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 Masters.[[68]] The first were the inferior clergy, who served in all the common offices of their
divine worship; next above them were the superintendents, who in their several districts governed the inferior clergy, as bishops do with us; and above all was the perfect-master, the archimagus, who was the head of the whole religion. Accordingly their places of worship were of three sorts. The lowest sort were parochial oratories served by the inferior clergy, where they read the daily offices out of their liturgy, and on solemn occasions read part of their sacred writings to the people. In these churches there were no fire altars; but the small scintilla of sacred fire preserved in them, was kept only in a lamp. Next above these were their fire temples, in which fire was continually burning on a sacred altar. The highest church of all was "the fire-temple," the residence of the archimagus, first established by Zoroaster at Balch, but removed in the seventh century to Kerman, a province in Persia on the southern ocean. To gain the better reputation to his pretensions, Zoroaster first retired to a cave, and there lived a long time as a recluse, pretending to be abstracted from all earthly considerations, and to be given wholly to prayer and divine meditations; and the more to amuse the people who there resorted to him, he dressed up his cave with several mystical figures, representing Mithra, and other mysteries of their religion. In this cave he wrote his book, called Zendavesta, or Zend, meaning "fire-kindler," or "tinder-box." This book contains much borrowed
from the Old Testament. He even called it the book of Abraham, and his religion the religion of Abraham; for he pretended that the reformation which he introduced was no more than to bring back the religion of the Persians to that original purity in which Abraham practised it, by purging it of all those defects, abuses, and innovations, which the corruptions of after-times had introduced into it.[[69]]