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

222 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [ CHAP. V.

magi, whose memories they revere, and whose works they are said to preserve, never taught them to consider the sun as anything more than a creature of the great Creator of the universe: they were to revere it as His best and fairest image, and for the numberless blessings it diffuses on the earth. The sacred flame was intended only as a perpetual monitor to preserve their purity, of which this element is so expressive a symbol. But superstition and fable have, through a lapse of ages, corrupted the stream of the religious system which in its source was pure and sublime.”

The great historian Gibbon in the eighth chapter of his history says: “‘The elements, and more particularly fire, light, and the sun, whom they call Mithra, were the objects of their religious reverence, because they considered them as the purest symbols, the noblest productions, and the most powerful agents of the divine Power and Nature.”

The following extract from Hanway’s Travels is one of the numerous evidences that the Parsis are monotheists :—‘‘ He (Zoroaster, the founder of the ancient religion of the Persians) considered light as the most perfect symbol of true wisdom and intellectual endowment ; and darkness the representative of things hurtful and destructive. From hence he was led to inculcate an abhorrence of all images, and to teach his followers to worship God only, under the form of fire, considerimg the brightness, activity,