable,
immersed, as it were, in deep sleep, and that the Self-
Existent One appeared, dispelling the darkness.” 4 That
He thereupon created ten great Lords of created beings,
and “these created seven other classes of Gods, of meas-
ureless power.”

A FISH THAT TALKS.

§ 2. Both the Hindoos and the Hebrews in their Holy
Books, make mention of a great destroying flood. One

chinery to going, which brought forth this world and its
inhabitants as if he had created it as set forth in Genesis.

3   If Ezra had consulted Manu as to his days of crea-
tion and lengthened them into Kalpas, of millions of
years, his poetry might not have been as entrancing, but
he would have been much nearer the truth.

4   Manu i, 5 and 6. Some scholars maintain that the
word “darkness” here is equivalent to Avidya (igno-
rance) .
 238

A FISH SAVED MANU

morning when Manu 5 was washing himself a fish came
into his hands, and like Balaam’s ass, and the serpent in
Eden, it possessed the power of speech. It said to Manu:
“A flood will come and carry all the people away. Rear
me and I will save thee from that.” “How shall I rear
thee?” asked Manu. The fish replied:   “I am a small

fish; the large ones devour the small ones. Keep me in a
tub and when I outgrow that put me in a pond; when
too large for the pond take me down to the sea. That
year the flood will come. Prepare a ship and I will save
thee from the flood.” The fish soon became a large one
and was put into the sea. Meanwhile Manu built a
ship and the flood came and floated him and his craft.
The fish swam up to the boat, whereupon Manu “threw
a rope over its horn.” Then it swam to a lofty moun-
tain and told Manu to fasten to a tree there, until the
waters subsided, and that he could then descend gradu-
ally and be safe.6 All the other people were washed
away. And there is yet a legend of the tying of Manu’s
ship on the summit of the Himalayas.

THE HINDU EVE.

Manu was now alone in the world and he desired off-

5   Satapatha, Brahmana, Vol. 12, S. B. E., p. 216. This
Manu is not the Creator, but the Father of mankind.

I am aware that it is claimed that Manu’s fish story is
copied from the Noah affair. Now, if that be true, then
the Hebrews here pay back a small portion of their debt
to the Hindus.

6   This silly legend, first told, perhaps, as a camp story
4,000 or 5,000 years ago, may be the antecedent or
progenitor of Noah’s deluge. His craft rested on a
mountain and so did Manu’s.
 THE FIRST HINDU WOMAN

239

spring. We are told that he offered sacrifices of clarified
butter, some milk and curds, and in a year a woman rose
from the sacrifices 7 and came to him. “Who art thou ?”
said he. “I am thy blessing, thy benediction. Whatever
thou shalt invoke through me all shall be granted to
thee.” This woman became his bride and the mother
of the Seers of the Veda.

Noah’s flood differs somewhat from that of Manu, for
instead of a fish the Lord himself warns Noah to build a
boat and gives him the dimensions to build it. The Lord
is sorry he made man, for “the earth was filled with vio-
lence ;” 8 and He proposes to drown all flesh. According
to the record, Noah was the only man upon the earth
who “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Ch. 6, v. 8.

It would seem to be a tremendous undertaking, even in
these days of rapid transit, to gather a variety of all the
beasts and birds upon the whole earth and house them in
a boat like the Ark. But the Lord was gracious unto
Noah, for he said to him that, “of fowls after their kind,
and of cattle of their kind, and of every creeping thing
of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come
unto thee to keep them alive.” 9

Directly after this the Lord changed his mind and

7   A cautious writer might ask where his milk and but-
ter came from, for in such a flood the cattle must have
perished.

8   Gen. ch. v, y and 8. As I gave ample reasons in my
introductory chapter on Zoroaster and the Persian re-
ligion, and compared it with the Persian flood, I refer
the reader to section 5 of that chapter.

9   Genesis 6. Read the whole chapter.
 240

NOAH'S ORDERS

gave Noah a different bill of lading. For he told him
to take of every clean beast by sevens, male and female,
and of beasts not clean10 11 by two, male and female. The
fowls of the air he should take by sevens.

