bring about the furtherance of the world and to be the perfectors of the world, themselves, is the devout prayer of the faithful.[1]
Universal Judgment. All human souls will be subjected to a collective judgment before the ultimate renovation of the world. The souls will have to undergo the great ordeal by fire and molten metal, to which reference has already been made.[2] At the time of the final Dispensation Ahura Mazda will judge the souls of the righteous and the wicked by the test of his blazing fire.[3] The powerful fire will be a manifest help unto the holy, but harmful unto the wicked.[4] Asha and Armaiti will help Ahura Mazda at the final judgment.[5] Mazda knows best how to mark out the lost sinners at the final ordeal of the molten metal.[6] This tribulation will reclaim the sinners.[7]
Righteousness triumphs over wickedness. The world of humanity will at last arrive at the stage when Druj, or Wickedness, will come into the hands of Asha, or Righteousness. This ideal aim and end has been the final goal laid out in the Gathas. Zarathushtra prays over and over again for the period when Righteousness will smite Wickedness. Every gain to the Kingdom of Righteousness is the loss to the Kingdom of Wickedness, and when there is no Wickedness left Righteousness will reign supreme. When the law of Wickedness is thus annihilated, the divine law of Righteousness will pervade the entire world. Even the wicked souls who had revolted from Mazda in the corporeal world and gone over to the Evil Spirit will after the retribution come over to Mazda and acknowledge his sovereignty. As the great shepherd, Ahura Mazda will bring back into the fold of righteousness all those persons who, led astray by the rach-tempter, had left his flock.
The later texts give us a systematic account of the final struggle between the good and the evil powers, and relate in detail how every one of the heavenly beings will smite his own particular opponent evil spirit. As we have already seen, the Gathas speak of the victory of Asha, or Righteousness, and the defeat of Druj, Wickedness. The fate of Angra Mainyu, the father of evil, is not mentioned; but we can infer that once the
