ol of his
Antagonist. Under these hostile banners are ranged all living
creatures, all created objects. For long periods this dreadful
contention rages, involving everything below in its fluctuations.
But at last Ahura Mazda subdues Angra Mainyus, overturns all the
mischief he has done, by means of a great deliverer whom he has
sent among men to instruct and redeem them raises the dead,
purifies the world with fire, and, after properly punishing the
guilty, restores all nature to its original paradisal condition,
free from pain and death.

In the primitive state of mankind, when the germs of this religion
were conceived, when men dwelt in ignorance, exposure, and fear,
they naturally shuddered at darkness as a supernatural enemy, and
worshipped light as a supernatural friend. That became the emblem
or personification of the Devil, this the emblem or personification
of God. They grouped all evils with that, all goods with this.

Imaginatively associating all light and darkness, all blessing
and bale, respectively with Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyus,
they universalized the fragmentary embodiments and oppositions
of these into one great battle; and under the impulse of
worshipping faith and hope, carried it to its crisis in the
final victory of the good. Plainly, it is mere poetry injected a
little with a later speculative element, and dealing in
mythological fashion chiefly with the phenomena of nature as
related to the experience of man. No one now can accept it
literally.

This survey of the various heathen myths of the end of the world
has prepared us, in some degree, to consider the corresponding
view held by the Jews, and more completely developed by the
Christian successors to the Jewish heritage of thought and
feeling.

The Hebrews believed themselves to be exclusively the chosen
people of God, who directly ruled over them himself by a
theocratic government represented in their patriarchs, law givers,
prophets, and kings. Jehovah was the only true God; they were his
only pure and accepted worshippers, sharply distinguished from the
whole idolatrous world. The heathen nations, uncircumcised
adorers of vain idols or of demons, were by consequence enemies
both of the true God and of his servants. This contrast and
hostility they even carried over into the unseen world, and
imagined that each nation had its own guardian angel in the Court
of Jehovah in heaven, who contended there for its interests; their
own na