THE ARK.

Let us first notice the Ark. It is a large, clumsy-look-
ing thing, about four hundred and fifty feet long, by
seventy-five feet wide, three stories, and one door for
each story, with only one window above, or on the top,
extending up one cubit.11 It has rooms, but the number
is not known, neither can any one tell us what Gopher
wood is, the material of the Ark. Nor can we tell whether
it was nailed or spiked, or how it was fastened together.

We are told that Jubal-Cain was an artificer in brass
and iron, and perhaps the art had not been lost.12 Pos-
sibly there may have been a hardware store close by,
and if Noah had the cash or good credit, that point was
easily passed. Noah, at that time, was a veteran in years,
for if chapter 5, Genesis, be true, he was five hundred
years old. But in chapter 6 it is there declared that
man’s days “shall be an hundred and twenty years,” yet
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters
was upon the earth (Gen. 7, v. 6). And he lived after
the flood ? three hundred and fifty years.13

10   All beasts that parted the hoof and were cloven-
footed and chewed the cud, except the camel, were clean.
Lev. xi.

11   Gen. 6:16. There is no mention of glass for that
window, although in Egypt glass was in use 2,400 years
B. C.

12   Gen. ch. 4, v. 22.

13   Gen. 9, v. 29. It would seem that the Lord had
changed his opinion about the length of man’s days.
 NO FIRE IN THE ARK

241

§ 3. How long this curious craft was in building, the
record is silent, and any opinion is mere conjecture. Some
say one hundred years and some even longer. If either
of those guesses be correct, Noah was certainly a man
of faith, courage and perseverance. Neither can any
human being tell the spot where this world-famous Ark
was constructed. It seems apparent, however, that if it
took Noah one hundred years to build it, the frame, un-
protected from the weather, would have become some-
what rotten and worm-eaten before the flood came. Nor
can we conjecture where he got grain and forage for
this immense carivansary that was to be housed in that
craft. We are also at a loss to know how Noah himself
fared during this long imprisonment. Did he eat cold
victuals all these weary months? There was no chimney
in the Ark. It was a dark stinking place filled with birds,
reptiles and beasts. He had no fire and no light. How
did he live?

Those who believe the record which we are investigat-
ing to be holy and God-given, will tell us that the Lord
provided all that. But the record does not say that it is
Holy, neither does it tell us that the Lord furnished
the food.

The carnivora required fresh meat every day, and the
waters prevailed one hundred and fifty days, and did
not commence to recede until the high hills and the lofty
mountains were covered with more than twenty feet of
water and all flesh had perished. Then it required one
hundred and fifty days more before the waters were
abated, and they “decreased continually until the tenth
 242

ONLY ONE WINDOW

month, when the tops of the mountains were seen.”14
The flesh-eaters (and there was an army of them), would
instinctively refuse salted food. How then were they
sustained for nearly a year? There were not enough of
the clean beasts in the ark to feed them, if we leave any
to procreate the species. Just how this difficulty was
bridged over I cannot tell, possibly the Lord closed the
mouths of the lions and other ravenous ones, as he closed
the lions’ mouths when Daniel, later on, was flung into
a den of them.

THE PROCESSION INTO THE ARK.

Let us take our place by the gang-plank of the Ark
and witness this wonderful procession as it arrives.
There never before was one like it in all this broad earth,
and there never will be another such a gathering, in
variety, magnitude and importance, world without end.
The heavens are black, portentious, threatening. Not a
leaf is rustling in all the forests. There is a dead calm
and such an awful stillness that one can hear his own
heart beat. The very clouds seem so freighted that
they hang upon the tops of the trees as if waiting a
signal. Noah and his sons and their wives have just
gone into the Ark. Listen! Do you hear that muffled
sound? It is not the roar of the coming tempest. There
is a rustling of wings, there is a hissing and a trampling
as of myriads of feet. We hear now the lowing of cat-
tle, the bleating of sheep, and we are startled by the
terrific roar of a lion. This commingling of sounds, such
as no mortal ear ever heard before and will never hear

