tion to the large history and knowledge of man.

With this apology to the modern mind, the recital may be resumed of the Aryan theory of mortal life as contained in the sacred assurances of their ancient religion.

Kaiômart we may take to represent man in a state midway between the corporeal and the spiritual, with vision extending into both worlds. Meschia and Meschiana are drawn down more fully into matter, and are thus subjected to what may be called the Fall. In a Phoenician myth which has passed through Grecian hands a somewhat similar gradation may be found. Aion and Protogones are the first that enter mortal life. Aion discovers the art of nutriment from fruit trees, and the offspring of the pair, apparently representing ordinary mortals, are Genos and Genea. These names are but philosophic expressions. Aion is on, or Time; Protogonos, first born, or first parent; Genos and Genea equally denote race, family, offspring.

Kaiômart having departed this life before the production of beings of separate sex, it might naturally be supposed that he returned forthwith to his spiritual state. It is probable enough that the cycle of existence was originally understood to denote the regular course of individual life made typical; but in the development of the theory it must have become doctrinally necessary to account for the close of an epoch as well as for its beginning. Artistically speaking, the idea of a general and specific blossoming of creation, and a simultaneous resurrection into superior opportunity of life, is more pleasant and picturesque than that of the same results produced, so to speak, insensibly, by the unostentatious coming and going of individuals. And indeed that there are cycles

of human development, history tells us; therefore it is not surprising that a doctrine should have established itself of a cyclic period bounded by a creation and a resurrection of man.

Geology would lead us to believe that our earth as a continuous abode of man is indefinitely older than is necessary far to outstretch even a number of cycles, regarded as periods between which Mother Nature was believed to pause to refresh herself, as it were, between throe and throe, each the creative act which peopled a world. Nevertheless, we shall find it easy to respect the cyclical conception of the history of man, and that without adopting literally the notion that men die out of the world at zodiacal intervals and are succeeded by a brand new race. How great civilisations fade out and are replaced by young and vigorous developments is a matter beyond the scope of the present paper.

As, in accordance with the cyclic creed, the day of resurrection approaches, the evil-doer, presumably the personification of the evil principle, is challenged to effect it. He will strive in vain; it is not in his province. But, nevertheless, the process begins. The various members which are to form man's supernal body are not drawn from earth as in the creation-they come one and all from the celestial land. It will be remembered that humanity has been regarded as moving towards the spiritual confines by the reverse process in respect of nutriment to that of creation. After abandoning, degree by degree, the diet of flesh, of milk, of fruit, and of water, man ceases to eat, and yet he does not die.

One part of the light which is with the sun will enlighten Kaiômart, the other will enlighten the rest of men. Perhaps we may read this as a poetic expression that the

spiritual ray reaches first the spiritual man. The spiritual entities now recognise the substantial forms that are the fit expression of each individual, and all the immortal denizens of the world assemble together with man, who is about to assume the final body, and return to the weightiest life.

As Kaiômart was the spiritual agent of creation, so Saoshyos fulfils the corresponding function in resurrection; he is the rekindler. There are also a number of otherworld beings who assist: "the Increasers of the Days, who step forward to the maintenance of the pure world." (Yaçna XLV. 3.)

The perishable world has been a protection to the evil and the good, and, however inferior in itself, has become in its maternal office the very creation of the Supreme. But when the dividing comes, the state of the wicked, as their souls, becomes hard. But they are not like the demons, without spiritual counterparts (Fravashis); their affinity is about to appear to them in uncomely form, the very image of their souls. The true followers of Ahura-Mazda comfort themselves during the trying process— the separation of the vital powers and consciousness-by the prayers that are themselves "the creations of the first world;" that is to say, of the world they are on the way towards, designated in the same Gâthâs as "the next world." picture given is of the whole creation, "bodies together with bones, vital power and form, strength and consciousness, soul and Fravashi," subjected to the dread process, through which into the after-death state the soul's progress is pourtrayed. In the account itself it is impossible to distinguish the doctrine of a postponed and general, or simultaneous, resurrection, which nevertheless is spoken of as taking

The

place after "the long time" and being "the perfect resurrection." The soul is finding its proper food and raiment in the truths of the religious hymns; and passages which we will shortly cite will instance how the journey is understood to begin immediately.

There is a cyclic account, however, according to which the dead are resuscitated by an elixir which proceeds from the Bull and from the White Man (Kaiômart). Saoshyos gives of this elixir to all mankind, and they enter upon their immortality in a world without stain. There is some contradiction in the different developments of the legend, for it is otherwise given (Bundaheshn): "First will the bodily form of Kaiômart uprise, then that of Mashia and Mashiana, afterwards that of the rest of mankind."

