and fed during a course of twelve hundred miles by no single affluent, yet not absorbed in the sand, nor evaporated by the ever-burning sun.  But though ignorant of its source, they know it has a source, and can enjoy all its benefits and blessings.  So Christianity is a full river of life, containing truths apparently the most antagonistic, filling the soul and heart of man and the social state of nations with its impulses and its ideas.  We should lose much in losing our positive knowledge of its history; but if all the books were gone, the tablets of the human heart would remain, and on these would be written the everlasting Gospel of Jesus, in living letters which no years could efface and no changes conceal.

Chapter V.

Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta.

Sec. 1.  Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. 
Sec. 2.  Greek Accounts of Zoroaster.  Plutarch’s Description of his Religion. 
Sec. 3.  Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta. 
Sec. 4.  Epoch of Zoroaster.  What do we know of him? 
Sec. 5.  Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion. 
Sec. 6.  Character of the Zend Avesta. 
Sec. 7.  Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch. 
Sec. 8.  Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas. 
Sec. 9.  Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine taught in the Zend
Avesta? 
Sec. 10.  Relation of this System to Christianity.  The Kingdom of Heaven.

Sec. 1.  Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.

In the southwestern part of Persia is the lovely valley of Schiraz, in the province of Farsistan, which is the ancient Persis.  Through the long spring and summer the plains are covered with flowers, the air is laden with perfume, and the melody of birds, winds, and waters fills the ear.  The fields are covered with grain, which ripens in May; the grapes, apricots, and peaches are finer than those of Europe.  The nightingale (or bulbul) sings more sweetly than elsewhere, and the rose-bush, the national emblem of Persia, grows to the size of a tree, and is weighed down by its luxuriant blossoms.  The beauty of this region, and the loveliness of the women of Schiraz awakened the genius of Hafiz and of Saadi, the two great lyric poets of the East, both of whom resided here.

At one extremity of this valley, in the hollow of a crescent formed by rocky hills, thirty miles northwest of Schiraz, stands an immense platform, fifty feet high above the plain, hewn partly out of the mountain itself, and partly built up with gray marble blocks from twenty to sixty feet long, so nicely fitted together that the joints can scarcely be detected.  This platform is about fourteen hundred feet long by nine hundred broad, and its faces front the four quarters of the heavens.  You rise from the plain by flights of marble steps, so broad and easy that a procession on horseback could ascend them.  By these you reach