14   Gen. 8:3 and 5.
 GOD’S ELECT OF ANIMALS

243

again grows momentarily more distinct. It is the breath-
ing, trampling, crawling, flying, hopping and hissing of
God’s elect of all animal life on earth. A most momentous
thing is about to happen. All life, not in this moving
column, is shortly to perish, and to perish because of the
wickedness of man. The head of the column is in sight.
No human voice or arm is guiding it; yet it moves with
the precision and steadiness of an army under a field-
marshal. Noah whispers to his sons: "Here they come!
they come! God has not forgotten me. My neighbors
scoffed and jeered me and their ridicule cut me to the
heart. But I remembered the promise of the Most High,
and obeyed Him. My sons, God will never desert you
if you put your trust in Him. Obey Him and fear not.”
§ 4. The head of the column is now at the gang-plank.
Here come the ponderous hippopotamus and his mate,
laboring heavily, followed by some ugly-looking croco-
diles.15 Behind them crawl two monstrous boa-constrict-
ors, and near them prance the horses, and they snort
furiously, for they had just seen the boa swallow an ox.
But the horses are safe, for the boa is drowsy and wants
to sleep. Noah himself looks somewhat nervous, for
he is but little familiar with the fauna of tropical
America. Here are the elephants, the lamas from Peru,
the camels, the zebras, the elks, the buffaloes, the cattle,
the gnu and the tall giraffe from Africa. All these pon-

15   It has been claimed that the hippopotamus and the
crocodile and boa constrictor families, together with the
frogs, etc., did not go into the Ark. But amphibious
animals could not live 300 days in water alone. Noah
probably had a tank for them.
 244

THEY CROWD IN

derous ones instinctively seek the lower floor of the Ark.
These and thousands of others crowd in. The lion
heads another division. The tiger, the wolf, the jaguar,
the hyena, the leopard, the cat, the dog, the rat, the
weasel, the opossum and skunk, the squirrel, the gopher
and mouse, and tens of thousands of other animals from
the frozen North and the tropical South all come crowd-
ing in.

THE APES.

But here is another division, headed by some curious
objects so like unto men that Noah is about to drive them
back. The leader bears a strong family resemblance to
Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japhet. Noah mentions
this to them and Shem replies:   “Yes, father, that is

true, but his resemblance to you is even more striking
than to us.” Noah speaks to the leader and it chatters
back to him. It has hands like a human and a face not
unlike many. The legs of the chimpanzee, its arms and
its hands were indeed so like Noah’s that no wonder he
was puzzled.

No man, except Noah and his sons, must enter that
Ark; that is God’s order; and here is the first case on
record where evolution was decided and defied. Noah
admitted the monkey, thus holding that it was not his
ancestor. It was fortunate for the ape that Noah so de-
cided, else he would have been turned back to perish
with all others in the destroying flood.

The closing act of this panorama has arrived, for the
flutter of wings announces the coming of the birds. The
gaudy peacock is directing the flight, with the eagle close
by. Here come the geese and the swans, the ducks and
flamingos, the swallows and martins, the lap-wings and
 THE BIRDS

245

the quails, the turkeys and turtle-doves, the sparrows and
pigeons, the black-birds and wrens, with the crows
and birds of paradise. Here also are the orioles and robins,
and the bee-eaters and bitterns, followed by the great
auk, from Labrador, with its small wings tired and worn,
while the king-fisher skims along with ease. The owl
opens his eyes drowsily and Polly says she wants a
cracker. The raven and the dove were there, for Noah
himself speaks of them. The nightingale, in her long
flight across the Atlantic, is so worn and prosy that she
sings no more sweetly than the unmusical blue-jay.

The line of the feathered tribe so lengthened out that
it filled, completely, Noah’s third story, except a small
space in one corner for a cow which had been left, upon
the urgency of Shem’s wife, who wanted some milk for
the baby.

