The Idea of God in Early Religions Part 3

If we insist on maintaining that, because spell and prayer are essentially different, men have at all times been fully conscious of the difference, we make it fundamentally impossible to explain the growth of religion, or to admit that it can have any growth. Just as, on the argument advanced in our first chapter, G.o.ds and fetishes have gradually been differentiated from some conception, prior to them, and indeterminate; just as magician and priest, eventually distinguished, were originally undistinguished, for a man of power was potentially both and might become either; so spell and prayer have come to be differentiated, to be recognised as different and fundamentally antagonistic, though originally the two categories were confused.

The theory that spell preceded prayer and became prayer, or that magic developed into religion, finds as little support in the facts afforded by the science of religion, as the converse theory of a primitive revelation and a paradisaical state in which religion alone was known.

For what is found in one stage of evolution the capacity must have existed in earlier stages; and if both prayer and spell, both magic and religion, are found, the capacity for both must have pre-existed.

And instead of seeking to deny either, in the interests of a pre-conceived theory, we must recognise both potentialities, in the interest of truth.

Just as man spoke, for countless thousands of years, before he had any idea of the principles on which he spoke, of the laws of speech or of the grammar of his language; just as he reasoned, long before he made the reasoning process matter of reflection, and reduced it to the laws of logic; so from the beginning he was religious though he had no more idea that there were principles of religion, than that there were principles of grammar or laws of correct thought. 'First principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and powerfully, long before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately expounded' (Ferrier: _Inst.i.tute of Metaphysics_, p.

13).

But this is not to say that primitive man argued, or thought, with never an error, or spoke with never a mistake, until by some catastrophe he was expelled from some paradise of grammarians and logicians. Though correct reasoning was logical before the time of Aristotle, and correct speech grammatical before the time of Dionysius Thrax; there was before, as there has been since, plenty both of bad logic and bad grammar. But that is very different from saying that, in the beginning, all reasoning was unsound, or all speech ungrammatical.

To say so, would be as unmeaning and as absurd as to say that primitive man's every action was immoral, and his habitual state one of pure, unmitigated wickedness. If the a.s.sumption of a primitive paradise is unworkable, neither will the a.s.sumption of a primitive inferno act, whether it is for the evolution of the grammar of language or morality, or of logic or religion, that we wish to account. It is to ask too much, to ask us to believe that in the beginning there was only wrong-doing and no right, only error and no correctness of thought or speech, only spell and no prayer. And if both have been always, as they are now, present, there must also always have been a tendency in that which has prevailed to conquer. We may say that, in the process of evolution, man becomes aware of differences to which at first he gave but little attention; and, so far as he becomes conscious of them, he sets aside what is illogical, immoral, or irreligious, because he is satisfied it is illogical, immoral, or irreligious, and for no other reason.

The theory that spell preceded prayer in the evolution of religion proceeds upon a misconception of the process of evolution. At one time it was a.s.sumed and accepted without question that the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and all their various species, were successive stages of one process of evolution; and that the process proceeded on one line and one alone. On the a.n.a.logy of the evolution of living beings, as thus understood, all that remained, when the theory of evolution came to be applied to the various forms of thought and feeling, was to arrange them also in one line; and that, it was a.s.sumed, would be the line which the evolution of religion had followed. On this a.s.sumption, either magic must be prior to religion, or religion prior to magic; and, on the principle that priority must be a.s.signed to the less worthy, it followed that magic must have preceded religion.

