peal to. To name these books with the Holy Scriptures, even in the way of contrast, will seem to many of our readers a profanation. But if such tasks be not undertaken in a right spirit there are, alas! plenty who will attempt them in a wrong one. The writer of these lines would be very thankful if he could but add a few slight contributions in a right direction to the labours of such investigators as Hardwick, Möhler, Döllinger, Hengstenberg, and Dr. Mill.

To us it certainly seems that the teaching of the Zendavesta is not thoroughly and purely monotheistic. We desiderate the definite emphatic assertions of a holier Book, 'Hear, O Israel, 'the Lord our God is one Lord. . . . Thou shalt have no other gods but Me.' And so too as regards the worship of the elements. A Parsee, who has long dwelt in a Christian land, may succeed in persuading himself that the sun and the fire were to be regarded as symbols of the Divinity, and nothing more. But not such do we believe to be the impression that would be made on any impartial student. Here, again, we lack such plain declarations as that of Job: 'If I beheld the sun 'when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my 'heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my 'hand; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: 'for I should have denied the God that is above.' Certain it is that Christians were persecuted in Persia because they refused to invoke fire and the sun. This may have partly come from an infusion of Magianism; but still real worship of fire does seem to be Zoroastrian."

ર

72

The position of Ahriman, if not actually involving dualism, is still unduly magnified. In Catholic theology Satan is, after all, a creature, and a creature only. His rival is not God, who is his Maker as well as ours; but among the Angels it is S. Michael; and among men, Christ in His human nature, overcoming the adversary by righteousness and justice, not by mere authority and power. The condition of the Evil One in the Zend writings looks to us more like that incorrect_view maintained, or at least implied, by Milton in the Paradise Lost.' In each case there is too much like an opposition to the Almighty being represented as on equal terms. To say that Ahriman in the Avesta is not a person is surely the excess of prejudice: one might with equal truth deny the personality of its Ormuzd. Herodotus, and others have remarked on the absence of the burnt-offering from the Persian sacrifices. According to Zoroas trian notions this would have been a sin against fire. They offered, however, with readings of the law, fruits, milk, oil, &c.; but above all, the mystic Homa or Haoma. This liquid, the 1 So, too, Hardwick and Dollinger

3

2 Job xxxi. 26-28.

3 I. 132.

juice of a plant, is greatly celebrated in the Indian Vedas, under the name of Soma; the interchange of the aspirate and the sibilant being, as is well known, very common among the Aryan languages. It was mixed with whey, wheat and other meal, and brought into a state of fermentation. The sacrificer duly partook of what he offered, and the effect of the draught was narcotic and intoxicating.2

6

3

And here, if we mistake not, appears one of the very deep differences between the true priests and prophets of God's chosen race, and the ministers of systems enshrining indeed many wrecks of Paradise;' but painfully marked and disfigured by a thousand evidences of the corruption of man's fallen nature. Nowhere in the pages of Old or of New Testament do we hear of the revealers of God's will having recourse to any purely physical source of excitement. The one apparent exception is not a real one. The employment of the divine art of music, the instruments of melody wherewith the company of the prophets met Saul, and David soothed the sorrows of the same monarch, and under whose influence Elisha gave inspired orders: this is something utterly distinct from the condition induced by such means as the draught of fermented liquor. Nobly and grandly does the calmness with which God's commissioned servants uttered their revelations contrast with the wild shriek of the Pythoness at Delphi, the fury of the priests of Bacchus or of Cybele, the intoxication of the Assassins by Hashish, the excitement wrought in Indians by Soma, or in Zoroastrians by Haoma. We do not say that all these cases were equally bad, equally removed from the mysterious truths of sacramental influences; but there is, we conceive, enough to show that between even the least corrupted usage (which is probably the Persian) and the living truth there yawns a mighty gulf. Still, just as the Persians looked upon Ahriman as somewhat of a simia Dei, to use a Patristic expression, even so, too, in the idea that through the Haoma the Deity manifested Himself, we may trace the distorted lineaments of mighty and consoling verities.

Its freedom from anthropomorphism, the sins denounced by it, and the general reasonableness of its doctrine of penance, are among the bright features of the Zendavesta. But although we have diligently sought for these, and suppose that it would be slightly less absurd to mention it with the Christian's Bible than it is in some of the cases selected by Dr. Colenso, yet, take sus, &πтd=septem, and a long list of similar variations between Latin

1 Cf. &s =

and Greek.

2 Spiegel, Döllinger, and others.

3 1 Sam. x. 5, 6; xvi. 23, and 2 Kings iii. 15.

4 Döllinger gives the following list: insolence, ingratitude, lying, cheating, breaking a promise, sloth, rape, pæderastia, thieving.

the Zendavesta at its best, and how poor it becomes by such a juxtaposition, if we venture on it just for a passing moment! The Bible teaches Theism purely, definitely, dogmatically; the Avesta with faltering and uncertain note. The Bible shows that man is fallen, and teaches the cause and the means of recovery; the Avesta is uncertain, obscure on all these cardinal points. The Bible contains true and definite prophecies long since fulfilled; the Avesta has not the semblance of such a thing. The Bible stakes its credit on the truth of at least one stupendous miracle; the Avesta makes no such challenge. The Bible not merely proclaims the love of God didactically, but it gives us the history of His true servants, shows how He has watched over His people, and while in the Psalms of the Older Covenant it supplies a fund of erotic devotion unknown elsewhere, transcends even those proofs of loving-kindness by the marvel of the Incarnation revealed in the Newer Dispensation. In all this the Avesta has no share.