The great gathering is over and the three doors of the
Ark are closed. All animals and every creeping thing
on earth, according to Genesis, are represented in that
Ark. The windows of heaven are now opened “and all
the fountains of the great deep are broken up.” 16
THE ARK TOO SMALL.

Such a world-renowned and wonderful story as that of
the flood is naturally called in question. Here are a few
of the objections which I find against it. The Ark is
too small to hold a tenth part of the animals and their
food for eight or ten months. It is, or must have been,
a dark stenchy place. No windows, except a scuttle-hole

[Prometheus]

16   They have windows in heaven; but they had only
one window in the Ark.—Gen. VII, n.
 246

PITCHY DARKNESS IN THE ARK

in the roof. The animals were, therefore, enveloped in
pitchy darkness. The filth of their stalls would be death-
breeding. The poor animals could not be properly fed
and cared for by three men, Shem, Ham and Japhet.

A man of Noah’s age (six hundred years) could do
but little. It would keep more than a thousand men busy,
day and night, with plenty of light and air, to look after
things.

The nights in that Ark were no darker than the days ;
for they had no lights; at least there is no mention of
them. As to food, each animal would require the grasses
and herbage of its locality. The flesh-eaters alone, in
three-hundred days, would devour all the animals in the
Ark. It will not do to say that God would feed them.
He did not agree to do so. The animals came unto Noah,
“for him to keep them alive.” 17

Nor will it do to say that, Noah probably made more
than one door for each story, and one window for the
roof. The Almighty told him just how to build that Ark;
and if he failed to follow the plans, then he disobeyed.
But, suppose the carnivora did not destroy all the cows,
and goats, and sheep, while in the Ark. They are all
turned loose, when the folks go ashore. What happens?
The lions, hyenas, wolves, etc., feed upon the cattle and
sheep and goats; and thus all this coming to Noah to
save their lives, is frustrated. Moreover, the long months
of water has killed all the grass and herbage; and the
cattle, on leaving the Ark, found the earth a great, barren,
leafless desert. There is not a seed for the birds, nor a

17   Genesis VI, 20.
 BABYLON DELUGE STORY

247

bit of pasture for the flocks. But some pious soul, with
more faith than reason, will say, “God could take care of
all that.” I can as well reply, that God could have de-
stroyed all the world, except Noah and his family, and
the elect animals, without all this trouble with the Ark.

noah's deluge is a copy.

§ 5. But is not this whole thing a copy, somewhat
extended and changed, from that old untrustworthy Baby-
lonian mythical deluge story? Genesis is a Jewish nar-
rative, and the Jews were notorious copyists and imita-
tors ; but they were also rhetoricians, and writers of high
degree.

Athenian eloquence, in the space of three hundred
years, was carried to such heights, that it has never yet
been surpassed. Thus, also, Jewish writers from the
time of Ezra, to the close of the four Gospels, a period
of about six hundred and fifty years, completed a volume
that, perhaps, for felicity of expression, and lofty
imagery, will never be excelled. But often the Pegassus
of the poet mounted beyond the cold facts.

The Babylonian deluge story was current in Babylon
centuries before Ezra was carried there as a prisoner of
war. That story had been copied by the Babylonians
from the Accadians, so that we do not get it even second
hand. The ancient world was, in fact, full of deluge
stories. The Persians, however, changed the destroying
deluge into the cold and killing frosts of winter. With
the Persians, it was not because the “earth was filled
with violence,” that mankind was to be destroyed; but
 248

THE PERSIAN VARA

because it was filled to “overflowing” with men and
animals.18

The Persian romancer, instead of an Ark, is directed
by Ahura Mazda (God) to build a great underground
vara, an abode two miles square, with streets, and foun-
tains of water; and is told that there will be a light, self-
shining, within, to make that abode as light as an eternal
day.19 The frosts came, as did the flood, and killed all
the people and animals not in the vara.

