Turanians, and Chinese and later in the nations which developed from them; among the Bactrians and Zoroaster, along the Indus and Ganges; and, finally, among the Brahmins and Buddhists.

Asia offers no early testimony to man's sense of religion beyond that of language: the "vestibule of Asiatic consciousness" is to be found in Egypt and Eastern Asia. Confucius can be called a prophet only so far as he bears witness to the sense of death in the Chinese theory of the universe, and sought an honorable tomb for his dead. Lao-tse was something more: he was a man in whom the sense of the Eternal had really broken through the hard rind of the Chinese ceremonialism; and, after seventeen centuries, he has found a disciple by whom his thoughts have been carried farther.

The deposit of the primeval world we find in the language and tradition of Egypt. The centre of the consciousness of God's presence felt by the Egyptians, is to be found in the Osiris worship, their oldest form of faith. Osiris is the Lord, the God and Father of each individual soul, the Judge of men, who passes sentence strictly according to right and wrong. The metempsychosis and the judgment of the souls. of the dead are nothing else than the reflection of that general theory of the universe, according to which good prevails. All guilt must be expiated; but the final issue will be the triumph of the Good, and a life in God will be the eternal heritage of the soul. The souls of men are immortal; but only those which have been tried and purified are made blessed. Among the Egyptians, actual life, in spite of abuses, retained an eternal sacredness; for it had been outlined upon a divine pattern. Faith in moral order never quite died out. Balance, sobriety, deliberate purpose, consecrated their art. Up to the thirteenth century before Christ, the Typhon of the Greeks was universally adored throughout Egypt, conferring. life and power on the sovereigns. He was at first a mighty benefactor, transmuted into Set, a destroying enemy, in consequence of the Assyrian conquest, he being also the God of the Semitic Asiatics. As the brother of Osiris, Set must have been in the time of Menes an ancient object of adoration.

Wherever we find Turanians, we find the yearning to transport one's self out of ordinary life into a state of enthusiasm rising to ecstasy; to be, in their view of the relation of man to God, the access to a more exalted consciousness. Inspired clairvoyance is their aim. For the same reason, some tribes of North-American Indians will refuse nourishment until nearly dead of hunger. Drunkenness is a Turanian vice; and so is every unnatural practice. Forced into uncongenial abodes, the Turanians have not yet contributed their quota to the advancement of mankind; but they are not inaccessible to culture, as the Magyars bear witness. In China, Confucius speaks not for its ancient civilization, but as the philosophical mouthpiece of its latest. "Heaven," which Confucius encountered among the remnants of the ancient literature,i.e., the divine order of the Universe, as reflected from the starry sky, has nothing to do with man's soul, though it may decide his fate. "Spirit" is no substance, except when used to denote the shades of his ancestors. But what is it? The energy residing in matter. What is matter? The product of two primitive matters! And this unintelligent and unintelligible theory Buddhism has never been able to displace, and nowhere is Buddhism so unintelligent as in China. The Chinese conception of religion is not that of primeval mankind, but the dead ruin of that conception. There is in the Chinese language absolutely no word to express abstract Mind. The nation's mind is not conscious of itself as mind. What we call History is precisely the unfolding of such a consciousness. The solitary evidence of any ancient faith in it is to be found in their " Worship of the Dead."

We come now to the consciousness of God developed by the Oriental Bactrians. The earliest Bactrian worship was pure Nature-worship. The migration from Bactria to India took place anterior to the reformation of the Bactrian faith by Zoroaster. The Vedic hymns, though they may be co-eval with that reformation, were nevertheless the hymns of the ancient faith, which in the parent land were superseded by the new influence. The language of these hymns is the most ancient monument of the Bactrian consciousness. The achieve

ment of Zoroaster was grand as that of Abraham. It was the transition from the worship of the elements, to the adoration of the spirit of those forces. Questions had begun to arise, -"Whence comes evil, if the good God reigns?" "How does it exist contrary to his will?" The key to the understanding of Zoroaster's position in History is in a Hymn of eleven three-lined strophes, - a sort of parallel to Luther's ninety-five Theses. Until now, this Hymn has been as good as unknown. It represents the prophet on one of the hills dedicated to fire-worship, on the southern spur of the Indian Caucasus.