It will scarcely be disputed that it was on the a.n.a.logy of what was believed to be the course of evolution, in the case of vegetable and animal life, that the first attempts to frame a theory of the evolution of religion proceeded, with the result that G.o.ds were a.s.sumed to have been evolved out of fetishes, religion out of magic, and prayer out of spell. To disprove this, it is not necessary to reject the theory of evolution, or to maintain that evolution in religion proceeds on lines wholly different from those it follows elsewhere. All that is necessary is to understand the theory of the evolution of the forms of life, as that theory is held by naturalists now; and to understand the lines which the evolution of life is now held to have followed. The process of evolution is no longer held to have followed one line alone, or to have described but one single trajectory like that of a cannon-ball fired from a cannon. The process of evolution is, and has been from the beginning, dispersive. To borrow M. Bergson's simile, the process of evolution is not like that of a cannon-ball which followed one line, but like that of a sh.e.l.l, which burst into fragments the moment it was fired off; and these fragments being, as it were, themselves sh.e.l.ls, in their turn burst into other fragments, themselves in their turn destined to burst, and so on throughout the whole process. The very lines, on which the process of evolution has moved, show the process to be dispersive. If we represent the line by which man has risen from the simplest forms of life or protoplasm by an upright line; and the line by which the lowest forms of life, such as some of the foraminifera, have continued on their low level, by a horizontal line starting from the bottom of the upright line, then we have two lines forming a right angle. One represents the line of man's evolution, the other that of the foraminifera. Between these two lines you may insert as many other lines as necessary. That line which is most nearly upright will represent the evolution of the highest form of vertebrate, except man; the next, the next highest; and so on till you come to the lines representing the invertebrates; and so on till you come to the lines which are getting nearer and nearer to the horizontal. Thus you will have a whole sheaf of lines, all radiating indeed from one common point, but all nevertheless dispersing in different directions.

The rush of life, the _elan de la vie_, is thus dispersive; and if we are to interpret the evolution of mental on the a.n.a.logy of physical life, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which compels us to a.s.sume either that intelligence is developed instinct, or that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may say, neither is there anything to warrant us in a.s.suming either that religion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not degraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: neither does become or can become the other, though man may oscillate, with great rapidity, between the two, and for long may continue so to oscillate.

The two moods were from the beginning different, though man for long did not clearly discriminate between the two. The dispersive force of evolution however tends to separate them more and more widely, until eventually oscillation ceases, if it does not become impossible.

The dispersive force of evolution manifests itself in the power of discrimination whereby man becomes aware of differences to which, in the first confusion of thought, he paid little attention; and ultimately may become conscious of the first principles of reason, morality or religion, as normative principles, in accordance with which he feels that he should act, though he has not always acted, and does not always act in accordance with them. In the beginning there is confusion of feeling and confusion of thought both as to the quarter to which prayer is addressed and as to the nature of the pet.i.tions which should be proffered. But we should be mistaken, if from the confusion we were to infer that there was no principle underlying the confusion. We should be mistaken, were we to say that prayer, if addressed to polytheistic G.o.ds, is not prayer; or that prayer, if addressed to a fetish, is not prayer. In both cases, the being to whom prayer is offered is misconceived and misrepresented by polytheism and fetis.h.i.+sm; and the misconception is due to want of discrimination and spiritual insight. But failure to observe is no proof either that the power of observation is wanting or that there is nothing to be observed. The being to whom prayer is offered may be very different from the conception which the person praying has of him, and may yet be real.

Pet.i.tions, then, put up to polytheistic G.o.ds, or even to fetishes, may still be prayers. But pet.i.tions may be put up, not only to polytheistic G.o.ds, or to fetishes, but even to the one G.o.d of the monotheist, which never should be put up. 'Of thy goodness, slay mine enemies,' is, in form, prayer: it is a desire, a pet.i.tion to a G.o.d, implying recognition of the superiority of the divine power, implying adoration even. But eventually it comes to be condemned as an impossible prayer: spiritually it is a contradiction in terms. If however we say that it is not, and never was, prayer; and that only by confusion of thought was it ever considered so, we may be told that, as a simple matter of actual fact, it is an actual prayer that was actually put up. That it ought not--from the point of view of a later stage in the development of religion--to have been put up, may be admitted; but that it was a prayer actually put up, cannot be denied.

