the wiles of the Devil.  For we struggle not against flesh and blood only; but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places.”—­Ephesians vi. 12.  Christians are also said to be delivered by God from the power of darkness, and to be translated into the kingdom of his dear son.  That is, as Christians were considered as being the subjects of Jesus, and the rest of the world as being of the kingdom of Satan, when a man became a Christian he was translated from the kingdom of one, to the kingdom of the other.  Jesus accused the Devil as being the author of all evil, as a liar, and the father of lies, and a murderer of men, and of women, too, as appears in the Gospel, from the account of that one, whose back the Devil had bowed down for eighteen years—­Luke xiii. 10—­(on what account it does not appear.) In short, the New Testament represents to him as being the source of all evil and mischief, and the promoter of it; and the whole world as being his subjects, and combined with him against all good.

But how does all this prove that these notions were derived from the religion of the ancient Persians?  I answer by requesting you, my reader, to peruse, attentively, the following account of the fundamental principles of the religion of Zoroaster, the prophet of the Persians.

The doctrine of Zoroaster was, that there was one Supreme Being, independent, and self-existing from all eternity; that inferior to him, there were two Angels, one the Angel of Light, who is the Author and Director of all Good; and the other, the Angel of Darkness, who is the Author and Director of all Evil; that these two are in a perpetual struggle with each other; and that where the Angel of Light prevails, there the most is good; awl where the Angel of Darkness prevails, there the most is evil.  That this struggle shall continue to the end of the world; that then there shall be a general resurrection, and a day of judgment, wherein just retribution shall be rendered to all according to their works; after which, the Angel of Darkness, and his followers, shall go into a world of their own, where they shall suffer in darkness, the punishment of their evil deeds.  And the Angel of Light, and his followers, shall also go into a world of their own, where they shall receive, in everlasting light, the reward due to their good deeds.

It is impossible but that the reader must see the agreement of the doctrines of the New Testament with all this; and since it is undoubted, that these tenets of Zoroaster are far more ancient than the New Testament, and since, as we have seen, that that book is much indebted to oriental notions for many of its dogmas, there is no way of accounting for this coincidence (that I know of), besides supposing the Devil of the New Testament to be of Persian origin.  It is, however, in my power to make this coincidence still more striking from the words of Jesus himself, who