“You expected a king to restore your political independence; we announced a God to regenerate and save mankind.  From this combination of ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity:  and whatever your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster.”

The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,* the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras; the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**

* Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of time.  These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands of God or of light, meaning the six summer months.  In the first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth; in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth man; corresponding with the account in Genesis.  For particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the religion of the ancient Persians.  It is remarkable that the same tradition is found in the sacred books of the Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve houses of the sun.  In the first thousand, God made heaven and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the sixth man.  See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows first the identity of their theological and astrological opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature, which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards periods of 60, of