To this the reply seems to be that it is with prayer as it is with argument: a fallacy is a fallacy, just as much before it is detected as afterwards. The fact that it is not detected does not make it a sound argument; still less does it prove either that there are now no principles of correct reasoning or that there were none then; it only shows that there was, on this point, confusion of thought. So too we may admit--we have no choice but to admit--that there are spiritual fallacies, as well as fallacies of logic. Of such are the pet.i.tions which are in form prayers, just as logical fallacies are, in form, arguments. They may be addressed to the being wors.h.i.+pped, as fallacies are addressed to the reason; and eventually their fallacious nature may become evident even to the reason of man. But it is only by the evolution of prayer, that is by the disclosure of its true nature, that pet.i.tions of the kind in question come to be recognised and condemned as spiritual fallacies. The pet.i.tioner who puts up such pet.i.tions is indeed unconscious of his error, but he errs, for all that, just as the person who uses a fallacious argument may be himself the victim of his fallacy: but he errs none the less because he is deceived himself. There are normative principles of prayer as well as the normative principles of thought; and both operate 'long before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately expounded.' It is in thinking that the normative principles of thought emerge. But it is by no means the case that they come to the surface of every man's thought. So too it is in prayer that the normative principles of prayer emerge; yet men require teaching how to pray.

Some pet.i.tions are permissible, some not.

If then there are normative principles of prayer, just as there are of action, thought and speech; if there are pet.i.tions which are not permissible, and which are not and never can be prayers, though by a spiritual fallacy, a.n.a.logous to logical fallacies, they may be thought to be prayers, what is it that decides the nature of an admissible pet.i.tion? It seems to be the conception of the being to whom the pet.i.tion is addressed. Thus it is that prayer throws light on the idea of G.o.d. From the prayers offered we can infer the nature of the idea.

The confusion of admissible and inadmissible pet.i.tions points to confused apprehension of the idea of G.o.d. It is not merely imperfect apprehension but confused apprehension. In polytheism the confusion betrays itself, because it leads to collision with the principles of morality: of the G.o.ds who make war upon one another, each must be supposed to hold himself in the right; therefore either some G.o.ds do not know what is right, or there is no right to be known even by the G.o.ds. From this confusion the only mode of escape, which is satisfactory both to religion and to morality, is to recognise that the unity of morality and the unity of the G.o.dhead mutually imply one another. But so long as a plurality of G.o.ds, with a s.h.i.+fting standard of morality, is believed in, the distinction between admissible and inadmissible pet.i.tions cannot be firmly or correctly drawn.

A tribal G.o.d is pet.i.tioned to slay the tribe's enemies, because he is conceived as the G.o.d of the tribe and not the G.o.d of its enemies. If the declaration, that 'I am thy servant,' is affirmed with emphasis on the first personal p.r.o.noun, so as to imply that others are no servants of thine, the implication is that thy servants' enemies are thy enemies; whereas if there is, for all men, one G.o.d only, then all men are his servants, and not one person, or one tribe, alone. The conception of G.o.d as the G.o.d of one tribe alone is an imperfect and confused apprehension of the idea of G.o.d. But it is less so than is the conception of a G.o.d as belonging to one individual owner, as a fetish does. To a fetish the distinctive, though not the only, prayer offered, precisely is 'Slay mine enemies'; and therein it is that lies the difference between a fetish and a G.o.d of the community. The difference is the same in kind as that between a tribal G.o.d and the G.o.d of all mankind. The fetish and the tribal G.o.d are both inadequate ideas of G.o.d; and the inadequacy implies confusion--the confusion of conceiving that the G.o.d is there only to subserve the desires and to do the will of the individual wors.h.i.+pper or body of wors.h.i.+ppers.

Escape from this confusion is to some extent secured by the fact that prayers to the community's G.o.d are offered by the community aloud, in public and as part of the public wors.h.i.+p; and, consequently, with the object of securing the fulfilment of the desires of the community as a community. The blessing on the community is, at this stage, the only blessing in which the individual can properly share, and the only one for which he can pray to the G.o.d of the community. Thus the nature of the pet.i.tions, and the quarter to which permissible pet.i.tions can be addressed, are determined by the fact that prayer is an office undertaken by the community as a community. If the desires which an individual entertains are such as would be repudiated by the community, because injurious to the community, they cannot be preferred, in the presence of the community, to the G.o.d of the community; and thus permissible pet.i.tions begin to be differentiated from those which are impermissible--a normative principle of prayer emerges, and the idea of G.o.d begins to take more definite form, or to emerge somewhat from the mist which at first enveloped it.