If the Genesis flood-story be true, it is a bad thing for
those who trace their genealogy to Noah; for his conduct,
later on, stamps him as a Bacchanalian. If the whole
earth is, in truth, descended from the Ark people; then
drunkenness is a strain and a stain in our blood. But
why that old man, slobbering in his cups, had the power
to curse Ham, and have that curse follow him and his
posterity all these years, I confess myself unable to un-
derstand. Is it not more charitable to think it a mistake
of the printer ?

THE RAINBOW.

But is not the whole flood-story rendered extremely
equivocal and uncertain by what is said about the rain-
bow?

Did the sun never shine while rain-drops were falling,
before the flood-time? If it did, then, just so surely a
rainbow was formed. Why then the statement, “I do

18   One thousand years or less; probably five hundred
years will again fill the world to overflowing. What
then ? Is it a flood or a vara ?

19   See my introductory chapter on Zoroaster and his
teachings, where this is fully set forth.
 RAINBOW OLDER THAN THE FLOOD

249

set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a
covenant” that all flesh shall not again be destroyed by a
flood (Genesis IX, 9 to 17). The bow had been "sef’
long before the flood; and Noah must have often admired
its beauty. When the first rain-drops fell through the
first sunshine, then the bow was “set.” It was, and is,
the result of an established law, and that law will con-
tinue unchanged, just so long as raindrops fall through
the atmosphere while the sun is shining.

Is it too much to assert, that if Manu’s fish story had
been written into Genesis, instead of that of Noah and
his Ark, many devout and unquestioning souls would
gulp it down as solid fact.

And there is not a bit of doubt that, if the Noah legend
had been transcribed into the Sacred code of Manu, the
foolish Hindoos would insist that it was an Sruti (revela-
tion) from their God, Brahma.
 CHAPTER VI.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD. THE PUNISHMENT OF
THE WICKED.

§ I. The Brahman and the Jewish Bibles both set
forth that this world will be ultimately destroyed. And
that a matter of such supreme importance may not be
overlooked and forgotten, that statement is repeated
again and again. Just where those writers obtained their
information they do not state; but if they guessed at it,
they are confirmed, some say, by modern science.

The Hindu Bible states that at the end of great periods
of time, called Kalpas, the Lord will dissolve this mate-
rial world. He does not burn it up; He simply dissolves
it; or, as it were, He pulverizes it. Peter, after declar-
ing that the world shall be burned up, falls back upon this
old Hindu word and says, “all things shall be dissolved/’
(II Peter, ch. 3.)

All souls meanwhile, according to the Hindu Bible,
lie in deep sleep until, at the Lord’s convenience, He pre-
pares another world.

If the soul be loaded with demerit, it is not flung into
a furnace of fire to broil and burn for countless Kalpas,
but is given another body and has another chance. It
may see its error; it may reform, and be born into higher
and higher grades, until perfect knowledge is reached,

250
 THE HOPE OP THE BRAHMAN

251

and final release is found in Brahma (God). The pure
in heart find peace at once.

The Brahmans believe that this process of creation,
and destruction of the world, will go on in the future,
as it has in the past; through endless Kalpas. That is,
the body of man being dust, will be resolved back to dust.
That the soul is an emanation from Brahma;1 that it was
pure before it went forth from him; and that it must be
pure before it can return to him.

The hope and the struggle of the pious Hindu was to
escape metempsychosis and become absorbed in Brahma.
For unrepentant sinners, twenty-one hells were provided,
by Yama, the Lord of Justice, where they were tossed
about, in terrors and torments, “like to that of being
bound and mangled.” 1 2 But this did not happen until
“another strong body” was given the evil doer, when,
having suffered for his faults, the soul, purged of its
stains, approached the Great One and Kshetragna (the
Knower of the Field). These two, as judges, examine
each soul that appears before them, and send it on a pil-
grimage of transmigration, according to its merit or
demerit.

Brahma, it is said, completely pervades all existences,
with three controlling qualities: goodness, activity and

1   Is not this nearly tantamount to saying that wicked
souls having forgotten that they emanated or came from
God; and that they are a part of the integer or whole, will
have to transmigrate from body to body until they re-
cover their memory.