To similar inferences should we be led by any attempt to compare the breadth and range of duties taught in Holy Writ with the comparatively limited range of the Zoroastrian system. Of literary beauties we do not speak: even the most Rationalistic critics, a Paine, a Strauss, a Renan, are keenly conscious of the immense difference in this respect between the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, and these would-be Bibles of other nations; nay, they even admit the fitness of the latter to be the instructors of many nations; while the Vedas, the Schu-King, the Zendavesta, have been each limited to some one or two families of the earth.

And now, what test do we apply to such books? how do we discriminate between their truth and falsehood, their merits and defects? The answer simply is, that we judge them by the religion of Christ Jesus. The influence of the Chinese religious books has long been evanescent; the Vedas contradict the existing religion of Hindostan; the Zendavesta awakes little interest even among the Parsees themselves, save when a native has had his spirit of inquiry quickened in Christian lands. About a century has passed since the adventurous Anquetil du Perron made the discovery of these writings, and to the best of his ability translated them. All honours to him and to subsequent labourers, Kleuker, Rask, Eugène Burnouf, Brockhaus, Westergaard, Haug, and Spiegel! They have, one and all, contributed to our means of investigating many deep and interesting problems. May we, who enter into their labours, strive to show ourselves worthy of the privilege, by endeavouring in a calm and reverent fearlessness to grapple with such further difficulties as still beset our progress towards the discovery of truth!

1 1 Cor. xv. 14, 15.

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ART. VIII.—Φωτίου Επιστολαι. Ὑπὸ Ἰωάννου Ν. ΒΑΛΕΤΤΑ, πρώην Διευνθυντοῦ τοῦ ἐν Σύρῳ Ἑλληνικοῦ Παιδαγωγείου, 'Ev Aovdiva: D. Nutt, 270, Strand. 1864.

WE are about to approach one of the hardest of Liturgical questions: a question which must undoubtedly exercise considerable influence over any negotiations for the future re-union of the Church. We can perhaps state it most easily in a series of inquiries.

I. Is it possible that the divergence of East and West in the most solemn part of the Liturgy, the omission by the Latin Church of the Invocation, which is the crowning seal of Consecration in the Eastern Church, should have existed from the beginning?

II. If that be answered in the negative; then is there reason to believe that the Invocation itself is neither Apostolic nor Isapostolic, but a late insertion?

III. Or, is there any ground for believing that the Latin Church, having originally possessed it, has since, from whatever cause, omitted it?

IV. And if that seem likely; then to what influence is this omission to be probably ascribed?

It is to these questions to which the following paper will attempt a reply: though we foresee that one article cannot possibly conclude the subject.

I. It is not easy to imagine the shock to our feelings which so wonderful a divergence would occasion, were we not so habituated to it as a matter of fact. But some idea may be formed, when we see how those who, without much knowledge of, but with deep feeling regarding, the subject, and who have been only and entirely accustomed to the English office, are shocked when they first hear the Scotch Liturgy. To them it seems not only perfectly unaccountable, but altogether profane, that, after those words in which they have learnt to believe that the whole transmuting efficacy lies, the priest should still continue, by beseeching the Holy Ghost 'to make this bread the Body of Thy Christ, and that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Thy Christ.' And when we remember the wonderful unanimity of heart and soul in the Apostolic Church, the twelve years that, according to very ancient tradition, the Apostles dwelt in Jerusalem together, the thousands of Liturgies which together they must have celebrated: that while S. James laid so great a stress on the Invocation in his form, S. Peter should altogether

have ignored it in his own, is surely incredible. And we must remember this: the early Church of Rome was scarcely anything else than a Greek colony of Christians in a Roman city. We must all have been struck with the number of Greek names in S. Paul's list of salutations to that Church. Epenetus, the firstfruits of Achaia,' Andronicus, Amplias, Apelles, Aristobulus, Herodias, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermes, Philologus, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and Stachys. These on the Greek side. On the Latin only, for certain, Urban, Rufus, Junia and Julia: and perhaps Mary. The household of Narcissus, that is, undoubtedly, some of his slaves, were just as likely to be Greeks as Latins. And it seems certain that, whatever might have been the case had the Gospel in those very early days taken firm hold of the Roman part of the population, forming them into a Church, separate from, or only remotely connected with, the East; in that case it might not have been altogether impossible to imagine that the Liturgy did receive some, it might be considerable, alteration. It is clearly and manifestly impossible that Easterns, settling at Rome, would not have brought their own Liturgy in its fulness and continued to employ it. In confirmation of this remark, it is also well to observe how many of the primitive popes have Greek names: Linus, Anacletus, Euaristus, Alexander, Telesphorus, Hyginus; all these within the first century and a half.

Let this also be noticed; no one will doubt that S. Mark was really sent by S. Peter to found the Church of Alexandria. And in confirmation of this fact, it may be noticed that the Liturgy of the Evangelical See,' in several particulars, much more closely resembles the Petrine Office than do those of any of her sisters. But the Liturgy of S. Mark has the Invocation at least as decidedly as any other Oriental Rite. No; whatever hypothesis on the subject may be tenable, it is absolutely incredible that, from the beginning, one Apostle followed the present Latin, and others the present Oriental, use. Let it be said, if you please, that the East has inserted, or the West omitted, the Invocation, but not that the insertion and omission co-existed in Apostolic, or even Isapostolic times.

II. If, then, it is impossible to conceive that the Primitive Church both employed and omitted the Invocation, what are we to say to the second hypothesis; that at some later, but still early, period, the great Eastern Communions inserted it?

Here, of course, the starting point is the Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. In the middle of the fifth century, then, the Invocation in the Liturgy of Jerusalem was the same, and held the same place, that it is and holds now; and was then of age