Then follow several paragraphs which are clearly directed against Christian missionaries, and more particularly against the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice and prayer: 'Some deceivers, [the Catechism says,] with the view of acquiring exaltation in this world, have set themselves up as prophets, and, going among the labouring and ignorant people, have persuaded them that, "if you commit sin, I shall intercede for you, I shall plead for you, I shall save you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among the people know the deceit.' This clearly refers to Christian missionaries, but whether Roman Catholic or Protestant is difficult to say. The answer given by the Parsis is curious and significant: 'If any one commit sin,' they reply, 'under the belief that he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rastâ Khez.... There is no saviour. In the other world you shall receive the return according to your actions.... Your saviour is your deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the giver. If you repent your sins and reform, and if the Great Judge consider you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to you, He alone can and will save you.' It would be a mistake to suppose that the whole doctrine of the Parsis is contained in the short Guzerati Catechism, translated by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, still less in the fragmentary extracts here given. Their sacred writings, the Ya_s_na, Vispered, and Vendidad, the productions of much earlier ages, contain many ideas, both religious and mythological, which belong to the past, to the childhood of our race, and which no educated Parsi could honestly profess to believe in now. This difficulty of reconciling the more enlightened faith of the present generation with the mythological phraseology of their old sacred writings is solved by the Parsis in a very simple manner. They do not, like Roman Catholics, prohibit the reading of the Zend-Avesta; nor do they, like Protestants, encourage a critical study of their sacred texts. They simply ignore the originals of their sacred writings. They repeat them in their prayers without attempting to understand them, and they acknowledge the insufficiency of every translation of the Zend-Avesta that has yet been made, either in Pehlevi, Sanskrit, Guzerati, French, or German. Each Parsi has to pick up his religion as best he may. Till lately, even the Catechism did not form a necessary part of a child's religious education. Thus the religious belief of the present Parsi communities is reduced to two or three fundamental doctrines; and these, though professedly resting on the teaching of Zoroaster, receive their real sanction from a much higher authority. A Parsi believes in one God, to whom he addresses his prayers. His morality is comprised in these words--pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds. Believing in the punishment of vice and the