2   Manu, ch. 4, § 87; Manu XII, § 75; Manu XII, §16
to 33. Lord of Justice, Manu, ch. 7, § 7.
 252

IS THERE PREDESTINATIONt

darkness. That when a man feels a deep calm in his soul,
he may know that the quality of goodness predominates.
But if greed of gain and sensual objects lure him, he is
marked with activity, and finds it difficult to tread the
narrow path. Darkness has the form of ignorance; leads
an evil life, and is ever covetous, unholy, and cruel.

Now if it be true that whatever the Lord first appointed
to each soul, whether gentleness or ferocity, virtue or
sin, truth or falsehood, and those qualities cling to it,
spontaneously, then is it not also true that the Lord pre-
destined some souls to tribulation and woe?3 Wicked,
marble-hearted old John Calvin would smack his lips
with pleasure if he could know of this hateful Hindu
creed. Yet, if we look about us, and confine our vision to
man’s life on earth (for that is all we know of it), we
shall find representatives of Goodness, Activity and Dark-
ness on every hand; each clinging tenaciously to its birth-
mark. Those endowed with supreme goodness have no
struggle to become pure in heart; and with ease they
reach “the state of the Gods.”

Moreover, each of the three-fold classes of transmi-
gration were further divided into three lesser grades.
The doom of the worst soul in darkness was that it should
inhabit the body of a fish, a rat, or snake, or insect. In
the next grade above this, in darkness, the soul was sent
into a barbarian, a lion or tiger; and the very highest
grade that it could obtain, in that division, was as a hypo-
crite, a panderer, a snake deity, a liar, or a demon. The
lowest of the order of Activity were drunkards, gamblers,

3   Chapter 32, Deut.
 THE AVARICIOUS

253

knaves, despicable wretches; and just above them in the
same order were the disputations and those meddlesome
tattlers, including unworthy priests and forked-tongued
women.

Those panting for gain, avaricious souls, greedy,
grasping, watching their treasures; those hell-born gob-
lins; even those made up the highest ranks of Activity.

Goodness also had its degree, reaching up to the
very throne. At the lowest round stood the hermits,
ascetics, Brahmanas, and a class of deities who traveled
in mid-air, called Vaimanikas. Next above these were
the sages, the vedic deities, and the Manes.4 Beyond
these and above these, on the very pinnacle of goodness,
without a stain, reposed Brahma, the Great One, the cre-
ator of the universe, beyond whom, nothing.

§ 2. It is certain that in this alleged final destruction
of the world, the Hebrews were imitators and copyists.
For that idea, when the book of Deuteronomy was found,
had been prevalent in India from four hundred to six
hundred years. Long enough surely for an idea, even
though slow-footed, to travel from Punjab to Jerusalem.
When then was this book of Deuteronomy found? For
in that book (chapter 33) these remarkable words are
written: “A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn
into the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her
increase, and set on fire the foundations of the moun-
tains.” This is the first distinct enunciation found in the
Bible that the earth shall be destroyed. And the word

4   These Manes were primeval deities, free from anger,
loving purity, chaste, averse to strife, and endowed with
great virtues. Manu 3:192.
 254

A REMARKABLE FIND

“hell” is here first used in the Hebrew Bible. That
awful catastrophy to the whole world is to take place,
and all mankind are to perish because some wicked He-
brews had provoked the Almighty to anger by sacrificing
unto devils and not to Him; and by their vanities and
abominations.5 This threat to consume the earth crept
into the record in the following mysterious way: About
six hundred and twenty-four years B. C., Hilkiah, the
High Priest in Jerusalem, send word to Josiah, the King,
that he had “found the book of the law (Deuteronomy)
in the house of the Lord.” It was surely the most re-
markable “find” in all history.6

