THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 59 



lift up thine eyes unto Heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the 

 moon and the stars, even all the host of Heaven, then shouldst 

 thou be driven to worship them." 



Amongst the Medes and Persians of old, fire was worshipped 

 as the element containing and diffusing light, and in special places 

 a perpetual fire was kept up, with certain purifications and cere- 

 monies. The material worship of light and fire was raised in the 

 religion of Ormuzd, their divine being, to a spiritual character, the 

 symbol of higher spiritual purity. For a long period worship was 

 paid simply to the light and fire, as they appeared in nature ; the 

 imaginations of th6 Persians do not seem to have conceived the 

 objects of their worship in definite forms, nor did they invent any 

 mythological stories about them. Sacrifices were offered in the open 

 air and on hills or high places, and Herodotus expressly states that 

 the Persians, in his time, had neither statues nor temples. Idolatry 

 was afterwards introduced but soon disappeared, and its place again 

 supplied by the material worship of fire, and at this stage the religion 

 of Ormuzd has continued to the present day, for the few surviving 

 remnants of the ancient Iranians, called Parsees, still cling to the 

 worship of their ancestors, notwithstanding the furious persecution 

 of the Mohammedans. They are found in some of the eastern parts 

 of Iran, especially in Surate, in Western India, and amongst the 

 Afghans, but their religion has become a coarse mechanical and 

 superstitious fire worship. 



Used more or less by all the nations of antiquity, especially 

 of Asia, it was likewise the religious form of worship amongst the 

 Aztecs and Peruvians of this continent, and traces of it yet linger 

 in some of the Indian festivals of the west. Amongst the Aztecs, at 

 the end of every 52nd year, their cycle, a high religious festival in 

 honor of the sun was held, on the eve of which every fire was 

 extinguished, and after an interval of fasting, the ceremony of the 

 new fire was celebrated, the Priests going at midnight to a neigh- 

 boring mountain, where by means of friction the sacred flame was 

 rekindled, which was to light up the national fires for another cycle. 

 As the sacred flame again blazed on the high altar and was distributed 

 to other shrines, shouts of triumph resounded and a festival lasting 

 13 days was held, attended with human sacrifices — a sort of jubilee 

 for the recovered flame, type of a regenerated world. Dr. Wilson, 

 in his description of this Aztec ceremony compares it to the Annual 



