For many ages the false religions of the East had remained stationary; but in this period, _magianism_ received considerable strength from the writings of Zoroaster. He was a native of Media. He pretended to a visit in heaven, where God spoke to him out of a fire. This fire he pretended to bring with him on his return. It was considered holy—the dwelling of God. The priests were for ever to keep it, and the people were to worship before it. He caused fire-temples everywhere to be erected, that storms and tempests might not extinguish it. As he considered God as dwelling in the fire, he made the sun to be his chief residence, and therefore the _primary_ object of worship. He abandoned the old system of two gods, one good and the other evil, and taught the existence of one Supreme, who had under him a good and evil angel—the immediate authors of good and evil. To gain reputation, he retired into a cave, and there lived a long time a recluse, and composed a book called the _Zend-Avesta_, which contains the liturgy to be used in the fire-temples, and the chief doctrines of his religion. His success in propagating his system was astonishingly great. Almost all the eastern world, for a season, bowed before him. He is said to have been slain, with eighty of his priests, by a Scythian prince, whom he attempted to convert to his religion. It is manifest that he derived his whole system of God’s dwelling in the fire, from the burning bush, out of which God spake to Moses. He was well acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures. He gave the same history of the creation and deluge that Moses had given, and inserted a great part of the Psalms of David into his writings. The Mehestani, his followers, believed in the immortality of the soul, in future rewards and punishments, and in the purification of the body by fire; after which they would be united to the good.—(_Marsh’s Ecclesiastical History_, p. 78.) From the same origin, that of the burning bush, it is altogether probable the worship of fire, for many ages, obtained over the whole habitable earth; and is still to be traced in the funeral piles of the Hindoos, the beacon-fires of the Scotch and Irish, the periodical midnight fires of the Mexicans, and the council-fires of the North American Indians, around which they dance. A custom among the natives of New Mexico, as related by Baron Humboldt, is exactly imitated by a practice found still in some parts of Ireland, among the descendants of the ancient Irish. At the commencement of the month of November, the great fire of _Sumhuin_ is lit up, all the culinary fires in the kingdom being first extinguished, as it was deemed sacrilege to awaken the winter’s social flame except by a spark snatched from this sacred fire; on which account, the month of November is called, in the Irish language, Sumhuin.