568th ORDIKAKY GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN" THE SMALL HALL, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, APRIL 19th, 1915, AT 4.30 p.m. 



T. G. Pinches, Esq., LL.D., M.R.A.S., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Secretary announced the election of Mr. John Lee and 

 Mr. J. Norman Holmes as Associates of the Institute. 



The Chairman introduced the Rev. James Hope Moulton, M.A., 

 D.Lit., D.C.L., D.D.. D.Theol., Greenwood Professor of Hellenistic Greek, 

 and Indo-European Philology, Manchester University, and invited him 

 to deliver his address on "The Zoroastrian Conception of a Future Life." 



THE ZOROASTRIAN CONCEPTION OF A FUTURE 

 LIFE. By the Rev. Professor James Hope Moulton, 

 D.Lit., D.C.L., D.D., D.Theol. 



THE Parsees, the modern exponents of Zoroastrianism, are 

 a small community, less than 100,000 in number, who are 

 to-day mostly concentrated in Bombay and its neighbour- 

 hood. They found a refuge in India centuries ago, having been 

 driven out of Persia, their own country, by the murderous 

 hordes of invading Islam. The faith for which in Persia they 

 had bravely endured a bloody persecution, to preserve which 

 unsullied the faithful remnant of them were ready to leave 

 their own land and go forth into the unknown, is almost as 

 old as Judaism, and for loftiness and purity of doctrine towers 

 high above all non-Christian religions with that same exception 

 alone. It is, as its Founder left it, absolutely monotheistic, free 

 from any unworthy views of God, earnest and practical, and 

 untainted by asceticism ; and if in later times it fell below its 

 Founder's too lofty ideals, and became corrupted with ritualistic 

 puerilities and a worship of saints and angels which seriously 

 compromises monotheism, it may be doubted whether it goes 

 beyond the corruptions of Christianity in many of the more 

 superstitious corners of modern Europe. The Parsees to-day 

 are the most enlightened and progressive community among the 

 natives of India, charitable and public-spirited, and free from 



