275 
How may I come, 0 Mazda ! to your dwelling-place (i. c. 
Heaven) 
To hear you sing ? ” 
The touching simplicity of the last question may almost pro- 
voke a smile, but let any Lucretius who, either in despairing 
incredulity or in temporary satisfaction with the water of this 
life, has 
“ Dropped his plummet down the broad 
Deep universe and said ‘ No God/ 
Finding no bottom/'’ 
commune for a moment with his own heart respecting this 
sacred thirst of man for the more immediate presence of 
divinity, this cry of agonizing intensity, “ When shall I come 
and appear before God?” “for all men yearn after the 
gods.” * Is it baseless, a mere desire for nothing ? I would 
as soon believe that physical thirst was unaccompanied by an 
answering actuality. No sadder doom can befall a mortal 
than to convince himself that this, the noblest aspiration of 
the soul, is altogether fallacious. To such an one it may 
almost be said in those words of unapproachable sadness, 
“ The fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, 
and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed 
from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.” That I 
do not exaggerate, witness the confession of the candid and 
most unhappy Physicus, at the conclusion of his able work, 
“ I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation 
of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness ; and 
when at times I think of the appalling contrast between the 
hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the 
lonely mystery of existence as now I find it, at such times I 
shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of 
which my nature is susceptible.”! Thank heaven that in 
ancient Iran we see no such “ monumental melancholy gloom,” 
but rather a childlike confidence and simple faith that Ahura 
will guide through all darkness and difficulty, and that at the 
last, although in some almost “unimagined fashion,” his 
children “ shall see his face.” 
“ Ahura who is giving all (good things) cannot be deceived 
All that have been living, and will be living, 
Subsist by means of his bounty only. 
The soul of the righteous attains to immortality. 
* Tldrrec dt Otuiv xarfoiw’ avOpuTroi. [Oil. iii. 48.) 
t A Candid Examination of Theism, 114 (English and Foreign Philo- 
sophical Library, vol. ix.). 
VOL. XIII. 
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