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What blacks for the Tories to be answered by counter-blacks for the Radicals! Beaconsfield as a sweep, Gladstone as an Angel of Light; Beaconsfield as Ormuzd, Gladstone as Ahriman; each in turn Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and Satan, the discomfited demon.
He knew that his own Persians possessed the military spirit in its fullest vigor; he felt that he himself had all the qualities of a successful loader; he may have had faith in his cause, which, he would view as the cause of Ormazd against Ahriman, of pure Religion against a corrupt and debasing nature-worship. His revolt was sudden, unexpected, and well-timed.
Let it be noted, however, in passing, that the amphitheism which believes in God and devil alike is much more compatible with a rational explanation of the world than pure monotheism. Here Ormuzd, the god of light and goodness, stands everywhere in conflict with Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil.
The great Artaxerxes, probably soon after his accession, set up a memorial of his exploits, in which he represented himself as receiving the insignia of royalty from Ormazd himself, while Ahriman, prostrate and seemingly, though of course not really, dead, lay at the feet of the steed on which Ormazd was mounted.
Robert hardly ever had him out of his thoughts, and the boy's doglike affection for the Rector, struggling with his deathly weakness, was like a perpetual exemplification of Ahriman and Ormuzd the power of life struggling with the power of death. It was a fierce fight.
He may not have a body, in the ordinary sense of the word; but he is entangled with material accidents, and is far from answering to the pure spirit, "without body, parts, or passions," which forms the Christian conception of the Deity. Ahriman, the Evil Principle, is of course far more powerful and terrible than the Christian and Jewish Satan.
He regarded the contest between them as one between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and wrote of Sedan, as he had written of Rossbach, with exultation.
Long before the Christian era, the Zoroastrian Persians held just such a theory of a struggling deity combating the evil machinations of Ahriman. The faithful were exhorted to do all in their power to assist Ahura Mazda in his stern fight with darkness and contamination. This dualistic view found its way West and appears in Manicheism.
As, after death, the four elements of which all things are composed, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, become reunited with their primitive elements; and as, at the resurrection-day, everything that has been severed combines once more, and nothing returns into oblivion, all is reunited to its primitive elements, Ahriman could only have been slain if his impurity could have been transmuted into purity, his darkness into light.
The good spirits of light, life and truth; of all noble deeds; of the Earth, the universal giver; of the refreshing waters, the shining metals, the pastures, trees and innocent creatures, were praised: the evil spirits of darkness; of lying, the deceiver of mankind; of disease, death and sin; of the rigid cold; the desolating heat; of all odious dirt and vermin, were cursed, together with their father the malignant Ahriman.
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