conception of Taou,
or Reason, was rationalistic, certainly, yet he invested it with all the
attributes of personality, as the word "Wisdom" is sometimes used in the
Old Testament. He spoke of it as "The Infinite Supreme," "The First
Beginning," and "The Great Original." Dr. Medhurst has translated from
the "Taou Teh King" this striking Taouist prayer: "O thou perfectly
honored One of heaven and earth, the rock, the origin of myriad
energies, the great manager of boundless kalpas, do Thou enlighten my
spiritual conceptions. Within and without the three worlds, the Logos,
or divine Taou, is alone honorable, embodying in himself a golden light.
May he overspread and illumine my person. He whom we cannot see with the
eye, or hear with the ear, who embraces and includes heaven and earth,
may he nourish and support the multitudes of living beings."

If we turn to the religion of the Iranian or Persian branch of the Aryan
family, we find among them also the traces of a primitive monotheism;
and that it was not borrowed from Semitic sources, through the
descendants of Abraham or others, Ebrard has shown clearly in the second
volume of his "Apologetics." Max Mueller also maintains the identity of
the Iranian faith with that of the Indo-Aryans. The very first notices
of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda,
even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or
gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to
evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism,
therefore, was of later growth. Zoroaster, whom Monier Williams assigns
to the close of the sixth century B.C.,[147] speaks of himself as a
reformer sent to re-establish the pure worship of Ahura, and Haug
considers the conception of Ahura identical with that of Jehovah. High
on a rocky precipice at Behistun, Rawlinson has deciphered an
inscription claiming to have been ordered by Darius Hystaspes, who lived
500 B.C., which is as clearly monotheistic as the Song of Moses. The
Vendidad, which Rawlinson supposes to have been composed 800 years B.C.,
is full of references to minor gods, but Ahura is always supreme. The
modern Parsees of Bombay claim to be monotheistic, and declare that such
has been the faith of their fathers from the beginning.

A Parsee catechism published in Bombay twenty-five years ago reads thus:
"We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any besides Him....
He is the