special, containing the praises of a particular deity.  The Homa ceremony consisted in the extraction of the juice of the Homa plant by the priests during the recitation of prayers, the formal presentation of the liquor extracted to the sacrificial fire, the consumption of a small portion of it by one of the officiating priests, and the division of the remainder among the worshippers.  As the juice was drunk immediately after extraction and before fermentation had set in, it was not intoxicating.  The ceremony seems to have been regarded, in part, as having a mystic force, securing the favor of heaven; in part, as exerting a beneficial effect upon the body of the worshipper through the curative power inherent in the Homa plant.  The animals which might be sacrificed were the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the goat, the horse being the favorite victim.  A priest always performed the sacrifice, slaying the animal, and showing the flesh to the sacred fire by way of consecration, after which it was eaten at a solemn feast by the priest and people.

It is one of the chief peculiarities of Zoroastrianism that it regarded agriculture as a religious duty.  Man had been placed upon the earth especially “to maintain the good creation,” and resist the endeavors of Ahriman to injure, and if possible, ruin it.  This could only be done by careful tilling of the soil, eradication of thorns and weeds, and reclamation of the tracts over which Ahriman had spread the curse of barrenness.  To cultivate the soil was thus incumbent upon all men; the whole community was required to be agricultural; and either as proprietor, as farmer, or as laboring man, each Zoroastrian was bound to “further the works of life” by advancing tillage.

The purity which was required of the Zoroastrian was of two kinds, moral and legal, Moral purity comprised all that Christianity includes under it—­truth, justice, chastity, and general sinlessness.  It was coextensive with the whole sphere of human activity, embracing not only words and acts, but even the secret thoughts of the heart.  Legal purity was to be obtained only by the observance of a multitude of trifling ceremonies and the abstinence from ten thousand acts in their nature wholly indifferent.  Especially, everything was to be avoided which could be thought to pollute the four elements—­all of them sacred to the Zoroastrian of Sassanian times—­fire, water, earth, and air.

Man’s struggle after holiness and purity was sustained in the Zoroastrian system by the confident hope of a futurity of happiness.  It was taught that the soul of man was immortal, and would continue to possess for ever a separate conscious existence.  Immediately after death the spirits of both good and bad had to proceed along an appointed path to “the bridge of the gatherer” (chinvat peretu).  This was a narrow road conducting to heaven or paradise, over which the souls of the pious alone could pass, while the wicked fell from it into the gulf below,