ed upon the doctrine that there existed a good and bad original being, who were the origin of all good and evil upon the earth. This foundation of the whole system received from him that inspection and practical application which a lawgiver, with the local relations of Zoroaster, was able to make. From the first being, (who existed from eternity, and was surrounded with great magnificence and was the original light,) there sprung two primitive good beings, Ormutzd and Ahriman. The latter, by his enmity against Ormutzd, lost his purity, and was condemned to dwell in darkness, twelve thousand years. Thus they remained opposed to each other: one had possession of the kingdom of light, and the other of the kingdom of darkness. Ormutzd, the author and dispenser of all good, ruled the kingdom of light; Ahriman was the origin of all moral and physical evil. The throne of Ormutzd encircled seven Amschaspands, or princes of light; and the first among them was Ormutzd himself. Subordinate to these were the Itzeds, the originators of all kinds of useful arts. * By similar wisdom was the kingdom of darkness arranged under Ahriman. His throne encompassed the seven highest Dews, (the princes of darkness,) and himself was first among them. An indefinitely great number of the inferior Dews were subordinate to them, as the Itzeds were subordinate to the Amschaspands. By means of Ahriman, was the first man influenced to sin, and by his transgression came death upon all men. The Itzeds take the souls of the good, that have struggled upon the earth against Ahriman and the Dews, into their protection at death; but the Dews take possession of the souls of the wicked. The intermediate state between death and the resurrection depends upon the sentence of Ormutzd, * The number seven among the Persians was a holy number—perhaps borrowed from the number of planets. Under the six Amschaspands (omitting Ormutzd,) a writer thinks were contained a personification of the six principal attributes of Ormutzd, viz: goodness, truth, righteousness, fullness, wisdom, and blessedness; and under the six highest Dews, a personification of the six principal attributes of Ahriman, viz: maliciousness, falsehood, unrighteousness, folly, want, and misery. These principal spirits, to whom many inferior beings were subordinate, resembled satraps in a temporal government. These were sovereigns, manifesting themselves and their various relations, by the splendor of an Asiatic throne, the judge. Individuals are more or less happy or wholly unhappy. The answer of the judge is given at the bridge of Tschinevad, which divides heaven from the earth. Under that bridge is the gulf of hell. The soul comes, according to its deeds, either to a resurrection in the land of joy, or is precipitated suddenly into hell, where it must remain to atone for its sins during a length of time proportioned to the measure of its guilt. The last conflict will occur during the existence of the kingdom of Ormutzd. At the close of twelve thousand years, (the length of time that the world will stand,)* Ormutzd will besiege Ahriman, and will destroy the kingdom of darkness, and change all darkness into light. The dead shall be raised, for both land and sea shall give them up. Ormutzd shall clothe himself with flesh and blood, and those who are alive at the time of the resurrection, shall die, in order to be raised from the dead. Before the resurrection, three great prophets will appear, and perform wonderful things. But in the last days, the earth shall be afflicted with every kind of evil, as the plague, other contagious diseases, hail, famine, and war, until it shall be renewed. After the resurrection, each one, both good and bad, shall learn what he has done, and they shall be separated from each other. The wicked, for whom atonement has not been made, shall be cast again into hell, before the eyes of the whole world, to remain three days and three nights, for the purpose of being purified in red hot streams of fused metals. Then they shall enjoy with the righteous, endless happiness, and the kingdom of Ahriman will be entirely at an end. The flowing streams of metal shall burn and purify those lying spirits. This fiery stream itself passes through hell, that it may become purified. The earth, then, will be the residence of the righteous; all nature will be light, and the laws of Ormutzd will rule universally, throughout the immeasurable whole. Individuals will recognise themselves again after the resurrection; but their relations in this life, * This measure of time was borrowed, according to the modern Bundchesch, from the twelve signs of the Zodiac. As the sun in a year passes over the twelve signs, so the world will exist twelve thousand years-at the end of which a new order of things is to commence. their sorrows and passions will cease, and everything will resound with praise to Ormutzd, in the universal, happy kingdoin of light.* * This system of Zoroaster in many respects remarkably corresponded with the Scripture view of the future world, and must have been taken from the Hebrews. The final restoration of the wicked, however, to the kingdom of light, is not in accordance with the Bible; but was doubtless considered by that great lawgiver as essential to his grand system.—Tr. MODERN CHARACTERS-No. IV. CAROLINE. (Continued from page 126.) YOUR readers, Mr. Editor, may by this time be impatient to know to what sect the lady, who has been thus amply characterized, belongs. I confess, that I find some difficulty in answering this question. Strictly speaking, there is a sense in which she is both Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Baptist. I mean that she pursues "the truth," and I am afraid I must add, pursues a little entertainment at the same time, by repairing indifferently to various churches. It is clear that she is not a Papist, since she most freely uses her Protestant right of exercising her own judgment on the doctrines of her teachers. She is quick to discern the unsoundness of a sermon; and the preacher, who, while he re-asserts her tenets, can most amuse her fancy, is the object of her preference. She loves, I admit, to have her mind vehemently affected, but no great practical good seems to result from these impressions. She likes to be alarmed by tremendous threatenings, transported with ecstatic joys, entertained also by familiar anecdotes, and surprised by new modes of spiritualizing and allegorizing the Scriptures. She is not sufficiently aware of the proneness of man to selfconceit, and of the danger lest the true gospel of Christ should ultimately be discredited, and hindered, through the competition of a multitude of superficial and self-appointed instructors. But I cannot conclude my account of Caroline without presenting the reader with a short history of her life. She was born of parents who were rich, though of middling rank; and her education, in no respect very good, was shamefully defective in point of religion, she having been sprinkled in her infancy, and confirmed in adult age, almost without even a superficial examination of her proficiency in religious knowledge. On these unscriptural and erroneous grounds alone, sne was taught to consider herself a very good and sufficient Christian, unless indeed some enormous crime should be perpe trated by her. She was plunged into the vanities of the world she was accustomed, after the example of her parents, continually to take in vain the name of God in her ordinary discourse; not indeed with what is deemed intentional profaneness, but by that light and irreverent mention of the name of the Supreme Being, against which, though so common among those who are not without religion, the third command ment is pointedly and expressly levelled. She never looked into a Bible; she indulged much vanity; she despised serious piety in her heart, and was most grossly ignorant of many of the leading doctrines of Christianity. It is true, that she went once a week to church, and did not formally disbelieve the Scriptures. But she owed her faith in them, if faith it may be called, to her ignorance of their contents; for while she admitted their general truth, her mind accorded scarcely with one individual doctrine or precept which they contain. Yet, though her right to the honorable appellation of a Christian rested on such slight foundations, neither her parents, nor her friends, I repeat it, infused into her any doubt of her being a Christian. Being visited by a religious friend during a state of severe illness, she became superficially acquainted with many great doctrines of Christianity, which had before escaped her observation. She experienced, at this season, extreme distress of mind, for she had a strong expectation of dying, and sometimes deemed herself on the brink of everlasting destruction. On her recovery, being more eager to obtain spiritual comfort than to make her calling and election sure, she was inclined to pacify her conscience, without laying the foundation of a deep repentance, and without much attending to the necessity and nature of that change in the dispositions of the heart, which the Scriptures represent as necessary to the true Christian. She, indeed, partly adopted the views of some of the religious persons among whom she fell, persons whose object seems to have been to multiply converts to a party, and to a scheme of doctrine, rather than to establish them in every good word and work. She now began to live in this circle. During the period when she was acquiring her doctrinal knowledge, she had the appearance of being extremely hum |