Author: W. J. Fox

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-13

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9781331298816

Excerpt from Lectures Addressed Chiefly to the Working Classes, Vol. 3 The Persians of old believed in two deities, - one the source of light and life, the other of death and darkness. To the first they referred whatever makes our existence joyous and hopeful, to the second every thing which renders it calamitous and desponding. Such was their mode of interpreting the contrasts and conflicts which present themselves to our contemplation in the material world, which we find also in the concerns of human intelligence and of social arrangement. That interpretation is obsolete; but still the phenomenon continues, and presses for explanation. Though the faith of the Persians be outworn and gone, yet even now when the religious contemplatist looks up to heaven, regards the blue sky which bends over all; sees the sun in his strength, the moon in her loveliness, the stars in their harmonious constellations, and the clouds "dropping fatness" on the earth, - his imagination realises the descending figure of a benignant God. And when he is oppressed by the sense of calamity, bewildered by the mass of physical and moral evil, then to his appalled fancy, from the abyss of darkness and corruption, - from the pit whose smoke is pestilential, - from sulphureous lakes and palpable gloom, - from the unfathomed depths of creation, - there rises the fearful form of a devil. Throughout the whole range of society we find antagonistic principles in ceaseless conflict; good and evil in their various shapes are intermingled, and their collision never ceases. We give them different names; but still there are the same essential principles: the one appeals to our hopes, the other to our fears; the one to love, the other to aversion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.