To save mankind God sent a savior in the person of Zoroaster with a divine revelation, the "Zend Avesta." Like Christ, Zoroaster was of supernatural origin and endowed with superhuman powers. Like Christ, he believed that Satan would be dethroned and cast into hell; like Christ he believed that the end of the world and the kingdom of God were at hand; like Christ, he taught his followers to worship God; like Christ he declared that God heard and answered prayer; like Christ he was tempted by Satan; like Christ he performed miracles; like Christ he was slain by those whom he had come to save. McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" gives a summary of the principal doctrines of Zoroaster among which are the following: "The principal duty of man in this life is to obey the word and commandments of God. "Those who obey the word of God will be free from all defects and immortal. "God exercises his rule in the world through the works prompted by the Divine Spirit, who is working in man and nature. "Men should pray to God and worship him. He hears the prayers of the good. "All men live solely through the bounty of God. "The soul of the pure will hereafter enjoy everlasting life; that of the wicked will have to undergo everlasting punishment" (Art. Zoroaster). Devils and angels are of Persian origin. Dr. Kalisch, the eminent Jewish scholar, says: "When the Jews, ever open to foreign influence in matters of faith, lived under Persian rule, they imbibed, among many other religious views of their masters, their doctrines of angels and spirits, which, in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, were most luxuriantly developed" (Leviticus, part II, p. 287). "The belief in spirits and demons was not a concession made by educated men to the prejudices of the masses, but a concession which all--the educated as well as the uneducated--made to Pagan polytheism" (Ibid). Strauss says: "It is in the Maccabean Daniel and in the Apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in the most precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persian on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves that they brought the names of the angels with them from Babylon" (Leben Jesu, p. 78). Baptism, communion, and even confirmation, are rites that were performed in Persia a thousand years before the advent of Christ. Dr. Hyde, in his "Religion of the Ancient Persians," says: "They do not use circumcision for their children, but only baptism or washing for the inward purification of the soul.... After such washing, or baptism, the priest imposes on the child the name given by his parents. Afterwards, in the fifteenth year of his age, when he begins to put on the tunic, the sudra, and the girdle, that he may enter upon religion, and is engaged in the articles of belief, the priest bestows upon him confirmation."