ORMUSD IDENTIFIED WITH THE WORD.

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Ormusd acts and exists only through the Word, which fills the whole capacity of his being. "I make izeschne," says Zoroaster, "to the intelligence of Ormusd, who possesses the excellent word. I make izeschne to the active spirit of Ormusd, who occupies himself with the excellent Word and executes it. I make izeschne to the

heaven requires the disintegration of the seed, and the incoherent protusion of radicles down into the ground.

Analysis precedes synthesis-this is the true statement of that relation at which Swedenborg blunders in the foregoing passages, but it is not the conditions of subversion and evil which may incidentally accompany this analysis which constitute here the essential feature.

The relative necessity of evil periods, whether for an individual or a race, is only a necessity for a work performed in them—a work good in itself, and to which the suffering and evil was a great hindrance.

Thus the development of science, art, and industry will advance the work of the incoherent periods, with incalculably greater rapidity under Phalansterian organization in the Passional Series, the essential destiny of our race, when the soul will first find itself at home upon the earth.

The most we can explain of evil is, that God is subject to the element of Time and the law of organic growth in his incarnations-that evil is incidental to the inertia of matter, and phenomenal of its resistance to the Divine Spirit during the struggle of incarnation.

"Mistake, and accident, and crime

Are but man's growth in Earth and Time,

And upward still life's spiral turns

To where the Love Eternal Burns."

Our despairing consciousness of sin and incompleteness, and our falsity to the Divine ideal, often present with us during these periods, has also its high use, since it causes us to throw ourselves more humbly and trustfully on a higher providence than our individual action, and when we are weakest then are we most ready to receive strength from above. This intermittent and valvular condition of our being and action, in which man appears like a spiritual water ram, must continue until the form or organization of society being completed according to the divine ideal, shall be the true body of God's incarnation in humanity. Society is the Spiritual reservoir and medium of Divine influx, which, when it is raised up to the height of the individual soul, and furnishes full satisfaction to its industrial and affectional desires, will thus give a free and uninterrupted channel to the Divine influx.

Cut off from these, man is sustained only by the mediation of that comforting spirit in which Christ fulfills his promise. It is the pivotal relation of the individual soul with its spiritual chief, and all true industrial and social relations must harmonize with this. At the same time this extends from the centre to the circumference of our life, and from the transcendant into the practical, only by the harmony of these external conditions, or co-ordination of the objective to the subjective sphere.

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THE WORD PROPOSED TO AHRIMAN.

tongue of Ormusd, who continually pronounces the excellent Word." Is this Word a new being, distinct from Eternal Time? Is it different in the first principle and in the second? Or is it only wisdom, mathematics, or law, the mode of action of the two principles, (Ormusd, or Love, acting in Time,) and enabling him to ultimate his eternal ideas in organic structures? For the word cannot be taken in the sense received among men in respect to their mouth and ears and oral language.

Ormusd thus teaches Zoroaster how, by means of the word, he had triumphed over the author of evil.

"The celestial Ormusd pronounced the Honover, I celestial operated, and the chief of evil was no longer.

He said among the Darvands, he said in the Douzakh, "I will not think good, I will not say it, I will not be intelligent, I will not submit myself, nor speak nor act. I renounce the law. I renounce the law. My soul, which exists, does not know this law."* Then I pronounced the Honover, saying it is the desire of Ormusd. water which has been given pure. I practised the law of the Maz, deiesnans, and this Darondj, weak and powerless, turned back-he who is the author of evil, and who teaches evil. †

I made izeschne to the pure

* How much Ahriman here seems like a truant school boy, or a forest outlaw, refusing those disciplines which are necessary to give harmonious expression to the inner in the outer life.

+ The foregoing, translated from mystical phrase, signifies that love, the internal, spiritual, or passional principle, in its struggle to overcome and harmonize the disorders of matter, so as to gain for itself a true organic expression in created nature and her productions, must avail itself of the Word or mathmatical law, to which matter is subject, and identify itself with this law and order, as Ormusd identifies his will with the Word, the Honover which he pronounces. It is then that disorder vanishes, and the Chief of Evil is no longer. We perceive, by the above passage, how Ahriman is identified with ignorance, and the confirmation of ignorance in obstinate prejudice; he "will not be intelligent;" and as soon as intelligence is introduced by the Word, he disappears as darkness before light. Familiar illustrations of this acceptance of mathematical forms by the passional and harmonic principle are afforded by the exercises of music, dancing, the operation of machinery, &c.

Happiness, the desire of man and the intention of God, is, in all the spheres of its attainment, an art, a science, a high discipline, to be acquired and conquered in the order and external correspondence of each passion or inherent desire of the soul, and in that modulation and distribution of all, in varied action and possession, which is necessary to their equilibrium, health, and renovated energy.