The confusion between the Parsi doctrines of immediate entrance after death into the life of the spiritual world, and of a resuscitation postponed until the expiration of a cycle, which requires for its completion the decrepitude of the physical world, is particularly noteworthy for us, seeing that the same dilemma has come down into our Christian ritual. In the Order for the Burial of the Dead there is the old mistranslation of Job, "in my flesh" for "out from my flesh;' there confronts it the beautiful account of a sowing in corruption, an uprising in incorruption; there is a pæan on the delivery from the burden of the body, and on the decarnate condition which ensues, as a state in which spirits or souls "live," and not only live, but live "in joy and felicity." And yet, as if the actual possession of life, and that a life of joy and of consciousness of the indwelling of God, were not enough to satisfy reasonable expectation, there is a superadded affirmation

of a general resurrection at the last day-a moment which, however intelligible in the primal meaning of the phrase, is traditionally regarded as marking a remote future period following upon the wreck of the globe.

But large doctrines like these which sway great portions of humanity for thousands of years ought to be treated with respect rather than with a too hasty and merely intellectual criticism. Our forefathers the Druids, as Julius Cæsar records, wished to convince men of this as a primary truth, that souls do not die, but from one set of conditions pass after death to others; and they were confident, he says, that in this was the greatest excitation to virtue, by the lapsing of the terror of death. For those, then, whose lack of development prevents their attaining "anastasy" in the true sense of the word; for persons who departing this life would fail of a better resurrection and, cowering back again (ab aliis transeuntes ad alios), pass into lower elements, it is perhaps well and hopeful that a belief should continue in a real spiritual consummation, postponed, but somewhile to be reached. Moreover, though humanity, being inharmonious, moves with the irregularities of individualism or at most in a partial national progress, spiritual spheres having the unity of their harmony, must consummate periods of development by a movement into fuller light of God in wholeness and simultaneity; and who can tell how far the great doctrine of a specific earthly resurrection, with its general enhancement of life, may not be due to a confused spiritual memory stirring in humanity? Why there should be a favourite expectation of rejoining a body composed of a

familiar material substance is easily made intelligible by the consideration how difficult it is for the terrestrial mind to appreciate the vigour of transcorporeal substance, or to realise how, if the life further on appears dim and phantom-like to us, we ourselves may probably appear still more frail and clad in a ghostlike mist, in the eyes of those who live and upstand in the terrible strength of angelhood.

The following will exemplify the religious belief of the Aryans on the immediate future of the departing soul, as it concludes its own last earthly day, and enters upon its own resurrection, and its own judgment.

"Where

are those tribunals, where do they assemble, where do they come together, at which a man of the corporeal world gives account for his soul? Then answered Ahura-Mazda, After the man is dead, after the man is departed, after his going, the wicked evil-knowing Daevas do work. In the third night, after the coming and lightning of the dawn." (Avesta, Vendidad, XIX., 89-91.)

"Zarathustra asked AhuraMazda, O Ahura-Mazda, most munificent spirit, creator of the settlements supplied with creatures, holy one! when a pious man passes away, where remains his soul that night? Then said Ahura-Mazda, It sits down near the head, chanting the Gâtha Ustavaiti, imploring blessedness. . . . On this night the soul has as much joyfulness as his whole living existence comprised. Where dwells his soul the second night? [The second and third night are described as the first.] On the lapse of the third night, when the dawn appears, the soul of the pious man goes forward, recollecting itself at the perfume of plants. To him there seems a wind blowing

from the more southern side, from the more southern quarters, a sweet scent more, sweet-scented than other winds. Then inhaling that wind with the nose, the soul of the pious man considers, Whence blows the wind, the most sweetscented wind that I have ever inhaled with the nostrils? Advancing with this wind, there appears to him what is his own religion [or law, the rule of life to which he has conformed] in the figure of a beautiful maiden with a dazzling face. Then the soul

of the pious man speaks to her, asking, What virgin art thou, whom I have seen here as the most beautiful of virgins in form? Then answers him his own law, I am, O youth, thy good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and good religion, on account of which good religion in thy own possession everyone has loved thee for such greatness, and goodness, and beauty, and perfume, and victoriousness, which overcomes enemies, as thou appearest to me. . . The soul of the pious man first advanced with a footstep placed upon good thought; secondly, upon good word; thirdly, upon good action; fourthly, upon the eternal lights. To him spoke a pious one, previously deceased, asking, How, O pious one, didst thou die? how come away from the fleshly dwellings, from the corporeal world, to the spiritual life, from the perishable to the imperishable? how long will have been thy blessing? Then said Ahura-Mazda, Ask not him whom thou askest, who is come along the fearful, terrible, tremendous path, the separation of body and soul." (Hadokht Nask 11.; cf. Arda Viraf IV., 8-35; Mainyo-i-Khard II., 110-157.)

