word signifies consecrated men, men devoted to the worship of God. Accordingly, the word magic originally signified the practice of worship, and the Magi of the East were those who devoted themselves to science and worship.

Says Alger: Zoroaster prays, "When I shall die, let Aban and Bahman carry me to the bosom of joy." It was a comthon belief among the Persians, that souls were at seasons permitted to leave the under world, and the upper regions and visit their relatives on earth.

The confusion relative to the time and teachings of Zoroaster, has arisen from overlooking the well established fact, that there were certainly two, probably three, distinguished personages bearing the name. Zoroaster occurs as a royal name in the Chaldean lists of Berosus. Pliny, following the positive affirmation of Aristotle, declares that Zoroaster the first, flourished six thousand years before Plato. Hermippus, a man of great erudition, places him five thousand years. before the Trojan war. Meoyle, Rhode, Volney, Gibbon, and other reliable scholars, concur in throwing him back into this vast antiquity.

The great religious chieftain of Persia, called by the Grecks Zoroaster, and by the Orientals, Zendust, was born according to Herodotus, about the year 1250, and, according to other historic writers, full 1,400 B. C., in Aderbijan, ancient Media. Suidas terms him a Perso-Mede. His birth was announced to his mother in a wonderful dream. She also saw in vision a brilliant angel hurling a book at evil demons, and a youth rising up and becoming a mighty person in the lands of the Orient. Zoroaster was often warned in dreams; nw celestial spirits; entered by trance into the heavenly world, and, being ushered into the presence of Ormuzd. conversed with him and his hosts of angels. The historian informs us that he obtained the commandments of the Avestan rolls from Ormuzd on a mountain, amid awful flames of light, as did Moses on Mt. Sinai.

After a quiet retreat of "twenty years duration," according to Pliny, as a work of preparation by fasting and communing with heaven, he commenced the public propagation of his doctrines, at the age of thirty, in the capital of the kingdom of the Bactrians. His system was eminently spiritual, abounding in revelations, prophecies and miracles—in visions, attending angels, good and evil spirits. Scarcely is a man dead, say the Zend books, "before demons good, or demons evil, come to possess him, and bear him to their own state of life."

Richardson informs us "that, among other religious ceremonies, the Magi used to place upon the tops of high towers various kinds of rich viands, upon which it was supposed the Peris and the spirits of their departed heroes regaled themselves." This corresponds with the scriptural account of Jesus' partaking of "broiled fish and an honey comb," after his resurrection. During the rise, the reign and fall of the Persian kingdom, the Magi, or media, were held in great repute, sitting often as counselors in the courts of kings.

Magic was but another name for wisdom. The magic of the Persians and Chaldeans, says the scholarly Brucker, "is not to be confounded with witchcraft, or a supposed intercourse with evil spirits only; it consisted in the performance of certain religious ceremonies or incantations, which were supposed, through the interposition of good demons, to have supernatural effects." Magic and miracle, dream and vision, prophecy and angel intercourse, blending with the Persian philosophy and theology as rainbow hues, were among the prevailing religious ideas of this powerful empire. From these the later Hebrew prophets, of Old Testament memory, borrowed largely.

CHAPTER VII.

HEBRAIC.

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*

"Who is he that cometh from Edom? with dyed garments from Bozrah? traveling in the greatness of his strength.' "I have trodden the wine-press alone. Who hath believed our report ?"

O Israel! how beautiful upon the mountains thy patriarchs, prophets, apostles! What a lyrical sweetness, richness of expression, moral grandeur of thought, flame through their language, bridging and brightening the historic passage of full four thousand years! Abraham, girded with faith— David, poetic-Isaiah, inspirational-Ezekiel, psychologic― Daniel, prophetic-Jeremiah, sympathetic-Jesus, spiritualistic-James, practical-John, pictorial and affectionate;—all these starred the highway of their "Lord" with heavenly truths, voiced the word of angels from the Dead Sea to Gennesaret, shed upon their "promise land" a light that lingers now in vesper beauty there, but re-lit to blaze with loftier inspirations—a sun rising in the West.

