The difference from other religions lay in the determined effort to grapple with the problem of the origin of evil. The tribe of divine students among whom Mazdeism sprang up saw in that unsolved problem the great cause of unbelief, and they set themselves to solve it by the theory which J. S. Mill said was the only one which could reconcile philosophy with religion—the theory of primal forces at war. The Indian did not attempt to fathom it; the Egyptian and Assyrian set it aside; we know the offered Hebrew solution: “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil, I, the Lord, do all these things.” But this is a statement, not a solution, because though it may be believed, it cannot be thought. The attraction of the dualistic conception is shown by nothing more clearly than by the extraordinary vitality of Manichæism in the face of every kind of persecution both in the East and West, although Manichæism, with its ascription of the creation of mankind to the Evil Principle, its depreciation of woman, its out-and-out asceticism which included abstinence from animal food (a rule borrowed by Mani from the Buddhists in his journey in India) contrasts unfavourably with the faith that did not make a single demand on human nature except to be good, even as its Creator was good. The origin of the Magians was Semitic, or, as some think, præ-Semitic and præ-Aryan. Travellers brought tales of them to the ancient world which listened with a fascinated interest, while it failed to see the importance of the mighty religious phenomenon of Israel. The “Wise men of the East” had a charm for antiquity, as they were to have for the Infant Church which never tired of depicting them in its earliest art. Mention of the “Persarum Magos” is frequent from Herodotus to Cicero, who speaks of them under that name. According to Herodotus the Magi sang the Theogony, and Pausanias describes them as reading from a book which was certainly the Avesta, though it must not be overlooked that never but once does it contain the smallest reference to them. This tribe of divine students enjoyed a high reputation at the Babylonian Court, which seems less unexpected by the light of recent research than it did when the Babylonians and Assyrians were thought to be destitute of any trace of an esoteric religion tending to monotheism. That the Magians were monotheists cannot be disputed. Probably they were skilled in astronomy and in medicine, the two sciences which almost covered what was meant then by learning in the East. Probably also they were astrologers like other searchers of the heavens, but they were not magic-workers, a calling that had a bad name. The Magi in the Gospel story are supposed to have been guided by astronomical calculations; whatever these may have been, they could not have been ignorant of the prophecy in their own Scriptures of a Virgin who should give birth to the Saviour and Judge of men.