In this respect the Roman Catholic Church has retained a great advantage over reformed churches. Whatever we may think of its tenets and principles, its forms of worship are more impressive and more attractive. The Mass, apart from all dogma and miracle, is a mysterious and beautiful religious drama, in which appropriate symbolism, vocal and instrumental music, all the highest efforts of human art, are united to produce feelings of joy and of devoutness. The vestment of the priest, his gestures and genuflexions, the Latin words chanted in stately recitative, the flame of the candles pointing heavenwards, the burning incense slowly soaring upwards, the music of great masters, not like our dreary and monotonous psalmody, but in fullest harmony and richest melody—all combine to attune the mind to that state of feeling which is the soul of religion.
In this respect, however, what I have called the Zoroastrian theory of religion affords great advantages. It connects religion directly with all that is good and beautiful, not only in the higher realms of speculation and of emotion, but in the ordinary affairs of daily life. To feel the truth of what is true, the beauty of what is beautiful, is of itself a silent prayer or act of worship to the Spirit of Light; to make an honest, earnest, effort to attain this feeling, is an offering or act of homage. Cleanliness of mind and body, order and propriety in conduct, civility in intercourse, and all the homely virtues of everyday life, thus acquire a higher significance, and any wilful and persistent disregard of them becomes an act of mutiny against the Power whom we have elected to serve. Such moral perversion becomes impossible as that which in the Middle Ages associated filth with holiness, and adduced as a title to canonisation that the saint had worn the same woollen shirt until it fell to pieces under the attacks of vermin. We laugh at this in more enlightened days, but we often imitate it by setting up false religious standards, and thinking we can make men better by penning them up on Sundays in the foul air and corrupting influences of densely peopled cities.
The identification of moral and physical evil, which is one of the most essential and peculiar tenets of the Zoroastrian creed, is fast becoming a leading idea in modern civilisation. Our most earnest philanthropists and zealous workers in the fields of sin and misery in crowded cities are coming, more and more every day, to the conviction that an improvement in the physical conditions of life is the first indispensable condition of moral and religious progress. More air, more light, better lodging, better food, more innocent and healthy recreation, are what are wanted to make any real impression on the masses who have either been born and bred in an evil environment, or have fallen out of the ranks and are the waifs and stragglers left behind in the rapid progress and intense competition of modern society. Hence we see that the devoted individuals and charitable institutions who take the lead in works of practical benevolence direct their attention more and more to the rescue of children from bad surroundings; to sending them to new and happier homes in the colonies, to country retreats for the sickly, and excursions for the healthy; and to providing clubs and reading-rooms as substitutes for the gin-palace and public-house. The latest development of this idea, that of the ‘People’s Palace’ in the East End of London, is a noble offering to the ‘Spirit of Light,’ by whatever name we choose to call him, in opposition to the ‘Spirit of Darkness.’
To the Zoroastrian, prayer assumes the form of a recognition of all that is pure, sublime, and beautiful in the surrounding universe. He can never want opportunities of paying homage to the Good Spirit and of looking into the abysses of the unknown with reverence and wonder. The light of setting suns, the dome of loving blue, the clouds in the might of the tempest or resting still as brooding doves, the mountains, the
Waste
And solitary places where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see,
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be;
the ocean lashed by storm, or where it
All down the sand