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THE GÂTHAS.
YASNA XXXIII. Prayers, HOPES, AND SELF-Consecration. Brighter times seem to have arrived. The vengeance so confidently promised in the close of XXXII is described as near at hand. In fact the first three verses seem to belong as much to XXXII as to the present chapter. They remind one of the choruses of attending saints, or 'Immortals,' in XXIX, perfectly germane to the connection, but referring in the third person to a speaker who closes the last chapter with a first, and who begins again with a first in verse 4. The propriety of a division of chapters here rests upon the fact that the thought comes to a climax at XXXII, 16, beginning afresh at XXXIII, 4. Whether Zarathustra, or the chief composer, whatever his name may have been, composed these three verses relating, as they do, to himself, and put them into the mouth of another, or whether their grammatical form indicates another author, is difficult to determine. I doubt very greatly whether either the expressions 'I approach,' I offer,' &c., or the words 'he will act,' let him be in Asha's pastures,' are at all meant to express more than some modern hymns which use 'I' and 'he. Both are in constant employment in anthology with no change in the person indicated. 'I' and •Thy servant' are merely verbal variations. Here, however, the change is somewhat marked by the allusion to the chastisement of the wicked just previously mentioned in XXXII, 16. 1. It is to be noticed that the strictest canon with the original, as indeed with the later, Zarathustrians of the Avesta was the primeval law.' Unquestionably the precepts understood as following from the dualistic principle were intended ; that is to say, no trifling with any form of evil, least of all with a foreign creed, was to be tolerated. Ahura has no share in the evolution of anything corrupt. We may even add that He had no power to prevent either sin or sorrow, although He possessed all conceivable power to oppose them. According to these fundamental laws, then, the Ratu is said to act, as sternly severe upon the evil as he is beneficent to the saint. 2. The fierce hostilities hitherto pursued are more than justified. The injury of the wicked by denouncing, planning, or by physical violence, is on a par with advising the good. They who pursue the enemies of Ahura are actually operating in love to God, and sacrificing to religion itself.
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