, the state
religion of the empire of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might
have become the religion of the whole civilized world."

In which case my Chicago friend would have asked, "If you destroy a
belief in Ormuzd, and that he gave the only supernatural moral law to
Zoroaster, how will children ever be taught what is right and what is
wrong, and how can they ever know that it is not right to lie and kill
and steal?"

"Their creed is of the simplest kind; it is to fear God, to live a life
of pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds, and to die in the hope of a
world to come. _It is the creed of those who have lived nearest to God
and served him faithfullest in every age_, and wherever they dwell who
accept it and practice it, they bear witness to that which makes them
children of God and brethren of the prophets, among whom Zoroaster was
not the least. The Jews were carried away as captives to Babylon some
600 years before Christ, and during the seventy years of their exile
there, they came into contact with the Persian religion _and derived
from it ideas about the immortality of the soul, which their own
religion did not contain. They also borrowed from it their belief in a
multitude of angels, and in Satan as the ruler over evil spirits_." [So
you see that even our devil is a borrowed one, and it now seems to
be about time to return him with thanks. ] "The ease with which man
believes in unearthly powers working for his hurt prepares a people to
admit into its creed the doctrine of evil spirits, and although it
is certain that the Jews had no belief in such spirits before their
captivity in Babylon, they spoke of Satan (which means _an adversary_)
as a messenger sent from God to watch the deeds of men and accuse them
to Him for their wrong-doing. Satan thus becoming by degrees an object
of dread, upon whom all the evil which befell man was charged, the minds
of the Jews were ripe for accepting the Persian doctrine of Ahriman with
his legions of devils. Ahriman became the Jewish Satan, _a belief in
whom formed part of early Christian doctrine, and is now but slowly
dying out. What fearful ills it has caused, history has many a page to
tell_. The doctrine that Satan, once an angel of light, had been cast
from heaven for rebellion against God, and had ever since played havoc
among mankind, gave rise to the belief that he and his demons could
possess the souls of men and animals at pleasure. Hence grew the belief