In the Pazand, sadis or sedish is the term for this period of three

days, or nights, that the soul remains near the body after death. The Sanscrit equivalent is triratrin. In the book of the Mainyo-i-Khard (Spirit of Wisdom) it is written:

"He who is a world-adorning and spirit-destroying man is so destroyed, in a single punishment of the three days, as a raging fire when water comes upon it." (ib. XXI., 10.)

"Which is the good work.. .? To wish good for everyone and to be undoubting about the existence of God, and the religion, and the soul, and heaven, and the account that is in the three days, and the reality of the resurrection of the dead and the final body." (ib. LXIII., 1-7.)

"Be not reliant on life; since death occurs at last, and dogs and birds destroy the corpse, and the bones fall to the ground; and during three days (and) nights, the soul sits on the top of the head of the body." (ib. 11., 110-114.)

In the former part of this paper reference was made to the traces of relationship and similarity existing between the Aryan doctrines and those which belong to what Christendom has accepted as its own religious traditions.

The Aryan approaches the question of the birth-process of death in a detailed and picturesque, we had almost said matter-of-fact, way. The following passage will exemplify the deeper intensity of religious feeling in the Hebrew.

"Come and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will He revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord; His going forth is prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us as the rain, as

the latter and former rain unto the earth."

This singular fragment appears in the book of Hosea (vi. 1, 3) quite detached from any context. If we analyse the passage it will be difficult to see what it means if it does not belong to the same kind of prophetic or visionary depiction of after-death experience as we have cited from the Zoroastrian books.

By the loose manner of Hebrew speech the phrase "after two days" is apparently reckoned as equivalent to "after three days" and also to "on the third day," as may be seen from what is quoted above when compared with Esther iv. 16, and v. 1, and also with the following:

"Come again unto me after three days.... They came on the third day, as the king bade, saying, 'come again on the third day.' (2 Chron. x. 5 and 12.)

The confusion is caused by fractions of days being counted as wholes. From a few moments before a particular day begins to a moment after it is passed, the period is one of three days, for it breaks into three separate days.

We will refer presently to the Hebrew word used in Hosea to denote resurrection, and dwell for a moment here on its Greek equivalent in the Septuagint. The Greek verb is ἐξανίστημι, literally forth-up-stand, using the English verb both transitively and intransitively; and the construction differs slightly from that of the Hebrew original, being in place of "in the third day he will make us upstand," "in the third day we shall forth-upstand," or, to paraphrase the compound, "emerge on a higher plane erect." By a comparison of words the English reader may find the pith of the meaning of this

one.

We have two well-known

words compounded of the Greek verb signifying to stand, apostasy and ecstasy, and may transliterate others from the compound verb above cited, viz., anastasy and exanastasy. A common measure is manifest in these words. Apostasy is offstanding in the sense of defection; ecstasy is outstanding in the sense in which (in the Persian passage already quoted) the spirit

described as finding its body a loose garment, which, under certain conditions, it is possible to stand out of. Anastasy is upstanding used in many senses, and is the well-known word which is usually and inaccurately translated resurrection. The invariable German rendering of the word is auferstehung, to which our AngloSaxon "upstanding" is the exact equivalent. The word ex-ana-stasy or out-up-standing combines the notion of ecstasy, or the spirit's freedom, with that of anastasy or its elevation. Whoever originally applied this Greek term to the subject of what is denominated resurrection, had evidently the clearest understanding of the metaphysics of the expression.

The word resurrection is confusing, for it implies re-rising, or rising again, which is a thought quite compatible with the Parsi conception of a primal state of existence to which the spirit returns at death; but that is not what is intended by those who currently use the word. If it is designed to mean a re-establishment of the physical organism, that sense is not to be found in the Greek term as originally employed.

The Aryan influences acting upon the Hebrews evidently tended to relax in some degree the reverential intensity with which the Hebrew mind had been wont to regard the mysteries of life. The following passage from the Talmud represents the mood of the Jewish