Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/357

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
324
ZOROASTRIANISM AS TAUGHT BY PAHLAVI WORKS

Fifteen hundred years separated Zoroaster from the Sasanian period, and a thick veil began to hide the pristine truth of his great religion from his followers.

The Sasanian Church became an arbiter of the faith of Zoroaster. It was through the Church that the religious teachings filtered into the populace. During the period of her great influence, when the State was practically under her tutelage, the Church rendered a lasting service by her attempts to reinvigorate the Mazdayasnian faith. She triumphed when she stood for the spirit of the religion of Mazda; but she failed when she descended to rigid formalism, stifled independent inquiry, stigmatized honest doubt as Ahrimanian, and sought to overrule original thinking by dogmatic assertions. Religion defeats its own ends when it degenerates into dogmatic theology. And it was not otherwise in Persia.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.