Moses had been in his grave about eight hundred and
twenty-seven years; yet, during all that period, eventful
to the Jews, there was no whisper that such a book as
Deuteronomy was in existence. The reigns of David and
Solomon preceded this “find” by more than three hun-
dred years. Where was this wonderful book during all
those centuries? We have only the bare, unsupported
word of Hilkiah, the High Priest, about this matter; and
all the circumstances are against him. A book hidden
away eight hundred and twenty-seven years! the ink
would fade, and the leaves would rot. In the dryest cli-

5   Chapter 32, Deut.

6   Shakespeare agrees with the Hindus and thinks the
earth will be dissolved.

“The cloud capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve,

And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a wreck behind.”
 AFTER 800 YEARS

255

mates and with the best of care four hundred or five hun-
dred years is the limit of the life of a book. This book
was hidden; for he found it. If hidden it must have been
put in some secret place, wrapped up; secreted; yet no
other High Priest mentions it for eight hundred and
twenty-seven years. There had been journeyings, and
wanderings, and wars, and rebellions, and battles, and
retreats, in those centuries. Deuteronomy during all this
time was not found by any one. The Ark of the Cove-
nant had been often moved; likewise the Mercy Seat, and
tabernacles; yet, in all these frequent changes, Deuter-
onomy lay undiscovered. Moses had died, and the Lord
had buried him in Moab; yet neither the Lord, nor Moses,
said a word about this hidden record. Furthermore,
after it is found, a strange thing happens. The King
(Josiah) directs Hilkiah and others to enquire of the
Lord about this newly-found wonder; and they visit
Huldah, a prophetess and fortune-teller, living in Jeru-
salem, and she reports favorably, of course, and Deu-
teronomy becomes a “thus saith the Lord.”7 Another
proof that Moses did not write this chapter in Deuter-
onomy, where the earth is threatened with destruction, is
that it is poetry (blank verse), and Moses was not a poet.
He was. a stern law-giver. Yet, some of these verses have
the rhythm of a Longfellow or an Emerson.

In that distant period, it is true that ideas traveled very
slowly. But if Ezra was the last editor of the Old Testa-

7   From a careful investigation of this matter, I think
Hilkiah wrote the book, and lied about finding it. Ezra,
probably, after the captivity, modified it somewhat. The
copyright, however, belongs to Hilkiah.
 256

PETER COPIES THE HINDU

ment, there was plenty of time for this notion about the
destruction of the earth to be carried from Persia, and
from India, to Babylon, to Jerusalem, and even west of
the Adriatic. It was an idea of such magnitude, and
terrible importance, that it was calculated to excite won-
der and discussion among all classes. This much, we
are certain, may be safely affirmed; that centuries before
Hilkiah found Deuteronomy in the House of the Lord,
the Hindoos had been teaching that the earth would be
destroyed, and again reconstructed, and that this process
would revolve continuously, like a wheel in perpetual
motion.

§ 3. We hear nothing further in the Jewish Bible
(and the New Testament was written by Jews) about
the destruction of the world, until nearly seven hundred
years after Hilkiah, when Peter declares that “the heavens
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall
melt with a fervent heat, and the earth shall be burned
up.”

[Prometheus]

Peter also, in imitation of the Hindoos, declares that
there shall be a day of judgment, and perdition, for the
ungodly.8 Paul chimes in with this, and says that Jesus
will come in flaming fire, and “take vengeance on them
that obey Him not; and will punish them with everlasting
destruction.”9 Paul, copying from the Persian, or the
Hindu Bible, or both, is specific about the happenings at

8   II Peter, ch. 3, v. 7 to 14. But Peter is a little cloudy
about where the heavens and earth will pass to, when
they pass away. Peter evidently did not know that matter
is eternal, and cannot be annihilated.