THE WORD PROPOSED TO AHRIMAN.

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The conditions proposed to Ahriman were to pronounce the Word of Ormusd, with the Havan, the Soucoupes, and the Hom. It is I who, by this Word, increase the Behescht, says Ormusd.

Nature gives us the wild germ of happiness, in the buoyant animal spirits of healthy childhood, just as she gives us musical ears and voices, and limbs capable of graceful motions. But musical ears and voices do not constitute us musicians, nor well-made legs good dancers; neither are health and noble passions sufficient for our happiness, without the order and art which are taught in the movements of the passional series, which is the Word, or divine mathematics, adapted to human society; the geometry of the passions, as the notes are the geometry of music, and the figures of the dance the geometry of harmonious motion. Thus the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ is significant of an organic structure and balance of temperament so perfect, that the divine life might flow freely through it, and the internal be expressed and manifest in the external man. He is, then, the potential type of a divine humanity, and pivot of the affinities of spiritual groups.

COSMOGONY.

DURING the first 3000 years in which Ormusd operated, were created a hierarchy of Genii and spirits, destined to assist him in the management of the universe. Among the first were Bahman, whose province was the animal kingdom, and who was supposed to dispense the heavenly (atmospheric ?) influences; Ardibehescht, presiding over fire; Shahriver over metals, and Sapendomad, the female genius of the earth, seconded by Zahnm; Ized, charged with the care of the earth as a human habitation, producing trees, &c.; Khordad, giving pleasures and intelligence, and causing the waters to flow; Amenidad, multiplying grains, &c.

In opposition to these, Ahriman creates six evil genii, also a sort of dark fire-fever principle. After these (Amschaspands, good productions,) Ormusd produced the revolving heaven, distinguished from the fixed heaven in which it is located.

The constellations of the Zodiac represented twelve dwellings, inhabited by innumerable stars. The stars were as soldiers who fought for the world under three different bodies. (Origin of Astrology.)

The distribution of heaven was finished in forty-five days, water was made in sixty, and the earth superposed; the earth was arranged in seventy-five; trees in thirty; animals in eighty, and man in seventy-five. Total, 365 days.

In commemoration of these, six feasts, called Gahanbars, were established.

Fire, son of Ormusd, was also created, the imperfect representative of the original fire (electricity?) which animates all beings, forms their mutual relations, and which was, at first, a principle of union between Ormusd and Eternal Time. Next, inferior Genii, to whom was entrusted a portion of the universe.

The twelve months of the year, 30 days of the month, and the elements, had each their tutelary genius.

Serosch was lieutenant, or vice-president of Ormusd on earth, and

THE FEROUERS, OR PRE-EXISTENT SOULS.

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Bahman in heaven. The female genii were so considered from the relation of their functions to women, or to the reception and parturition of germs by the earth.

Next in order to these were the Ferouers, divine ideals and prototypes of character, who were afterwards to enter into the constitution of the souls of men and animals. The Zend-avesta, vol. ii. p. 261, thus speaks of them:

These living very active beings, the pure, strong, and excellent Ferouers of the holy ones of the celestial law, who are great, this celestial people whom the Being absorbed in excellence (Ormusd) has given against the sin of the being concealed in crime (Ahriman.)

If I had not created on high the strong Ferouers of the holy ones, says Ormusd, then the Daroudj, concealed in crime, would have gnawed through heaven and earth.

The Ferouers are the first models of beings. Every rational and created substance has a Ferouer. I make izeschne, says Zoroaster, to all these Ferouers, who have been created at the beginning. Those of quadrupeds, birds and fish, were called Goshoroun, (instincts?) which watched over their preservation.

Heaven and earth, men and animals, have all been created in favor of the Ferouers, and nature exists for and through them, though assailed and beseiged by the evil principle.

Force, grandeur, lustre, pleasures, tell it and repeat it, O Sapetman Zoroaster, owe their origin to the Ferouers of the holy, the strong, and the well armed. I have been to their assistance, says Ormusd; I have borne on high the strong Ferouers of the Saints, and thence proceed their light, their glory, their lustre.

I preserve the heavens and all nature for the glory and lustre of the Ferouers; they bless it, and it continues to exist. The Ferouers, placed above the abundant waters, are employed in blessing them, and cause them to flow. Of all Ferouers, the most precious are those of the law of Iran and of Zoroaster. I tell you clearly, says Ormusd, that had there not been from the beginning of the world some one like thee, executing my word, pure in his thoughts, in his words, the world would now be at its end. I make izeschne, he says elsewhere, to the pure, to the holy Ferouer of Sapetman Zoroaster, first in the thought of Ormusd, to whose ear He has spoken instruction, and whom He has formed with grandeur amid the provinces of Iran.

The good genii and beings submitted to them having been created, a perpetual peace and harmony reigned in the world of Ormusd,