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odistic baptism at its birth, Whitefield inspirited its founders, and was honored by it with the title of A. M.; the Methodist in England gave it funds; and one of its noblest presidents (Davies) was a correspondent of Wesley, and honored him as a 'restorer' of the true faith." Dartmouth College arose from the same impulse; it received its chief early funds from the British Methodists, and bears the name of one of their chief Calvinistic associates whom Cowper celebrated as "The one who wore a coronet and prayed." Whitefield's preaching, and especially the reading of his printed sermons in Virginia, led to the founding of the Presbyterian Church in that state, whence it has extended to the south and south-west. "The stock from which the Baptists of Virginia and those in all the south and south-west have sprung was also Whitefieldian." The founder of the Freewill Baptists of the United States was converted under the last preaching of Whitefield.

Though Whitefield did not organize the results of his labors, he prepared the way for Wesley's itinerants in the new world. When he descended into his American grave they were already on his tracks. They came not only to labor, but to organize their labors; to reproduce amid the peculiar moral necessities of the new world both the spirit and the methods of the great movement as it had at last been organized by Wesley in the old, and to render it before many years superior in the former in both numerical and moral force to the Methodism of the latter.* Such is a rapid review of the early development both of the United States and of Methodism preparatory for those extraordinary advancements which both have made. The next *Figures are proverbially veracious. We have authentically the statistics of the leading Christian denominations of the United States for the first half of our century. They attest conclusively the peculiar adaptation of the ecclesiastical system of Methodism to the moral wants of the country. During the period from 1800 to 1850 the ratio of the increase of the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church has been as 6 to 1, of its communicants as 6 to 1; of the ministry of the Congregationalists as 4 to 1, of their communicants as 23 to 1; of the ministry of the regular Baptists as 4 to 1, of their communicants as 53 to 1; of the ministry of the Presbyterians ("old and new schools") as 14 to 1, of their communicants as 8 to 1; of the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church (north and south) as 193 to 1, of its communicants as 173 to 1. It must be borne in mind, however, that most, if not all these religious bodies, have, during the whole of this period, been more or less pervaded by the Methodistic impulse given by Whitefield and his successors, and much of their success is unquestionably attributable to that fact.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.-18

year, as has been remarked, after Wesley stood in the quadangle of Glasgow University, where Watt, about the same time, hung out his sign, the Methodist apostle stood preaching in the open air, in an obscure village of Ireland, to the people who were destined to form the first Methodist Church in the United States. In two years more they arrived at New York, in six years more they were organized as a society, and thenceforward, coincidently with the opening of the continent by the genius of Watt and Fulton, Methodism has maintained Christianity abreast of the progress of immigration and settlement throughout the states and territories of the Union.

ART. VII.-THE PARSEES.

Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees. By Dr. M. HAUG. 8vo. Bombay: 1862.

The Manners and Customs of the Parsees. By DADABHAI NAOROJI. Liverpool: 1861.

The Parsee Religion. By DADABHAI NAOROJI, Liverpool: 1861.

THE Parsees belong at present among the smallest religious denominations of the world, as they amount only to about one hundred thousand in western India, and five thousand five hundred in Yazd and Kirman, making a total of one hundred and five thousand five hundred.* Yet a greater interest is taken in them than in many sects a thousand times their superiors in numbers; for they are remembered as the descendants of that powerful State Church of Persia which, under the first

*Pierer's Real-Encyclopädie, s.v. Parsen, (vol. xii, p. 712,) estimates the number of the Parsees in Persia at about 7000, and in India, in 1858, at 150,000. They have greatly decreased during the past century in Persia, as one hundred years ago they still numbered 100,000. In India, on the other hand, they have increased since the occupation of Bombay by England. A hundred years ago there were only 50,000 in Bombay, Surat, and the neighboring region; now (according to Pierer) the island of Bombay alone contains 110,000.

Dr. Petermann, during his journey in Persia, learned from a distinguished Parsee of Bombay that the number of Parsees in India amounted to 300,000. (Reisen im Orient. Leipzic: 1861. Vol. ii, p. 179.) The number of Persian Parsees is reported by Petermann to be about 3000 families. (Ibid., p. 203.)

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successors of Cyrus, for some time seemed to be destined to become temporarily the religion of the greater part of the globe; and which again, under the Sassanian dynasty, (228-673 A. D.,) assumed such vigor that Shapur II., like another Diocletian, aimed at the extirpation of the Christian faith. Overpowered and almost extirpated by the Mohammedans, they disappeared, as it seems, forever from among the prominent religions of mankind. Their religious condition, like that of all eastern Asia, was almost entirely unknown to the Christian world until, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the celebrated Orientalist, Anquetil du Perron, laid the foundation of a thorough knowledge of their language and literature. Since then, steady progress has been made in the elucidation of their history and religion. Grammars and dictionaries of the ancient language in which their sacred books were written have appeared; the originals of these sacred books and ancient translations into other oriental languages have been published;* valuable information has been obtained from our improved knowledge of the other literatures and languages of the East; and all the material thus gained has been so successfully elabo-" rated, that the Parsees in India themselves. have acknowledged their indebtedness to European scholars for the elucidation of their ancient religion.