There he summons the nobles of the land, to choose between faith and superstition. He is willing, as the Zend shows, to retain some old ceremonies, but only as emblemati cal of spirit-worship of a spirit-Cause. He demanded unconditional acceptance, the suppression of the priesthood and the hostile guild of bards. That he admitted some compromise, is the characteristic which distinguishes him from Abraham. He made veracity the most decisive point of piety: "You cannot serve two masters; you cannot hold fellowship with lies: choose ye whom you will serve." Evil is the negative principle, that which is, in order not to be, in order to become the stepping-stone to what is permanent. In Zoroaster's eye, Evil is the Evanescent. No Aryan can look at ethics apart from metaphysics. To him the Reason finds the Good when it is seeking the True. The seventh strophe of this Hymn shows the richest meaning:

"But to the succor of this life comes Armaiti, mother of the corporeal world, with Power and with Truth and with Piety of Heart. But the Spirit, first-born of creation, dwells with thee, O Mazda !”

The reputed doctrine of Zoroaster is foreign to the original idea of the prophet. With such a life as he invites us to lead, are associated four Helpers, - Obedience, Power, Truth, and Good Intention. Armaiti represents submission. He who, sacrificing his own selfish interests, devotes himself to the divine will, shall receive earthly power, possessions, and strength, the consequence of a willing surrender. The Spirit

is called the first-born of creation; the life of the Spirit, the final life! Zoroaster's conception of life and history is not merely practical, but ethical: it rests on an elaborate metaphysical theory. The Lord speaks to man in unmistakable language, but only to the good man. This living faith in moral order explains the influence which Zoroaster has exercised for five, thousand years, and which marks an era in universal history.

He protects the twofold life, who is of truth the source and lord;

Gives to the Wise the deeds of life, and to the truthful heart the power."

From Bactria, this faith spread to Media, where it became mixed with Chaldean philosophy, and of course degenerated. It was because Abraham possessed the courage to throw away all relics of the old and erring faith, that he, and not his Aryan contemporary, became the Father of the Faithful. Of the personal history and inward conflicts of Zoroaster, we know nothing; but, three thousand years before Christ, his faith had founded an empire. Seven centuries later, the old nature-worshippers took refuge in India; and in the seventh book of the Veda hymns Dr. Haug traces the fortunes of the prophet from whose reforming influence they fled. But they found Aryans established there.

What consciousness did they develop in the lands of the Indus and the Vedas? This was the last of fourteen regions bestowed by Ahura-mazda. The first settlement must have been made long before the time of Zoroaster; for he felt a pride of race in its history, and retained the account of it, as our Bible retains the story of the first movements out of Ur. The language of the Vedas is purer and older than that of the Zend, and that of the Zend is purer than the Sanscrit, which was the formation consequent on the emigration that occurred in the time of Zoroaster. In Europe, we all speak dialects which are grammatical corruptions of the Vedic tongue. The sacred books of India touch us even more nearly than the Hebrew Scriptures; but they are sealed to us. The earliest Vedic hymns place us in reference to the veiled life behind, as we should be in reference to the Hebrew

life had we no record of the time from Abraham to Jeremiah but the Book of Psalms. The only ceremonial they preserve is that observed at the obsequies of the dead. As this is described, it gives us the sense of blood-relationship. At first sight, the religion of the Vedas appears a mere adoration of the visible natural powers. The sun, sky, light, appear as Varuna (Ouranos), and Agni. The heavenly symbol of generative power is a bull; that of the earthly sustaining power, a cow. Agni- or fireis the divinity who comes nearest to man on earth. Of the beautiful early hymns which Bunsen quotes from Max Müller, many passages so strongly remind us of the Hebrew Psalms, that it would seem as if both preserved a common inheritance from an older source.

"He who measured out the light in the air,—who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?". "All who are wise of heart adore God, the Begetter."

This stage of religious consciousness corresponds to the Zeus-worship of the early Hellenic epoch. From one of these hymns we take the following lines, which show that the burning of widows was a corrupt practice into which the nation fell, and was by no means commanded by the original sacred books:

'Rise up, O woman! to the world of life:
Thou sleep'st beside a corpse: come down;
Thou hast been long enough a faithful spouse
To him who made thee mother to his sons."

The sacrificial ceremonies show a sense of a beneficent Deity, disposing the affairs of his human children with a kindly hand. Many of Pindar's thoughts are to be found in the hymn of Kasyapa, beginning,

"To the world where unfading Light, where Sunshine itself, hath its home, Thither bring me, O Soma! where no harm and no Death ever come."

Three stupendous facts account for the degeneracy of this early faith, for the fearful nihilism in which Sâkya-muni found his countrymen plunged, pantheism, priestcraft, and despotism. When the mind has once become conscious of its