can offer us gifts worth the having. When they rise in the morning
they know that they have a great warfare to wage, and that they are
not alone, but have heavenly helpers. This form of representation is
not indeed the only one, but who shall say that we can dispense with
it? Even if evil be but the shadow of good, a _Maya_, an appearance,
yet must we not act as if it had a real existence, and combat it with
all our might?

May we also venture to include Buddhism among the religions which may
directly or indirectly have prepared the way for Bahaism? We may; the
evidence is as follows. Manes, or Mani, the founder of the
widely-spread sect of the Manichaeans, who lived in the third century
of our era, writes thus in the opening of one of his books,--
[Footnote: _Literary History of Persia_, i. 103.]

'Wisdom and deeds have always from time to time been brought to
mankind by the messengers of God. So in one age they have been brought
by the messenger of God called Buddha to India, in another by
Zoroaster to Persia, in another by Jesus to the West. Thereafter this
revelation has come down, this prophecy in this last age, through me,
Mani, the Messenger of the God of Truth to Babylonia' ('Irak).

This is valid evidence for at least the period before that of Mani. We
have also adequate proofs of the continued existence of Buddhism in
Persia in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; indeed, we
may even assert this for Bactria and E. Persia with reference to
nearly 1000 years before the Muhammadan conquest. [Footnote:
R. A. Nicholson, _The Mystics_, p. 18. Cp. E. G. Browne,
_Lit. Hist. of Persia_, ii. 440 _ff_.]