rding to their works, &c. And all this the remainder of
that sect, which is _now_ in Persia and India do, without any variation,
after so many ages still hold, even to this day. Another reformation which
he made in the Magian religion was, that he caused fire temples to be built
wherever he came: this being to prevent their sacred fires, on the tops of
hills, from being put out by storms, and that the public offices of their
religion might be the better performed before the people. Zoroaster
pretended he was taken up into heaven, there to be instructed in those
doctrines which he was to deliver unto men. Mohammed pretended to have seen
God. Zoroaster was too well informed for such imposture. He only claimed to
have heard him speaking to him out of the midst of a great and most bright
flame of fire; and he, therefore, taught his followers that fire was the
truest _shechinah_ of the divine presence. His followers thereafter
worshipped the sun as the most perfect fire of God. But this was an
original usage of the Magi (referred to in Ezekiel viii. 16), where it is
related, that the prophet being carried in a vision to Jerusalem, had there
shown him "about five-and-twenty men standing between the porch and the
altar, with {61} their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces
toward the east; and they worshipped the sun." The meaning of which is,
that they had turned their backs upon the true worship of God, and had gone
over to that of the Magians.[67] The _Kebla_, or point of the heavens
toward which they directed their worship being toward the rising sun, that
of the Jews in Jerusalem to the Holy of Holies on the west end of the
temple; of those elsewhere toward Jerusalem; of the Mohammedans toward
Mecca, and the Sabians toward the meridian.

Come whence it may, what is the meaning of the use of fire in any divine
worship?

1. Burnt-offerings of old required it.

2. It descended on the altars of Elijah, and of Solomon, from God himself.

3. The Magi, from the time of Zoroaster, have deemed it the symbol of
purity.

4. The pagan mysteries in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, all preserved the
"sacred fire." Most religions seem to have adopted its use. Why?

5. The Catholic church has ever preserved its use in burning tapers, lamps,
and smoking incense.

In his reformation of the customs and rites of the Magi, Zoroaster, as has
been hereinbefore said, preserved their three grades of APPRENTICES,
MASTERS, and PERFECT