uld
be to say that Christians, who use the same symbol, give their worship
to the symbol rather than the Being symbolized. Still our author finds
this emblem a very important one in the religion of the followers of
Zoroaster and thinks he detects a progress in thought and civilization
marked by the coming of the people to give religious regard to the sun
and heavenly bodies, instead of fire kindled by human hands--a new
stability of being corresponding with the passage of early people's art
of nomadic or shepherd life into agriculture with its fixed abodes and
domestic associations.

The two deities of the Zend Avesta, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the
evil in perpetual conflict, could not have been conceived of in Southern
Asia where the human will is kept under, and where self-consciousness is
so moderately developed. This battle is in the Avestan faith and morals
largely in the human breast, and is the same that Paul is conscious of
in the combat he describes between himself and sin that was in him. The
Avestan _Morals_ are brought out by Mr. Johnson in their original
and exceeding purity.

But the larger sweep of Mr. Johnson's purpose carries him into an
exhaustive and most interesting consideration of Persian influence upon
the Hebrew faith and thought--through the conquests of Cyrus and
Alexander--and through Maurchaeism and Gnosticism--down to Christendom.

Mahometanism is, in our author's mind, the culmination of the religion
of personal will, and he devotes many glowing and instructive pages to
bringing out the meaning and heart of the religion of Islam, especially
in its later and in its more spiritual developments. The final object of
the volume is to show the relation of the religion of personal will to
universal religion.

Of course our author has not been foolish and unfair enough to portray
the perversions and lapses of this particular type of Oriental faith and
ethics; but his aim has been to set forth its essential principles and
to show how they spring from the universal root.

The study of comparative religions, and hence of the universal religion,
is one of the characteristics and glories of our time. Once every people
despised, as a religious duty, every nation and every religion but its
own, and sword and fagot were employed, as under divine command, to
exterminate all strange manifestations of religious sentiment. Now the
advance guard of civilization is giving itself to devout and thankfu