But though permissible pet.i.tions be distinguished from pet.i.tions which are impermissible, it by no means follows that impermissible pet.i.tions cease to be put up. What actually happens is that since the community does not, and cannot, allow pet.i.tions, conceived to be injurious to itself, to be put up to its G.o.d, they are put up privately to a fetish; or, to put the matter more correctly, a being or power not identified with the welfare of the community is sought in such cases; and the being so found is known to the science of religion as a fetish. But though a fetish differs from a G.o.d, inasmuch as the fetish will, and a G.o.d will not, injure a member of the tribe, the distinction is not clear-cut. There are things which both alike may be prayed to do: both may be besought to do good to the individual who addresses them. To this protective mimicry the fetish owes in part its power of survival. For the same reason spell and magic contrive to continue their existence side by side with religion and prayer. What conduces to this result is that at first the G.o.d of the community is conceived as listening to the prayers of the community rather than of the individual: from the beginning it is part of the idea of G.o.d that He cares for all His wors.h.i.+ppers alike. This conviction, to be carried out to its full consequences, both logical and spiritual, requires that each individual wors.h.i.+pper should forget himself, should renounce his particular inclinations, should abandon himself and long to do not his own will but that of G.o.d. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness of self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its existence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition of the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes relatively late both in the history of the community and in the personal history of the individual. At first the existence of the individual will and the individual self is not recognised by the community and is not provided for in the community's wors.h.i.+p and prayers. It is the community, as a community, and not as so many individual wors.h.i.+ppers, offering separate prayers, that first approaches the community's G.o.d. The existence of the individual wors.h.i.+pper, as an individual is not denied, it is simply unknown, or rather not realised by the community. But its stirrings are felt in the individual himself: he is conscious of desires which are other than those of the community, and the fulfilment of which forms no part of the community's prayers to the community's G.o.d. His self-consciousness, his consciousness of himself as contrasted with the community, is fostered by the growth of such desires. For the fulfilment of some of them, those which are manifestly anti-social, he must turn to his fetish, or rely upon the power of magic. Even for the fulfilment of those of his desires which are not felt to be anti-social, but which find no place in the prayers of the community, he must rely on some other power than that of the G.o.d of the community; and it is in spells, therefore, that he continues to trust for the fulfilment of these innocent desires, inasmuch as the prayers of the community do not include them.

The existence, in the individual, of desires, other than those of the community, wakes the individual to some consciousness of his individual existence. The effort to secure the fulfilment of those desires increases still further his self-consciousness, for he resorts to powers which are not exercised solely in the interests of the community, as are the powers of the community's G.o.d. But his increasing self-consciousness cannot and does not fail to modify his character and action as a wors.h.i.+pper of the community's G.o.ds. It modifies his relation to the community's G.o.ds in this sense, viz. that he appears before them not merely as a member of the community undistinguished from other members, but as an individual conscious to some extent of his individuality. He continues to take part in the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, but he comes to it conscious of wishes of his own which may become pet.i.tions to the G.o.d, so far as they are not felt to be inconsistent with the good of the community.

Of this stage we have ample evidence afforded by the cuneiform inscriptions of a.s.syria. Spells employed to the hurt of any wors.h.i.+pper of the G.o.ds are spells against which the wors.h.i.+pper may properly appeal to the G.o.ds for protection. A G.o.d is essentially the protector of his wors.h.i.+ppers, and he protects each as well as all of them. Each of them may therefore appeal to him for protection. But though any one of them may so appeal, it is apparently only in course of time that individual pet.i.tions of this kind come to be put up to the G.o.ds. And the evidence of the cuneiform inscriptions is particularly interesting and instructive on the way in which this came about.

In the 'Maklu' tablets we find that the writers of the tablets are, or antic.i.p.ate that they may be, the victims of spells. The inscriptions themselves may be regarded, and by some authorities are described, as counter-charms or counter-spells. They do in fact include, though they cannot be said to consist of, counter-spells. Their typical feature is that they include some such phrase as, 'Whoever thou art, O witch, I bind thy hands behind thee,' or 'May the magic thou hast made recoil upon thyself.' If the victim is being turned yellow by sickness, the counter-spell is 'O witch, like the circlet of this seal, may thy face grow yellow and green.'

