the
glory of God that we defend."

"And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
not? Are you not men like us?"

"To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
befits his dignity?"

"Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."

"And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
exclusive privilege of understanding them."

Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.

"We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this
is in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the
laws, the ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those
books; you will not find the slightest indication, either expressed or
understood, of what constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian
theology. You nowhere find the least trace of the immortality of the
soul, or of a future life, or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of
the principal angel, author of the evils of the human race. These ideas
were not known to Moses, and the reason is very obvious: it was not
till four centuries afterwards that Zoroaster first evangelized them in
Asia.*

* See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.

"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance
was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political
relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when,
having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and
transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphr