History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. V.] THE SYMBOL OF GOD. 211

All Eastern historians have acknowledged that the Persians from the earliest times were not idolaters, and that they worshipped one God, the Creator of the world, under the symbol of fire. Such is still the present practice among their descendants in India.

It will not be out of place here to examine some of the causes that induce a Parsi to reverence fire. -

Firstly, fire is held by a Parsi to be the emblem of refulgence, glory, and light, the truest symbol of God, and the best and noblest representative of His divinity. In the words of a learned author, in the eyes of a Parsi “its (fire’s) brightness, activity, purity, and incorruptibility bear the most perfect resemblance to the nature and perfection of the Deity.” He looks upon fire as “the most perfect symbol of the Deity on account of its purity, brighthess, activity, subtilty, fecundity, and incorruptibility.” Secondly, fire is the noblest, the most excellent, and the most useful of God’s creations. Take it in its visible form as the manifestation of heat and heght, or in its invisible form as heat, light, ete., it serves innumerable purposes in the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds, As an important agent in our innumerable arts and manufactures, as an invaluable helpmate in our domestic life, and as an essential factor in the production of hundreds of natural phenomena, not only on the surface of our earth but in the