The ceremonies with which these counter-spells were performed are indicated by the words, and they are ceremonies of the same kind as those with which spells are performed: they are symbolic actions, that is to say, actions which express by gesture the same meaning and intention as are expressed by the words. Thus, from the words:

'As the water trickleth away from his body So may the pestilence in his body trickle away,'

it is obvious that this counter-spell accompanied a ceremonial rite of the kind indicated by the words. As an image of the person to be bewitched was used by the workers of magic, so an image of her 'who hath bewitched me' is used by the worker of the counter-spell, with the words:

'May her spell be wrecked, and upon her And upon her image may it recoil.'

If, now, such words, and the symbolical actions which are described and implied, were all that these Maklu tablets contained, it might be argued that these counter-spells were pure pieces of magic. The argument would not indeed be conclusive, because though the sentences are in the optative mood, there would be nothing to show on what, or on whom, the speaker relied for the fulfilment of his wish. But as it happens, it is characteristic of these Maklu tablets that they are all addressed to the G.o.ds by name, e.g. 'May the great G.o.ds remove the spell from my body,' or 'O flaming Fire-G.o.d, mighty son of Anu! judge thou my case and grant me a decision! Burn up the sorcerers and sorceress!' It is the G.o.ds that are prayed to that the word of the sorceress 'shall turn back to her own mouth; may the G.o.ds of might smite her in her magic; may the magic which she has worked be crumbled like salt.'

Thus these Maklu pet.i.tions are not counter-spells, as at first sight they may appear; nor are they properly to be treated as being themselves spells for the purpose of counteracting magic. They are in form and in fact prayers to the G.o.ds 'to undo the spell' and 'to force back the words' of the witch into her own mouth. But though in the form in which these Maklu pet.i.tions are preserved to us, they appear as prayers to the G.o.ds, and not as spells, or counter-spells; it is true, and important to notice, that, in some cases, the sentences in the optative mood seem quite detachable from the invocation of the G.o.ds. Those sentences may apparently have stood, at one time, quite well by themselves, and apart from any invocation of the G.o.ds; that is to say, they may originally have been spells or counter-spells, and only subsequently have been incorporated into prayers addressed to the G.o.ds.

Let us then a.s.sume that this was the case with some of these Maklu pet.i.tions, and let us consider what is implied when we make the a.s.sumption. What is implied is that there are some wishes, for instance those embodied in these Maklu pet.i.tions, which may be realised by means of spells, or may quite appropriately be preferred to the G.o.ds of the community. Such are wishes for the well-being of the individual wors.h.i.+pper and for the defeat of evil-doers who would do or are doing him wrong. When it is recognised that individuals--as well as the community--may come with their plaints before the G.o.ds of the community, the functions of those G.o.ds become enlarged, for they are extended to include the protection of individual members of the community, as well as the protection of the community, as such; and the functions of the community's G.o.ds are thus extended and enlarged, because the members of the community have become, in some degree, individuals conscious of their individuality. The importance, for the science of religion, of this development of self-consciousness is that the consciousness of self must be realised before self can consciously be abandoned, that is before self-will can be consciously surrendered.

As is shown by the Maklu pet.i.tions, there may come, in the course of the evolution of religion, a stage in which it is recognised that the individual wors.h.i.+pper may pet.i.tion the G.o.ds for deliverance from the evil which afflicts them. And the pet.i.tions used appear in some cases, as we have seen, to have been adopted into the ritual of the G.o.ds, word for word as they were found already in existence. If then they were, both in the words in which they were expressed, and in the purpose which they sought to achieve, such that they could be taken up, as they were and without change, into the ritual of the community's G.o.ds, it would seem that, even before they were so taken up, they could not have been wholly, if at all, alien to the spirit of religion. What marks them as religious, in the cuneiform inscriptions, is their context: it shows that the power, relied on for the accomplishment of the desires expressed in these pet.i.tions, was the power of the G.o.ds. Remove the context, and it becomes a matter of ambiguity, whether the wish is supposed, by those who utter it, to depend for its realisation on some power, possessed and exercised by those who express the wish, or whether it is supposed to depend on the good will of some being vaguely conceived, and not addressed by name.