No scholars versed in Shemitic tongues, or well read in antiquity, will deny that the Hebrew scriptures are made up principally from religious records, superstitious relics, and the sacred books that long preceded them. Hence, Godfrey Higgins (F. R. Asiatic Society, Ana., p. 272) says, in referring to Wilson's discoveries, "It is now certain that all the first three books of Genesis must have come from India."

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The dogmas, laws, rites, and ceremonies that characterized the Mosaic dispensation, were taken almost bodily from the mythic codes of Egypt's priests and subordinate castes. The deciphered hieroglyphs demonstrate this. The writings of the lesser Jewish prophets, booked in the Bible, are largely drawn from the symbols, wonders, night visions, and general religious literature of the older Persian Magi. To this end the author of the English Penny Cyclopedia informs us that "some of those prophecies recorded in the Bible were extant in books written long before the events took place to which they refer."

Few historic facts are better established than that India colonized Egypt. After giving many sound reasons for this, Higgins states with emphasis, that "India was the parent of Egypt." Manetho, a man of great wisdom, Egyptian by birth, residing at Heliopolis in the time of the Ptolemies, yet writing his history in Greek, considered the Hebrews as low in caste, a loose, war-like, wandering people, given to heinous vices. He further contends that this nomadic "nation, called shepherds, were likewise called captives in their sacred books." After "being driven out of Egypt," as the great Jewish historian Josephus admits, they journeyed through the "wilderness of Syria, and finally built a city in Judea, which they called Jerusalem." Professor Morton, an eminent scientist, giving us the representation of a mummied cranium, taken from one of the oldest Egyptian sepulchres, remarks: "This head possesses a great interest on account of its decided Hebrew features, of which many examples are extant on the monuments." The Egyptians being originally from India, and the Hebrews residing in, and then ultimately driven out from Egypt, it is perfectly natural that the customs, and particularly the theological ideas of the Jews, relating to this and the future life, should in a great measure coincide with those of the riper and superior nations.

The Pentateuch of Moses was nearly all made up from the Brahminical Vedas and Phoenician manuscripts. "In

Sanchoniathon," says Higgins, "we have, in substance, the same cosmogony for the Phoenicians as is found in Genesis. On this account the genuineness of his books has been doubted, but I think without sufficient reason." (Anac. B. 8, C. 2, p. 391). Father Georgius, who was master of the Tibetian language, quotes the story of Anobret from Sanchoniathon, and shows that the Jeud of this forerunner of Moses, is the Jid of the Tibetians. Both Alexander Polyhistor and Abydene, the one a learned compiler in Scylla's time, the other referred to for his wisdom by Eusebius, agree to Sanchoniathon's ante-dating Moses, and to the account of the deluge, and other portions of Genesis, being purely Chaldean, taken from "manuscripts of an almost infinitely remote period of time."

The philosopher, Porphyry, student of Origen and Longinus, writes (Lib. iv, Adv. Christianos), that Sanchoniathon and Moses gave the like accounts of persons and places, and that Sanchoniathon extracts his account partly out of the annals of the cities, and partly out the book reserved in the temple, which he received from Jerombalus, Priest of the God Jeud, who is Jao or Jehovah."

Though the Jews were ever less spiritual than the inhabitants of the sunny clime of India, less learned than the Egytians, less poetic than the Persians, they ever had among them rare spiritual gifts; and all through that collection of books called the Old Testament, Spiritualism stands out prominent. Among the many, note the following passages:

"And there came two angels to Sodom at even, and Lot, seeing them, rose up to meet them."-Gen. xix: 1.

"And the Lord appeared to him (Abraham) in the plains. And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo! three men stood beside him; and when he saw them he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground."—Gen. xviii: 1-2.

When Jacob was traveling to meet Esau, he beheld the angel of God, and said "This is God's host."-Gen. xxxii.

"The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush: the bush burned, but was not consumed. He