THE ZOROASTRIAN CONCEPTION OF A FUTURE LIFE. 239 



excellently put it, "White to play, and mate in so many 

 millennia." Zarathushtra is not interested in such precision. 

 He takes Evil very seriously indeed, and finds it anything but 

 an " ineffectual angel " of darkness, to be rendered impotent by 

 words of a Gatha muttered as a spell, and by the killing of 

 Progs and ants. The weapons of his warfare are prayer and 

 pure thought, words of truth, and the simple husbandman's 

 industry. Nor does he think of millennia : he clings to the 

 hope that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and he will see it. 

 Zarathushtra accordingly began where the Apostles began ten 

 centuries later. It is of the nature of enthusiasm to see 

 a distant landscape very near and clear ; and it is a condition 

 of humanity, if it sees the future at all, to see it foreshortened, 

 the iar away mountain peak and the near hill melting into one 

 outline. We have realised this especially in the recent keen 

 discussion on the eschatology of the New Testament. But 

 there is a suggestive contrast between the paths of the two 

 religions when the flight of time dimmed the brightness of 

 the Advent Hope. Zarathushtra left no successors who could 

 catch up and wear his mantle. His followers called him Lord ! 

 Lord ! and gave him worship which would have horrified him 

 unspeakably ; but they could not do the things he bade them, 

 for these were too simple and too high for them. When the 

 promise of the End was deferred, and all things continued as 

 they were from the beginning of the Creation, the Magi devised 

 an elaborate system of world-ages, which fix the Eenovation for 

 the year a.d. 2398. We need not laugh at them : they were 

 wiser than some prophets of our own, many of whose dates for 

 the End have come and gone already. But we may compare 

 instructively the very different course taken by Christianity 

 when " the fathers fell asleep," and still the Promise of the 

 Advent was delayed. The very delay taught new lessons, and 

 the Church took up new conceptions of work to be done. It 

 was one example among many of the fact that Iran had but 

 a single isolated Prophet, while Israel and Christianity had a 

 " goodly fellowship " in bright succession. 



It is time to describe more in detail the " Great Consumma- 

 tion " as it revealed itself to Zarathushtra. The destiny of 

 individuals comes later : it was indeed for him only an 

 appendage of the universal event. As in the New Testament, 

 but still more conspicuously, the Day comes with Fire. Fire 

 is throughout the Parsee system the special symbol of God's 

 holiness. Its particular form w T as that of a great flood of 

 molten metal, let loose upon the universe. The righteous, as 