But if eventually the wish, and the words in which it was expressed, are taken up into the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, there seems a balance of probability that the wish was from the beginning rather in the nature of religion than of magic, rather a pet.i.tion than a command; though the categories were not at first discriminated, and there was at first no clear vision of the quarter from which fulfilment of the wish was hoped for.

From this point of view, optative sentences, sentences which express the wishes of him who p.r.o.nounces them, may, in the beginning, well have been ambiguous, because there was, in the minds of those who uttered them, no clear conception of the quarter to which they were addressed: the idea of G.o.d may have been vague to the extreme of vagueness. Some of these optative sentences however, were such that the community as a whole could join in them; and they were potentially, and became actually, prayers to the G.o.d of the community.

The being to whom the community, as a whole, could pray, was thereby displayed as the G.o.d of the community. The idea of G.o.d became, so far, somewhat less vague, somewhat more sharply defined. Optative sentences, however, in which the community could not join, in which no one but the person who framed them could take part, could not be addressed to the G.o.d of the community. The idea of G.o.d thus was defined negatively: there were wishes which could not be communicated to him--those which were repugnant to the well-being of the community.

The prayers of savages, that is of the men who are probably still nearest to the circ.u.mstances and condition of primitive man, furnish the material from which we can best infer what was the idea of G.o.d which was present in their consciousness at those moments when it was most vividly present to them. In view of the infinite number and variety of the forms of religion and religious belief, nothing would seem, _a priori_, more reasonable than to expect an equally infinite number of various and contradictory ideas. Especially should this seem a reasonable expectation to those who consider the idea of G.o.d to be fundamentally, and of its very nature, impossible and untenable. And so long as we look at the attempts which have been made, by means of reflection upon the idea, to body it forth, we have the evidence of all the mythologies to show the infinite variety of monstrosities, which reflection on the idea has been capable of producing. If then we stop there, our _a priori_ expectation of savage and irrational inconsistency is fulfilled to abundance and to loathsome excess. But to stop there is to stop short, and to accept the speculations of the savage when he is reflecting on his experience, instead of pus.h.i.+ng forward to discover for ourselves, if we may, what his experience actually was. To discover that, we cannot be content to pause for ever on his reflections. We must push back to the moment of his experience, that is to the moments when he is in the presence of his G.o.ds and is addressing them. Those are the moments in which he prays and in which he has no doubt that he is in communion with his G.o.ds. It is, then, from his prayers that we must seek to infer what idea he has of the G.o.ds to whom he prays.

When, however, we take his prayers as the evidence from which to infer his idea of G.o.d, instead of the luxuriant overgrowth of speculative mythology, we find everywhere a bare simplicity, and everywhere substantial ident.i.ty. If this is contrary to our expectation and at first seems strange, let us bear in mind that the science of morals offers a parallel, in this respect, to the science of religion. At one time it was, unconsciously but none the less decidedly, a.s.sumed that savages had a multiplicity of irrational and disgusting customs but no morals. The idea that there could be a substantial ident.i.ty between the moral rules of different savage races, and even between their moral rules and ours, was an idea that simply was not entertained.

Nevertheless, it was a fact, though unnoticed; and now it is a fact which, thanks to Dr Westermarck, is placed beyond dispute. 'When,' he says, 'we examine the moral rules of uncivilised races we find that they in a very large measure resemble those prevalent among nations of culture.' The human spirit throughout the process of its evolution is, in truth, one; the underlying unity which manifests itself throughout the evolution of morality is to be found also in the evolution of religion; and it is from the prayers of man that we can infer it.