The works named at the head of our article are the most recent, and belong among the most interesting and valuable productions of Parsee literature. The author of the first, Dr. Martin Haug, is a young German scholar, educated at the Universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Bonn, who left his native country about three years ago in order to accept a professorship of Sanscrit at the Indian University of Poona, in Deccan. While in India he soon established a reputation by his profound knowledge of the sacred books of the Parsees. In September, 1861, the Parsees in Bombay arranged in his honor for a great

• There are at present five more or less complete editions of the Zendavestą. The first was lithographed under the supervision of Burnouf, and appeared in Paris 1829-'43. The second edition of the text, in Roman characters, was published by Professor H. Brockhaus, of Leipzic, 1850. The third, in Zend characters, was published by Professor Spiegel, of Erlangen, in 1851; and a fourth one by Professor Westergaard, of Copenhagen, (Copenhagen, 1851-52.) One or two editions were published in India, with a Gujerati translation. A German translation was published by Professor Spiegel, (Leipzic, 1852-'59,) but it is mostly based on the Pehlevi translations of the original.

meeting, at which their high priests, (desturs,) from sixty to seventy influential members of their community, and some Brahmins, were present. They presented him with a large number of printed books on the religion of the Parsees and kindred subjects, and he had to give them a lecture on their religion, with which they were highly pleased. They also inquired of him whether he did not wish to become president of their ecclesiastical seminary at Bombay, and teach their priests the true contents of the Zendavesta. This remarkable offer was declined for the present, but it is a proof of the great confidence which the Parsees have in the extent and the accuracy of his scholarship. Nearly the whole edition of his works was, in advance, subscribed for by the Parsees and the Englishmen in the presidentship of Bombay. His work, which also embraces a grammar of the Zend language, discusses the primitive religion of the Parsees.

The other two works at the head of our article are mostly devoted to the actual condition of the sect, and have been compiled by a learned Parsee, Dadabhai Naoroji, who was at the time of their publication (1861) Professor of Gujerati in the University of London. The one on the Manners and Customs of the Parsees, is a paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society; the other, on the Parsee Religion, was delivered as a lecture before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. In the following lines we give a condensed account of the works of both the German and the Parsee scholars.

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE PARSEE RELIGION.

The earliest mention, according to Dr. Haug, of the followers of Zoroaster is found in the prophet Jeremiah, (xxxix, 3,) who speaks of the Magi at the court of Nebuchadnezzar. There is a casual reference to the doctrines of the sect in Ezekiel viii, 16, 17; and Dr. Haug regards it as a remarkable circumstance that Cyrus, the greatest ruler produced by the sect, is called by the prophet Isaiah "an aminted of the Lord." Besides the belief in one God, there are several other points which are common to the Old Testament and the Zendavesta, as the doctrine of Satan and the resurrection of the flesh. The language of the two books, however, shows but few traces of mutual influence. The Zendavesta contains but two foreign

words of Semitic origin, and they do not refer to religious things. On the other hand, the later portions of the Old Testament have a number of Persian words, the most celebrated of which is the word Paradise. The New Testament speaks with high esteem of the "wise men " (Matthew ii) who came from the East to Jerusalem to worship the new-born King of the Jews.

Among the Greeks, Herodotus is commended by Dr. Haug for his accurate knowledge of the sacrificial rites of the Persians. A special work (unfortunately not extant) on the religion of Zoroaster was compiled by Hermippus, who seems to have possessed an extensive knowledge of the ancient Zend literature. Among the Armenian writers, Eznik and Elisæus, two authors of the fifth century, report, that at their time the Parsees were divided into two sects, the Mog, (Magi, Maghava,) who recognized only the Avesta, or the original sacred writings, as obligatory, and lived especially in Media and Persia; and the Zendik, who recognized also the Zend, or the traditional explanations of the Avesta, and were numerous in the East, especially in Bactriana. The Arabic geographers furnish but little light. The learned Massudi put Zoroaster about two hundred and eighty years before Alexander the Great, or about five hundred and sixteen years before Christ; but in this he only follows an erroneous statement of the Persians of the time of the Sassanian dynasty. Another statement of Mohammedan authors, that according to the assertions of the Parsees, Abraham and Zoroaster were one and the same person, probably rest upon an intentional invention of the much-persecuted Parsees, who thus hoped to escape the intolerance of the Mohammedans.

The investigations of European scholars begin with the "History of the Ancient Persian Religion," published in 1700 by Hyde, the celebrated scholar of Oxford. But he only collated what foreign authors had written about the subject. The first European who opened to himself the way to the text of the sacred books is Anquetil du Perron. Being without funds, he went as a sailor to India in order to study the Parsee literature. He remained in India from 1754 to 1761, and upon his return he published a translation of the Zendavesta, with notes and treatises. This work, which is the basis of all modern investi

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