coming that very night. But the Lord did not put in an
appearance, and the robes were laid up in lavender again. A fat matron
trying to fly in that outfit would be a sight worth seeing. It would
take several angels to float some of them. Even the archangel Michael
might shrink from tackling twenty-stone.

Like everything else in Christianity, except the accursed doctrine
of salvation by faith, the idea of the end of the world and a day of
judgment is derived from older sources.

The Hindu _Kalpas_, covering thousands of millions of years, are periods
of creation and destruction, and each is called a day of Brahma. During
this enormous interval the universe begins and ends. Brahma wakes from
his slumbrous solitude, and his thoughts and emotions embody themselves
in worlds and creatures. When he falls to rest again, the whole system
of finite things vanishes like the baseless fabric of a vision.

The Stoics also believed in a periodical destruction and renovation of
all things. They, as Alger says, "conceived of God as a pure artistic
force or seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the
evolution of the cosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into fire and
vanishes. The universal periodical conflagration destroys all evil, and
leaves the indestructible God alone in his pure essence again."

The Persians entertained a similar conception, which more closely
resembles the Christian doctrine. Ahura-Mazda creates all things
good, and the race of men happy and immortal. But Angra-Mainyas, his
adversary, the old serpent, corrupts them, brings upon them misery and
death, and leads their souls to his dark abode. Good and evil spirits
fill all creation with their conflict. But at last Ahura-Mazda subdues
Angra-Mainyas, nullifies all the mischief he has done by means of a
great deliverer, who is sent to instruct and redeem mankind, raises
the dead, purifies the world with fire, and restores all nature to its
paradisiacal condition.

The Scandinavians had their Ragnarok, or Twilight of the Gods, when all
the powers of good and evil join in battle. The horn sounds, the last
day dawns in fire and splendor from the sky, in fog and venom from the
abyss. Flames destroy the earth, the combatants mostly slay each other,
but Gimli, the heaven of the All-Father, is a refuge for the survivors,
and the beginning of a new and fairer world.

Chiefly influenced by the Persian, and partly by other systems, the
later Jewish t