The first and fundamental article of belief implied by the offering of prayers is that the being to whom they are offered--however vaguely he may be conceived--is believed to be accessible to man. Man's cry can reach Him. Not only does it reach Him but, it is believed, He will listen to it; and it is of His very nature that He is disposed to listen favourably to it. But, though He will listen, it is only to prayers offered in the right spirit that He will listen. The earliest prayers offered are in all probability those which the community sends up in time of trouble; and they must be offered in the spirit of repentance. It is with the conviction that they have offended that the community first turns to the being wors.h.i.+pped, by whom they hope to be delivered from the evil which is upon them, and by whom they pray to be forgiven.

Next, the offering of prayer implies the belief that the being addressed, not merely understands the prayers offered, but has the power to grant them. As having not only the power, but also the will so to do, he is approached not only with fear but also with hope. No approach would or could be made, if nothing could be hoped from it; and nothing could be hoped, unless the being approached were believed to have the power to grant the prayer. The very fact that approach is made shows that the being is at the moment believed to be one with whom it rests to grant or refuse the supplication, one than whom no other is, in this respect at least, more powerful, _quo nihil maius_.

But prayers offered in time of trouble, though they be, or if they be, the earliest, are not the only prayers that are offered by early man.

Man's wishes are not, and never were, limited: escape from calamity is not, and never has been, the only thing for which man is capable of wis.h.i.+ng. It certainly is not the only thing for which he has been capable of praying. Even early man wishes for material blessings: the kindly fruits of the earth and his daily food are things for which he not only works but also prays. The negro on the Gold Coast prays for his daily rice and yams, the Zulu for cattle and for corn, the Samoan for abundant food, the Finno-Ugrian for rain to make his crops grow; the Peruvian prayed for health and prosperity. And when man has attained his wish, when his prayers have been granted, he does not always forget to render thanks to the G.o.d who listened to his prayer.

'Thank you, G.o.ds'; says the Basuto, 'give us bread to-morrow also.'

Whether the prayer be for food, or for deliverance from calamity, the natural tendency is for grat.i.tude and thanks to follow, when the prayer has been fulfilled; and the mental att.i.tude, or mood of feeling, is then no longer one of hope or fear, but of thankfulness and praise. It is in its essence, potentially and, to varying degrees, actually, the mood of veneration and adoration.

'My lips shall praise thee, So will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name, And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.'

From the prayers that are offered in early, if not primitive, religions we may draw with safety some conclusions as to the idea, which the wors.h.i.+ppers had before their minds, of the being to whom they believed they had access in prayer. He was a being accessible in prayer; and he had it in his power, and, if properly approached, in his will, to deliver the community from material and external evils.

The spirit in which he was to be properly approached was one of confession and repentance of offences committed against him: the calamities which fell upon the community were conceived to have fallen justly. He was not conceived to be offended without a cause. Doubtless the causes of offence, like the punishments with which they were visited, were external and visible, in the sense that they could be discovered and made plain to all who were concerned to recognise them. The offences were actions which not only provoked the wrath of the G.o.d, but were condemned by the community. They included offences which were purely formal and external; and, in the case of some peoples, the number of such offences probably increased rather than diminished as time went on. The _Surpu_ tablets of the cuneiform inscriptions, which are directed towards the removal of the _mamit_, the ban or taboo, consequent upon such offences, are an example of this. Adultery, murder and theft are included amongst the offences, but the tablets include hundreds of other offences, which are purely ceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant growth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a ceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others which, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go deeper and to be sins, personal sins of the wors.h.i.+pper against his G.o.d. The penitent exclaims:

'Lord, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds.'

The spirit, in which he approaches his G.o.d, is expressed in the words:

'I thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee.

Like the doves do I moan, I am o'ercome with sighing, With lamentation and groaning my spirit is downcast.'

His prayer is that his trespa.s.ses may be forgiven:

'Rend my sins, like a garment!

My G.o.d, my sins are unto seven times seven.

Forgive my iniquities.'

And his hope is in G.o.d:

'Oh, Lord, thy servant, cast him not away, The sins which I have committed, transform by thy grace!'

The att.i.tude of mind, the relation in which the wors.h.i.+pper finds himself to stand towards his G.o.d, is the same as that revealed in the Psalm of David: