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184 and reflect glory on himself. The secret of his success was, he taught the theology of Moses, and his theology was so simple and sublime, and so consonant at the same time with the best conceptions of mankind that it clothed this impostor with the veneration of his countrymen, and sanctified even his crimes and follies. It was from Moses that Zoroaster derived the idea of one living God, the maker of heaven and earth; but he corrupted this pure doctrine by making two subordinate gods, the authors respectively of good and evil. From Moses he received an utter abhorrence of all images and of the temples in which they were worshipped, but he introduced, in connection with the true faith, the doctrine of evil spirits dividing the government of the universe. So it happened that there was not only an impress of the religion of our fathers upon that of the Persians, but a reaction of the Persian religion upon that of our nation.

"The Jews, as would appear from the book of Tobit, first learned in their captivity those ideas of the agency of evil spirits in the world, of which we find traces in all their histories. Cyrus was a Persian, and in all probability had been instructed in the doctrines of Zoroaster, a combination, as we have seen, of Judaism and the ancient Persian religion; hence his extraordinary partiality for the Jews is explained, and his zeal in rebuilding the only temple on earth which was dedicated in his name to the God of heaven, and was free from the all-pervading and polluting sin of idol-worship.