9II Thessalonians, ch. 1. Paul does an injustice to
 HINDU SPECULATION

257

the final day. Manu says, each soul is examined as to its
merit and guilt, and "obtains bliss or misery.,, That if
"virtue and vice are found in a small degree, it obtains
bliss in heaven, clothed with those very elements. But if
it chiefly cleaves to vice, and in a small degree to virtue,
it suffers the torments inflicted by Yama.” * 10 11

Paul, with the imagination of the poet, is inclined to
exaggeration. He therefore proclaims that the Lord him-
self shall descend from heaven, with a shout and with the
trump of God. That the "righteous shall be caught up in
the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and be ever with
him.” 11

Paul being a scholar, had no doubt learned of this
Pagan doctrine; but, being also a Jew, his nature is
naturally more fierce, and unrelenting, than the milder
Hindu; and he threatens the wicked with vengeance, and
everlasting destruction. "The Hindu punished the wicked
with great severity, but his punishment was not everlast-
ing. For when his term had expired, his soul was sent
into some animal, and might, as we have seen, work its
way upward towards supreme bliss.,, Even a mortal sin
of the Hindu did not consign him to eternal flames.12
Both of these punishments seem fearful to contemplate;

Jesus, about taking vengeance on the wicked; for Jesus
was not a vengeful man. The genuineness of this epistle
is questioned, but it is published as Gospel; therefore I
quote it.

10   Manu XII, 18 to 23: But Yama’s torments were not
eternal.

11   I Thess. IV, v. 16 and 17, and II Thess., ch. 1, v. 8
and 9.

12   Manu XII, 54.
 258

BEYOND BELIEF

but of the two, the Hindu is much less terrible than the
Jewish, the penalties in both being much too severe for
the offense. In short, they are so fiendish, that they are
beyond belief, for they picture God as a demon, gloating
over misery; and not as a “Lord very pitiful, and of
tender mercy.” (James V.)

Neither of these Bibles take into consideration the orig-
inal difference in the construction of the human brain—
the seat of the mind. But every one, no matter what his
original gifts or curses may have been, must measure up
to the same high standard, or suffer beyond expression.

Now, it is plain that some children are born with high
moral faculties, and with none of that grasping greedi-
ness which wickedly covets the wealth of others. With
destructiveness small, with benevolence large, such a
child, grown to maturity, is filled with good works, and
is as certain not to sink into a thief or robber, or mur-
derer, as a June sunbeam is certain to bring forth the
roses. Another child is born, perhaps the same hour,
with his moral faculties sadly depressed; with destructive-
ness large; with covetousness abnormally developed. He
is a born thief and robber; but he inherited those dan-
gerous tendencies. They were bom in him, and forever
must be as a weight about his neck, pulling him down to
dark and devious ways. They act as a perpetual load-
stone drawing him continually towards the cess-pools of
vice and crime. There was, and is, a gulf as deep and
wide and impassable between these two persons, as be-
tween Dives and Lazarus. Yet, at the last assize-judg-
ment day, if there be such a day, this child of sin must
appear in spotless robes, or he is doomed, according to
 GOD IS NOT A DEMON

259

Paul, to endless woe and suffering. Even the milder and
more humane Hindu punishes such an one with great
severity. Is there even-handed justice in this? Must this
inherited wickedness “suffer” in that fire which shall
never be quenched; where the worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched,13 simply because certain parts of his
brain were, without his making, small, where they ought
to have been large, and excessive where they ought to
have been small ?

Is it not true that “just as the twig is bent, the tree in-
clines”? The one who bent the twig is to blame for the
crooked tree. The tree is not to blame. The one who
caused the crooked brains to thus grow; is he not to
blame for the crooked acts which follow? It will not
do to say that God will adjust all these matters on that
final day. The record, if true, does not so state. Let us
keep to the record or throw it aside. If God inspired
Mark to write those awful words, then God puts Himself
on a level with the demons; for demons can do no worse
than to roast a man in unquenchable, everlasting flames.

Reader, the writers of the Hindu and the Hebrew
Bibles, lived in times of ignorance, superstition and
idolatry. Both Bibles make their Gods cruel, barbarous
and ungodly. Let us believe the good things that are said
about the Creator, but let us not believe with Mark and
Manu, that God is a demon.

13   Mark IX, 45 and 46.
 /