V. PERSIAN SECTS AND SKEPTICS.
Persia has possessed sufficient intellectual mind to make very considerable changes in her religion. According to tradition, she was once overrun with idolatry. But now, and for at least three or four thousand years (and before the time of Moses), that nation has manifested the greatest abhorrence to images, excelling in this respect even Moses, who probably borrowed his antipathy to idolatry from that country. Sects have arisen which have condemned not only the doctrines of the primary system, but its mode of worship. There has been considerable controversy among the sects in Persia upon the question whether God should be worshiped in temples made with hands, or in the open air; also with respect to the origin of evil, and whether the Devil (Ahrimanes) was eternal, or co-eternal with God (Ormuzd). These questions of dispute, and various others, have given rise to more than seventy different sects; while the most intellectual and best improved minds have outgrown and renounced them all, and assumed the character of infidels.