A Modern Zoroastrian

by S. Laing

Some 3,200 years ago a sight might have been seen in the ancient city of Balkh—the famous capital of Bactria, the ‘Mother of Cities’—very like that witnessed some fourteen centuries later at our own Canterbury. The king and his chief nobles and courtiers were assembled to hear the discourse of a preacher who proposed to teach them a better religion. Gushtasp listened to Zoroaster, as Ethelbert listened to Augustine, and in each case reason and eloquence carried conviction, and the nation became converts to the new doctrine.

This conversion was effected without miracles, for it is expressly stated in the celebrated speech of the prophet, preserved in the 30th chapter of the Yasna, that he relied solely on persuasion and argument. Ferdousi, the Persian Homer, thus describes the first interview between Zoroaster and Gushtasp: ‘Learn,’ he said, ‘the rites and doctrines of the religion of excellence. For without religion there cannot be any worth in a king. When the mighty monarch heard him speak of the excellent religion, he accepted from him the excellent rites and doctrines.’

The doctrines of this ‘excellent religion’ are extremely simple. The leading idea is that of monotheism, but the one God has far fewer anthropomorphic attributes, and is relegated much farther back into the vague and infinite, than the god of any other monotheistic religion. Ahura-Mazda, of which the more familiar appellation Ormuzd is an abbreviation, means the ‘All-knowing Lord;’ he is said sometimes to dwell in the infinite luminous space, and sometimes to be identical with it. He is, in fact, not unlike the inscrutable First Cause, whom we may regard with awe and reverence, with love and hope, but whom we cannot pretend to define or to understand. But the radical difference between Zoroastrianism and other religions is that it does not conceive of this one God as an omnipotent Creator, who might make the universe as he chose, and therefore was directly responsible for all the evil in it; but as a Being acting by certain fixed laws, one of which was, for reasons totally inscrutable to us, that existence implied polarity, and therefore that there could be no good without corresponding evil.

Dr. Haug, who is the greatest authority on all questions connected with the Zend scriptures, says: ‘Having arrived at the grand idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, Zoroaster undertook to solve the great problem which has engaged the attention of so many wise men of antiquity and even in modern times, viz. how are the imperfections discernible in the world, the various kind of evils, wickedness, and baseness, compatible with the goodness, holiness, and justness of God? This great thinker of remote antiquity solved this difficult question philosophically, by the supposition of two primæval causes, which, though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of spirit. These two primæval principles are the two moving causes in the universe, united from the beginning, and therefore called twins. They are present everywhere—in the Ahura Mazda, or Supreme Deity, as well as in man.’

They are called in the Vendidad Spento Mainyush, or the ‘beneficent spirit,’ and Angro Mainyush, or the ‘hurtful spirit.’ The latter is generally known as Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness; and the former as Ormuzd, is identified with Ahura Mazda, the good God, though, strictly speaking, Ahura Mazda is the great unknown First Cause, who comprehends within himself both principles as a necessary law of existence, and in whom believers may hope that evil and good will ultimately be reconciled.

Anquetil du Perron, the first translator of the Zendavesta, in his ‘Critical View of the Theological and Ceremonial System of Zar-thurst,’ thus sums up the Parsee creed: ‘The first point in the theological system of Zoroaster is to recognise and adore the Master of all that is good, the Principle of all righteousness, Ormuzd, according to the form of worship prescribed by him, and with purity of thought, of word, and of action, a purity which is marked and preserved by purity of body. Next, to have a respect, accompanied by gratitude, for the intelligence to which Ormuzd has committed the care of nature (i.e. to the laws of nature), to take in our actions their attributes for models, to copy in our conduct the harmony which reigns in the different parts of the universe, and generally to honour Ormuzd in all that he has produced. The second part of their religion consists in detesting the author of all evil, moral and physical, Ahriman—his productions, and his works; and to contribute, as far as in us lies, to exalt the glory of Ormuzd by enfeebling the tyranny which the Evil Principle exercises over the world.’

It is evident that this simple and sublime religion is one to which, by whatever name we may call it, the best modern thought is fast approximating. Men of science like Huxley, philosophers like Herbert Spencer, poets like Tennyson, might all subscribe to it; and even enlightened Christian divines, like Dr. Temple, are not very far from it when they admit the idea of a Creator behind the atoms and energies, whose original impress, given in the form of laws of nature, was so perfect as to require no secondary interference. Admit that Christ is the best personification of the Spenta Mainyush, or good principle in the inscrutable Divine polarity of existence, and a man may be at the same time a Christian and a Zoroastrian.

The religion of Zoroaster has, however, this great advantage in the existing conditions of modern thought, that it is not dragged down by such a dead weight of traditional dogmas and miracles as still hangs upon the skirts of Christianity. Its dogmas are comprised in the statement that there is one supreme, unknown, First Cause, who manifests himself in the universe under fixed laws which involve the principle of polarity. This is hardly so much a dogma as a statement of fact, or of the ultimate and absolute truth at which it is possible for human faculty to arrive. No progress of science or philosophy conflicts with it, but rather they confirm it, by showing more and more clearly with every discovery that this is in very fact and deed the literal truth. Religion, or the feeling of reverence and love for the Great Unknown which lies beyond the sphere of human sense and reason, shines more brightly through this pure medium than through the fogs of misty metaphysics; and we can worship God in spirit and in truth without puzzling our brains as to the precise nature of the Logos, or exercising them on the insoluble problem how one can be equal to three, and at the same time three equal to one.

As regards miracles, which are another millstone about the neck of Catholic Christianity, the religion of Zoroaster is entirely free from them. There are, it is true, a few miraculous myths about him in some of the later writings in the Pehlvi language, as of his conception by his mother drinking a cup of the sacred Homa, but these are of no authority and form no part of the religion. On the contrary, the original scriptures which profess to record his exact words and precepts disclaim all pretension to divine nature or miraculous power, and base the claims of the ‘excellent religion’ purely on reason. This is an immense advantage in the ‘struggle for life,’ when every day is making it more impossible for educated men to believe that real miracles ever actually occurred, and when the evidence on which they were accepted is crumbling to pieces under the light of critical enquiry. The Parsee has no reason to tremble for his faith if a Galileo invents the telescope or a Newton discovers the law of gravity. He has no occasion to argue for Noah’s deluge, or for the order of Creation described in Genesis. Nay even, he may remain undisturbed by that latest and most fatal discovery that man has existed on the earth for untold ages, and, instead of falling from a high estate, has risen continuously by slow and painful progress from the rudest origins. How many orthodox Christians can say the same, or deny that their faith in their sacred books and venerable traditions has been rudely shaken?